Linux: The Ultimate Guide

Enlightenment Desktop.

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Other Desktop Environments 
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PANTHEON DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT
Pantheon contains everything you see on screen. It shows the background 
of your desktop that switches between open windows, the home screen 
at the top of the screen, and the dock at the bottom. Pantheon is one of 
the many available Linux desktop environments. This situation is different 
from Windows and macOS, each giving you one interface to use. That’s 
why most of us have no idea that the desktop environment is separate 
from the kernel, bootloader, or any other part of those two apps. If you 
can’t change the parts, the difference doesn’t matter.
History
Unlike many other desktop environments, Pantheon is very close to the 
Linux operating system (more commonly known as “distribution” or “dis-
tro”). The engineers behind Elementary OS are the same people behind 
the Pantheon. The Pantheon started as another way people could put it on 
Ubuntu. Ubuntu is widely regarded as the most popular Linux version of 
personal computers if that name is unfamiliar. At that time, it used a desk-
top space known as Unity. That link had a panel at the top and a separate 
icon dock at the bottom left of the screen. The design encouraged people 
to find and unlock the software by searching.
The Pantheon was no other way to Unity than GNOME, one of the old-
est and most established desktop centers for free desktop and open source. 
Elementary OS founder Daniel Fore and others knew they could not 
change GNOME to their favorite, so they used multiple building blocks 
to build something of their own. Their creation, Pantheon, is written with 
GTK + and Vala. Unlike other developed methods like GNOME and the 
KDE Plasma desktop, which you can install on almost any Linux version, 
the Pantheon is most visible on Elementary OS only. That being said, you 
do not need to use Elementary OS to install the Pantheon. As a free proj-
ect, some can use and redistribute the code as they wish.
The Pantheon desktop environment is built on the GNOME software 
base, GTK, GDK, Cairo, GLib (GObject and GIO), GVfs, and Tracker. The 
desktop allows multiple workplaces to schedule user activity. Pantheon 
apps designed and developed by foundations include:
• Pantheon Greeter: LightDM based session manager
• Gala: Window manager
• Wingpanel: Top panel, similar to working with the top GNOME 
Shell panel

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