1. KDE, Gnome, Xfce, X11, XDMCP, VNC, Spice, RDP
A graphical desktop is a combination of X Server, x Client, display Manager, window manager and other graphical elements and programs. If you come from the Windows world, you know that there is only one graphical desktop interface on linux. There are many different ones that you can use depending on which one you like better optically or offer you corresponding functions. As you know, there are dozens of different linux distributions out there. All of these distributions, at least those that are suitable for the desktop area, have a certain graphical desktop as the standard. This differs from distribution to distribution.
Here you have the most common graphical desktops. We have kde. Here. We have Glen, we have Xfce. We have lxt, cinnamon and Made. Let me show you the web pages where you can see a little bit of these graphical desktops. A very popular graphic desktop is kde. kde stands for a cool desktop environment where Cool is written with K here and kde is currently released in version 518 plasma the next generation desktop for linux. And here you can see what it looks like. You can see some pictures, you can see more pictures. When you use the Google Search and search for maybe kde, I think it’s enough.
And then pictures and here you have some kde pictures. Another very popular graphic desktop is gnome. The current version of gnome is version 338. You can see here, this is gnome. Another very widespread desktop environment is Xfce. At Xfce, not so much emphasis is placed on a modern or even futuristic appearance but rather on the fact that Xfce saves resources as a result, xfce is also often used on older systems that are not using an up to date hardware. Other well known desktop environments are for example lxde, cinnamon or Made, as already showed in the overview. But there are also various others here but I think these are the important ones.
Please keep them in mind for the exam. In addition to the three desktop interfaces kde, gnome and Xfce that you need to know for the exam and a few others that I mentioned before, this topic also deals with remote access to other systems.How can you access other graphic systems remotely? First of all, you have the possibility to start a graphical program via ssh and the option X. So I won’t go into that here as ssh will have its own chapter towards the end of this course. There is also rdp. rdp stands for Remote Desktop Protocol. rdp is a protocol developed by Microsoft and if you are or have been a Windows user, you may have seen this before.
The tool can be found in Windows when you click on Start and then simply enter Remote and then the correct program is just suggested and here you can enter a computer name or an IP address and then you can connect. This should of course be a Windows system. linux systems cannot be accessed with this program. Another option is vnc. vnc stands for Virtual Network Computing. In contrast to rdp, vnc is platform independent, so it can be used on linux, Windows and macos. You need a vnc server and a vnc client, of which there are several different ones that you can use.
Let me switch back to my bunto. A vnc client would be, for example, on my ubuntu it is not preinstalled, so I have to install it. Okay, here is webinar, and here I can click on sorry. Click on this button here new Connection Profile. And then I can name it. I can choose which protocol I want to use rdp, sftp, ssh, vnc and here I can enter the server address, username password and so on. And then I can connect to the server. Then there is also spice. Spice stands for Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments. With Spice you can also make the desktop of a target computer visible and even transfer audio data.
Spice is relatively new and is therefore not used that often. The last protocol for this is the xdmcp protocol. xdmcp stands for X Display Manager Control Protocol and is also able to transmit the entire desktop of a target computer. It is not necessary to configure or use all of these protocols and the corresponding programs for the exam. Just know that these protocols exist and what they do. You should expect questions like which of these protocols can be used for transfer desktop content remotely? And for such a question you should know the protocols. In this case ax, dmcp and Spice.
