I've used Windows my entire life and I'm still a pretty beginner-level computer user, so Linux terminology is confusing me. Why are there so many different Linux distributions? Also, what exactly are a desktop environment (DE) and a window manager (WM), and why would someone need one? Which DE or WM do you personally prefer?
3 Answers
A window manager mainly controls application windows—moving, resizing, minimizing, maximizing, stacking, or tiling them. Some are part of a full desktop environment, while others are used on their own with separate tools for panels, launchers, notifications, and settings. A tiling window manager automatically arranges windows and is often keyboard-focused; a traditional one behaves more like the desktop you’re used to. You can run Linux without a DE or WM, but then you’ll generally be working from a command line rather than a normal graphical desktop. Personally, I like Xfce for a simple, low-resource setup, while KDE Plasma is an easy recommendation for someone coming from Windows.
A desktop environment is the complete graphical desktop you interact with: menus, panels or taskbars, icons, settings tools, notifications, a file manager, and usually a window manager. KDE Plasma feels fairly familiar to Windows users and is highly customizable. GNOME has a cleaner, more minimalist workflow, while Xfce is lightweight and straightforward. You normally choose a distro that already includes one, so you don’t have to assemble everything yourself.
Linux is open source, so no single company controls the entire operating system. Different people and organizations can combine the Linux kernel with different system tools, software repositories, installers, update policies, and default settings. Those combinations are called distributions, or distros. Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch, and Mint are all different ways of assembling and maintaining that larger collection of software. It’s a bit like having many cars built around similar underlying technology, but with different designs and intended uses. You don’t need to try them all—Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, or openSUSE are common starting points.
That’s what made it click for me: on Windows, the graphical desktop is bundled into the operating system, so you rarely think about it as a separate component. Linux gives you the option to swap it out.