No subject

KDE and GNOME also provide you added functionality like
"drag and drop" between GNOME (or KDE) applications. 

You can certainly run X with a window manager *without* GNOME or KDE,
and some people like to do so especially on much older slower machines.
You just lose out on the added functionality provided by GNOME and KDE.

I should add that *both* GNOME and KDE have incredibly strong
pools of developers working to make our GUI experience that much
better.  IMHO, we win in the end by having the ongoing competition.

One final note about the desktop environments and window managers.
KDE is pretty much designed to run with its own window manager, kwm.
It *is* possible to run KDE with a different window manager, but the
default is kwm.  GNOME on the other hand is designed to be independent
of window managers and often is found running in conjunction with 
Englightenment. (Unless it is the Helix Code version which uses
Sawfish.)

> See the gnome home page (perhaps www.gnome.org?) and

http://www.gnome.org/

> the helixcode home page for more info on gnome
> http://www.helixcode.com.

FYI, Helix Code is a company founded by Miguel de Icaza and a
couple of the other original GNOME developers to go out and make
better tools for GNOME.

> There must also be a home page for kde, I just don't
> know what it is.

http://www.kde.org/

Brenda's diagram is great when describing how X works at the
protocol level:

>                                        /--------------\
>         /----------------\             |  x client    |
>         |   X server     |             +----+         |
>         |                |             | Xm |         |
>         |                |             +----+--+      |
>         |                |             | Xt    |      |
>         |                |             +-----------+  |
>         |                | <- X11R6 -> | Xlib      |  |
>         +----------------+             +--------------+
>         | OS (linux)     |             | OS (linux)   |
>         \----------------/             \--------------/

When I'm trying to explain it to people in a more conceptual
form about how all these pieces fit together, I describe it as:

  ---------------------------------
   window manager
  ---------------------------------
   desktop environment (KDE,GNOME)
  ---------------------------------
   X-Window System
  ---------------------------------
   operating system
  ---------------------------------

which is more or less how the pieces fit together conceptually.

My 2 cents,
Dan

-- 
Dan York, Director of Training        dyork at e-smith.com
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