How to create a simple desktop environment?

Question

Hello, I want to know how to create a simple desktop environment, such as KDE, Gnome and LXDE, for Linux, or specifically, Ubuntu/Kubuntu, but I do not know how to begin and how complex it is.

I want to create a simple, efficient and lightweight desktop and to reproduce some good features from KDE, Gnome and Windows XP. I do not want to reinvent the wheel, I want to design the graphical interface and main dialogs.

I could use C++ with Qt, or maybe with X11 calls. A simple desktop like TWM would be the first step, then I could add task bar, start menu, new features and play with new ideas.

Thanks.

Answer 1

These are all open source projects, so I suggest you grab one of the simpler window managers and rummage around in its source code. I should warn you, though: this kind of project is not for the faint-hearted, and the likelihood of your little toy project becoming a mainstream desktop is low, so don't go into this imagining it's going to be anything more than a learning exercise (and if it does become something more, you'll be pleasantly surprised).

Strategically, your best bet is to fork an existing WM, rather than trying to build a brand new one from scratch.

One final point: Qt is a windowing framework for C++ that sits on top of a window manager. It isn't a window manager, per se, like Gnome/TWM/etc. are. And, as @ptomato rightly points out, Gnome is actually a desktop environment that itself sits on top of a window manager, which is selectable, but defaults to Metacity.