Linux Desktop Comparison (Demo)
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Video Transcription
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>> Hey, Cybrarians. Welcome back to
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the Linux plus course here at Cybrary.
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I'm your instructor Rob Goelz.
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In today's lesson, we're going to have
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a Linux desktop environment comparison.
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Upon completion of today's lesson,
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you're going to be able to understand
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the purpose of a desktop environment,
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differentiate between
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the different desktop environments,
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and then also we'll have a demo
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at the end of the lesson where
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we'll see how to navigate
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the different desktop environments.
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The desktop environment really is just providing
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a GUI and it's the appearance and
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also the several components that run underneath it to
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provide that gooey environment for us in Linux.
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The display manager is a desktop login screen.
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Sometimes if you're running
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different desktop environment,
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you can choose between them on the login screen.
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The Windows manager is a client program that is used to
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determine how the windows are
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presented to you on the desktop.
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The File Manager is what we
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use to perform graphical file maintenance.
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If we want to work with files
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but not do it from the command line,
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we can use the File Manager program to do so.
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Now, there are five different desktop environments
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that are covered on the exam.
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The first one is KDE Plasma that's
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used by openSUSE and Kubuntu.
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It uses the SDDM display manager and
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the Dolphin File Manager and
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the Windows manager is called Kwin.
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Now, Cinnamon is the default
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desktop environment for Linux Mint,
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but you can also run MATE on Linux Mint.
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We'll see that when we
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>> talk about MATE in a minute here.
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>> Now, Cinnamon uses the display manager LightDM,
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the File Manager Nemo,
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and the Windows manager Muffin.
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Unity is an older desktop environment that was
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used in Ubuntu before 17.10.
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I'm actually going to demo it later in
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a Ubuntu 16 just so that we can see it.
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But it's important to keep in
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mind that Unity isn't really
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the default desktop environment
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for any distribution anymore.
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It is one that you can choose to run.
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It is very nice, but it's not really
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officially supported by Canonical,
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who owns Ubuntu anymore.
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The display manager in unity is also LightDM,
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the File Manager is Nautilus
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and the Windows manager is Metacity.
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Now when you're talking about Gnome,
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this is the default desktop environment
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for Fedora and for Debian.
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When we're in CentOS or running Ubuntu,
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this is going to be what we're used to seeing.
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Gnome is the desktop environment we see there.
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The display manager for Gnome is a GDM.
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The File Manager is just called
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files and the Window manager is called Mutter.
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Then finally we have Mate.
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Later on today I'm going to demo this unmanned manager,
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the manager or Linux distribution,
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but it can also be an option in
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Linux meant you could run cinnamon or mate.
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Now may also uses the LightDM display manager.
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The File Manager is called Caja or cava,
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and then the Windows Manager is called Marco.
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Let's have a look at all of these different
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desktop environments with some Demo Time.
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Here we are in our demo environment.
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The first thing we're going to see here
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is Gnome and this is CentOS.
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Our Windows Manager here are
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our display manager that we've seen when we
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log in is as GDM.
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This is really GDM that we see here.
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It has this weird thing where you
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have to move your mouse up to get in.
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Then he logged into the system.
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Once you've logged in here are
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going to be brought to the desktop.
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The desktop here you're going to
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have the access to the file system
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right from the desktop is if you have that setup, I do.
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What this does is it takes you into the File Manager,
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which is just called Files,
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and then the Windows manager that allows us to do
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everything in the back-end and move
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things around is called Mutter.
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That's pretty much all that you need
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to know about working
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with CentOS and Ubuntu
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is going to be generally the same layout here.
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Everything is controlled from up
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here in the upper left-hand corner.
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Then if you wanted to do anything like shut down,
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you would go up here and click on
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the shutdown option where you
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can choose what you want to do.
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You can also choose to lock the screen from up
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here by clicking on this icon and I'll do that.
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Now let's take a look at the next desktop environment.
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The next desktop environment we're going to
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look at today is KDE.
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This is actually running openSUSE.
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We're going to log in here.
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Remember that the display manager
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that we use to log in when we're
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talking about KDE, it's called SDDM.
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Let's go ahead and log in here.
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Now that we're logged in SDDM,
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we can open the File Manager.
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The File Manager here is called Dolphin.
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When we open this app we'll see that
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the says home dolphin and that is
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the File Manager that we have in KDE.
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We can close out of that but this is everything
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that's managing what we're doing with
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moving around Windows here.
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That's the Windows Manager which is called Quinn.
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Now note that when you're working in KDE,
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all of your applications and stuff are
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down here in the lower left-hand corner.
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This is going to be more akin to
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using a Windows environment,
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where you sometimes see the Start menu down here.
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From here you can do things like
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get into your applications,
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look at the computer,
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look at the history, and then
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also you can go over here to leave,
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to lock the screen shut down,
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or restart the computer.
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Once again, I'll go ahead and lock the screen and
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we'll move on to our next desktop environment.
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The next desktop environment
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we're going to look at today is
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Linux Mint and this is actually running cinnamon.
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Now the display manager that we
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use to login to Linux Mint,
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this is actually called LightDM right here.
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We're going to use that and get logged
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in. Hopefully, it won't.
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Let's try that pass-through one more time.
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Let's get logged in here.
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Now we're into the user environment
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for Linux Mint. This is cinnamon.
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Cinnamon is the desktop environment on Linux Mint.
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We can see that this is very similar to KDE
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in terms of the layout and then
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our menu options are all down here.
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Everything that we see, we can
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also go up here and open our files.
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The File Manager here is actually called Nemo.
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We're talking about cinnamon and
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the windows manager that allows us
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to interact with these windows and move things around.
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Well, that's called Muffin.
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Now if we wanted to go ahead and just lock this system,
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we can go up here and click on the Lock button,
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and then we've locked it and we
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can move on to our next desktop environment.
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The next desktop environment
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I want to take a look at with
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you today is the mate desktop environment,
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which is in Manjaro.
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The display manager will log into here.
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Let's just make sure if type that password right.
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Apologies. The display manager
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we just use to log in there
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>> on Manjaro is also light DM,
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>> but we can see where we land here.
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It's just a slightly different graphical experience.
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If we go ahead and double-click on the home icon here,
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we can see that this has opened up on Manjaro.
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The File Manager here is Caja.
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The Windows Manager we used some of everything
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around is actually called Marco.
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If we wanted to go ahead and lock on this system,
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we could go up here and just click on the lock icon,
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and that will lock it out for us.
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Let's go on and take a look at
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the last desktop environment.
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In the last desktop environment,
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we're going to look at today is unity.
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Again, you can see up
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>> here this is running on Ubuntu 16.
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>> You can see down here it says Ubuntu 16
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for long-term support.
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That's what the LTS means.
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We're going to go ahead and just log in here
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and get into the system.
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Now on unity, the display manager is also LightDM,
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so you can see now we've seen
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three different desktop environments
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with light DM and they
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all had very different displays for the login screen.
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It's very flexible. You do a lot of things with it.
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Inside of here, we can go into the File Manager.
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If we click on the Files here,
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It's going to come up in just a minute.
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This is actually Nautilus as well.
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That's the File Manager that we're using here.
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If we move or windows around here,
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the Windows Manager is actually called Metacity.
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That does some nice transparency
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when you move files around or move windows around.
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Then that's pretty much it for unity as well.
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Again, display managers like DM,
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the File Manager is
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not always the Windows Manager is Metacity.
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Then that's really pretty much it
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for working with all
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of these different display environments.
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To lock the screen, we can just hit
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Control Alt L or we can select lock right here.
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But with that, we've reached the end of this lesson.
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In this lesson, we covered
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the purpose of a desktop environment.
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We talked about how to differentiate between
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the environments and the differences between them.
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Then we also saw how to log in and
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navigate the various desktop environments.
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Thanks so much for being here and I look
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forward to seeing you in the next lesson.
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