Over the past few years, 3-D rendering in window managers has become a new trend in the desktop environment. OS X was the first to make fancy visual effects prominent in the way users interact with the windows in their desktop. Windows Vista has also jumped on the bandwagon with its Aero interface, though it has some performance issues to work out.

A misconception among most Windows and Mac users is that an Operating System and a desktop environment are the same. Linux users have the opportunity to know better. Linux users have the advantage of using several desktop environments/windowmanagers like Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, XFCE and Openbox to name only a few.

The desktop environment for many Linux users, Gnome, is fast, organized and very easy to learn. But Gnome is also very powerful and highly customizable. Today's top 10 lists the various ways you can tweak Nautilus and the Gnome desktop to turn Linux into a productivity powerhouse.

Most of the Linux users should be familiar with Gnome and KDE since both of them are the most commonly used desktop managers in the various Linux distros. Now, if you are using an old PC with low hardware specs, you might find that the above two desktop environments are too heavy for your computer to handle.

The GNOME community's design and usability experts gathered for a week-long hackfest hosted by Canonical in the UK to shape the next major iteration of the GNOME desktop environment.

I have been recently been looking into desktop managers other than Gnome and KDE. Fortunately, with Ubuntu (and probably others) it is relatively easy to download and install several such desktop managers, and then choose between them on login.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mandriva One 2010.0 desktop (with the GNOME desktop environment) that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops.

Gnome and KDE are great – they give you a beautiful desktop with all the tools and utilities you need. On either system, you’ll find a solid window manager, desktop icons, a panel full of applets, the works. That’s all well and good for your average desktop PC, but what if you need something lighter, faster, or cleaner in appearance?

Here we are, contemplating the whole "desktop metaphor is obsolete" debate again.