Free desktop environment software for linux

GEX is just another desktop environment. Definitely nothing special. But it has one feature that no other desktop environment could provide: GEX is mine and gets all the features that I need and nothing else.
Another reason for this little desktop environment is my endeavor to create an Mbus profile for desktop environments and applications. It should provide at least the following features:
- a dynamic configuration mechanism for applications
- a remote control mechanism
- a event mechanism for service daemons
Configuration:
The configuration of GEXs first generation is completly stored in one single INI like file. This file may be located at several different places in your home directory:
~/.gex
~/gexrc
~/etc/.gex
~/etc/gexrc
~/usr/etc/.gex
~/usr/etc/gexrc
Each of the core components of the GEX desktop environment has its own configuration group in this file. The available keys, their possible values and a description can be found in the follow sections.
Enhancements:
- More support for multiple screens was added.
- gex-desktop draws the configured background configuration on all available screens and gex-panel can provide several panels on any available screens.
- A few bugs were fixed; for example, the detection of screen resizes should work much better now.

Techisa Desktop Environment is a lightweight alternative desktop environment developed using Qt.
The projects goal is to provide users with a comfortable environment using as few resources as possible. Only a Brazillian Portuguese translation is currently available.
Enhancements:
- Better support for KDE desktop files.
- Improved recognition of KDM/GDM sessions.
- New icon search paths.
- Enhancements to the TDE menu.
- Better handling of links and properties.
- TDESU shows correct error codes.
- Thumbnails.
- A tree view in the file browser. tdeopen accepts new parameters: [file name] directly executes a file or associated application, and -f [source] [destination] shows a popup allowing user to copy, move, or link.

Lovi is a log file viewer for the K Desktop Environment. Lovi supports monitoring multiple log files, with color-coded filtering of warning and error messages.

Zirconium Desktop Environment is a new low resource desktop shell optimized for usability.
Zirconium Desktop Environment operates on the philosophy that the desktop environment needs to stay out of the users way and provide the quickest access to the functions that are truly needed from a desktop shell.
Principle Zirconium Desktop Environment design goals:
- Very easy navigation by taking advantage of the corner effect by placing the icons for the 2 most critical functions (program launcher and window switcher) in the top corners.
- Minimal use of on-screen real estate. This is accomplished by "recycling" the window title bar by overlapping the already minimal on screen furniture on top of the title bar when a window is maximized.
- Eliminating the "system tray". Instead of using a pixel wasting systray icon to communicate status to the user programs are expected to use the ZDE Notification Daemon to sent small unobtrusive notifications to the user when something of note occurs. The ZDE Notification Daemon uses the SOAP protocol for universal compatibility and network transparency.
- Web integration. An (optional) backdrop manager based on the embedded Gecko engine from Mozilla is provided to provide for "Weblets" to run on the desktop. The ZDE session manager also provides a SOAP API that can be accessed by signed or expressly permitted Weblets to access the ZDE system.
Components of the ZDE system:
Corner Menus.
The left corner menu opens up the Program Launcher. Note that the Program Launcher is a custom navigation window and not a pop-up style menu. The Launcher window closes when an item is activated or the mouse pointer leaves the window.
The right corner menu is a list of open windows for window switching. It is a standard GTK pop-up menu.
Mini-Bar.
In the top center is the Mini-Bar that shows essential items like the time, volume control, battery and network status. The Mini-Bar is the same height as the Title Bar of a window so that when a window is maximized the title bar is partly covered by the Mini-Bar.
Notification Daemon:
When a SOAP message for a Notification arrives the Notification pop-up appears briefly. When not shown the very edge is visible in the lower-right. Mousing over the edge makes the Notification appear again and the mouse leave event closes the notification making it very simple to dismiss a notification by just mousing over it. Clicking the visible edge will open a Notification History window showing all notifications that have been logged during the session.
Window Theme:
The Window Manager theme needs to make special allowances for the way ZDE is arranged. The title bar needs to be 22 pixels high and the controls need to be 22 pixels away from the ends of the title bar to allow for the corner icons.

Logical Desktop is a desktop environment. A "desktop environment" is a program that allows you to do many different things with your computer, but in a consistent way. Desktop environments can be seen as a "dogma" of how things should be done, and how they should look and feel.

Examples of desktop environments are KDE, Gnome, the Windows interface, etc.

In Logical Desktop, like in all desktop environments, you work by composing actions made of one verb and one or more objects (e.g. "Print" is the verb, and the objects are the printer, the files to print, and the program used for printing).

Logical Desktop is how you specify those things: 1) in any order 2) with automatic hiding of the things that dont make sense.

1. In any order: Logical Desktop enables you to specify your action with many possible styles of interaction (file-oriented, task-oriented, program-oriented, device-oriented). Logical Desktop can do that because it treats verbs and objects with complete symmetry and uniformity: you can select both verbs and objects, and in any order.

2. With automatic hiding: Logical Desktop is more intelligent than traditional systems because it hides the unnecessary things while you are composing the action. More precisely, Logical Desktop hides those verbs/files/devices/programs that make no sense with the current selection.
Combining this with the previous point (that you can select anything in any order), we obtain a very powerful mechanism: if you select a verb first, the objects that dont make sense with it are hidden; if you select an object first, the verbs that dont make sense with it are hidden.

Watchpost is a file change monitoring program written for the GNOME desktop environment. The user sets files or folders to monitor for change and Watchpost will report any changes to the files monitored.

The tool was designed to help people keep an eye on what is being modified in their system.

LucidLife is a free and usable implementation of Conways Life. Aimed at users of the GNOME desktop environment, LucidLife should also be portable to other platforms. LucidLife is based on GtkLife.