4-decade long MS command line and Windows user learning Ubuntu. Please ELI actually 5: GNOME. I’m yet to find a Linux person who explain it simply.

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Terminal and all that other shit, I follow you. Command lines. Fine. I don’t know what the Linux terms mean, but I understand command lines etc… But GNOME… what the fuck is it? Is it a suite? an environment? Every Linux user explains things like I’ve already been a user for a few years and all of them have forgotten what being NEW actually is.

Ironically, the WORST place to find Linux environments explained simply and clearly from the bottom up: The Internet.

This is where I remind and beg: Like. I’m. FIVE.

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27 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Edit, a short and simple explanation.

For all practical purposes, GNOME is the graphical parts of Ubuntu operating system. This means, among other things, a collection of all the key system applications (like file explorer).

Original explanation starts here:

GNOME is one of the desktop environments running between the lower graphics layers and your user inputs. That is, for handling the graphical user interface (GUI), including applications to manage all settings of the GUI.

There are two big desktop environments (KDE is the other), and a pile of smaller desktop environments for specific purposes like one optimised for slower system, or for minimalism for sake of minimalism.

Of the two big ones, GNOME likes to keep things simple whereas KDE wants to allow the user to customise everything should they so wish. These two approaches seem to divide the Linux users into two stable camps. You usually either swear by GNOME or by KDE and wonder why anyone would use the other (as both are for all practical purposes good enough to just work for all normal use cases).

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