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.
In: 81
I’m not going to answer your question. Others already did.
But I do want to welcome you to a new amazing world that you get to explore. It’ll all be familiar and different, but once you *get* it, you’ll wonder why it took you so long to try linux. It all just *makes sense*.
Unlike Windows, Linux is nice, it plays well with a lot of toys. Most of these toys don’t look like a PC, you don’t play with them like a PC – mobile phones, televisions, cars, games consoles. Linux don’t mind. It let’s them be who they want and make their own look, their own way of playing with Linux. Gnome is one of the PCs ways of playing with Linux.
There’s already a lot of comments here that explain it better than I will, but you might find it useful to check out other flavors of Ubuntu. The standard Ubuntu has the GNOME desktop environment, Kubuntu has KDE and the Plasma Desktop, Lubuntu has the LXQt Desktop Environment, etc. Check ’em out [here](https://ubuntu.com/desktop/flavours). It’s simply a different way to interact with your operating system (“Start” menu, taskbar, settings, file explorer, default apps, etc.)
ETA
Different Linux distributions (distros) have different release schedules for their apps. Some distros offer more up-to-date software, but they might have untested issues. Some prefer to wait longer before releasing an app to the user in order to ensure compatibility.
Some distros are even based off of *other* distros. Because Ubuntu is the most generally supported distribution, a lot of other distributions use it as a base e.g. Linux Mint or Elementary OS. They can then customize their own desktop environment over the top.
4-decade long MS command line
I mean that’s got to be the world record for longest MS command line of all time, right?
The computer does a lot of things. Most of the time, it’s invisible. If you want to see those things, especially more than one, you need a magic window. That window is GNOME
( or any other window manager)
The operating system is not the pretty program (aka the windows, mouse, etc.) you see when you start your computer.
The operating system runs on the command line behind everything you see.
The operating system needs to run a “program” that provides you with something to look at, a GUI (graphical user interface.)
Back in the DOS days, this was windows. DOS was the command prompt, and you needed to TELL IT to run windows.
GNOME is the same thing. GNOME is windows as DOS is to linux.
So GNOME is literally just the GUI that linux can run. There are other GUIs that linux can run (KDE for example) but GNOME is one of the most popular.
Gnome is the program that tells other programs how to have nice windows that you can click on. Without Gnome you just get a command line with text. Gnome is the window manager that gives you things like desktop, start menu, app icons, etc. Gnome also includes a widget toolkit, i.e. buttons and other controls, so that other programs can use them like Lego to build a UI.
There are alternatives to Gnome like KDE, Lxde, Cinnamon, etc. They do the exact same thing as Gnome but look different because different people have a different idea of fashion and what looks good.
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