What is the difference between WE/WM and DE?
 

Hey folks,

Firstly: What is the difference between a Window Manager and a Desktop Environment? Can one give examples? For example, can one use Enlightenment as WM and Gnome as DE? What does this do? What is the difference? So firstly can someone kindly explain this,

And secondly, does anyone know of a site with various DE and WM listed? I remember a webiste which was very plain and dull, however cannot remember the URL.

Thanks :)

Window Managers (like flux) simply manage your windows.
GNOME and KDE make a full desktop with many desktop apps build for it.

Enlightenment is a GNOME diet version.

A window manager is a program that (typically) draws borders around your windows so that you can resize them, and provides a titlebar so that you can move the window around.

A desktop environment typically includes software for navigating your file system, some kind of panel for the edge of your screen, etc. A desktop environment usually includes a window manager, but you can often use an alternative. For instance, GNOME comes with the metacity window manager, but one may quite easily use the openbox window manager within GNOME instead.

Check this site:

http://www.xwinman.org/