Do we need Win95/98/Me support?

[Bernard Helyer]

On Monday, 23 January 2012 at 11:15:02 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> [1] I don't even know what the fuck to call any of them 
> anymore. "Window manager", "Desktop Environment", "Shell", 
> "Compositor", and if I'm not mistaken there's even some damn 
> hybrids or some such, and some can be used together, some 
> can't, bleh.

A window manager handles window bar controls, positions of new 
windows, and the like. A shell is merely a term for something 
that allows input to the OS. A compositor takes the pixels pushed 
by other parts of the stack and applies GL magic to them. A 
Desktop Environment takes several of the above and packs them 
together in a single environment to create something (hopefully) 
cohesive.

>They're all the same damn things as far as I can
> tell :/

That's because you don't know what you're talking about. :P