Desktop Widgets

In recent years, Widgets have become standard fare in all modern operating systems, although they take different forms depending on the operating system in question. (OS X has the Dashboard while Vista has the Sidebar) Linux also features multiple widget engines for multiple desktop environments to fill space on the desktop that would otherwise be wasted. This section will discuss the various theme engines that are available for Linux and what each of them can do. 

Screenlets

GNOME's only real widget system (aside from various things that can be placed on the GNOME panels) is an external program called Screenlets. As far as widgets go, the Screenlets program is very decent. It has a wide variety of widgets available out of the box, with multiple calendars, clocks, system monitors, email checkers, RSS readers, etc. to choose from. From our experience, the Screenlets program is the best widget system available for Linux since the Widgets work equally well on GNOME, KDE and many other window managers.

In Ubuntu, the Screenlets Manager can be installed by running “sudo apt-get install screenlets”. The Screenlet manager software also allows you to install additional screenlets; (most are located on Linux resource sites like gnome-look.org) these must be extracted to your home folder and be placed in the “.screenlets” directory.

Plasma Widgets

The widget system in KDE4 is rather unique. KDE4 was originally meant as a reinvention of the traditional desktop concept; virtually everything (including any desktop shortcut icons) is made out of individual entities called plasmoids that are directly integrated with the new Plasma rendering system. This is a radical departure from other widget systems mentioned in this article, since those are essentially programs that run on top of another desktop environment without actually being part of it.

Plasma widgets are simple to use. To add widget plasmoids to your desktop, right-click anywhere on the desktop in KDE4 and choose the “Add Widgets” option. Many distros include only a few widgets out of the box, but more are available. (KDE4 includes a built-in tool for acquiring new widgets, wallpapers, etc.) However, the selection is not as diverse as Screenlets or SuperKaramba, but this is only because KDE4 is still fairly new. Given time, this deficiency should resolve itself.

If KDE4 is present, nothing else needs to be installed to be able to use KDE4 widgets. KDE4 widgets are not available in any other desktop environment.

SuperKaramba

SuperKaramba saw most of its use several years ago, and still serves as the widget engine for older versions of KDE. SuperKaramba is a remake of Karamba, an even older widget engine. SuperKaramba took Karamba's foundation and added additional features to make widgets easier to use (the original Karamba had no GUI and no easy way to add new widgets)

Due to its age, SuperKaramba has plenty of widgets for every conceivable purpose, and many of them can be found at KDE-oriented resource sites like KDE-look.org. SuperKaramba is best used in older versions of KDE, since KDE4 has its own built-in widget engine and GNOME is not able to handle transparency in SuperKaramba widgets very well. Furthermore, the Screenlets program has the capability to use SuperKaramba widgets, although that feature is still in beta.