Documentation › Reference
Glossary
Words used in this documentation
- Compositor
- The program that draws windows on the screen and passes them input: Wayfire or labwc in Aurora.
- Wayland
- The modern way Linux apps show windows. Older X11 apps run through Xwayland.
- Shell
- Aurora Shell: the top bar, dock, desktop, Spotlight, notifications and widgets. (Also: the command interpreter in a terminal, bash.)
- Layer surface
- A part of the desktop that isn't a window (bar, dock, wallpaper), drawn above or below windows.
- Greeter
- The login screen.
- Session
- Everything that runs from login to logout.
- Snapshot
- An instant copy of the system on btrfs, to go back to after a bad update.
- Flatpak
- A format for sandboxed apps that work on any distribution; Flathub is its main store.
- Portal
- The way sandboxed apps ask for files, the camera or the screen.
- polkit
- The system that asks for the administrator password for privileged actions.
- Live session
- Aurora running from the USB stick without installing.