What Does Desktop Environment (DE) Mean?
Desktop environment (DE) is a graphical users interface (GUI) that enables a user to access and manage the important and frequently accessed features and services of an operating system.
A desktop environment is a default interface provided by virtually all modern operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Mac and more. This type of interface was developed to replace the command-line interface, which was used in legacy operating systems such as DOS and Unix. However, a user may still have command-line access for some system-level services that aren't accessible through a desktop environment.
The primary desktop environment is often called simply a desktop.