A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a

desk A desk or bureau is a piece of furniture with a flat table (furniture), table-style work surface used in a school, office, home or the like for academic, professional or domestic activities such as reading (activity), reading, writing, or using ...

(often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various computer terms: *

Desktop computer A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...

, a personal computer designed to fit on a desk ** Pizza box form factor, a design of

computer case A computer case, also known as a computer chassis, is the enclosure that contains most of the hardware of a personal computer. The components housed inside the case (such as the CPU, motherboard, memory, mass storage devices, power supply unit a ...

Desktop metaphor In computing, the desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users interact more easily with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the computer monitor as if it is t ...

in computing, the area behind the "windows" in a graphical user interface for the operating system **

Desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

, software that provides a comprehensive computer user interface **

Remote desktop software In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a ...

, software that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely on one system *

Client (computing) In computing, a client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks. The server is often (but not always) on another computer system, in ...

, sometimes referred to as a ''desktop'' to distinguish a Client from the Server *

Desktop (word processor) Desktop is a WYSIWYG word processor for computers ZX Spectrum and compatible (e. g. Didaktik). It is a word processor of Czech origin, its author is Tomáš Vilím who used the name ''Universum'' as his author name. Distributor of the program wa ...

, a program for Sinclair ZX Spectrum and compatible computers

See also