GNOME is a
desktop environmentIn graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today...
—a
graphical user interfaceA graphical user interface is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than...
which runs on top of a computer
operating systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
—composed entirely of
free and open source softwareFree and open-source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
. It is an international project that includes creating
software developmentSoftware development is the set of activities that results in software products. Software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products...
frameworks, selecting
application softwareApplication software is a computer program that functions and is operated by means of a computer, with the purpose of supporting or improving the software user's work. In other words, it is the subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a...
for the desktop, and working on the programs which manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management.
GNOME is part of the
GNU ProjectThe GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated the GNU operating system, software development for which began in January 1984...
and can be used with various
Unix-likeA Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating systems, most notably those built on top of the
Linux kernelThe Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
and the
GNUGNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for “GNU's not Unix!” This name was chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code...
userland, and as part of
Java Desktop SystemJava Desktop System is a desktop environment from Sun Microsystems, available for Solaris, and formerly Linux.JDS aims to provide a system familiar to the average computer user with a full suite of office productivity software such as an office suite, a web browser, email, calendaring, and...
in Solaris.
The name originally stood for
GNU Network Object Model Environment.
According to the GNOME website:
The GNOME project puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, usability, and making things “just work”.
GNOME is a
desktop environmentIn graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today...
—a
graphical user interfaceA graphical user interface is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than...
which runs on top of a computer
operating systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
—composed entirely of
free and open source softwareFree and open-source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
. It is an international project that includes creating
software developmentSoftware development is the set of activities that results in software products. Software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products...
frameworks, selecting
application softwareApplication software is a computer program that functions and is operated by means of a computer, with the purpose of supporting or improving the software user's work. In other words, it is the subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a...
for the desktop, and working on the programs which manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management.
GNOME is part of the
GNU ProjectThe GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated the GNU operating system, software development for which began in January 1984...
and can be used with various
Unix-likeA Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating systems, most notably those built on top of the
Linux kernelThe Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
and the
GNUGNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. Its name is a recursive acronym for “GNU's not Unix!” This name was chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code...
userland, and as part of
Java Desktop SystemJava Desktop System is a desktop environment from Sun Microsystems, available for Solaris, and formerly Linux.JDS aims to provide a system familiar to the average computer user with a full suite of office productivity software such as an office suite, a web browser, email, calendaring, and...
in Solaris.
The name originally stood for
GNU Network Object Model Environment.
Aims
According to the GNOME website:
The GNOME project puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, usability, and making things “just work”. The other aims of the project are:
- Freedom—to create a desktop environment that will always have the source code available for re-use under a free software license.
- Accessibility
In human-computer interaction, computer accessibility refers to the accessibility of a computer system to all people, regardless of disability or severity of impairment...
—ensuring the desktop can be used by anyone, regardless of technical skill or physical disability.
- Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes...
—making the desktop available in many languages. At the moment GNOME is being translated to 166 languages.
- Developer-friendliness—ensuring it is easy to write software that integrates smoothly with the desktop, and allow developers a free choice of programming language.
- Organization—a regular release cycle and a disciplined community structure.
- Support—ensuring backing from other institutions beyond the GNOME community.
History
In 1996, the
KDEKDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment mainly for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications...
project was started. KDE was
free and open sourceFree and open-source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
from the start, but members of the GNU project were concerned with KDE's dependence on the (then) non-GPL
QtQt is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of GUI programs , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers. Qt is most notably used in KDE, Google Earth, Skype, Qt Extended, Adobe Photoshop Album, VirtualBox and OPIE...
widget toolkitA widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...
. In August 1997, two projects were started in response to this issue: the Harmony toolkit (a free replacement for the Qt libraries) and GNOME (a different desktop not using Qt, but built entirely on top of GPL and LGPL licensed software). The initial project leaders for GNOME were
Miguel de IcazaMiguel de Icaza is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects.-Early years:Miguel de Icaza was born in Mexico City and studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico but never received a degree. He came from a family of scientists in which his...
and
Federico MenaFederico Mena Quintero is a Mexican computer programmer.He wrote the GNOME Canvas while working at Red Hat. He also maintained GIMP for a time, and was one of the first hires at Ximian, now owned by Novell, where he still works...
.
In place of the Qt toolkit,
GTK+GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt....
was chosen as the base of the GNOME desktop. GTK+ uses the
GNU Lesser General Public LicenseThe GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
(LGPL), a free software license that allows GPL-incompatible software (including proprietary software) to link to it. The GNOME desktop itself is licensed under the LGPL for its libraries, and the GPL for applications that are part of the GNOME project. Having the toolkit and libraries under the LGPL allowed applications written for GNOME to use a much wider set of licenses (including
proprietary softwareProprietary software is any computer software with restrictions on use or private modification, or with restrictions judged to be excessive on copying or publishing of modified or unmodified versions. The term proprietary software is thus the opposite of free software, generally speaking...
licenses).
In 1998, Qt became GPL. While Qt was dual-licensed under both the QPL and the GPL with exceptions to other specific licenses like
Apache LicenseThe Apache License is a free-software license authored by the Apache Software Foundation...
, the freedom to link any proprietary software with GTK+ at no charge made it differ from Qt. With Qt licensed under the GPL, the Harmony Project stopped its efforts at the end of 2000, as KDE did not depend on non-GPL software anymore. In contrast, as of 2009, the development of GNOME has not stopped. In March 2009, after its owner company Troll Tech was bought by Nokia, Qt 4.5 was released, adding another licensing option, the LGPL. Completely ceasing the licensing problems it had, while still maintaining the strong foundations on which it was built, being very well documented and supported.
The California startup
EazelEazel was a software company based in Mountain View, California from 1999 to 2001.The enterprise was staffed with former employees of Apple Computer, Netscape, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, among others. Mike Boich was CEO; Bud Tribble was VP of Engineering; Andy...
developed the
Nautilus file managerNautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards....
from 1999 to 2001. de Icaza and
Nat FriedmanNathaniel Dourif Friedman , known as Nat, is a programmer who co-founded Ximian along with Miguel de Icaza in 1999, a company that was later bought by Novell in 2003....
founded Helix Code (later
XimianXimian was a company that provided free software desktop applications for Linux and Unix based on the GNOME platform. Ximian was founded by Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman in October 1999, and was bought by Novell on August 4,...
) in 1999 in Massachusetts. The company developed Gnome's infrastructure and applications, and in 2003 was purchased by
NovellNovell, Inc. is a global software corporation based in the United States specializing in enterprise operating systems such as SUSE Linux Enterprise and Novell NetWare; identity, security and systems management solutions; and collaboration solutions. Together with WordPerfect, Novell was...
.
Name
The name “GNOME” was proposed as an acronym of
GNU Network Object Model Environment by Elliot Lee, one of the authors of
ORBitORBit is a CORBA 2.4 compliant Object Request Broker . It features mature C, C++ and Python bindings, and less developed bindings for Perl, Lisp, Pascal, Ruby, and Tcl...
and the Object Activation Framework. It refers to GNOME’s original intention of creating a
distributed objectThe term distributed objects usually refers to software modules that are designed to work together, but reside either in multiple computers connected via a network or in different processes inside the same computer. One object sends a message to another object in a remote machine or process to...
framework similar to
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices...
’s
OLEObject Linking and Embedding is a technology that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects developed by Microsoft. For developers, it brought OLE Control eXtension , a way to develop and use custom user interface elements...
. This no longer reflects the core vision of the GNOME project, and the full expansion of the name is now considered obsolete. As such, some members of the project advocate dropping the acronym and re-naming "GNOME" to "Gnome".
Project structure
As with most free software projects, the GNOME project is loosely managed. Discussion chiefly occurs on a number of public mailing lists.
In August 2000 the
GNOME FoundationThe GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, coordinating the efforts in the GNOME project.- Purpose :...
was set up to deal with administrative tasks and press interest and to act as a contact point for companies interested in developing GNOME software. While not directly involved in technical decisions, the Foundation does coordinate releases and decide which projects will be part of GNOME. Membership is open to anyone who has made a non-trivial contribution to the project. Members of the Foundation elect a board of directors every November, and candidates for the positions must be members themselves.
Developers and users of GNOME gather at an annual meeting known as
GUADECThe GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, is an annual conference taking place in Europe, whose topic is the development of the GNOME desktop environment....
in order to discuss the current state of the project and its future direction.
GNOME often incorporates standards from
freedesktop.orgfreedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....
into itself to allow GNOME applications to appear more integrated into other desktops (and vice versa), and encourages cooperation as well as competition.
Major subprojects
GNOME is built from a large number of different projects. A few of the major ones are listed below:
- Bonobo
Bonobo is a component model for creating reusable software components and compound documents. It was created formerly by Ximian for compound documents used in GNOME....
– a (obsolete in current releases) compound documentIn computing, a compound document is a document type typically produced using word processing software, and is a regular text document intermingled with non-text elements such as spreadsheets, pictures, digital videos, digital audio, and other multimedia features...
technology.
- GConf
GConf is a system used by the GNOME desktop environment for storing configuration settings for the desktop and applications.Changes to this system are controlled by GConfd, a daemon. GConfd watches out for changes to the database, and when they are changed, it applies the new settings to...
– for storing application settings.
- GVFS
GVFS is a replacement for GnomeVFS, the GNOME Virtual File System. GVFS optionally allows supported virtual file systems to be mounted through FUSE....
– a virtual file systemA virtual file system or virtual filesystem switch is an abstraction layer on top of a more concrete file system. The purpose of a VFS is to allow client applications to access different types of concrete file systems in a uniform way...
.
- GNOME Keyring
GNOME Keyring is a daemon application designed to take care of the user's security credentials, such as user names and passwords. The sensitive data is encrypted and stored in a keyring file in the users home folder...
– for storing encryptionIn cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
keys and security information.
- GNOME Translation Project – translate documentation and applications into different languages.
- GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt....
– a widget toolkit used for constructing graphical applications. The use of GTK+ as the base widget toolkit allows GNOME to benefit from certain features such as theming (the ability to change the look of an application) and smooth anti-aliased graphics. Sub-projects of GTK+ provide object-oriented programming support (GObjects), extensive support of international character sets and text layout (PangoPango is a free and open source computing library for shaping internationalized texts in high quality. Different font backends can be used, allowing cross-platform support.- Utilization :...
) and accessibility (ATKAccessibility Toolkit refers in particular to the GNOME ATK.The ATK is a developer toolkit which allows programmers to use common GNOME accessibility features in their applications. This includes such features as high-contrast visual themes for the visually-impaired and keyboard behaviour...
). GTK+ reduces the amount of work required to port GNOME applications to other platforms such as Windows and Mac OS X.
- Human interface guidelines
Human interface guidelines are software development documents which offer application developers a set of recommendations. Their aim is to improve the experience for the users by making application interfaces more intuitive, learnable, and consistent. Most guides limit themselves to defining a...
(HIG) – research and documentation on building easy-to-use GNOME applications.
- LibXML
libxml2 is a software library for parsing XML documents. It is also the basis for another library which parses XSLT-1.0 stylesheets. It is written in the C programming language, and provides bindings to C, C++, XSH, C#, Python, Kylix/Delphi and other Pascals, Ruby, and PHP5. It can be accessed from...
– an XML library.
- ORBit
ORBit is a CORBA 2.4 compliant Object Request Broker . It features mature C, C++ and Python bindings, and less developed bindings for Perl, Lisp, Pascal, Ruby, and Tcl...
– a CORBAChorba , shurpa , sorpa , or shorpo is one of various kinds of soup or stew found in national cuisines across Eurasia. The term is likely of Persian or Turkic origin.- Turkey :...
ORBIn distributed computing, an object request broker is a piece of middleware software that allows programmers to make program calls from one computer to another via a network...
for software componentry (obsolete in current releases).
A number of
language bindingIn computing, a binding from a language to a library or OS service is an API providing that service in the language.Many software libraries are written in systems programming languages such as C or C++...
s are available allowing applications to be written in a variety of programming languages, such as
C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as a middle-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features...
(
gtkmmgtkmm is the official C++ interface for the popular GUI library GTK+. gtkmm is free software distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License ....
),
JavaJava is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
(
java-gnomejava-gnome is a set of language bindings for the Java programming language for use in the GNOME desktop environment. It is part of the official GNOME language bindings suite and provides a set of libraries allowing developers to write computer programs for GNOME using the Java programming language...
), Ruby (ruby-gnome2), C#, (
Gtk#Gtk# is a set of .NET bindings for the GTK+ GUI toolkit and assorted GNOME libraries. The library facilitates building graphical GNOME applications using Mono or any other compliant CLR...
),
PythonPython is a general-purpose high-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
(
PyGTKPyGTK is graphical user interface for creating programs, consisting of a set of Python wrappers for the GTK+ GUI library. PyGTK is free software and licensed under the LGPL. Other popular alternatives are PyQt and wxPython. Its original author is the prominent GNOME developer James Henstridge...
),
PerlPerl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall, a linguist working as a systems administrator for NASA, in 1987, as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone...
(
gtk2-perlGtk2-Perl is a set of wrappers for the Perl programming language around the GTK+ GUI library and the other GNOME platform libraries. GTK2-Perl is free software and licensed under the LGPL...
) and many others. The only languages currently used in applications that are part of an official GNOME desktop release are C, C#, Python and Vala.
Look and feel
GNOME is designed around the traditional computing
desktop metaphorThe desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users more easily interact with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the monitor of a computer as if it is the user's desktop, upon which objects such as documents and...
. Its handling of windows, applications and files is similar to that of contemporary desktop operating systems. In its default configuration, the desktop has a launcher menu for quick access to installed programs and file locations; open windows may be accessed by a taskbar along the bottom of the screen and the top-right corner features a notification area for programs to display notices while running in the background. However these features can be moved to almost anywhere the user desires, replaced with other functions or removed altogether.
GNOME uses
MetacityMetacity is a window manager used by default in the GNOME desktop environment. The development of Metacity was started by Havoc Pennington and it is released under the GNU General Public License.Before the introduction of Metacity in GNOME 2.2, GNOME used Enlightenment and then Sawfish as its...
as its default window manager. Users can change the appearance of their desktop through the use of themes, which are sets consisting of an
iconAn icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism...
set, window manager border and GTK+ theme engine and parameters. Popular GTK+ themes include
BluecurveBluecurve is a desktop theme for GNOME and KDE created by the Red Hat Artwork project. The main aim of Bluecurve was to create a consistent look throughout the Linux environment, and provide support for various Freedesktop.org desktop standards...
and
ClearlooksClearlooks is a theme engine for GTK+, the main widget toolkit used by the GNOME desktop environment. It is based on Red Hat's Bluecurve theme. The theme engine draws the actual widgets, and can be configured with 'themes' that invoke the theme engine with different configurations. It is the...
(the current default theme).
GNOME puts emphasis on being easy for everyone to use. The HIG helps guide developers in producing applications which look and behave similarly, in order to provide a cohesive GNOME interface.
Usability
Since GNOME v2.0, a key focus of the project has been
usabilityUsability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal...
. As a part of this, the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) were created, which is an extensive guide for creating high-quality, consistent, and usable GUI programs, covering everything from GUI design to recommended pixel-based layout of widgets.
During the v2.0 rewrite, many settings were deemed to be of little or no value to the majority of users and were removed. For instance, the preferences section of the Panel were reduced from a dialog of six tabs to one with two tabs.
Havoc PenningtonRobert Sanford Havoc Pennington is well-known in the free software community due to his work on GNOME, Metacity, GConf, and D-BUS. He works for startup , "developing a consumer product that involves hardware, software, and online services"....
summarized the usability work in his 2002 essay "Free Software UI", emphasizing the idea that all preferences have a cost, and it's better to "unbreak the software" than to add a UI preference to do that:
Releases
Each of the parts making up the GNOME project has its own version number and release schedule. However, individual module maintainers coordinate their efforts to create a full GNOME stable release on a roughly six-month schedule.
The releases listed in the table below are classed as stable.
| Version |
Date |
Information |
|
August 1997 |
GNOME development announced |
| 1.0 |
March 1999 |
First major GNOME release |
| 1.0.53 |
October 1999 |
"October" |
| 1.2 |
May 2000 |
"Bongo" |
| 1.4 |
April 2001 |
"Tranquility" |
| 2.0 |
June 2002 |
Major upgrade based on GTK2. Introduction of the Human Interface Guidelines Human interface guidelines are software development documents which offer application developers a set of recommendations. Their aim is to improve the experience for the users by making application interfaces more intuitive, learnable, and consistent. Most guides limit themselves to defining a...
. |
| 2.2 |
February 2003 |
Multimedia and file manager improvements. |
| 2.4 |
September 2003 |
"Temujin": EpiphanyEpiphany is a web browser for the GNOME graphical computing desktop. It is also available for Mac OS X and is a descendant of Galeon.-Development:...
, accessibility support. |
| 2.6 |
March 2004 |
NautilusNautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards....
changes to a spatial file managerIn computing, a spatial file manager is a file manager that uses a spatial metaphor to represent files and folders as if they are real physical objects.-Concepts:The base requirements of a spatial file manager are:...
, and a new GTK+ file dialogIn computing, a file dialog is a dialog box that allows users to choose a file from the file system...
is introduced. A short-lived fork of GNOME, GoneME, is created as a response to the changes in this version. |
| 2.8 |
September 2004 |
Improved removable device support, adds EvolutionEvolution or Novell Evolution is the official personal information manager and workgroup information management tool for GNOME. It combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions. It has been an official part of GNOME since version 2.8 in September 2004...
. |
| 2.10 |
March 2005 |
Lower memory requirements and performance improvements. Adds: new panel applets (modem control, drive mounter and trashcan); and the TotemTotem is a media player for the GNOME computer desktop environment which runs on GNU, Linux, Solaris, BSD and other Unix and Unix-like systems. It is officially included in GNOME starting from version 2.10 , but de facto it was already included in most GNOME environments...
and Sound JuicerSound Juicer is an application Front-End to the Cdparanoia CD ripping library. It allows the user to extract audio from compact discs and convert it into audio files that a personal computer or digital audio player can understand and play...
applications |
| 2.12 |
September 2005 |
Nautilus improvements; improvements in cut/paste between applications and freedesktop.org integration. Adds: EvinceEvince is a document viewer for PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF and DVI designed for the GNOME desktop environment.The developers of Evince intended to replace the multiple GNOME document viewers with a single and simple application. The Evince motto sums up the project aim: "Simply a Document...
PDF viewer; New default theme: Clearlooks; menu editor; keyring manager and admin tools. Based on GTK+ 2.8 with cairo support. |
| 2.14 |
March 2006 |
Performance improvements (over 100% in some cases); usability improvements in user preferences; GStreamer 0.10 multimedia framework. Adds: EkigaEkiga is a VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME and Windows. It is distributed as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It is the default VOIP client in Ubuntu...
video conferencing application; Deskbar search tool; Pessulus lockdown editor; Fast user switchingFast user switching is a feature on some modern multi-user operating systems such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora. It allows users to switch between user accounts on a single PC without quitting applications and logging out...
; Sabayon system administration tool. |
| 2.16 |
September 2006 |
Performance improvements. Adds: TomboyTomboy is a free and open-source desktop notetaking application written for Unix-like and Microsoft Windows systems written in C# using Gtk#. Tomboy is part of the GNOME desktop environment, often filling the need for personal information management. Its interface is a notepad with a Wiki-like...
notetaking application; BaobabBaobab is a graphical disk usage analyzer for GNOME. It is a part of GnomeUtils. It is named after a strange tree: Adansonia.- See also :* Filelight, a similar application, for KDE* GParted* SequoiaView* TreeSize- External links :**...
disk usage analyser; OrcaOrca is an open source, flexible, extensible assistive technology for people with visual impairments. Using various combinations of speech synthesis, braille, and magnification, Orca helps provide access to applications and toolkits that support the AT-SPI .The development of Orca has been led by...
screen reader; GNOME Power Manager (improving laptop battery life); improvements to Totem, Nautilus; compositingCompositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called “blue screen,” “green screen,” “chroma key,” and other names. Today,...
support for Metacity; new icon theme. Based on GTK+ 2.10 with new print dialog. |
| 2.18 |
March 2007 |
Performance improvements. Adds: Seahorse Seahorse is a GNOME front-end application for managing PGP and SSH keys. Seahorse integrates with Nautilus, gedit and Evolution for encryption, decryption and other operations. It has HKP and LDAP key server support...
GPGGNU Privacy Guard is a free software alternative to the PGP suite of cryptographic software. GnuPG is compliant with RFC 4880, which is the current IETF standards track specification of OpenPGP...
security application, allowing encryption of emails and local files; Baobab disk usage analyser improved to support ring chart view; Orca screen reader; improvements to Evince, Epiphany and GNOME Power Manager, Volume control; two new games, GNOME Sudoku and glchess. MP3 and AAC audio encoding. |
| 2.20 |
September 2007 |
Tenth anniversary release. Evolution backup functionality; improvements in Epiphany, EOG, GNOME Power Manager; password keyring A keyring is a ring that holds keys and other small items, which are sometimes connected to keychains. Other types of keyrings are made of leather, wood and rubber. Keyrings were invented in the 19th century. The most common form of the keyring is a single piece of metal in a 'double loop'...
management in Seahorse. Adds: PDF forms editing in Evince; integrated search in the file manager dialogs; automatic multimedia codecA codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of compressor-decompressor' or, more accurately, coder-decoder'.Historically a modem was a contraction of modulator/demodulator and converted...
installer. |
| 2.22 |
March 2008 |
Addition of CheeseCheese is a GNOME webcam application, similar to Apple's Photo Booth. It was developed as a Google Summer of Code 2007 project by Daniel G. Siegel. It uses GStreamer to apply effects to photos and videos...
, a tool for taking photos from webcams and Remote Desktop ViewerVinagre is a VNC client for the GNOME desktop environment. It was included in GNOME 2.22. It has several features, like the ability to connect to multiple servers simultaneously and switch between them by tabs, VNC servers browsing and bookmarking...
; basic window compositing support in MetacityMetacity is a window manager used by default in the GNOME desktop environment. The development of Metacity was started by Havoc Pennington and it is released under the GNU General Public License.Before the introduction of Metacity in GNOME 2.2, GNOME used Enlightenment and then Sawfish as its...
; introduction of GVFSGVFS is a replacement for GnomeVFS, the GNOME Virtual File System. GVFS optionally allows supported virtual file systems to be mounted through FUSE....
; improved playback support for DVDs and YouTubeYouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google...
, MythTVMythTV is a free Linux application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living-room TV, and turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or Home Theater Personal Computer...
support in TotemTotem is a media player for the GNOME computer desktop environment which runs on GNU, Linux, Solaris, BSD and other Unix and Unix-like systems. It is officially included in GNOME starting from version 2.10 , but de facto it was already included in most GNOME environments...
; internationalised clock applet; Google Calendar support and message tagging in Evolution; improvements in EvinceEvince is a document viewer for PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF and DVI designed for the GNOME desktop environment.The developers of Evince intended to replace the multiple GNOME document viewers with a single and simple application. The Evince motto sums up the project aim: "Simply a Document...
, TomboyTomboy is a free and open-source desktop notetaking application written for Unix-like and Microsoft Windows systems written in C# using Gtk#. Tomboy is part of the GNOME desktop environment, often filling the need for personal information management. Its interface is a notepad with a Wiki-like...
, Sound JuicerSound Juicer is an application Front-End to the Cdparanoia CD ripping library. It allows the user to extract audio from compact discs and convert it into audio files that a personal computer or digital audio player can understand and play...
and Calculator. |
| 2.24 |
September 2008 |
Addition of the Empathy Empathy is an instant messaging client which supports text, voice, video, file transfers, and inter-application communication over many different protocols....
instant messenger, EkigaEkiga is a VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME and Windows. It is distributed as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It is the default VOIP client in Ubuntu...
3.0, tabbed browsing in NautilusNautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards....
, better multiple screens support and improved digital TV support. |
| 2.26 |
March 2009 |
New Disc Burning application BraseroBrasero is a free disc-burning program for Unix-like systems, which serves as a graphical front-end to cdrtools, growisofs, and libburn.Brasero is the default CD/DVD application in Ubuntu and Xubuntu as well as in the GNOME desktop....
, simpler file sharing, media player improvements, support for multiple monitors and fingerprint reader support. |
| 2.28 |
September 2009 |
Addition of GNOME Bluetooth module. Improvements to EpiphanyEpiphany is a web browser for the GNOME graphical computing desktop. It is also available for Mac OS X and is a descendant of Galeon.-Development:...
web browser, EmpathyEmpathy is an instant messaging client which supports text, voice, video, file transfers, and inter-application communication over many different protocols....
instant messenger, Time Tracker, and accessibility. Upgrade to GTK+GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt....
version 2.18. |
Source code
GNOME releases are made to the ftp.gnome.org FTP server in the form of
source codeIn computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language...
with configure scripts, which are compiled by operating system vendors and integrated with the rest of their systems before distribution. Most vendors use only stable and tested versions of GNOME, and provide it in the form of easily installed, pre-compiled packages. The source code of every stable and development version of GNOME is stored in the GNOME
GITGit is a free distributed revision control, or software source code management project with an emphasis on being fast. Git was initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development....
source code repository.
A number of build-scripts (such as Jhbuild or
GARNOMEGARNOME is a build utility for the GNOME Desktop. It began as a project to allow users to build the GNOME desktop, without falling victim to the depravities of CVS, non-standard build tools and other forms of co-dependence....
) are available to help automate the process of compiling the source code.
Future developments
There are many sub-projects under the umbrella of the GNOME project, and not all of them are currently included in GNOME releases. Some are considered purely experimental concepts, or for testing ideas that will one day migrate into stable GNOME applications; others are code that is being polished for direct inclusion.
GNOME 3.0
The next version of the desktop environment was officially announced at the 2008
GUADECThe GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, is an annual conference taking place in Europe, whose topic is the development of the GNOME desktop environment....
conference held in
IstanbulIstanbul is the largest city in Turkey and fifth largest city proper in the world with a population of 12.6 million. Istanbul is also a megacity, as well as the cultural and financial centre of Turkey. The city covers 39 districts of the Istanbul province...
in July. Release has been targeted for 2010, in place of version 2.30 or 2.32 of the current branch. Although the desktop will undergo a major revision, changes planned so far are mostly incremental. For several previous years, thinking about Gnome happened under the code named
ToPaZ and quite a few mock-ups were created as part of several Topaz brainstorming processes in the Gnome community.
Usage
GNOME is the default desktop environment for several Linux distributions, most notably
DebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software especially under the GNU General Public License and other open source licenses. The primary form, Debian GNU/Linux, which uses the Linux kernel and GNU OS tools, is a popular and...
,
FedoraFedora is an RPM-based, general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...
and
UbuntuUbuntu , is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution. It is named after the South African ethical ideology Ubuntu and is distributed as free and open source software. Ubuntu provides an up-to-date, stable operating system for the average user, with a strong focus on...
, as well as for
OpenSolarisOpenSolaris is an open source operating system based on Sun Microsystems' Solaris. It is also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around it....
.
For derived and other distributions, see Comparison of Linux distributions.
See also
- List of GNOME applications
- Comparison of X Window System desktop environments
- Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today...
- GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative
The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative , also known as GNOME Mobile, is an initiative for developing and promoting the use of the GNOME platform in mobile devices...
External links