GNOME

GNOME, which stands for the GNU Network Object Model Environment, is a graphical user interface and desktop environment based on the GTK+ toolkit. It was originally developed for GNU/Linux systems, but is becoming available on other UNIX type systems. The GNOME project aims to make GNU-based and other UNIX systems easier to use for non-technical users.

The project started due to free software licensing problems with Trolltech's C++ toolkit, Qt, the underlying toolkit for KDE (a slightly older, comparable desktop environment) during KDE's early history. After the licensing issues had been resolved, the GNOME desktop still proved to have many merits of its own (such as compatibility with more programming languages and software licenses), and thus continued to be used and developed by many people.

Popular applications that run natively under the GNOME desktop include the GIMP, the Nautilus file manager, Gnumeric, AbiWord, GnuCash, the Galeon web browser, Ximian Evolution, dia and Gabber. These and other tools are collectively sometimes known as GNOME Office.

GNOME is an official graphical user interface of the GNU system. GNUstep is another.

Architecture

Several vital technology pieces make up the advanced infrastructure of GNOME:

• GTK+ widget set.
• Orbit[?] - a CORBA ORB for software components.
• Bonobo - a compound document[?] technology.
• GNOME VFS[?] - a virtual filesystem.

See Also

• TLDP

External links

• Official homepage (http://www.gnome.org/)
• The Story of the GNOME project (http://primates.helixcode.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html) written by Miguel de Icaza