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The GNOME project is an international effort to create an easy-to-use computing platform built entirely from free software. This goal includes creating tools which help developers write new stand-alone application software, selecting applications for inclusion in the official product, and working on what is known as the desktop environment — the programs which manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management. A great deal of software is created or hosted under the umbrella of the GNOME project, some of which is collected and released as GNOME. GNOME is used in conjunction with an operating system such as Linux or Sun Microsystems' Solaris, to create a fully functional computer system. GNOME is the official desktop of the GNU Project and the official pronunciation of the name is with a hard "G", although (as in the English word "gnome") is also in common usage.
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: Origin
Organization As with most free software projects, the GNOME project is loosely organised. Discussion chiefly occurs on a number of public mailing lists.• In August 2000 the GNOME Foundation was set up to deal with administrative tasks, 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 GUADEC in order to discuss the current state of the project and its future direction.• Platforms
Architecture GNOME is built from a large number of different projects. A few of the major ones are listed below: A number of language bindings are available allowing applications to be written in a variety of programming languages, such as C++ (gtkmm), Java (Java-GNOME), Ruby (ruby-gnome2), C# (Gtk#), Python (PyGTK), Perl (gtk2-perl) and many others. The only languages currently used in applications that are part of an official GNOME desktop release are C, C Look and feel GNOME is designed around the traditional computing desktop metaphor. Its handling of windows, applications and files is similar to that of contemporary desktop operating systems; The desktop has a launcher menu for quick access to installed programs and file locations, open windows may be accessed by a task bar 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. Each window may be expected to have its own menu bar, making the overall appearance of the desktop closer to that of Microsoft Windows than that of Mac OS X. The appearance of GNOME can be changed by the use of themes, which are sets consisting of an icon set, window manager border and GTK+ theme engine and parameters. Popular GTK+ themes include Bluecurve and Clearlooks (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 usability. As a part of this, a large effort was put into creating the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). The HIG is an extensive guide for creating high quality, consistent, usable GUI programs, covering everything from GUI design to recommended pixel-based layout of widgets. GNOME HIG introduction:• During the v2.0 rewrite, many settings were deemed to be "crack" settings (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 sprawling dialog of six large tabs to a much simpler one with two small tabs. Freedesktop.org and GNOME Freedesktop.org is a project to assist interoperability and shared technology between the different X Window desktops such as GNOME, KDE or Xfce. Although it is not a formal standards organization, Freedesktop.org defines certain basic features of an X Desktop, including drag and drop between applications, window manager specifications, menu layouts, recent files lists, copy and pasting between applications and a shared MIME type database, among other things. Following Freedesktop.org specifications allows GNOME applications to appear more integrated into other desktops (and vice versa), and encourages cooperation as well as competition. Examples of technologies originated at Freedesktop.org which now form part of GNOME's core technology set include: These initiatives aim to allow users and developers to choose the technologies and applications they like regardless of which desktop environment they use. GNOME applications Along with those applications bundled with the desktop, a large amount of other applications have been developed for use in GNOME. See List of GNOME applications for a more complete list. Official applications Here is a selection of applications typically supplied as part of a GNOME release: Other applications Here is a selection of applications that use technology from the GNOME project and are likely to be used on an average GNOME desktop: Stable 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. Unstable releases for testers and developers are not listed, nor are bugfix releases for individual modules. Source code GNOME releases are made in the form of source code, which is 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 version of GNOME is stored in a version control system in the GNOME source code repository.• The process of downloading the source code, compiling and installing the entire GNOME desktop manually is a laborious and time-consuming process, and a number of build-scripts (such as JHBuild or GARNOME) can be used to automate it. Those interested in testing, fixing bugs or adding new features can use the latest unstable branch from the GNOME source code tree, known as "HEAD". Development code contains new modifications and experimental changes to the code which are later "frozen" to allow for the code to be tested and bugs to be corrected. 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. Some examples include: There had been considerable discussion about including software written in C See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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