14 DAY TRIAL // GNOME, the abbreviation for GNU Network Object Model Environment, is an elevated desktop environment, built of free software only and supported by many programmers all over the world. As the name suggests, it is also part of the GNU Project, therefore it addresses most of the Unix operating systems.
As its official website states, "the GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, an intuitive and attractive desktop for users, and the GNOME development platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop." Translated into more than 100 languages, GNOME is oriented on being easy to use and on its usability. Along with Ubuntu and OpenOffice, it aligns a six months release cycle. Free, usable, accessible, international, developer-friendly, organized, supported? these are just a few words which best describe GNOME.
Ten years ago, when Miguel de Icaza first announced the GNOME Project, he also released an "unofficial" roadmap mentioning GNOME`s goals. He claimed at that time that they intended to create a complete set of applications which should be not only user friendly but also to share as many elements and UI concepts as possible. And I think they?ve managed pretty well to accomplish this. They?ve also managed to adopt the GTK toolkit as the official tool for writing applications. There was no need to lobby for this new project at that time as many people became soon highly interested in supporting and even developing it.
The GNOME Project also deals with the development of some experimental sub-projects, some of which will be included in forthcoming GNOME releases, the other ones being only testing ideas. For example the Project Ridley, which was intended to consolidate several small undermaintained libraries into GTK+, such as libgnome and libgnomeprint, or the use of Mozilla project?s XUL on the GNOME desktop.
The Softpedia team whishes a warm and sincere Happy Birthday! to GNOME and expects even more reliable releases from now on.