GNOME

GNOME stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment.

It is a desktop environment—a graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system—composed entirely of free and open source software.

It was created by two Mexican programmers, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena.

It is an international project that includes creating software development frameworks, selecting application software for the desktop, and working on the programs that manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management.

GNOME is part of the GNU Project and can be used with various Unix-like operating systems, most notably GNU/Linux, and as part of the Java Desktop System in Solaris.

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.

		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. 2.2 February 2003 Multimedia and file manager improvements. 2.4 September 2003 "Temujin": Epiphany, accessibility support. 2.6 March 2004 Nautilus changes to a spatial file manager, and a new GTK+ file dialog 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 Evolution. 2.10 March 2005 Lower memory requirements and performance improvements. Adds: new panel applets (modem control, drive mounter and trashcan); and the Totem and Sound Juicer applications 2.12 September 2005 Nautilus improvements; improvements in cut/paste between applications and freedesktop.org integration. Adds: Evince 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: Ekiga video conferencing application; Deskbar search tool; Pessulus lockdown editor; Fast user switching; Sabayon system administration tool. 2.16 September 2006 Performance improvements. Adds: Tomboy notetaking application; Baobab disk usage analyser; Orca screen reader; GNOME Power Manager (improving laptop battery life); improvements to Totem, Nautilus; compositing support for Metacity; new icon theme. Based on GTK+ 2.10 with new print dialog. 2.18 March 2007 Performance improvements. Adds: Seahorse GPG 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 management in Seahorse. Adds: PDF forms editing in Evince; integrated search in the file manager dialogs; automatic multimedia codec installer. 2.22 March 2008 Addition of Cheese, a tool for taking photos from webcams and Remote Desktop Viewer; basic window compositing support in Metacity; introduction of GVFS; improved playback support for DVDs and YouTube, MythTV support in Totem; internationalised clock applet; Google Calendar support and message tagging in Evolution; improvements in Evince, Tomboy, Sound Juicer and Calculator. 2.24 September 2008 Addition of the Empathy instant messenger, Ekiga 3.0, tabbed browsing in Nautilus, better multiple screens support and improved digital TV support. 2.26 March 2009 New Disc Burning application Brasero, 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 Epiphany web browser, Empathy instant messenger, Time Tracker, and accessibility. Upgrade to GTK+ version 2.18. 2.30 March 2010 Improvements to Nautilus file manager, Empathy IM Client, Tomboy, Evince, Time Tracker, Epiphany, and Vinagre. iPod and iPod Touch devices are now partially supported via gvfs through libimobiledevice. Uses GTK+ 2.20. 2.32 September 2010 Addition of Rygel and Gnome Color Manager. Improvements to Empathy IM Client, Evince, Nautilus file manager and others. 3.0 was intended to be released in September 2010, so a large part of the development effort since 2.30 went towards 3.0.