The list of GNOME packages is colossal. Do I need them all? You certainly need a lot of them. The idea of having many packages is for several reasons: It keeps things modular. Small components can be reused by multiple programs over and over again. It is a big help to those on slow connections or with slow machines. They can be extremely selective about what they download or install. Whilst gnome-libs is an essential, for example, not that many people need gnome-pilot, and they can omit it happily. It's a lot easier to issue bugfixes and security fixes when packages are small and split up: you only need to reissue one smallish package instead of one very large one. It spreads the load. Maintaining small packages is hard enough. Maintaining large ones is very hard work. What are they all for? How do I find out? Okay, here's a quick run-down of GNOME components with particularly mystifying names. It is not intended to be technical: for that, you'll need to look at the developer FAQ. But it might help. Libraries for the underlying structure Lots of the packages are libraries which make it simpler for programmers to program things for X, which is a big and complicated beast. So if a program uses one of the libraries, you need the library installed. These packages include: ORBit is what provides CORBA, and CORBA is what lets different parts of GNOME talk to each other using the same consistent pieces of information. GTK is the Gimp ToolKit. It is a library which the GIMP people made and which GNOME borrowed. It lets people create buttons, scrollbars, menus and other basic "widgets" in a consistent way when writing an application for X. Imlib is a rendering library. It's responsible for telling X how to draw things and how to load images. Many GNOME programs require this, but some can use, or even require, gdk-pixbuf instead, which is a newer library performing the same function. gnome-libs contains the core libraries which all GNOME applications need. glib contains coding routines which are used by almost all GNOME programs. It contains the details of how to do the same jobs on different platforms, thus saving coders from having to put those into every single GNOME app separately. libxml: GNOME needs to be able to understand files which use XML (a format for describing information contained in something). libxml lets it do that. libxml is sometimes referred to as gnome-xml. This is because the libxml package is stored as gnome-xml on the GNOME CVS server. libglade is a library which reads XML files using libxml (see above) and turns them into a user interface. libgtop: GNOME wants to be able to get information about filesystem organisation and how the system controls what runs when. This varies on different forms of UNIX. The details of how to do it go in here, so programmers can just call this, whatever platform the program runs on. It is called libgtop after the traditional way to display this information: the 'top' program. libghttp: Many GNOME programs need to be able to use HTTP. The library with all the details for that is libghttp. libghttp is sometimes referred to as gnome-http. This is because the libghttp package is stored as gnome-http on the GNOME CVS server. The esound server is something which takes all the requests for "Make a noise" that GNOME produces and feeds them to the soundcard as well as sharing it when two things want to beep at the same time. gnome-print: writing programs which involve printing is hard. It has to take into account everything from what language the printer understands to how to parcel up the information that is going from the program to the various parts of the printing system. A new library is trying to put all of this into one place so that programs can just use that library and not have to do all the complicated stuff themselves. This is gnome-print, which is now a requirement if you want to use Gnumeric. Modules that make use of the libraries Sitting on top of the libraries are all the modules which contain the code for the programs you actually use: gnome-core contains the panel, gnome-terminal, the current help browser, and the session management. The current file manager, gmc, and the desktop icons are distributed between mc, gmc, and mcserv. The graphical configuration tool, gnomecc, comes from control-center. You can get more detailed information with the package manager of your choice. If you use rpm then either use Programs System GnoRPM to start GnoRPM, browse through the packages (GNOME packages are largely in User Interface/Desktops or Development/Libraries), select a package, and hit Query, or type rpm -qi packagename at the command line. Debian users can use the command dpkg -p package, which will return information whether or not the package is currently installed. I keep hearing about Evolution and Nautilus but I don't see them anywhere on my machine. You won't see them -- or any other GNOME -- packages shipping as standard until they're ready. As of this update (March 2001), they are still under heavy development and not in a perfectly stable state. They are both in CVS, and you are at liberty to collect them and try to compile them yourself, or you can grab one of the periodic snapshots which get released. See either the Eazel page for Nautilus or the Ximian page for Evolution. Both are expected to arrive soon, Nautilus as part of Gnome 1.4, and Evolution as part of Gnome 1.4.1. I have an old GNOME and there's a load of new packages. What are they for? Stable packages which are new since October GNOME: bug-buddy This is a self-contained little program which guides you through reporting a bug. It will grab relevant system information, generate useable information from core dumps, and give you the addresses for the right place to send the result. gdk-pixbuf This is a library which loads images, draws things, and can load simple animations. It is now required for GNOME 1.2. Development or not-so-stable packages which are new since October GNOME: eog Eye of GNOME is a small and fast image viewer. gnome-print Okay, this was around at the time of October GNOME. But it's under constant and heavy development, and new releases are very frequent. If you use Gnumeric, this is a requirement. bonobo bonobo will be increasingly used in GNOME. It allows you to embed contents from one program inside another. For example, you can embed a picture into a spreadsheet (useful) or play minesweeper inside a spreadsheet (possibly not so useful). It is not a requirement for GNOME 1.2, although there are programs around which can make use of it. oaf OAF (which stands for Object Activation Framework) is used by newer GNOME applications to find and start CORBA objects (these objects are what the O in GNOME stands for). Like bonobo, this is not a requirement for GNOME 1.2, but will be used in future applications (such as Evolution and Nautilus). gconf GConf is an application which will keep track of configuration options, make it easier for GNOME to keep track of itself, and make it simple for system administrators to set up and tweak systems for multiple users.