So what is GNOME? The initials stand for GNU Network Object Model Environment. This doesn't really help explain what it does, though. GNOME is a part of the GNU Project and an attempt to make a desktop environment which is free software, which: runs on lots of platforms; is consistent so that you use the same approach to do the same tasks in different programs; can be used by developers to develop software easily; is fun to use. GNOME: nome or guh-nome? In English, the word "gnome" is pronounced with a silent "g". However, GNOME itself is generally pronounced as "guh-nome", just as GNU is pronounced "guh-noo" when referring to the GNU Project. When did GNOME start? The official announcement of the project was in August 1997 and was posted to comp.os.linux.announce under the subject heading The GNOME Desktop project. It doesn't seem to be in Deja but copies exist in various archives of the newsgroup. That's a bit brief. Is there a more detailed history? Probably, but your writer couldn't find an authoritative one. A very rough guide: Date Event Rough version number August 1997 Miguel de Icaza posts the initial GNOME announcement December 1997 The "GNOME tarball" gnome-0.10 or so January 1998 gnome-0.12 September 1998 The tarball splits and becomes more than one package. "Bouncing Bonobo" release. gnome-core,libs,utilities,media 0.30 December 1998 Ramping up to initial release gnome-core 0.99.1 March 1999 GNOME 1.0 released to the world at large. This shipped on several distributions. gnome-core/libs 1.0.4 or so. October 1999 October GNOME released gnome-core/libs 1.0.50 or so. January 2000 Start of test releases for next big upgrade gnome-core-1.1.x and gnome-applets-1.1.x May 2000 GNOME 1.2 released. Also known as Bongo GNOME. gnome-core-1.2.x, gnome-applets-1.2.x, gnome-libs-1.0.60 or so. some time in 2001 GNOME 1.4 to be released. gnome-core-1.4.x, probably The version numbers are hard! Help! If you're not used to them, they're hard, yes. It doesn't help that people familiar with different releases will also use names for the releases as well as or instead of the version numbers. GNOME uses a version number system that is very common on the net now: it's also used by the Linux kernel, the mutt mailer, and several other large applications. It's three numbers separated by dots, in an x.y.z format. Start with the first number. If it is 0, the app is probably still in development: it may be stable, but it may not have all the features planned yet. If it's 1 then look at the second number. Odd numbers mean it's unstable, at least nominally, or a development version. Even numbers (or zero) mean it's stable. So the gnome-core-1.1.z packages were unstable. When they became stable, they were released as gnome-core-1.2.0. The third number is simply a minor increment, denoting bug-fixes or small improvements. Note that it is not a decimal number. When you get to 1.1.9 in a package, the next number is quite likely to be 1.1.10. Most GNOME packages seem to come out with memorable names: the October GNOME release, "Beantown" for gnome-core-1.1.1 and so on. The reason why so many releases of GNOME packages have inventive names may either be an attempt to make the packages more memorable, or they may be a reflection on the minds of the developers. Where can I find more information on GNOME? All over the place. A partial list is in the Resources section of this FAQ. How do I invest in GNOME? When is it going to IPO? GNOME is under the control of no one company. There are hundreds of people working on it all over the world. Some are doing it for free, some are doing it in addition to their day job, and some are doing it as their day job, funded by their company. So GNOME itself isn't an entity which is going to have an IPO. Several companies are making significant contributions to the Gnome project, and we wish them well. There's GNOME and KDE. Why two environments? Why not merge them? There are several answers to this. First, there is the issue of licensing. This is a big issue in the world of free software and can lead to equally big arguments. The KDE Project came first, and used a set of libraries called Qt. These had a non-free licence. Some people didn't like this licence and wanted to work on something with a different licence, so looked about, found none, and wrote their own, which are under the GPL and the LGPL. Qt's licence has changed since then and is now also GPL for the Linux and Unix platforms. But by the time this happened, the projects had diverged greatly in look, focus, organisation, and how the code underneath worked. Second, although they look very similar on top, the way each works underneath is very different. You couldn't just take code from one project and plug it into the other. It's not that simple. You can run some KDE programs from within GNOME and vice versa, but making them work any more closely is hard. Finally, it's worth pointing out that whilst the code in the two projects can't work together, this is not necessarily true of the developers. GNOME developers and KDE developers do actually talk to each other. It's even rumoured that some of them get on quite well.