GNOME comes with many applications and utilities; in addition, GNOME allows you to use any third party applications such as Netscape), KDE applications, or other applications and utilities installed on your system. You can also use GNOME 1.x applications under GNOME 2 (if you have installed appropriate GNOME 1.x libraries).
Below is a partial list of some of the most useful tools and applications which you can find in GNOME Menu.
The contents of GNOME Menu depends on the applications installed on your system. In addition, if you are using a copy of GNOME packaged by someone other than GNOME project (for example, packaged as part of your a Linux distribution), the menu is likely to be slightly different from the one described here. For example, distributors can add some distribution-specific applications to the menu, or even completely reorganize the menus. In this case refer to documentation which came with your distribution.
This submenu contains the following utilities.
This allows you to manually enter a command to run, saving you from starting full-blown terminal emulator.
You can also start Run Program dialog by using Alt-F2 shortcut.
This utility allows you to search for files and folders on your system.
Takes a screenshot of your desktop and saves it in a file.
These include office and productivity applications such as
Gnumeric, a full-featured Excel-compatible spreadsheet
GNOME Calculator
Several text editors, from simple and easy to use Gnome editor (gedit) to the (arguably) the most powerful text editor ever created, Emacs (which is not a GNOME application)
Dictionary, allowing you to look up a word in one of freely available dictionaries on the Internet.
This submenu contains preferences tools used to customize your desktop; see the section called “Customizing GNOME” for details.
Lots of them — just try!
Gimp — image editing program for power users; rivals Photoshop
Image viewers such as Eye of GNOME, GQview and gThumb
GNOME Postscript Viewer, which can also be used for viewing PDF files.
Here you will find Galeon web browser. If you haven't used it before, give it a try — you will never want to go back to Netscape.
Depending on the software installed on your system, you are also likely to find here
Netscape web browser
X-Chat, an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client
GNOME-ICU for talking with other people using ICQ protocol
gftp, a graphical tool for file transfers, supporting FTP, HTTP, and SSH protocols. Note that GNOME file manager, Nautilus, also has built-in FTP capabilities.
Shows all applications which do not belong to one of the other categories. In particular, this submenu is likely to contain many GNOME 1.x applications such as AbiWord, a lightweight word processing application.
Bug report tool. Use this tool to make suggestions and report bugs in GNOME applications.
Here you will find CD player, Volume Control, and an MP3 player XMMS.
This submenu contains various tools used for managing your system, such as
System Monitor. This application can be used to view all processes (tasks) currently running on your system and the resources (memory and processor time) they use. You can also use System Monitor to kill a frozen or otherwise misbehaving application.
Configuration Editor. This tool is only recommended for advanced users. It allows you to change all settings used by GNOME applications (unlike preferences tools which only cover some of the settings). However, it provides little assistance or safeguards, so it is easy to make your system completely unusable if you do not know what you are doing.
Archive Generator, tool for creating archive files.
Floppy Formatter
This submenu also contains tools for managing software installed on your system, namely GnoRPM and Red Carpet (if you are using the distribution of GNOME prepared by Ximian, Inc.). GnoRPM allows you to view all software packages installed on your system (if you are using a distribution of Linux based on RPM packages, such as Red Hat, SuSe, or Mandrake); it also allows you to remove, update, or install new packages. Red Carpet provides an extremely easy, almost one-click, way to update your GNOME installation. Both of these utilities, however, require that you have system administrator (root) privileges.
And finally, the same submenu also contains various terminal emulators (xterm, Color xterm, GNOME Terminal) letting you use the most powerful (although not most user friendly) interface ever created — the command line prompt.
This starts GNOME help browser, Yelp, described in the section called “GNOME Help System”.
This opens a new Nautilus window showing the contents of your home folder.