Gnome 2 - Part I

Last week marked the release of Gnome 2, the highly anticipated upgrade to the venerable Gnome Desktop Environment for Linux. Let’s cover a bit of the background with Gnome, first.

Gnome was actually the second major desktop environment for Linux. KDE beat the Gnome developers to the punch by a few short months. It’s been said that Gnome was developed, in a sense, as a reaction to KDE. Initially, KDE contained code libraries that did not meet the Gnu Product License (GPL) requirements. Additionally, KDE was created in C++. If you’re a reasonably savvy Windows user, you already know that this is the development language for Windows, as well. The Gnome developers, appartenly aghast at using C++ to create a desktop environment for Linux, chose to use C, instead. It’s since become an ongoing internal battle amongst Linux users - which DE is actually the best in terms of speed, reliability and GPL-compliance? I’ve used Gnome most of my time with Linux, but have recently begun to use KDE on a regular basis. In other words - it’s a battle I won’t get into here!

Nonetheless, Gnome has always provided a stable and very reliable DE for Linux users. Gnome 2 adds some crucial features and does, indeed, take Gnome to another level of functionality. As with any new version, there are still some minor bugs to work out, but overall the release is very stable.

Over the next few days, we’ll walk through the download and install process for Gnome 2. We’ll also look at the new features and how they differ both from the older versions of Gnome and from KDE. We’ll try to draw a clear distinction between the two where possible, to give you a solid basis on which to decide which DE is right for your system and use.

Tomorrow, we’ll start this in-depth look at Gnome 2 with download and installation instructions.