LinuxDevCenter: What Is the GNOME Desktop

“GNOME is a desktop software project, but it’s large enough to
mean different things to different people. If you’re a software
user, it’s a desktop and some applications. If you’re a software
developer, it’s a platform, toolkit, and community. The core
applications consist of the Nautilus file manager, the panel and
its associated gadgets called panel applets, the usual complement
of accessories (text editor, terminal emulator, calculator, and so
on), a few games, and some larger applications like the Evolution
mail, calendar, and address book, the Gnucash finance tool, the
Rhythmbox music player, and the Totem video player.

“The development platform consists of a set of libraries and
language wrappers that range from the low-level (the glib utility
functions and the libxml XML parsing libraries) to buttons and
widgets as complex as a Mozilla-based HTML rendering tool–meaning
you can write your own web browser in under 100 lines of C#, or a
calculator in about 5 lines of Python…”

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