SAN JOSE, CA – Today at the Linux World Conference, the GNOME Project announced the release of the GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) version 1.0. GNOME is an integrated desktop environment designed to run on UNIX-like systems, including Linux-based systems.

“GNOME is a graphical user interface (GUI) that combines ease of use with the flexibility and reliability of GNU/Linux. We’re very excited about GNOME and what it will mean for the future of GNU/Linux computing,” said Miguel de Icaza, GNOME project coordinator.

The features of GNOME are designed to result in an environment in which users can easily perform common desktop tasks. Users will appreciate the complete configurability of the GNOME desktop, which gives them the ability to customize their working environment for their personal needs and tastes. GNOME is also fully internationalized. Its built-in support for more than 17 languages allows each user to experience GNOME in their native language. Additionally it makes efficient use of today’s technologies, such as CORBA and drag-and-drop, to ensure maximum interoperability with existing software.

Developers creating GNOME programs will appreciate features such as the anti-aliased canvas display system, hypertext help, session management, and a high-performance CORBA subsystem that allow them to write user-friendly programs with minimum development time. Because GNOME supports many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, TOM, Perl, Python, Guile, developers are able to write GNOME programs in their language of choice.

Programmers from around the world have been working on GNOME for almost two years. The vast majority of the current group of some 250 developers, including Mr. de Icaza, are volunteers who donate their time to the cause of Free Software. They have received substantial additional help from Red Hat Advanced Development Labs, and from many people whose ideas, tips and bug reports have played an important role in the success of the GNOME project so far.

“The Free Software Movement is a very dynamic one. GNOME is not only providing a desktop for end-users, it is laying down a foundation for standardizing a number of issues that have been ignored for a long time by the Unix community,” Mr. de Icaza noted.

The Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt charity formed in 1985, is dedicated to give people the right and the freedom to use, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. It does so by protecting these rights through the GNU General Public License. The aim is to give people the freedom to cooperate with other computer users.

“GNOME is a giant step towards achieving the Free Software Foundation’s goals of providing a whole spectrum of software for everyone from experts to end-users. We’re excited about the direction that GNOME will take us in.” Richard Stallman, Founder and President of the Free Software Foundation said. ” ‘Free Software’ is a matter of liberty not price. It includes the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve any software distributed under the FSF’s General Public License. We hope that this will continue to create a vigorous environment for programmers and users to create and use GNU/Linux and GNOME programs. Very soon we’ll see a wide range of GNOME-based applications, to answer the different needs of computer users.”

Red Hat Advanced Development Labs (RHAD Labs) was established as an independent development group to work on the usability of the GNU/Linux operating system. RHAD Labs’ charter is to work with the free software development community to develop a best of breed graphical computer environment on GNU/Linux.

GNOME is designed to be portable to any modern UNIX system. Currently, it runs on Linux systems, BSD variants, Solaris, HP-UX, and Digital Unix. In the future, it will be included in Red Hat Linux, and other Linux distributions such as Debian GNU/Linux and SuSE Linux.

GNOME 1.0 is available for free download via http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome-1.0.shtml and several other mirror sites.