GNOME is an advanced user desktop for the Solaris Operating
Environment. It is designed to integrate seamlessly with the
Internet, to provide a breakthrough user experience, and
dramatically increase personal productivity. Built on an
open-source, free-software desktop, GNOME is rapidly gaining user
and industry acceptance as it evolves into a standard across
multiple UNIX[r] and Linux platforms.
The core functionality includes a compelling, dynamic user
interface that enhances desktop interaction with applications and
provides efficient navigation of local desktop files and global
Internet resources. It includes an advanced workspace manager and
file manager, a full-featured office productivity suite, and a
collection of useful desktop accessories and utilities. GNOME
provides built-in accessibility solutions and supports many
industry standards to ensure data interchange and interoperability,
a key requirement in today's highly distributed and heterogeneous
computing environments.
GNOME Standard Desktop -- A
windowing interface and workspace environment that enables user
interaction, navigation to menus and applications, and access to
local or networked information resources.
The GNOME Standard Desktop includes:
Panel -- Control bar for easy access to applications, switching
between running applications, and managing multiple workspaces.
Displays an active graphical view of workspaces and task
lists.
Workspace Manager -- Defines an unlimited number of workspaces,
which can each run a group of applications for a given task. For
example, one workspace can be running a word processor and
presentation application that are being used to create a business
document, while the user's e-mail and Web browser are running in
another workspace.
Desktop Preferences -- Eases configuration and personalization
of all aspects of the environment -- wallpaper, environment themes,
screen saver, and windowing options.
Nautilus -- Unique file manager that provides a unified view of
local and remote files, as well as networked information resources.
Its compelling and intuitive interface enables users to easily
locate information quickly. With Nautilus, users can:
Select multiple zoom levels for displaying varying amounts of
information about a file, without actually opening the file.
Customize file views for common information types. For example,
audio file sizes can be displayed in minutes rather than bytes, and
image files can be displayed as thumbnails.
View graphic emblems that show important file attributes such
as access permission.
Session Manager -- Restores the state of running applications
at login time and remembers their state upon logout.
System Resource Management -- Tools to monitor system load and
control print jobs.
Multiple Monitor Support -- Multiple monitors can be configured
as a single logical screen, enabling applications to be displayed
in a panoramic view, or as individual screens, with a separate
front panel on each monitor.
Supports Peripherals and Devices - These include: removable
media; Sun frame buffers; SCSI, USB, IEEE-1394, serial, and
parallel devices; PC cards; smart cards; keyboards; and mice.
GNOME Desktop Accessibility - Extensive keyboard navigation
capabilities, AccessX support, and integrated accessibility
framework. Other assistive technologies, such as an onscreen
keyboard, screen reader, and screen magnifier, are planned for
delivery in a future update to GNOME.
GNOME Desktop Accessories and
Utilities - Collection of useful applications and tools that
are provided with the desktop, including:
Terminal - Gives developers and system administrators direct
access to UNIX commands.
Media Player - Plays video clips and music files.
Text Editor - Allows creation and editing of text and HTML
files.
Screen Shooter - Captures screen images.
File Viewer - Displays the contents of many types of
files.
Image Viewer - Allows viewing of many types of graphics
files.
Help System - Provides easy access to GNOME documentation.
GNOME Productivity Applications -- A
suite of applications that help businesses run more efficiently and
competitively. These applications, available separately,
include:
StarOffice Productivity
Suite - Feature-rich office productivity suite that enables
users to easily create, edit, and print word processing documents,
spreadsheets, and presentations. It also reads and writes Microsoft
Office files.
The components of StarOffice software include:
StarOffice Writer - Powerful tool for creating professional
documents, reports, newsletters, and brochures. Allows users to
easily integrate images and charts in documents, produce business
letters and extensive text documents with professional layouts, and
create and publish Web content.
StarOffice Calc - Sophisticated spreadsheet application with
decision-making analysis tools for performing advanced spreadsheet
functions and data analysis. Charting tools generate impressive,
high-quality 2-D and 3-D charts.
StarOffice Impress - Tool for creating effective multimedia
presentations. Includes 2-D and 3-D clip art, special-effects
animation, and high-impact drawing tools.
StarOffice Draw - A tool for creating or importing advanced
custom drawings and manipulating photographs. Functions include
direct manipulation for editing gradient and transparency; merge,
subtract, and intersect capabilities enable you to create complex
drawings by combining multiple shapes and pictures.
Evolution (still in development) - Easy-to-use, comprehensive
personal information management system that includes mail,
calendar, and contact manager functionality. Key features
include:
Evolution Mail - Lets users create, send, and print HTML
documents and compound e-mail messages. Provides mail management
features such as filing, viewing, and setting priorities based on
e-mail received or sent by name or subject. Supports
industry-standard protocols such as IMAP and POP3.
Evolution Calendar - Comprehensive calendar package for
tracking appointments, deadlines, and task lists. Supports group
calendar scheduling, interoperates with iCalendar industry-standard
systems, and synchronizes data with Palm OS-based organizers.
Evolution Contact Manager - Maintains lists of people and phone
numbers, addresses, and other identifying information. Also
supports LDAP standard and synchronizes data with Palm OS-based
organizers.
Netscape -
Powerful communications tool that combines the popular Netscape
Navigator Web browser with a set of Internet tools for sending and
receiving e-mail, participating in discussion groups, and composing
Web pages.
GNOME Development Tools - A wide
range of libraries and tools developers can use to create
GNOME-savvy UNIX applications, including:
GTK+ - C-based, user interface toolkit for creating the user
interface portion of GNOME applications
ORBit - Small, fast implementation of a CORBA Object Request
Broker (ORB).
Bonobo - Library for supporting the GNOME component
architecture.
GConf - GNOME network- and component-aware configuration
management system.
glib - Utility library for creating and manipulating common
data structures.
gdk-pixbuf - Image library for manipulating images in a variety
of popular formats.
libgnomeui - Library of GUI-related GNOME code.
libgnome - Library of non-GUI-related GNOME code.
gnome-print - Library of printing routines.
libxml - Library for parsing XML data files.
gnome-vfs - Virtual file system library.
Glade - User interface builder for GTK+-based
applications.
Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) - Toolkit to quickly build
accessible applications.
Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (AT SPI) -
Programming interface for assistive technologies.
The GNOME desktop provides significant interoperability and
flexibility capabilities that enable easy file interchange and
application cooperation, including:
Drag and drop and copy and paste between CDE, GNOME, and Java
technology-based applications.
Interoperability with GNOME applications running on a variety
of UNIX platforms.
Ability to run CDE- and Java technology-based
applications.
Standards
GNOME supports industry standards to facilitate data interchange
and interoperability in a networked, heterogeneous world,
including:
XML, DOM
HTTP, HTML
CORBA
X11, NFS, TCP/IP
XDnD
Unicode
OpenGL[R]
Media standards - MPEG, JPEG, MIDI, AVI
Smart card
Removable media
IEEE-1394, USB, serial, parallel, SCSI, PC cards
Energy Star
System Requirements
Solaris 8 Operating Environment or higher (SPARC or x86
Architecture Editions). (Note that Solaris 9 OE, x86 Edition is
available with Solaris 9 OE Update 2.)
128 Mbytes of memory minimum (more recommended)
600 Mbytes of hard disk space
8-bit video frame buffer or better
Supported Languages
Brazilian Portuguese
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Service and Support
Sun Microsystems has support options available for the Solaris
Operating Environment, which now encompass the GNOME 2.0 Desktop.
See the GNOME 2.0
support page for more details.
Licensing
Two primary licenses cover most of the GNOME software: the GNU
General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License.
See the software license included with the GNOME 2.0 Desktop
software for complete information.
Additional Resources
For more information about Sun's involvement in Free and Open
Source Projects, please visit http://www.sunsource.net.
For more information about the GNOME community, please visit http://www.gnome.org.
