Category: Press Release

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jan. 24, 2001– RedFlag’s Membership in the Foundation Signals the Localization of GNOME Into Chinese — Making it Available to More Than One Billion People.

In a move that will make GNOME available to more than a billion people, RedFlag has joined the Advisory Board of the GNOME Foundation. As part of the membership, RedFlag will lead an effort to localize GNOME, the entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices, into Simplified Chinese. “With the addition of RedFlag and the localization of GNOME, businesses and individuals in China can enjoy the power, cost-effectiveness and ease of use of free software,” said Havoc Pennington, GNOME Foundation board chair. “In addition, talented programmers in China will be able to utilize the modern architecture and design of GNOME for application development.” RedFlag will lead GNOME Foundation efforts in China, focusing on education, support and marketing. It will also join the volunteer efforts of more than 500 of the world’s most talented software designers and programmers who are currently working on GNOME or GNOME-compatible programs. “We’re very committed to the GNOME Foundation and the localization of GNOME into Simplified Chinese,” said Bo Liu, president and CEO of RedFlag Software Co. Ltd. “GNOME is a robust and powerful environment that will be very beneficial to individuals, companies and educators here in China.” GNOME is a free software project (also referred to as open source software) that is developing a complete, easy-to-use desktop for Linux (GNU/Linux), BSD and a variety of other Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. More than 500 computer developers, including more than 100 full-time, paid developers, contribute their time and effort to the project.

About the GNOME Foundation

Composed of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. GNOME is an entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices. The modern architecture and design of GNOME includes a technically advanced application development platform and a powerful end-user desktop environment. Major leading software industry and computer manufacturers support the GNOME development effort, which is led by a worldwide community of volunteers. More information on GNOME is available at www.gnome.org.

About RedFlag

RedFlag Software Co. Ltd. is a leading company of Linux distributions and applications in China, developing applications and operating systems for server, desktop and embedded platforms. RedFlag Software also provides applications to end-users for achieving system security and performance. With more than 20 years of experience in Unix and open source systems and more than 18 years of Chinese localization experience, RedFlag devotes itself to empower any kind of CPU-based hardware from set-top boxes, mobile appliances, PDAs and mainframes. It offers a full line of services, including telephone support, on-site consulting, developer training, certification programs, e-business and ISV support. Located in Beijing, the company can be found on the Web at www.redflag-linux.com.

Borland To Support Linux Desktop With Upcoming Kylix[tm] Development Platform

Las Vegas, Nev. — November 15, 2000 — Inprise Corporation (Nasdaq: INPR), herein referred to as Borland, today at the Linux Business Expo announced its reaffirmed commitment to open-source development by joining the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board. Borland teams with firms such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat and Helix Code to foster development of the GNOME desktop environment and application framework.

“The GNOME Foundation is pleased to have the support of Borland,” said Miguel Icaza, founder of the GNOME Project. “Borland’s long history of component architecture experience will be invaluable to helping further the Bonobo component project in creating reusable software components and compound documents. We are looking forward to their contributions to GNOME and their work to help developers bring their applications to the GNOME platform using Kylix[tm].”

Borland is introducing the first rapid application development (RAD) platform, Kylix, which aims to enable users to quickly and easily build and deploy native Linux® applications. Kylix will be based on the design of Borland’s award-winning Delphi[tm] and C++ Builder[tm].

“We’re delighted to become a part of the GNOME Foundation and to help take GNOME award development to RAD developers,” said Michael Swindell, director of product management of the RAD Tools group at Borland.

“Borland’s participation in the GNOME Foundation aims to help developers build great GNU/Linux applications that look, feel, and behave natively in multiple desktop environments,”continued Michael. “A significant part of this effort will be working closely with GNOME’s Bonobo component project and companies like Eazel and Helix Code to deliver Bonobo component support to Kylix developers.”

About Kylix[tm]

Kylix is intended to be the first high-performance rapid application development (RAD) platform for the Linux platform. Kylix is a component-based development environment for two-way visual development of graphical user interface (GUI), Internet, database and server applications. Kylix will be powered by a new high-speed native Delphi/C/C++ compiler for Linux and will implement a native Linux, and cross-platform version of the Borland VCL (Visual Component Library) architecture called CLX[tm]. CLX is designed to radically speed native Linux application development and simplify the porting of Delphi and C++ Builder applications between Windows® and Linux operating systems. To learn more, visit: http://www.borland.com/kylix/

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME project has built a completely free and easy-to-use desktop environment, as well as a powerful application framework for software developers on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME Foundation will provide organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project, and help determine its vision and roadmap. GNOME is part of the GNU project, an effort to build a completely free Unix-like operating system better known as GNU/Linux or Linux. Additional information is available at http://www.gnome.org/.

About Borland

Inprise Corporation, referred to in this press release as Borland, is a leading provider of Internet access infrastructure and application development tools and services for all major platforms, including Linux, Solaris[tm] and Windows. Founded in 1983, Borland is headquartered in Scotts Valley, California with operations worldwide. To learn more, visit the community site or call the company at (800) 632-2864.

San Francisco – November 14, 2000 – MandrakeSoft today announced that it is joining the Advisory Board of the GNOME Foundation, which aims to promote the GNOME graphical desktop. Linux-Mandrake operating system has included GNOME since early versions and the GNOME has recently become the desktop of choice for many Linux-Mandrake users.

“We are delighted that MandrakeSoft is joining the Foundation’s Advisory Board and extending its commitment to GNOME “, said Miguel De Icaza, co-founder of GNOME. “MandrakeSoft’s market leadership role in the European Linux market and its strong retail presence in the US will allow GNOME to reach a much broader audience worldwide.”

MandrakeSoft has long recognized the great value offered by the GNOME environment and its ability to attract new users from the Windows world. MandrakeSoft also credits the numerous innovations introduced by the GNOME project as one of the key reasons for the worldwide success of Linux and the Open Source model.

“MandrakeSoft has always been committed to support Free Software and Linux in particular. Our entrance in the GNOME Foundation proves once again our commitment to killer free-software projects”, said Gaël Duval – VP & Co-Founder of MandrakeSoft.

MandrakeSoft affirms its commitment to the Foundation and to GNOME’s bright future by also announcing to financially sponsor several GNOME developers so that they may focus on developing GNOME Office/OpenOffice for the benefit of the entire community.

In a related announcement, Borland-Inprise today announced that it, too, will be joining the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board.

About MandrakeSoft

MandrakeSoft publishes the Linux-Mandrake operating system, based on open-source development (which provides free access to source code published in accordance with a General Public License, or GPL). Several hundred developers throughout the world contribute to the constant improvement of the product directly over the Internet. This international developer community has given Linux-Mandrake a product that is available in over 40 languages.

Linux-Mandrake is a very complete system with a choice of several powerful, pre-configured graphic interfaces (notably the leaders KDE and GNOME), as well as more than 2,300 applications including Netscape Communicator, the StarOffice suite, and the Apache Web server.

In a testament to its success, MandrakeSoft received the awards for “Best Product of the Year” and “Best Linux-Distribution/Server” at LinuxWorld Expo 99, as well as the PC Answers Platinum Award in April 2000 and the Linux Magazine Editor’s Choice Award in September 2000. The company has signed a strategic partnership with the American publisher Macmillan USA and held the number one spot in Linux North American sales for Macmillan USA in July & August 2000 (Source : PC Data).

“Born on the Internet”, MandrakeSoft established headquarters in Pasadena (U.S.) and Paris (Europe). Please visit the web site, http://www.linux-mandrake.com for more information.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME project has built a completely free and easy-to-use desktop environment, as well as a powerful application framework for software developers on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. GNOME is part of the GNU project, an effort to build a completely free Unix-like operating system better known as GNU/Linux or Linux.

The GNOME Foundation will provide organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project, and help determine its vision and roadmap. The Foundation is governed by a board of directors elected by the members of the foundation: individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the development of GNOME through participation in the development, documentation and promotion of GNOME. An Advisory Board provides a vehicle for organizations and companies to communicate with the GNOME community and support GNOME.

Advisory Board members include Hewlett Packard, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Turbo Linux and other leading technology companies.

Additional information is available at http://www.gnome.org/. You are invited to participate in GNOME, which provides many opportunities for individuals and companies to contribute.

Adopts upcoming GNOME 2.0 as future user desktop for Solaris[tm] Operating Environment

PALO ALTO, CA — August 15, 2000 — Today at the LinuxWorld 2000 conference in San Jose, California, Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced it is joining the GNOME Foundation, a new organization of open community developers and leading high-technology companies that will advance GNOME as an industry-wide open user environment. Sun also announced it will adopt GNOME 2.0 as the future desktop for its Solaris[tm] Operating Environment. In a related announcement, the GNOME Foundation announced it will adopt OpenOffice.org technology as the core for GNOME Office Suite.

Solaris Operating Environment is the world’s leading mission-critical UNIX(R) operating environment, used by global corporations. OpenOffice.org is the industry initiative to deliver open office productivity applications, based on Sun’s StarOffice office productivity suite, that was provided to the open source community by Sun in July.

“We are delighted to be joining the GNOME Foundation and to be adopting GNOME as the modern desktop for Solaris. Linux developers will now be able to tap into the industrial power of Solaris as they develop applications for desktops and Internet-enabled devices for the dot-com era,” said Marco Boerries, vice president and general manager of webtop and application software at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Sun is committing significant engineering resources to ensure that GNOME integrates seamlessly into Solaris.”

“This is the first time a major systems vendor has embraced free software/open-source software as a key element of its primary operating system,” said Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project and Helix Code. “Sun’s commitment to GNOME helps usher in a new era in delivering a complete and modern future user environment for not only the Sun community but for the open-source community as well.”

By focusing on Sun’s areas of development expertise–robust UNIX technology, printing, internationalization, accessibility, and network configuration and management–Sun will drive reliability and quality with the GNOME Foundation.

About GNOME 2.0

GNOME 2.0 will be the first major release from the GNOME Foundation, which will integrate the advanced technologies from the GNOME Foundation partners with existing technology from the GNOME Project. Some of the features planned for GNOME 2.0 include an advanced and easy-to-use user environment; an integrated and free office productivity suite; and the latest browser technology from the Mozilla Project.

Availability

GNOME 2.0 for Solaris is scheduled to be available from Sun by the middle of calendar year 2001. Sun plans to start releasing early access versions of GNOME 2.0 for Solaris, as the GNOME 2.0 technology becomes available, around the end of calendar year 2000. CDE-based applications will continue to run in the new Solaris desktop environment without change, and Sun will continue to support CDE users and applications.

About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME project has built a completely free and easy-to-use desktop environment, as well as a powerful application framework for software developers on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME Foundation will provide organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project, and help determine its vision and roadmap. Present members include Compaq, Eazel, Free Software Foundation, Gnumatic, Hewlett Packard, Helix Code, Henzai, IBM, Object Management Group, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, TurboLinux and VALinux. Collab.Net, the leading provider of collaborative software development services based on open source principles, is helping to organize the GNOME Foundation. GNOME is part of the GNU project, an effort to build a completely free Unix-like operating system better known as GNU/Linux or Linux. Additional information is available at www.gnome.org.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses. With $15.7 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.

LinuxWorld Expo, San Jose, CA — August 15, 2000 — The GNOME project today announced five major initiatives aimed at delivering an industry-wide open user environment. These initiatives are:

• To establish the GNOME user environment as the unifying desktop for the Linux and Unix communities.
• Adoption of OpenOffice.org technologies for integration into GNOME.
• Integration of the Mozilla browser technology into GNOME.
• Industry leaders to work together to improve the quality, reliability and accessibility of the GNOME user environment around the world.
• Establishment of the GNOME framework as the standard for next generation Internet access devices.

  “GNOME is receiving a tremendous boost in terms of support, backing and commitment for contribution and improvements,” said Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project. “GNOME is now well positioned to be the next generation user environment, uniting the existing Linux and UNIX communities. We are building an alternative environment based on free software and open principles. By leveraging other open technologies we are able to maintain our focus on making the most attractive development environment.”

  GNOME ADOPTION ON LINUX AND UNIX

  GNOME has achieved significant acceptance from the Linux and Unix communities. Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard are announcing their adoption of GNOME as the future default user environment for Solaris and HP-UX, respectively. The GNOME user environment is the default for Red Hat, TurboLinux and several other leading Linux distributions and is available for all major Linux distributions. As a result, this initiative will unify many variations of Unix under a single user environment. It creates a cost-effective framework based on open standards and open source that will enable developers to write solutions for many different platforms, while competing on implementations.

  “The advent of a single user environment will provide enormous benefits to developers, end users and the industry as a whole,” said Bill Claybrook of Aberdeen Group. “By reducing development, deployment and training costs this project will create a competitive, open standards based alternative.”

  A COMPLETE END-USER ENVIRONMENT

  Based on StarOffice, an alternative competitive office productivity suite available on multiple platforms and the leading productivity suite for Linux, OpenOffice.org is the industry initiative to deliver open office productivity applications and its technologies are being adopted by the GNOME project for integration into the system. OpenOffice.org will leverage the Bonobo component model to create a number of object components, allowing these components to be used by a wide range of applications.

  The Mozilla project is an industry initiative to deliver an open Internet browser. Mozilla browser technology, together with IBM’s SashXB technology, will be integrated into GNOME to deliver an integrated browsing experience into its next generation user environment. GNOME has also integrated Mozilla with the Bonobo component system.

  Eazel will provide Nautilus, an innovative file manager which serves as the starting point for Eazel’s web-based system management services. Nautilus will provide a state-of-the art file manager for GNOME, with a fully-integrated Mozilla web-browser and a number of innovative new features. The Nautilus software will be integrated with web-based services that provide assistance with file management and system administration.

  GnuCash will provide graphing and financial data handling infrastructure.

  Helix Code will provide Evolution, the integrated calendar, mail and contacts system, as well as its Bonobo component architecture which enables applications to be built out of reusable software components. In addition, Helix Code will deliver a new set of configuration and administration tools targeted to end users, including configuration snapshotting, rollback and cluster management.

  BEYOND THE DESKTOP

  This initiative will develop the framework and platform services required for applications to be developed and deployed on Internet appliances, consistent and compatible with the GNOME user environment on desktop systems. For the emerging Internet appliance market, Linux has been established as the front runner kernel technolgy. This initiative will provide a well-defined framework for developers and manufacturers of new devices and developers of Internet-based software services. It will also provide users and developers with a cost-effective framework that will deliver a common experience and share data across a range of hardware platforms, from handhelds to supercomputers.

  As part of this initiative, Compaq is working to make Gnome-based applications available on its handheld devices as well as assisting developers through the handhelds.org community and the GNOME Foundation.

  OTHER KEY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENHANCE GNOME

  IBM is contributing application development tools which enable development of web-based applications (SashXB for Linux) using open web standard languages (HTML, Javascript, DHTML, and XML), but have look-and-feel consistency with other “native” applications.

  Red Hat will provide an object-oriented widget framework, CORBA, an OMG industry standard, support for distributed software, lay-out and rendering of internationalized text and configuration management technology.

  Sun Microsystems will provide printing, internationalization and accessibility technology as well as its substantial expertise in improving reliability and quality based on its experience in delivering mission-critical solutions for global corporations.

  ABOUT GNOME

  The GNOME project has built a complete free and easy-to-use desktop environment for the user, as well as a powerful application framework for the software developer.

  GNOME is part of the GNU project, and is free software (often referred to as open source software). GNOME is included in almost every BSD and Linux distribution and works on many other Unix systems.

  Although a number of private and public companies are contributing to the development of GNOME, GNOME is not controlled by any company. It is a volunteer-driven effort with hundreds of volunteer developers from all over the world. Their efforts are coordinated by the Gnome Foundation. Information about GNOME is available at http://www.gnome.org.

  Contact Information:

  Barb Heffner
  CHEN PR
  781-466-8282
  bheffner@chenpr.com

Foundation to Reinforce and Advance GNOME as the World’s Leading Open-source Desktop Environment.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.-August 15, 2000-Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq:RHAT), the leader in open source Internet infrastructure solutions, today announced it has joined the GNOME project and top industry vendors including Compaq, Eazel, Helix Code, IBM, Sun Microsystems and VA Linux Systems to form the GNOME Foundation, a non-profit, unified group of vendors and individuals dedicated to advancing the use and extending the capabilities of the popular GNOME graphical user environment.

The GNOME (GNU Network Object Modeling Environment) project is an open source, GUI-based user interface for Linux designed to run on all modern versions of UNIX-like operating systems. Since its development, GNOME has quickly become one of the world’s leading, free and simple desktop environments.

Red Hat will assist the GNOME Foundation in leading the technical direction of the continuing GNOME project, offering forums for industry leaders to contribute to GNOME and in promoting the benefits of GNOME. The GNOME Foundation will provide organizational and financial support for GNOME and related open source projects.

“Red Hat has played an integral part in the development of code and support for GNOME,” said Bob Young, chairman and co-founder of Red Hat, Inc. “As one of the key founders of the GNOME Foundation, Red Hat is dedicated to working with others in advancing this powerful application framework and promoting it as the desktop environment of the future.”

About the GNOME Foundation

The GNOME Foundation provides organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project. The foundation will help determine the vision and roadmap for GNOME. It will also assist in creating technical standards, coordinate GNOME releases, and determine which software projects are part of GNOME. The foundation will make public statements and administer funds on behalf of the GNOME project. The Foundation will be incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation.

You are invited to participate in the GNOME Foundation. We welcome contributions in many forms. Our membership consists of those individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the development of GNOME through participation in the development, documentation and promotion of GNOME. The Advisory Board provides a vehicle for organizations and companies to communicate with the GNOME community and support GNOME. Additional information is available at: http://www.gnome.org.

Joining Red Hat in the GNOME Foundation is Collab.net, Compaq, Debian, Eazel, Free Software Foundation, Gnumatic, Helix Code, Henzai, Inc., IBM, Sun Microsystems, and VA Linux Systems.

Open source momentum

International Data Corp. (IDC) research states that paid Linux shipments grew faster than any other server operating system over the past two years, and their preliminary figures for 1999 show Linux shipments hold 24.6 percent of the server operating system market, up from 15.8 in 1998. IDC also states that Red Hat Linux is by far the most popular distribution, preferred by 68.7 percent of U.S. Linux users.

Research firm Netcraft, Inc. (www.netcraft.com), states that as of May 2000, 36 percent of all public Web sites run on Linux-based operating systems, making Linux the most popular choice for deploying public Web sites. IDC research shows 40 percent of all spending on Linux servers is for Internet related applications, firmly entrenching Linux servers in the Internet infrastructure.

Finally, IDC predicts that by 2002, there will be more than 55 million handheld and notebook-style information appliance devices and that by 2005, shipments of these appliances will exceed shipments of PCs.

Red Hat’s numerous alliances with industry leaders and the demand for Linux-based applications has created open source support from many of the industry’s leading software and hardware manufacturers, including Compaq, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Netscape, Novell, Oracle and SAP.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Founded in 1994, Red Hat (Nasdaq:RHAT) is the leading provider of open source Internet infrastructure solutions, ranging from small embedded devices to high availability clusters and Web serving. Red Hat applies its technological leadership to create open source solutions for Internet infrastructure and post-PC environments, offers services backed by the best understanding of open source and the most comprehensive resources, delivers the brand of a widely trusted open source leader and corporate partner, and persists in an indelible commitment to the virtues of open source to lead a revolution in the computing industry.

Red Hat, Inc. is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. and has offices worldwide. Visit Red Hat on the Web at www.redhat.com. For investor inquiries, contact Lippert/Heilshorn at (212) 838-3777.

Red Hat Europe was established in July 1999 with its European headquarters based in Surrey, United Kingdom and offices throughout Europe.

Forward-looking statements

Forward-looking statements in this press release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release that are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, management’s plans and objectives for future operations and management’s assessment of market factors, constitute forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties.These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, product plans and performance, the ability to continue to develop the Linux kernel and other software, reliance upon strategic relationships, Red Hat’s dependence upon an open source business model, reliance upon independent third-party Linux developers, management of growth, expansion of Red Hat’s business focus and operations, the possibility of undetected software errors, the enforceability of the GNU General Public License and other licenses under which Red Hat’s products are developed and licensed, the scarcity of Linux-based applications, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat’s industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures, the viability of the Internet, and other risks detailed in Red Hat’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which may be accessed through the SEC’s Web site at http://www.sec.gov.

KING OF THE BONGO

The GNOME team is proud to announce the availability of GNOME 1.2, affectionately known as “Bongo GNOME.” GNOME 1.2 is the latest stable release of the GNU desktop.

This new release represents a dramatic step forward in the usability, attractiveness, and stability of the GNOME desktop. Since the release of October GNOME, the pace of development of new features and bugfixes in the GNOME project has more than doubled, and it would be impossible to name them all here.

GNOME 1.2 FOR USERS

End users will be able to impress their grandparents and younger siblings with the following large-scale changes to the GNOME desktop:

• Ease of use. In response to feedback from our users, we formed the GNOME UI team, focused solely on improving the user experience. The result is a lean, intuitive, and attractive desktop which just plain feels good.
• Help. Thanks to the relentless effort of the GNOME documentation team, on-line documentation and user’s manuals are ubiquitous in GNOME 1.2.
• Polish. We corrected countless problems and bugs which users had reported in the previous version, and GNOME is more stable and smoother as a result.
• Polyglot. Updated localization and documentation from our international team of translators and writers.

GNOME 1.2 FOR HACKERS

GNOME hackers and developers of GNOME applications now have a much more powerful development platform available to them:

• Stability. The same APIs you used in GNOME 1.0 are still available to you in GNOME 1.2. We have worked hard to preserve source- and binary-compatibility everywhere.
• Simplicity. The Glade UI design tool has much improved support for GNOME, and is now an official part of the GNOME project. Thanks to Glade, even the most inept programmers can construct beautiful user interfaces. And non-programmers can contribute to the development process by designing interfaces which can be dropped wholesale into an existing project.
• Power. The robustness and utility of the GNOME libraries and development tools has been improved across the board.
• Documentation. The majority of the GNOME APIs are now fully documented.
• Support. The developer.gnome.org web site contains a wide variety of resources for those individuals and companies that use the GNOME development platform.

NEW WEB PAGE

The introduction of GNOME 1.2 is accompanied by a new web site design. Check it out athttp://www.gnome.org/

Updates and news the GNOME community are available daily from http://gnotices.gnome.org/gnome-news/

SOURCE CODE AVAILABILITY

The GNOME 1.2 source code is available from the GNOME FTP site at:

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/releases/gnome-1.2/

Our web site contains full details for installing GNOME from source:

http://www.gnome.org/start/installing/

READY-TO-INSTALL GNOME 1.2

Helix Code provides easy-to-install packages for GNOME 1.2. Installation instructions can be found here:

http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/download.php3

An extensive set of platforms are supported:

Linux/Intel:
Debian GNU/Linux (Woody, Potato)
TurboLinux 6.0
Red Hat Linux 6.0, 6.1 and 6.2
Linux Mandrake 6.1, 7.0
Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4
SuSE 6.3 (6.4 coming soon)

Linux/PPC
LinuxPPC 2000
Yellow Dog Linux Champion Server 1.2

SPARC:
Solaris 2.7 on UltraSparc

Helix Code’s web site uses Akamai to ensure that downloads are speedy from every corner of the planet.

SCREENSHOTS

If you want to see just how beautiful a desktop can be before downloading GNOME 1.2, check out:

http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/screenshots.php3

THE GNOME STEERING COMMITTEE

At the first GNOME Users and Developers European Conference held in Paris, the GNOME steering committee was created to oversee the development of the GNOME 2.0 platform. The committee will also help establish the GNOME Foundation which will be a non-profit organization that will insure GNOME’s future as the world’s leading free desktop.

Thanks to all of the people that made Bongo GNOME possible:

The GNOME team would like to thank our GNOME 1.2 release coordinator Jacob “The Bod” Berkman who devoted endless hours to making sure the GNOME 1.2 user experience was superb. (Miguel)

Our documentation team pulled one of the most impressive efforts in the story of free software documentation. Special thanks to Dave Mason for motivating contributors and coordinating this effort.

The users who reported bugs, suggested improvements and provided constructive criticism.

Our translation team that worked constantly to keep our applications fully internationalized and localized. Special thanks go to Kjartan Maraas, the team coordinator.

The hackers and families of the hackers that made this software possible.

All of the companies that have supported GNOME over the years.

Special thanks go to Mathieu Lacage and all of the companies, organizations and individuals that made the first GNOME Users and Developers European Conference (http://www.guadec.enst.fr/) possible: ACT/Europe, AFUL, Alcove, Eazel, Helix Code, Linux Magazine/France, Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, Telecom Paris and Mike Shaver.

The GNOME User Interface Improvement team for devoting countless hours evaluating, commenting, redesigning, polishing, improving and rethinking our user interfaces. Thanks to James Cape for heading up this team.

Thanks to the free software community.

Enjoy,
Jacob                   jacob@gnome.org
The GNOME Team          http://www.gnome.org/

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.