GNOME (pronounced /ˈnoʊm/ or /ɡəˈnoʊm/) is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software and is mainly developed by Red Hat employees. It is an international project that includes creating software development frameworks, selecting application software for the desktop, and working on the programs that manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management.
GNOME is part of the GNU Project and can be used with various Unix-like operating systems, most notably GNU/Linux and as part of OpenSolaris Desktop.
GNOME was started in August 1997 by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena as a free software project to develop a desktop environment and applications for it. It was founded in part because K Desktop Environment, an already existing free software desktop environment, relied on the Qt widget toolkit which at the time used a proprietary software license. In…