GNOME is 25 years old. So it was and so it is

GNOME turns 25

Who'd say. Although I have always had a Linux computer for a long time and I do not use Windows as my main system, the truth is that I tried Linux for the first time in 2006. For me, Linux came into existence in 2002, when a colleague « he ate our ears» to all of us who approached him talking about an operating system that always worked, in which you didn't have to install drivers... everything was rosy. But it had been around for a long time, and one of the most used desks, if not the most, has always been GNOME.

Today the GNOME project celebrates its 25º birthday. It was on August 15, 1997 when they made themselves known, saying that they wanted to develop a group of applications and software in the form of free and friendly tools, more or less as CDE and KDE were doing, the latter for about 10 months. What GNOME is like now is known by the entire Linux community, but only those of us who are old enough know what it was like when it really started to spread.

GNOME 1.0 was like an ugly Windows, but it was only the beginning

"We want to develop a free and complete set of easy-to-use desktop applications and tools, similar to CDE and KDE but based entirely on free software."

As they explain in their celebration item, in March 1999 GNOME 1.0 was released. They chose the GIMP Toolkit as their base, and I'm sure many are wondering what GIMP has to do with all this. The "GIMP Toolkit" is now known as GTK, and it's the toolkit that shapes much of GNOME's aesthetic. The interface was as seen in the following screenshot: it looks like Windows 95, but worse designed. There are virtual desktops, but it didn't have the best of presentations.

GNOME 1.0

A year later, in 2000, they held the first GUADEC and announced the foundation GNOME, this already in August. In June 2002 they released version 2.0, which didn't have the best of designs either, but they began to shape what would shortly afterwards be used by an operating system that caused a lot of talk: Ubuntu. In terms of aesthetics, and compared to Windows XP, for example, it was never its strong point, but performance was much higher (and still is).

Already in 2011 they released GNOME 3.0, very rare for those of us who were used to and comfortable with 2.x versions, but the design problem began to disappear. More recently, in 2016 it was integrated with flatpak packages, a type of package that prioritizes over snap; almost any app that comes out for GNOME soon shows up on Flathub.

GNOME Screenshot Tool

GNOME 42 comes with a useful screenshot tool, but without too many configuration options

In 2021 they released GNOME 40, upping the number from 3.x so there would be no confusion with GTK4. While it's never really been bad, going up from GNOME 2.x to 3.x saw performance drop, it's the price to pay for moving something pretty. With versions 41 and 42 the desktop has been gaining in fluidity, thus recovering much of the lost ground in this section.

What does the future hold?

Time will tell. Seeing what they have been adding since they went up to 40, it seems that two things are clear: the performance will get better and better. On the other hand, the applications will have more functions, but they will not forget an essence that makes them easy to use for any type of person. We also have to remember that they have been using Wayland by default for a long time, and soon it should work fine regardless of the graphics card we use.

Special mention a few gestures that make things much easier for us, to the point of hearing feedback from users in the community who have switched/returned to GNOME just to be able to use them. Surely the future will bring us surprises, and the first ones will come when GNOME 43 reach its stable version.

For everything else, wish you a happy birthday from here, and many more to come.


Be the first to comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: AB Internet Networks 2008 SL
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.