GNOME bet that fewer settings make better software, and angered many users
While rewriting their Linux desktop, GNOME developers deleted piles of settings on purpose. Havoc Pennington argued that every preference carries a hidden cost, so software should simply behave right by default. That philosophy shaped one of the most used free desktops, and later sparked a revolt when GNOME 3 hid the minimise button.
Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena launched GNOME on 15 August 1997. A rival desktop, KDE, was gaining ground but depended on the Qt toolkit, which carried a proprietary licence until mid-1999. GNOME instead built on GTK, under a permissive licence that even allows proprietary software to link against it. The name first stood for GNU Network Object Model Environment, but that meaning was dropped, and in 2021 GNOME was formally removed from the GNU package list after its director had asked for this since 2019.
GNOME 2 arrived in June 2002 as a familiar desktop with a launcher menu, a taskbar and a notification corner. Its human interface guidelines, drawing on cognitive ergonomics, gave every app a consistent feel. Pennington mocked free software that tried to include every feature ever seen anywhere, taking a jab at the famously configurable Emacs editor.
Frustration over drift led to GNOME 3 in 2011, with a new shell built around an overview screen for switching tasks and workspaces. Hiding the minimise and maximise buttons and trimming options stirred heavy controversy, and projects such as MATE forked the old GNOME 2 code to keep the traditional layout alive. GNOME later offered official extensions and a Classic mode restoring some familiar pieces.
Accessibility is built in through a toolkit that lets tools such as the Orca screen reader work across the whole desktop, and the interface supports 197 languages at varying completeness. Volunteers and paid staff, with Red Hat the biggest contributor, ship new core apps every six months, and Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund gave the project 1,000,000 euros across 2023 and 2024.
Source: GNOME
