GNOME in 1998: A Blast from the Past

2025-06-15

This article recounts the author's experience with the early GNOME desktop environment included in Red Hat Linux 5.1 from 1998. It was a beta release, significantly simpler than today's GNOME, but boasted remarkably faster boot times. The author details the applications available, such as a basic file manager, the Electric Eyes image viewer, gEdit 0.4.0, and simple games, drawing comparisons to modern versions. This nostalgic look showcases the efforts and ingenuity of the early open-source community.

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