an IRC program, you would prefer to run kIrc in KDE rather than BitchX or

ircII. GNOME has been the preferred desktop environment for many Linux users

primarily because of its high speed and responsiveness (and partly for its

complete GPL license).

Helix GNOME is a polished distribution of the GNOME desktop provided as a

service to the GNOME user community. It includes stable, up-to-date versions

of powerful software with an integrated, attractive interface. Helix GNOME is

designed to simplify the task of installing a fully featured version of GNOME

on your favorite Unix system.

The Helix GNOME installer sets an example of how installation of software can

be made simple. In most cases all that you need to type in a terminal window

to install Helix GNOME is,

# lynx -source http://go-gnome.com/ | sh

Surprised? Once the setup starts, the installation process is interactive and

the only thing that takes up time is waiting for the download to finish! You

can select from an array of business, entertainment, development and system

software to go with the base package. The installer makes sure that the entire

process is transparent, so that the next time you load up your XWindows

system, you can start using the GNOME system. The GNOME desktop environment

can hardly be faulted and even rivals the Windows interface.

Desktop Toys

The base Helix GNOME package contains an impressive array of software. Here is

a brief overview of some of some of the applications that are installed or can

be installed during the setup process.

Applications

* GXedit: A multi-function text editor that can be used both as a C/C++

development editor, HTML creation tool, e-mail/newsreader and as text

management software. In other words, it's a notepad on steroids.

* gEdit: A small and light weight text editor.

* Glade: Glade is a Gtk+/GNOME user interface builder. It enables rapid

prototyping and creation of application user interfaces.

* Calendar: A personal calendar and schedule manager.

* GHex: A binary file editor that can be used to hex edit files.

* GnomeCard: An electronic business card manager.

* GTimeTracker: Another time management tool that can intelligently identify

time spent on a project.

* gNotepad+: A full featured text editor with font control and styles.

* Gnumeric: Microsoft Excel has new competition in the form of the Gnumeric