There’s no question in any PC user’s mind that the desktop GUI is one of the most important pieces of any operating system. Fortunately for Linux, we have two great GUIs to choose from, KDE and GNOME.
GNOME has quickly become the de facto GUI standard for several major Linux distributions (such as Red Hat, Debian, and Slackware) mainly because it is completely free software and all of its components are licensed under the GPL. Alternatively, KDE, while completely Open Source, does not meet all of the criteria of Free Software as stipulated by the FSF (Free Software Foundation) and the GNU project, which is why it has fallen out of favor with many Linux distros as the GUI of choice.
Enter Helixcode
Helixcode is a company that was founded by several members of the GNOME development team, including Miguel de Icaza, the leader of the official GNOME project. Their product, Helix GNOME, is the closest thing there is to a “commercial” distribution of the GNOME environment. Like the official GNOME distribution, Helix GNOME is completely Free Software (in the strictly GPL sense of free) but it’s packaged with dozens of third- party GTK programs that a lot of the more popular distributions don’t install by default.
Helix throws in multimedia enhancements like XMMS and Grip, many Internet utilities like Gaim and Xchat, productivity packages like AbiWord and Gnumeric, a cutting edge build of The GIMP graphics manipulation program, a GTK version of Napster…
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