The GNOME project has built a complete free and easy-to-use desktop environment for the user, as well as a powerful application framework for the software developer. GNOME is included in pretty much every BSD and GNU/Linux distribution and works on many other Unix systems. This release marks the first API frozen release of the GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform, and is 100% parallel installable with the latest GNOME 1.x platform libraries. The GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform provides many technical advantages over GNOME 1.x, including full multi-lingual text support, high-quality anti-aliased text, accessibility support, substantial API and usability improvements to the libraries and widgets, and greater ease of development.