The Official GNOME 2 Developer's Guide
by Matthias Warkus
Published by: 
No Starch Press
520 pages
Retail Price: $49.95


As most developers using Linux are aware, GNOME is a graphical desktop interface for both Linux and UNIX. Besides that, it also provides a rich application and object oriented development environment to work from. All the various libraries, the GTK+, utilities, Glade, configuration tools, and the GNOME API's are covered well, with examples throughout the book. The GNOMEVFS (the virtual file system) is full explained as well, which should be of benefit especially to those coming from a Windows environment.

As it was originally developed in the German language, this is the first book that explains GNOME 2 in English. That fact alone should make it required reading for all developers wanting to gain familiarity and expertise with. The other fact is the author has done an exceptional job here to explain the many ways that GNOME 2 shines in an understandable and interesting way. He is an advanced Linux developer, and has written several books on Linux. No Starch is also contributing a portion of the book proceeds to the GNOME Foundation, which is dedicated to providing a computer platform which fully utilizes open source software.