WHAT IS GNOME?

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software .It is mainly developed by Red Hat employees. GNOME was founded with the goal of promoting software freedom  It is an international project that includes creating software development frameworks, selecting application software for the desktop, and working on the programs that manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management.

GNOME is part of the GNU Project and can be used with various Unix-like operating systems, most notably GNU/Linux and as part of OpenSolaris Desktop. GNOME was started in August 1997 by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena as a free software project to develop a desktop environment and applications for it

A number of language bindings are available, allowing applications to be written in a variety of programming languages, such as C++ (gtkmm), Java (java-gnome), Ruby (ruby-gnome2), C# (Gtk#), Python (PyGObject), Perl (gtk2-perl), Tcl (Gnocl) and many others. The only languages currently used in applications that are part of an official GNOME desktop release are C, C++, Python, Vala and Javascript. A number of build-scripts (such as JHBuild or GARNOME) are available to help automate the process of compiling the source code.The running of GNOME is mainly based on the donations received from its users.

Until the release of GNOME 3.0, GNOME was designed around the traditional computing desktop metaphor. Users can change the appearance of their desktop through the use of themes, which usually consist of an icon set, a window manager border and GTK+ theme engine and parameters. The current default theme is Adwaita. The Human Interface Guidelines help developers to produce applications that look and behave similarly to each other, which provides a cohesive GNOME experience.

The applications that are provided with the GNOME Desktop share several characteristics. For example, the applications have a consistent look-and-feel. The applications share characteristics because the applications use the same programming libraries. An application that uses the standard GNOME programming libraries is called a GNOME-compliant application. For example, Nautilus and the gedit text editor are GNOME-compliant applications.

GNOME provides libraries in addition to the libraries provided by your operating system. The libraries enable GNOME to run your existing applications as well as GNOME-compliant applications. 

The other desktop environments similar to GNOME are KDE and XFCE

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Ubuntu : The Free Operating System

UBUNTU

Ubuntu  is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software, using its own desktop environment. The word ubuntu means humanity towards others. Ubuntu is composed of many software packages, the vast majority of which are distributed under a free software license. The only exceptions are some proprietary hardware drivers. The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Ubuntu.

The Ubiquity installer allows Ubuntu to be installed to the hard disk from within the Live CD environment, without the need for restarting the computer prior to installation. Beginning with 5.04, UTF-8 became the default character encoding, which allows for support of a variety of non-Roman scripts.

As a security feature, the sudo tool is used to assign temporary privileges for performing administrative tasks, allowing the root account to remain locked, and preventing inexperienced users from inadvertently making catastrophic system changes or opening security holes.PolicyKit is also being widely implemented into the desktop to further harden the system through the principle of least privilege.

Ubuntu is composed of many software packages, the vast majority of which are distributed under a free software license. The only exceptions are some proprietary hardware drivers. The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Ubuntu.

The Ubiquity installer allows Ubuntu to be installed to the hard disk from within the Live CD environment, without the need for restarting the computer prior to installation. Beginning with 5.04, UTF-8 became the default character encoding, which allows for support of a variety of non-Roman scripts.

As a security feature, the sudo tool is used to assign temporary privileges for performing administrative tasks, allowing the root account to remain locked, and preventing inexperienced users from inadvertently making catastrophic system changes or opening security holes. PolicyKit is also being widely implemented into the desktop to further harden the system through the principle of least privilege.

Some of the softwares included in ubuntu are LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Empathy, Transmission. A large number of other softwares can be downloaded from the ubuntu software center.

The installation of ubuntu can be done with the help of live cds .Also the Ubuntu OS can run directly from the CD.

Users can download a disk image (.iso) of the CD, which can then either be written to a physical medium (CD or DVD).

Some of the variants of ubuntu are

•             Edubuntu, a GNOME-based subproject and add-on for Ubuntu, designed for school environments and home users.

•             Kubuntu, a desktop distribution using the KDE Plasma Workspaces desktop environment.

•             Lubuntu, a lightweight distribution using the LXDE desktop environment.

•             Mythbuntu, designed for creating a home theater PC with MythTV and uses the Xfce desktop environment.

•             Ubuntu Studio, a distribution made for professional video and audio editing, comes with higher-end free editing software.

•             Xubuntu, a distribution based on the Xfce desktop environment, designed to run more efficiently on low-specification computers

The latest release is Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal), released on 18 October 2012.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.ubuntu.com/download

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BROWSE ANONYMOUSLY USING TOR NETWORK

Tor (short for The Onion Router)is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software directs internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers to conceal a user's location or usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications. Today, it is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists, and many others.

 "Onion Routing" refers to the layered nature of the encryption service: The original data are encrypted and re-encrypted multiple times, then sent through successive Tor relays, each one of which decrypts a "layer" of encryption before passing the data on to the next relay and, ultimately, its destination. This reduces the possibility of the original data being unscrambled or understood in transit

Tor aims to conceal its users' identities and their network activity from surveillance and traffic analysis by separating identification and routing. It is an implementation of onion routing, which encrypts and then randomly bounces communications through a network of relays run by volunteers around the globe. These onion routers employ encryption in a multi-layered manner (hence the onion metaphor) to ensure perfect forward secrecy between relays, thereby providing users with anonymity in network location. That anonymity extends to the hosting of censorship-resistant content via Tor's anonymous hidden service feature.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication.

Once inside a Tor network, the traffic is sent from router to router, ultimately reaching an exit node at which point the cleartext packet is available and is forwarded on to its original destination. Viewed from the destination, the traffic appears to originate at the Tor exit node.

Tor can also provide anonymity to servers in the form of location-hidden services, which are Tor clients or relays running specially configured server software. Rather than revealing the server's IP address (and therefore its network location), hidden services are accessed through Tor-specific .onion pseudo top-level domain (TLD), or "pseudomain," making it one realm of the so-called darknet. The Tor network understands this TLD and routes data anonymously both to and from the hidden service. Due to this lack of reliance on a public address, hidden services may be hosted

The Tor client is free software and use of the Tor network is free of charge

http://www.torproject.org.in/

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WHAT IS OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE ?

Open-source software is software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees.Open-source code can evolve through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual programmers as well as very large companies. Many of these individuals programmers who start an open-source project usually end up as large companies with open-source programs.

Examples of open-source software products are

Application software

7-Zip – file archiver
Blender – 3D graphics editor
Eclipse – development environment comprising an IDE
GIMP – graphics editor
Inkscape – Vector graphics editor for .svg
Mozilla Firefox – web browser
Chromium – web browser
Mozilla Thunderbird – e-mail client
NASA World Wind – virtual globe, geobrowser
OpenOffice.org (and the LibreOffice fork) – office suite
OpenEMR  – Electronic Medical Records software
PrestaShop – Electronic commerce platform
ADempiere – (now Free Software forked from Compiere) an enterprise resource planning (ERP) open source software platform for business
Vue – (Visual Understanding Environment) mind mapping software project of Tufts University
WordPress – web publishing platform

Operating systems

Android – operating system derived from Linux
FreeBSD – operating system derived from Unix
Linux – family of Unix-like operating systems
OpenIndiana – a free Unix-like operating system
ReactOS – operating system built on Windows NT architecture
Haiku – free and open-source operating system compatible with BeOS
Programming languages
Perl – a general purpose programming language
PHP – scripting language suited for the web
Python – general purpose programming language
Ruby – general purpose programming language
PHDL – hardware description language used for PC Board Design

Server software

Apache – HTTP web server
Drupal – content management system
MediaWiki – wiki server software, the software that runs Wikipedia
MongoDB – document-oriented, non-relational database
Moodle – course management system or virtual learning environment
WordPress – blog software
Joomla! – content management system
TYPO3 – enterprise content management system