GNOME 2
GNOME 2 is the second major release of the GNOME desktop environment. Building upon the release of GNOME 1, development of GNOME 2 focused on a greater design-oriented approach that simplified and standardized elements of the environment. It also introduced modern font and image rendering, with improved accessibility and internationalization, and improved performance. It was released on June 26, 2002 at the Linux Symposium. Although officially superseded by GNOME 3, and no longer actively maintained, GNOME 2 became the basis for the MATE desktop environment, which actively continues development. It also helped to inspire the Cinnamon desktop environment, and the GNOME Flashback shell session, which both largely retain a similar user experience to GNOME 2, but with modern components. Features GNOME 2's initial release was largely an evolution of the final release of GNOME 1, that had introduced both Nautilus (today known as GNOME Files) as its file manager, and Sawfish as its window manager. However, in an effort to simplify its implementation, by the second release of GNOME 2, the Metacity window manager had been adopted. With that, it also included an official look and feel, as it adopted the Clearlooks theme. For the first time, the GNOME human