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But if history is a guide, even the support of companies including Sun Microsystems Inc., Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM Corp. might not be enough to make a significant dent in the Windows world.

GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) is in a battle with KDE (K Desktop Environment) for dominance among Linux desktop interfaces, both aiming to make the underlying operating system more user-friendly.

GNOME (pronounced Guh NOME) already has momentum behind it. It is bundled with just about every major Linux distribution, as well as with some Unix flavors, including Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD). And some open-source software developers also use GNOME as a software-development framework.

This week, according to a report published in The New York Times, a number of top computer hardware vendors are going to throw their weight behind GNOME as well.

Among the companies slated to announce their support for GNOME at a press conference Tuesday at LinuxWorld in San Jose, Calif., are Compaq, Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Sun. The group will call itself the GNOME Foundation.

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Compaq (NYSE: CPQ), HP (NYSE: HWP) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) are expected to say they will offer GNOME as the standard interface on the versions of Linux that they preload on Linux desktops, laptops and handhelds. Sun (Nasdaq: SUNW) is rumored to be willing to make GNOME its default interface for its Solaris operating system over time.

MS Office another target?
On Tuesday, the GNOME Foundation is also expected to announce that it is adopting the open-source version of Sun's StarOffice desktop applications suite and will turn it into GNOME Office, confirmed sources close to Sun.

GNOME Office will be based on a future, more componentized version of StarOffice. That will allow users to pick and choose among elements, such as a thesaurus component or e-mail component, and embed them in their future user interfaces and interfaced-based applications.

The hardware vendors did not respond for requests to comment on their GNOME plans. Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL) and Gateway Inc. (NYSE: GTW) also did not respond.

Another company expected to back GNOME in a major way is Helix Code Inc. The Cambridge, Mass.-based software developer is charged with helping commercialize the GNOME Linux desktop, which is developed by the GNOME Project as part of the GNU. GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, a collection of Unix-compatible software developed and maintained by the Free Software Foundation. GNU is distributed freely or at a nominal cost under the GNU General Public License.

Helix sells Helix Gnome through its channel partners, and earlier this month, announced a set of graphical administration tools for Linux and Unix.

The idea of creating a common user environment that would give Microsoft some real Windows competition is hardly a new one.

In the early 1990s, a number of Unix vendors including IBM, HP and Sun attempted to build up the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) as an agreed-upon front end. But the fragmentation that has plagued the Unix industry as a whole also ended up weakening the CDE effort considerably.

CDE lacks acceptance
Sun currently touts CDE as its default Solaris interface. And other Unix makers such as IBM also offer CDE as a built-in part of their current Unix distributions.

But CDE never rose up to create a truly common UI around which software vendors could rally. And it definitely never emerged as the formidable challenge to the Windows UI that its creators originally had envisioned.

CDE also never gained acceptance from the Linux community.