GNOME is a free desktop environment, the easiest and cleanest free graphical user interface we know about. The FarsiWeb Project has contributed to both Persian support (internationalization) and Persian translation (localization) of GNOME.
Roozbeh Pournader, a co-founder of FarsiWeb, is the coordinator for the Persian translation effort. Amir Hedayaty, an intern at the project, is the coordinator for the Iranian Azerbaijani effort.
In GNOME 2.12.0, released in September 2005, the level of Persian support was “partially supported”, which means more than 50% of the GNOME desktop had been localized to Persian.
In November 2005, with GNOME 2.12.2, the Persian language became a “supported” language, with more than 80% of the desktop system localized to Persian. This means that Persian users will now have a smooth localized experience in their own native tongue.
GNOME 2.12’s Persian support is available in Ubuntu 5.10 and Edubuntu.
In March 2006, GNOME 2.14 was released. The supported status continued to hold, meaning that every GNU/Linux distribution that includes GNOME 2.14 will have the Persian support. Specially, this support will become available in Fedora Core 5, to be released in March 2006.
We wish to thank the several contributors to the GNOME localization effort: Roozbeh Pournader, Meelad Zakaria, Elnaz Sarbar, Farzaneh Sarafraz, Alireza Kheirkhahan, Masoud Ahmadzadeh, Hamed Malek, Behnam Pournader, Sara Khalatbari, Hessam M. Armandehi, Reza Mohammadi, Hedayat Vatankhah, and Behdad Pournader.
To participate in the effort to localize GNOME to Persian or Iranian Azerbaijani, please send us an email at gnome-l10n@farsiweb.info.