As GNOME 2's release cycle spanned the course of over eight years, many component libraries and core applications were introduced and replaced at various points.

Although greater overall standardization was a major goal of GNOME 2, it also provided increased functionality in customization, as version 2.2 supported the ability for full icon themes to be applied for the first time.

[1] Gathering from other project leaders Miguel de Icaza and Havoc Pennington, the roadmap roughly detailed overall goals, their dependencies, and time to completion.

As early as February 2000, the GNOME Project publicly outlined a plan to have an SDK available by the end of the calendar year.

[2] During the first GUADEC which took place the following month, a non-authoritative GNOME 2.0 steering committee was formed, and an updated timeline was created.

[4] Project co-founder Miguel de Icaza also outlined key points, including which technologies should be adopted via a public document.

[7] This culminated in the creation of the GNOME Usability Project, which handled publishing of an accompanying set of human interface guidelines.