Miguel de Icaza spends his days as a computer-network administrator at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in Mexico City. Watching over the network, he says, "gives me a lot of spare time"-time he spends answering e-mail and working on "fun little projects." His current spare-time computer activity, he thinks, is "really great." De Icaza is coordinating the GNOME project, a volunteer effort to develop a computer desktop-a mouse-and-windows interface-that will outdo the various incarnations of Windows that form the foundation of the Microsoft empire.

The GNOME desktop, its programmers say, will be faster, more powerful and less likely to crash than anything from Redmond, Wash. "It's a radical step forward in computer design," says Larry McVoy, a former Sun Microsystems programmer who now runs a networking startup in San Francisco called BitMover, "the coolest, whizziest thing out there." And GNOME will be free: downloadable from the Internet without charge.