GNOME News Archives

Epiphany, the web-browser for the GNOME desktop, is receiving a rather significant facelift as it becomes more important to the GNOME3 desktop.

Among the interesting package updates for the latest GNOME 3.3/3.4 development update are some of the changes to Clutter and Cogl (the Clutter OpenGL component) in preparation for their version 1.10 releases.

For those interested in the GTK3 tool-kit on Windows, improvements are forthcoming.

There's new major development versions of KDE and GNOME now available. On the GNOME side it's GNOME 3.3.2 and for KDE it's the Software Compilation 4.8 Beta 1.

There's new releases of GTK+ and Mutter, both of which bring new features. The releases are GTK+ 3.3.4 and Mutter 3.3.2, which are development versions in the road to GNOME 3.4.

As reported on Thursday, GNOME Shell / Mutter no longer requires OpenGL-accelerated hardware drivers. It's possible to run this GNOME3 desktop with a software back-end via Gallium3D's LLVMpipe.

Transmageddon, a popular open-source video transcoder for Linux that's built atop GStreamer, has seen its first major update in more than one year.

The first development release for GNOME 3.4, which is marked as GNOME 3.3.1 in the 3.3 unstable series, is now available for testing.

The first point release to the Oktoberfest-christened GNOME 3.2 was released today. Like usual, this GNOME update (v3.2.1) just brings translation updates and bug-fixes. There's also some "tiny improvements" but nothing major.

Farsight, the GStreamer-based audio/video conferencing framework that's used by MeeGo, Pidgin, Empathy, aMSN, and former Nokia phones is now known as the Farstream project.

The 2011 GNOME User Survey, an end-user survey that was assembled by independent GNOME users and hosted on Phoronix, began less than 24 hours ago and we're already approaching 2,000 submissions. There's still one month to go, and from these submission so far when simply dumping the comments it amounts to about 148 pages. However, it's not hard to guess what most of these comments are about when it comes to the GNOME desktop.

Evolution, the e-mail client that's part of the GNOME desktop, will be seeing many significant changes during the GNOME 3.4 development cycle.

For those not busy at Oktoberfest this week or elsewhere, GNOME 3.2 is now available for those wishing to try out the latest GNOME desktop packages.

While not replacing the Nautilus file manager or playing a major role within the soon-to-be-released GNOME 3.2, there is a new GNOME file manager available.

With the official release of GNOME 3.2 coming later in the week, Red Hat's Matthias Clasen has christened the official version of the GTK+ 3.2 tool-kit. GTK+ 3.2 brings several interesting features since the inaugural GTK+3 release earlier in the year.

The GNOME 3.2 release is imminent, but there's one last step before going gold: testing out the release candidate. The release candidate of this desktop environment's 3.2 release is now available for everyone to test.

Besides the already talked about features of GNOME 3.2, one of the features that hasn't received much attention (aside from at the Berlin Linux Desktop Summit) until now with the GNOME 3.2 Beta is the web applications support in this next major update to the GNOME desktop.

Owen Taylor announced a new version of the GNOME Shell and Mutter releases this afternoon for what will be incorporated into the GNOME 3.2 desktop. While it's late in the development cycle with the final GNOME 3.2 release coming next month and the beta release being set for Wednesday, the Mutter 3.1.90 carries two important changes along with prominent changes to the GNOME Shell.

A lot of people hate Canonical's Unity desktop, but a lot of people also hate the current state of the GNOME 3.0 Shell too. For those that are still fond of the GNOME 2.x environment, there is a fork of GNOME2 that's been little talked about up to this point. This fork is called the Mate Desktop Environment.

On the third day of the Berlin Desktop Summit there wasn't any major announcements like the previous two days when we found out the KDE plans for Wayland, basic plans for KDE 5.0, and initial thoughts concerning GTK4. One of the talks that I attended on Monday that was of closest interest to that of Phoronix content is the work being done towards making a multi-touch GNOME Shell.

Besides talk of KDE on Wayland, also talked about this weekend in Berlin at the 2011 Desktop Summit was the GTK4 tool-kit. While GTK3 was just released with GNOME 3.0, the most primitive discussions surrounding the next-generation GTK4 tool-kit were had this morning at Humboldt University.

Back in June I mentioned the plans for GStreamer 1.0 and that work is now beginning to materialize. GStreamer 0.11 has just been officially released as the first development snapshot for what will turn into the notable GStreamer 1.0 release.

The Desktop Summit is beginning at the end of this week as the joint conference between the GNOME and KDE communities. This year's Desktop Summit is taking place in the wonderful city of Berlin and will go from the 6th to 12th of August. At Humboldt University there will be a number of interesting Linux desktop talks and other events.

In readying for the GNOME 3.1.4 development release, there's new development builds available for the GNOME Shell and Mutter -- two of the key components of the GNOME 3 desktop.

There's another noteworthy GTK+ development release in the road to GTK+ 3.2. This new GTK+ 3.1.10 release integrates the Gail module, re-designed file chooser features, theming enhancements, and bug fixes.

For those interested in running some new development software this weekend, the GNOME 3.1.2 development snapshot has been released.

Red Hat's Owen Taylor who is largely responsible for the work on the GNOME Shell and Mutter has written his response to the recent article about How Unity, Compiz, GNOME Shell and KWin Affect Performance.

GTK+ 3.2, the first major update since the release of GNOME 3.0 with the overhauled GTK+ 3.0 tool-kit, is coming along nicely in preparation for the September release of GNOME 3.2.

Debates surrounding Linux desktop environments, especially the new Ubuntu Unity shell and the GNOME 3.0 Shell, tend to be very polarized. There also tends to be lots of trolling by users when such debates occur within our forums and elsewhere. But what do graphics driver developers -- and those not out simply to rant -- think of the new desktops? Well, Alex Deucher of AMD recently switched over to the GNOME Shell and he's provided a list of issues he's had with the experience thus far.

Just a day after the KDE camp pushed out KDE SC 4.7 Beta 1, the GNOME camp has come to the desktop with their stable 3.0.2 release. The GNOME 3.0.2 release, like is usual for GNOME point releases, just brings bug-fixes and translation updates.

Last week marked the end of the feature proposal for GNOME 3.2, for the first major update to the GNOME3 desktop. The GNOME 3.2 release schedule has the final release set for the end of September. In this article is a list of some of the features that were brought up for GNOME 3.2.

One of the mailing list messages making the rounds on the Internet today is concerning the GNOME project and whether they should no longer concern themselves with supporting non-Linux operating systems.

GNOME 3.0 / GTK+ 3.0 was released just over one month ago, but already work is well under-way into developing GNOME 3.2 and with that the GTK+ 3.2 update for release later on in the year. GTK+ 3.1.2 was released in mid-April, but GTK+ 3.1.4 was released yesterday as the second development snapshot. This tool-kit update does provide more features.

Two weeks have passed since the release of GNOME 3.0, but preparations are already under-way for the next major release: GNOME 3.2. Continuing in the GNOME release tradition, and while it's not yet shipping in most Linux distributions, the next release will occur in six months time and take place at the end of September.

With Canonical ditching the GNOME 3.0 Shell in favor of their custom-developed Unity Desktop, one of the first Linux distributions where you'll see GNOME 3.0 shipping in full "out of the box" is Fedora 15. Fedora 15 is set to be released at the end of May, but a beta release happens to be coming out today. Additionally, this Thursday they're looking for your help in testing out GNOME 3.0.

Last November we reported on Broadway GTK+, which makes GTK+ programs accessible from the web-browser by taking advantage of HTML5 as a GTK+ back-end. The Broadway back-end will be merged in GTK+ 3.2 and the work continues to become more interesting.

Today's GNOME's big day... GNOME 3.0 has been released.

The release candidate of GNOME 3.0 is due out, and the final release is just days away (6 April), but the GNOME Shell continues to advance with just days to go. GNOME Shell 2.91.92 is now available with a number of improvements.

The GNOME release team has announced the immediate release of GNOME 3.0 Beta 2. The release of GNOME 3.0 Beta 2 (v2.91.91) puts this free software desktop stack in its string and user-interface freeze.

As expected, when talking about the latest GNOME Shell and Mutter changes this morning. GNOME 3.0 Beta 1 has been released today. This is the first of two betas for this popular desktop environment before the final release is expected in a little more than one month.

Version 2.91.90 of GNOME Shell and Mutter were released last night and they carry some last minute changes to these major components of the GNOME 3.0 desktop.

It's been a little more than a week since the final release of GTK2 was made available and at that time GTK+ 3.0 was nearing its official release. Today, after being in development for years, GTK+ 3.0 has been officially released.

On a GNOME 2.x desktop if you are a laptop owner you can control what happens when you close your laptop's lid from the power management preferences whether to suspend the system or simply blank the screen. With GNOME 3.0, when you close your laptop's lid, the system will suspend and there will be no user-interface for changing this policy. It's a design decision for the GNOME 3.0 desktop.

In preparation for the GNOME 2.91.6 release tomorrow, many GNOME modules are being checked in, including new versions of the GTK+ 3.0 tool-kit, the GNOME Shell, and the Mutter window manager.

There's good news in the land of GNOME tool-kits this week. In preparation for the release of GNOME 3.0, GTK+ 2.24 as well as Clutter 1.6.0 have been officially released.

Intel's Chris Wilson has announced the Cairo 1.11.2 snapshot, which is the first development look at what's to come with version 1.12 of the Cairo drawing library. Besides introducing support for creating Bezier surface gradients and working up the API in some areas, there's many other improvements being introduced in Cairo 1.12.

Vincent Untz has announced the first GNOME release of 2011, which is one of the final development snapshots leading up to the long-awaited release of GNOME 3.0.

Red Hat's Matthias Clasen has just announced the release of GTK+ 2.99.0 as the first beta for the forthcoming GTK+ 3.0 tool-kit release in conjunction with the much-anticipated GNOME 3.0 desktop. While the final release is nearing and there's already been several interesting GTK+ advancements in recent weeks, with GTK+ 2.99.0, there continues to be noteworthy happenings.

While the GTK+ tool-kit is primarily used on Linux based systems and those running an X.Org Server, with GTK+ 3.0 there are several improvements to benefit the Wayland Display Server as well as other operating systems.

Due out today is the latest GNOME 3.0 development snapshot, GNOME 2.91.4, and because of that in recent days there's been a slew of GNOME package check-ins. Landing yesterday was GTK+ 2.91.7, the latest version of the GTK+ 3.0 tool-kit that plays one of the most important roles on the GNOME desktop. While it's getting late in the release cycle and this GNOME tool-kit has already delivered lots of new features, the changes keep rolling.