Gnome Archive

A proposal for the handling of MIME types was published by Red Hat's JRB.

"For years, it has seemed that the GNU/Linux desktop was right on the cusp of being ready for the mainstream desktop out of the box. Recent distributions, such as Mandrake Linux 9.2, bring the desktop to the mainstream, but something is still lacking: complete unity." Read more at OfB.biz. Update: On other Ximian news, the first release of Dashboard is coming along soon.

Linux Universe posted a review of the Dropline Gnome distribution for Slackware.

The GNOME Foundation announced the launch of the first-ever open source desktop integration bounty hunt. The aim of the contest is to recruit new developers and to more tightly integrate the various projects that make up the desktop into a more coherent, and complete user experience. The contest consists of a number of small, concrete projects, each of which has a cash bounty associated with it. Complete the hack, enter the contest, and collect a prize. Also of great interest are Nat's slides shown at the Gnome Summit in NY showing a bright future for Gnome and the Unix/Linux desktop.

It is not a secret that Novell/Ximian will be pushing C# and Mono on Gnome in the coming years when it will be more full-featured and ready for adoption. Programming-wise, there are several advantages of using Mono over the plain GTK+ (oh, and by the way, GTK# 0.13 was released today). So, what's your opinion on a .NET/Mono-aware Gnome?

More commentary on the GNOME front: Jared White of 'The Idea Basket' compares the GNOME Storage project with the new WinFS technology in Microsoft Longhorn. Can Storage gain enough momentum and developer involvement within the open source community? Will it be ready to compete with WinFS in 2006? Havoc Pennington has a similar question on his blog.

" I learned about Dropline Gnome, an optimized Gnome installation for Slackware. Anyway, the upshot was that my Gnome system was upgraded, my personal settings were retained but my Open Office file associations were broken. I could no longer open documents in Nautilus with an Open Office application." Read the tutorial at Linux-Universe.

The GNOME-Office team announced the immediate availability of GNOME-Office 1.0. It includes the AbiWord-2.0 word processor, GNOME-DB-1.0 database interface and Gnumeric-1.2.0 spreadsheet. In the meantime, Nautilus is set to receive a new UI design which will be object oriented-based. In this OO design each folder is an object and opens in its own window, while the navigational buttons and methods are going away from the default interface (similar to Tracker in the pre-OpenTracker BeOS 4/5 days).

"GNOME 2.4 brings to the Linux desktop considerable polish, accessibility and consistency. This release is a culmination of the work done by commercial vendors and the GNOME community, as evidenced by the fact that three vendors--Sun, Red Hat and Ximian--have already shipped desktops focused on the GNOME 2 platform. The end result is a pleasant desktop that is nimble, attractive and unobtrusive. While it's not perfect, the foundation is now there and the overall product has matured." Read the in-depth review of GNOME 2.4 at ArsTechnica.

Epiphany is a GNOME web browser based on the Mozilla/Gecko rendering engine and today reached 1.0 status. It will be included as the default browser on Gnome 2.4, due to be released Wednesday.

This article describes how to use GnomeVFS -- a C library for accessing various file systems -- to extend GNOME and develop your own extensions to the virtual file system. The article is centered around an imaginary example file system that lets you access an in-memory directory tree.

The GNOME Desktop 2.4 Release Candidate 1: "Kublai", is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors.

Gnome 2.4 beta has been announced. The GNOME Desktop 2.4 Beta 1: "Jelme", is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors.

The release freeze of Gnome 2.4 is imminent, so an intrepid Gnome user takes a look at what's in 2.4 and how it differs from 2.3.