Gnome Archive

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).

The GNOME 2.4 Desktop & Developer Platform is the latest release of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment. GNOME 2.4 includes 11 new applications and more than 100 user-requested enhancements. You can use a script like Garnome, CVSGnome or (if on Slackware) Dropline to build. Update: Ximian releases beta of its upcoming Ximian Desktop 3 product, currently losely based on Gnome 2.4, but targeting 2.6 for its final release.

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.

Storage is an exciting project to replace the traditional filesystem with a new document store, database-based. It is part of a larger design for a new desktop environment, more details on that to come in the future by GNOME's Seth Nickell. The current implementation, built under Gnome for now, offers natural language access, network transparency, and a number of other features. Some additional info is here. Update: Seth is replying at Slashdot about Storage.

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

The GNOME Desktop 2.4 Beta 2: "Subotai", is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors since August 31st. The RC1 of Gnome 2.4 is expected to be released in a few days while work for the GTKFileChooser API has started (most possibly to be included on Gnome 2.6 next year).

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.

The GNOME Development Series Desktop 2.3.5 "Jebe", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors.

This Gnome 2.3.3 release is a feature-frozen, development series snapshot. It is used by developers and testers as their day-to-day working desktop, and is ready for wider testing by our user community. Full changelog here.

Java-GNOME is a set of java bindings for the GNOME and GTK libraries so GNOME applications can be written in Java. The bindings are implemented via a JNI layer that accesses the native libraries. After many months, version 0.8 is released, which adds support for GTK+ 2.x and GNOME 2.x.

Ximian Desktop 2 came out of few days ago and I gave it a go. This is not a usability experts review, and probably more of a first impressions thing than a review. I consider myself an intermediate user, (probably advanced intermediate). I installed Ximian Desktop on the following computer:

TuxReports offers a peek at Ximian Desktop 2. I also installed XD2 just a few hours ago on my RHL9. Between 2 rcd random crashes (which brought Red Carpet down too) and 5 unresolved dependancies (metacity-devel, bonobo-devel etc), XD2 managed to install successfully. I only use it for a few hours, but it seems like a nice distribution of Gnome2 with added bonuses. It could have been even better though.

One year ago I wrote a review of Gnome 2. Some people thought I was harsh, others thought I was fair, point is, I always write what I think and surely Gnome 2.0 didn't have the polish or stability of a .0 release. But one year has passed. Gnome 2.2.1 is out, and I must say one thing: I am starting to get impressed by the effort and the clean interface Gnome 2 is now offering. Update: Screenshots inside.

Joe Barr is happy to have a Ximian desktop again, and hopes he doesn't have to go a long time without it in the future. Read his review of Ximian Desktop 2 at LinuxWorld. Expect an interview with Ximian officials this week, here at OSNews. Update: Two more reviews of Ximian Desktop 2, one from LinuxAndMain and one from eWeek. And an additional article about it by eWeek again.