Gnome Archive

Today is the scheduled release date for the long-awaited GNOME2 desktop. But instead of a final GNOME2, a second release candidate will be issued. This falls in line with a one-week delay in RC 1, though when its delay was announced it was said that final release would not be delayed. The report is at LinuxAndMain. Our Take: Gnome2 is more than one year old late, while KDE is on track on most of its releases, and it seems to have captivated the userbase, as according to latest stats and polls, KDE has more than 55% of the Linux desktop, as opposed to Gnome's 25% (which continues to decline). UPDATE: Yama from PCLinuxOnline writes: "I have written an article that aims to clear up many misconceptions that many people seem to hold about GNOME. Hopefully it will lead to a greater understanding of The GNOME Project and what it's about."

"The first release candidate of GNOME 2.0 (GNOME 2.0 RC1, also known as "Fever Pitch") was announced on June 14, 2002, and is spreading across the 'Net like wildfire. This article examines what's new in GNOME 2.0 and the release candidate, where to find it, how to install it, and concludes by discussing whether or not to install it as well as a crystal-ball look at some of the implications of GNOME's successes to date and GNOME 2.0's potential for the future." Read the article at LinuxPlanet.

"The GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 5 release, "Reciprocity", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure! It is now available for immediate download. The GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface." Read more at LinuxToday.

"The long-awaited second major version of the GNOME desktop is days away from a fifth beta and on schedule for a full release on the first day of summer, according to its release manager. 'I'm quite sure we're going to make it, given that our UI and string freeze has just kicked in, and the number of 2.0.0 bugs we have left to go,' says Jeff Waugh, who is ramrodding the release. According to the release schedule, Beta 5 will be issued at the end of this week. It is to be followed by a release candidate, which developers hope to make public June 7. If all goes well, GNOME-2.0 will be released two weeks later." Read the rest of the news at LinuxAndMain.

The GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 3 release, "La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download. The Changelog is here, while the final version is expected to be released on May 1st. In related news, GTK+ 2.01 released yesterday.

"From the "things that could happen if Mono is incorporated into Gnome" department: Intel, having gleefully taken advantage of the MIT licensing on Mono's class libraries, enforces its patents against every entity making use of its modifications, including the Gnome project, effectively shutting it down." Read Tina Gasperson's editorial at NewsForge. In any case, Gnome 2.0 Beta 1 was released for general testing today.

An alpha version of the new GTK+ 2.0 based, Gnome 2.0, is now available for download and testing. The new version enhances anti-aliased text and internationalisation support, accessibility features and more. Screenshots available. Our Take: Note on the Gnome roadmap that they expect to also break binary and source compatibility for version 3.0 as they currently do now for 2.0. I wonder if this is what makes proprierty systems (eg. Windows) more successful commercially. The support for backwards compatibility is certainly something that users will always appreciate if they can run their closed source programs for the years to come or, for open source apps, users will be able to compile for the new Gnome version without changes in the app's source code. However, supporting older versions, can cause "bloat". Is the trade off acceptable? Discuss.

Damien Sandras from Fosdem.org interviews Michael Meeks, one of the full time Gnome hackers and Ximian employee. Michael speaks about himself, Mono, Gnome 2.0 and GTK+ 2.0.

In this very interesting interview at MSDN, Miguel deIcaza, the founder of GNOME, Bonobo, Gnumeric and CTO at Ximian, talks about UNIX components, Bonobo, Mono, and Microsoft .NET.

LinuxPower features an interesting interview with Rodney Dawes. "At daytime Rodney is a faithful employee at Ximian working on making sure that the packages in Red Carpet are up to date. At night he is working hard to make his GNU/Elysium Linux distribution a reality."

Bonobo is the component object model of the GNOME project. Bonobo provides a COM-like model, using CORBA as a location-transparent transport. It is the foundation of the GNOME vision to provide a fully Free Gnu Network Object Model Environment. In this series of three articles, Michael Meeks, component software engineer at Ximian, examines Bonobo in more detail: The first article (already published) gives an overview of what Bonobo can do for you and how it works; the second article will focus specifically on the client side and cover how to use components others have written; and the final article of the series will discuss how to write your own components.

A new beta of Gnome 1.4.1 has just been released. Mostly bug and security fixes have been added for this release. Get the betas here or here. In the meantime, work for Gnome 2.0 is going strong and it is planned to be released sometime next year, having full versions for both Linux and Sun Solaris 9 among other platforms.