Gnome Archive

GNOME defending trademark against Groupon

Submitted by Wes 2014-11-11 Gnome 17 Comments

Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon's product is a tablet based point of sale "operating system for merchants to run their entire operation." The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications (the full list of applications they filed can be found here, here and here). To use the GNOME name for a proprietary software product that is antithetical to the fundamental ideas of the GNOME community, the free software community and the GNU project is outrageous. Please help us fight this huge company as they try to trade on our goodwill and hard earned reputation.

Groupon acting scummy. Say it ain't so.

Update: Groupon has decided to abandon the trademark applications. Situation resolved!

My Trip to GNOME: a 3.10 Review

Howard Fosdick 2014-05-23 Gnome 30 Comments

Remember back when GNOME and KDE dominated Linux desktops? Seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Yet it was only three years ago, in April 2011, that GNOME 3 was released. Its radically redesigned interface shook up everyone. Some eagerly adopted it. Others left GNOME.

In this brief review I take a fresh look at GNOME today, as it's currently distributed in several popular Linux distributions.

GNOME 3.12 released

Thom Holwerda 2014-03-27 Gnome 37 Comments

Major new features for this release include a significant update to the experience for finding and installing applications, as well as major facelifts for the Videos and gedit applications. Those who have high resolution displays will benefit from greater support, and users will experience better start up times as well as more efficient resource usage. They will also be able to quickly organize their applications with the new application folders feature.

I remember a time when GNOME and KDE releases were big deals here. Feels like eons ago, a distant memory from an irrelevant past.

Guest post by nej_simon 2013-05-27 Gnome 44 Comments

"At the Tizen conference this week in San Francisco, Intel showed off an Intel Ultrabook running their next-generation Tizen 3.0 platform that's using a shell/desktop derived from GNOME 3.x."

MATE Desktop 1.6 released

Thom Holwerda 2013-04-03 Gnome 34 Comments

"The team is proud to announce the release of MATE Desktop 1.6. This release is a giant step forward from the 1.4 release. In this release, we have replaced many deprecated packages and libraries with new technologies available in GLib. We have also added a lot of new features to MATE." Look at those screenshots. This is what GNOME is supposed to be: elegant, understated, to-the-point. I should try this.

GNOME 3.8 released

Thom Holwerda 2013-03-27 Gnome 18 Comments

"The GNOME Project has officially released GNOME 3.8 today. This latest version of GNOME 3 delivers major new features, a brand new application and a host of smaller bug fixes and enhancements."

GNOME to get sandboxing for applications

Submitted by Anonymous 2013-02-06 Gnome 34 Comments

"Some GNOME developers are planning to implement an app format that allows developers to provide their Linux programs in distribution-independent files that can be installed as easily as smartphone apps. A sandbox model is supposed to isolate the apps from each other, and from the rest of the system, in a way that goes further than the isolation in current Linux distributions. Various developers worked to conceptualise such "Linux apps" at the GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest, which was held in the run-up to FOSDEM 2013 in Brussels. At the hackfest, the GNOME developers also declared JavaScript as the de-facto standard for GNOME programming." Right, because they haven't alienated enough of their users.

JavaScript becoming default language for GNOME applications

Thom Holwerda 2013-02-04 Gnome 75 Comments

"At the GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest in Brussels, the GNOME developer community has tackled the problem of specifying a canonical development language for writing applications for the GNOME desktop. According to a blog post by Collabora engineer and GNOME developer Travis Reitter, members of the GNOME team are often asked what tools should be used when writing an application for the desktop environment and, up until now, there has been no definitive answer. The team has now apparently decided to standardise on JavaScript for user-facing applications while still recommending C as the language to write system libraries in." Discuss.

GNOME to officially support set of ‘classic’ extensions

Thom Holwerda 2012-11-28 Gnome 105 Comments

Not even GNOME itself could ignore the GNOME 3 criticism for much longer. "As part of the planning for the DropOrFixFallbackMode feature, we've decided that we will compile a list of supported gnome-shell extensions. This will be a small list, focused on just bringing back some central 'classic' UX elements: classic alt tab, task bar, min/max buttons, main menu. To ensure that these extensions keep working, we will release them as a tarball, just like any other module."

Guest post by pepa65 2012-11-09 Gnome 62 Comments

"I'm writing to inform you that the release team discussed Drop or Fix Fallback Mode yesterday. We've come to the conclusion that we can't maintain fallback mode in reasonable quality, and are better off dropping it." Gnome-fallback has been my refuge, as I find both Unity and Gnome 3's shell unusable. Yes, we have been warned this would happen. I thought the cost of maintaining gnome-panel would be so low that it might never need to happen. But as it appears, it is deemed necessary. As for me, I'm bound for something Qt, as I am very angry at Gnome for abandoning its 'classic' users.

Submitted by Elv13 2012-11-08 Gnome 104 Comments

"Theme development is a tedious and difficult task, and for the GTK devs to be so careless in breaking their API at every turn disrespects the many hours people put into making themes for it. I was given to believe that this breakage stems from a Microsoft-like climate of preventing users from customizing their systems, and deliberately breaking the work of others so that your 'brand' is the best. Anytime I hear the word 'brand' being used in Linux, I know something valuable is being poisoned." I find the tone of this one a bit too harsh and overly negative at times, but his point still stands.

GNOME 3.6 released

Thom Holwerda 2012-09-28 Gnome 33 Comments

"Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 3.6, the latest version of the popular free desktop, as well as the GNOME developer platform. GNOME 3.6 is the third major update of GNOME 3. It builds on the foundations that we have laid with the previous 3.x releases and offers a greatly enhanced experience. The exciting new features and improvements in this release include a new login experience, integrated input methods, a refresh of the message tray, support for more online accounts, improved accessibility, and many more."

Guest post by thesunnyk 2012-09-23 Gnome 51 Comments

"Gnome 3 has received a lot of disapproval of late, from the Gnome foundation being charged with not taking care of its users, or losing mindshare, to Gnome 3 itself being an unusable mess. I've been using Gnome 3 myself for a few months to sort the truth from the fiction, and to try and understand just how the Gnome foundation expects their newest shell to be used. I will end with some thoughts on how Gnome 3 can be improved. The review will require a fairly lengthy preface, however."

McCann: “Optimistic about GNOME”

Submitted by suka 2012-08-20 Gnome 48 Comments

In a recent interview with the Austrian newssite derStandard.at, GNOME designer Jon McCann talks about GNOME OS, the consequences of Canonical leaving GNOME behind, the purported removal of features and the future role of Linux distributions. "I think there was a time when GNOME had kind of a crisis, we didn't know where we wanted to go, we were lacking goals and vision - that was the end of the GNOME2 cycle. So we pulled together and formed a vision where we want to go - and actually did something about it. And now we have been marching on that plan for quite some time."

GNOME OS detailed: new application framework, SDK, and more

Thom Holwerda 2012-08-08 Gnome 74 Comments

The future of GNOME - an interesting subject. GNOME 3 has been out and about for a while, and it hasn't exactly been a smashing success. One of the efforts to take GNOME to the next level is what the team refers to as GNOME OS - but in reality, it's a set of improvements to GNOME that are just as interesting to GNOME-the-desktop-environment.

GNOME: ‘staring into the abyss’

Thom Holwerda 2012-07-27 Gnome 157 Comments

Honest question. Do you think the GNOME project is as healthy today as it was, say, 4 years ago? Benjamin Otte explains that no, it isn't. GNOME lacks developers, goals, mindshare and users. The situation as he describes it, is a lot more dire than I personally thought.

Submitted by fran 2012-03-30 Gnome 53 Comments

"GNOME 3.4 introduces a range of new features. A new document search facility allows quick access to content stored both on your device and online. Smooth scrolling means that moving through content is slick and graceful. New application menus, which are located on the top bar, provide a useful way to access application options and actions." And a lot more.

A new approach to GNOME application design

Thom Holwerda 2012-02-12 Gnome 71 Comments

"One of the things that the GNOME design crew have been focusing on recently is creating a new approach to application design for GNOME 3. We want GNOME applications to be thoroughly modern, and we want them to be attractive and a delight to use. That means that we have to do application design differently to how we've done it in the past."

Cinnamon: GNOME Shell Fork with a GNOME2-Like Layout

Guest post by Anonymous 2011-12-21 Gnome 50 Comments

"Clement Lefebvre, the Linux Mint founder, has started working on a GNOME Shell fork called Cinnamon, which tries to offer a layout similar to GNOME 2, with emphasis on 'making users feel at home and providing them with an easy to use and comfortable desktop experience'. Among the features that we'll probably see in Cinnamon are GNOME2-like notifications and systray icons, option to change the panel position and other panel options like autohide, etc. Some of these features are already available through Mint GNOME Shell Extensions (MGSE), but their functionality is pretty limited."

Gnome 3: Go to Shell? Not Just Yet, Thanks

Guest post by Antonio Ospite 2011-10-21 Gnome 81 Comments

Antonio Ospite explores Gnome 3 in fall-back mode and tries to make it look and behave more like Gnome 2.32 again. This summer Linus Torvalds made it to the news for complaining about the gnome-shell design; Gnome fall-back mode is the solution for those like Linus who can't - or better, do not want to - use gnome-shell just yet.