GNOME developers announced a brand new release of the GNOME desktop environment, version 2.24. A lot of hot extra features, new translations and updated documentation. Intrepid Ibex – upcoming Ubuntu 8.10 which is scheduled for release on October 2nd will include functional version of GNOME 2.24. As they said:

“GNOME 2.24 is the latest version of the GNOME Desktop: a popular, multi-platform desktop environment for your computer. GNOME’s focus is ease of use, stability, and first class internationalization and accessibility support. GNOME is Free and Open Source Software and provides all of the common tools computer users expect of a modern computing environment, such as e-mail, groupware, web browsing, file management, multimedia and games. Furthermore, GNOME provides a flexible and powerful platform for software developers, both on the desktop and in mobile applications.“

Some features in new GNOME 2.24:

• Empathy Instant Messenger – a Pidgin-like IM client based on the Telepathy communications framework.
• Track Your Time Better – a new Panel applet that will show you the tasks that you have been working on.
• Ekiga 3.0 – GNOME’s SIP audio/video conferencing client has been greatly improved.
• Improved File Management – other than list and icon views, the new Nautilus (GNOME’s file manager).
• Smarter Deskbar – includes a few interesting additions, such as Google Search (and code search), a calculator, Yahoo and Wikipedia suggestions.
• New Screen Resolution Controls – GNOME 2.24 introduces X.Org’s XRandR 1.2 specification, allowing users to set up monitors in many configurations.
• New Sound Theme Support – the job of sound theme handling has been taken by libcanberra, which basically means that you can watch a full screen movie.
• Better Digital TV – Totem includes support for remote text subtitling and high-resolution YouTube videos.
• Extra Pretty – good looks has been a priority for GNOME 2.24, which includes new and improved artwork and themes.

Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) users (testers) can update their systems to GNOME 2.24. The update can be initiated with following commands in a terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

To compile GNOME 2.24, get the sources from Softpedia.

Tags | Linux, Look and Feel, Open Source, Tools, Ubuntu, Update