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You're right that GNOME1 applications don't work *on* GNOME2, but they do work *with* GNOME2, since the GNOME1 libraries are fully parallel installable with the GNOME2 libraries. In other words, you can have your new desktop environment, the applications that make use of the new and better libraries, and still use your favorite applications that haven't been ported yet. It's a beautiful world.

I can't really comment on comparisons with KDE, as I'm not familiar with KDE's accessibility. However, accessibility has been a driving force in GNOME2 development. Sun, in particular, has been very active in this area. See, for example, their work on the Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) or the GNOME on-screen keyboard or the screen-magnifier (see here). You can find more about the GNOME Accessibility Project (GAP) here. All this is being designed for GNOME2; so, we'll see more of the implementation of the accessibility stuff with this release onward.

As for the question of who is using GNOME2, well, the developers are using it mostly -- which you might expect since GNOME2 beta just came out! ;-)

Cheers!

one image on one of these screenshots, this, was once upon a time the logo of Lucas (LinUx en CAStellano, Linux in Spanish). But they got legal threats (copyright violation) and had to put it off.

try here

The main FTP site seems to be down, but at ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/MIRRORS.html you can find a list of mirrors.

A few of them are:

ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Gnome
ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/gnome.org/
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/gnome/
ftp://ftp.twoguys.org/GNOME

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The anti aliased fonts, is that the gtk hack that came some months ago? It looked really ugly. :-P

• January 28 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Alpha 2
• January 30 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Alpha 2
• February 11 UI FREEZE - no more UI changes w/o approval of release team (excludes 1.4 feature porting)
• February 11 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta
• February 13 Porting FREEZE - porting complete as per GNOME 2.0 Porting Guide
• February 13 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta
• February 18 String FREEZE - no more localizable string changes w/o approval of release team
• March 4 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
• March 6 DEEP FREEZE - release team approved fixes only from now to final
• March 6 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
• March 27 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final
• March 29 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final

ROX doesn't implement reverse scrolling itself, as it uses Gtk's scrollbars. However, I have made a patch for Gtk. See the bug report on bugzilla for the discussion. I don't think the developers realise how useful this is, though, so don't expect to see it in 2.0 :-(

Confronting the KDE propaganda machine.

The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

• Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  
  The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.
  
  
• Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use
  
  Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME, and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian, which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.
  
  
• Myth #3 - KDE is more popular
  
  In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.
  
  One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.
  
  
• Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
  
  Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror not a bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work done on it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
  
  
• Myth #5 - KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
  
  See also: Qt/TrollTech. This is the most common wail heard by KDE developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.
  
  GNOME applications get much more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases they mature and reach stable featureful release states much more quickly. Some examples of this are: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet, X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade and Anjuta. All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass their KDE counterparts. It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.
  
  It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is vastly more advanced. With the forthcoming 2.x release, a number of impressive behind the scenes technologies will finally mature: component technology (bonobo), media (Gstreamer), internationalisation (pango). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what is more, because it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.
  
  It is also worth noting that GNOME also develops code for use outside the project (see the XML libraries as one example) - the KDE project rarely (if ever) engages in this kind of work. KDE developers ensure that all software must link with Qt, and hence tie it closely with the Qt toolkit preventing re-use and enhancing the value of TrollTech intellectual property.
  
  
  Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.
  
  
• Myth #6 - KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
  
  KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects; and masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory are two of the most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.
  
  Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) used to bandage up the design and coding flaws in the decrepit KDE architecture to see the truth.
  
  
• Myth #7 - GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
  
  Fundamental misunderstanding. The KDE project releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.
  
  
• Myth #8 - The Qt toolkit is cross-platform and yet takes advantage of each individual platform
  
  The Qt toolkit (the software at the heart of KDE) is supposedly a cross-platform toolkit allowing the lucky developer the opportunity to write Windows/Linux/Mac software all at once. And yet, among the magical mythical claims made, the most nonsensical is that it makes applications which take advantage of the distinct features of the different platforms. This is of course, nonsense. Qt is a bloated, slow layer that is slapped over a native system's APIs in an attempt to make all the systems look alike. It no more takes advantage of Linux/Windows/Mac than Java does - in fact it offers many of the disadvantages of Java with few of the advantages. If you have ever wondered why the KDE desktop looks so much like Windows... you need look no further than Qt. Qt is a lowest common denominator toolkit, and that LCD is Windows - Trolltech's, the creator of Qt, real market.
• Myth #9 - TrollTech is a friend of Free software
  
  To Be Written. Ideas: Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this violated the GPL, didn't care, stole others' GPL code by porting it to link (in violation of the license) with Qt and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for writing closed-source with Qt, and hence KDE. Trolltech only moved towards the GPL because of the success of GNOME. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare (3 licenses to deal with). Gradual migration of features belonging in KDE into Qt (and so into TrollTech's IP portfolio), allowing easy porting of apps to the revenue generating Windows world (see TheKompany for a perfect example), thereby making KDE an irrelevant launcher of Qt applications. Claims made that Qt is GPL, while true, hide the real truth. There cannot be a real fork of Qt for the KDE project: Core developers work for Trolltech; any fork would need to be full GPL and hence ban any closed-source apps from KDE altogether (all KDE apps must link with Qt); Any commerical licensees of Qt (non-GPL) would and could only follow TrollTech. KDE is stitched up good and proper.
  
  
• Myth #10 - KDE is more than attractive, but GNOME/GTK is ugly
  
  

  To be Written. Ideas: Mosfet liquid theme is an ugly and unstable hack. GNOME GTk icons are better thought-out and of a far higher quality than the poorly drawn and cartoonish and confusing KDE ones. Qt is basically a Windows-look on a Unix platform.
  
  

"...The ill feelings that linger between GNOME developers and KDE developers are not good for the community, and it is very useful to help calm the antagonism."

Let's here from a few who are (accepted to be) wiser than ourselves:

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." -George Bernard Shaw (emphasis, mine!)

"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress." -Mahatma Gandhi

Why not layer the QT API on top of GTK? (QTK)

Despite of what many of you may think this is not a bad thing(TM). Really, on Windows, QT is layered on top of the Win32 API. Heck, for all platforms (UNIX excluded) QT is layered on top of the native widget API, so why not do the same for Unix!

See also: initial QTK ponderings

In 1998, Larry Wall for his work on Perl and other software.

"Larry Wall won the Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software for his many contributions to the advancement of freely distributed software, most notably Perl, a robust scripting language for sophisticated text manipulation and system management. His other widely-used programs include rn (news reader), patch (development and distribution tool), metaconfig (a program that writes Configure scripts), and the Warp space-war game."

In 1999, Miguel de Icaza for his work on GNOME

"de Icaza headed a team of more than 300 programmers worldwide, most of them volunteers, in the development of GNOME. GNOME is a user-friendly graphical users interface (GUI) and programming platform for GNU/Linux. GNOME 1.0 was first released in March, 1999 and has since had a step-up release."

In 2001, Brian Paul for his ground-breaking work on the Mesa 3D Graphics Library

"The Mesa 3D Graphics Library allows free software users to model and render in full 3D." Jeff Bates, chairman of the Free Software Foundation Awards Committee said. "The library has added tools and capabilities to the GNU/Linux system that are being utilized by people all over the world."

The biggest problem I see with .NET is that the apps that get created with it will only run on Windows servers.

I think that this is in refference to the programing language c#, which is a component of MS .net, right?

ximian is working on a linux port of .net right now. Currently they are up to version 0.8. Looks like new versions of Gnome will be written for mono, at some point. Of course, if you'd read /. in the past weeks, you would know that. You can read up on it or offer your assistance at Go mono

and here are Miguel de Icaza's comments concerning Gnome and mono.

If you want people to make the comparison and agree with you, it would help if you provided a URL of screenshots of Gnome 1.4+.

After trying to find them on my own and finding http://www.gnome.org/seegnome.html, I'm of the opinion that KDE 3.0 looks way better. I always find the Gnome icons and color schemes so melancholy, gray, and lifeless. But then, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If these are outdated shots, please provide a better URL; if Gnome looks better than this, I definitely want to know about it.

(disclaimer: I don't use KDE or GNOME, so couldn't care less which one is more l33t; to me they're just bloatware)

I can't speak for KDE (though I believe they have a Usability team), but look here for the GNOME Usability Project (aka GUP). I know that Sun has done user testing on GNOME.

Go read what he as to say about the .NET Framework, Mono and GNOME.

He also replys directly to the RMS controversy.

The Register, On Friday he repeated his desire to base future GNOME development on the .NET APIs using work from his Mono project.
".NET is a fantastic technology upgrade for GNOME from Microsoft," he said.
see for the full text. The above appears at the bottom, following the link, Miguel de Icaza says things
GNOME is not adopting Mono or .NET
and
Decisions in the GNOME world are done by active contributors and module maintainers. I have given my maintainership status on every module I maintained to other members of the GNOME team as I got more involved with Ximian and later on with Mono.
So effectively I have no "maintainer" control.
so it appears to me that the register might be trying to stir up trouble where it doesn't exist, or they don't know the difference between Ximian/Mono and Gnome. Also I didn't find any of the quotes on the page they linked and I looked hard. oh wait maybe a covert team of monkey-boy hackers from Ximian cracked the gnome mail archives and removed the incriminating page for Miguel!

"A free replacement for Visual Basic which works with GNOME would be a major step forward; any capable team that wants to launch this project should please contact gnu@gnu.org." --RMS

Psst, Mr. Stallman sir, you've already got one: GNOME Basic.

Stallman says:

"Another misleading point in the article was the reference to GNOME as an "open source project." The Open Source Initiative has the right to define a criterion for open source and note the fact that GNOME fits it, but GNOME has no connection with them. GNOME, like the GNU Project as a whole, is part of the free software movement. GNOME is a free software project par excellence, because it was started in 1997 as a defense against the threat to our freedom posed by the (at the time, since changed) non-free license of Qt."

But right there on gnome.org, I see otherwise!

"GNOME is part of the GNU project, and is free software (some times referred to as open source software.)"

So, is GNOME open source software or isn't? On one hand Stallman denies it, and on the other it's confirmed on the project web page. Theories:

(1) Stallman is lying
(2) Stallman is out-of-touch with what-is-gnome

That's why Sun made this study to help Gnome (they are using it as their next desktop); I don't know if the Open Source movement is using the recommendations.

The online reference manual for glib is definetely a good resource. However, I would appreciate a comparison with traditional libc, especially one based on real life experience. Also, as many people pointed out, I would like to hold the book, take it to bed, and pencil notes on the margin.

and history with M$ and this kind of stuff is long and basically the same....YOU ARE FSCKED !!!

Read the explanation. That's covered. They're implementing the ECMA spec and adding seemless access to GNOME. If there's compatibility with Microsoft's implementation, that's nice since portability is free. If Microsoft deviates from the standard, it's a shame Mono is still has merit, especially language independence which was always important to GNOME. Essentially, Mono is cherry-picking features from .NET.

Okay, you're asking, why not use Java's JVM since it supports multiple languages. As someone pointed out in the gnome lists, Java, like TCL, is Turing complete so it can support any language your CPU can. Suppose you tried to implement Java in TCL? Would you be pleased with the performance? Probably not. Java's JVM lacks several features that make running languages like C++/C, Lisp, and Haskell fast, including:

• support for tail calls
• less heap allocation, due to
  • value types
  • function pointer types (rather than heap-allocated closures)
  • byref arguments (rather than returning multiple values in heap-allocated objects or arrays)
  • support for unverifiable code (which can avoid the need for some runtime checks)

The .NET's CLR gives you these features. If Java's JVM were open source, the Mono team could easily extend the JVM to support these features. It would certainly make life a lot easier. Unfortunately, if they did, Mono would get little commercial support, and they'd receive a call from Sun's legal department. I personally hope .NET and Mono force Sun to do the right thing and extend the JVM to efficiently support other languages.

Java is nice, but the take it or leave attitude of Java is the reason .NET was not laughed out of existence.

It's interesting how someone can post a link to Miguel's clarification but it gets lost in the shuffle.

Beyond that it amazes me how everyone seems to be overlooking the maintainers of the various Gnome applications. Just look at the shear size of the Gnome Software Map. If anybody is going to be making the call of using Mono, Bonoboo, or whatever when adding features to Gnome applications it will be maintainer(s) and contributors.

Hell even in Miguel's example of Gnumeric, I would suspect that Jody Goldburg as the maintainer would be making the final choice rather than Miguel. I'll grant you I don't follow Gnumeric development and Jody might love Mono but it seems everyone is looking in the wrong place to discern the future trends of Mono & it's integration with Gnome.

And yes, I do realize that Miguel was the creator but he seems to have his hands full with other things like Mono and Ximian. As I recall his stated motivation for creating Gnumeric was not even an interest in a spreadsheet but annoyance with the lack of one in Gnome.

It's interesting how someone can post a link to Miguel's clarification but it gets lost in the shuffle.

Beyond that it amazes me how everyone seems to be overlooking the maintainers of the various Gnome applications. Just look at the shear size of the Gnome Software Map. If anybody is going to be making the call of using Mono, Bonoboo, or whatever when adding features to Gnome applications it will be maintainer(s) and contributors.

Hell even in Miguel's example of Gnumeric, I would suspect that Jody Goldburg as the maintainer would be making the final choice rather than Miguel. I'll grant you I don't follow Gnumeric development and Jody might love Mono but it seems everyone is looking in the wrong place to discern the future trends of Mono & it's integration with Gnome.

And yes, I do realize that Miguel was the creator but he seems to have his hands full with other things like Mono and Ximian. As I recall his stated motivation for creating Gnumeric was not even an interest in a spreadsheet but annoyance with the lack of one in Gnome.

If Miguel hadn't moved MONO to the X11/MIT license last week, I don't think RMS would be so upset. We're talking about GNOME, the biggest GNU project since HURD being based on an API that is Non-Free-As-In-Freedom, only a portion of NET has been submitted to ECMCA. With the concern the GNU community had over KDE, this would make the GNOME community look like hippocrites (GNOME was started because KDE used to be based on QT, which was not released under GPL.)

FYI I submitted this same story about 5 hours ago. Hmmm.

Take a look at www.gnome.org. It says, "GNOME is part of the GNU project...". I would say this substantially complicates who owns the project.

Read Miguel's clarification of what he meant by GNOME taking advantage of Mono.

Mono has a lot of technical merit, don't shoot it down only because it's based on .net. It just might deliver what CORBA only promised, language independent component reuse. I know I wouldn't mind mixing for example Kylix generated GUI frontends with Java/C# running the logic in the background, transparently (and natively!). I surely hope that by the time we reach GNOME 4 (and we're talking 2-4 years from now here) we're not still writing GUI applications in C, as is the state with most GNOME apps now.

Remeber that Mono isn't .net, it's not controlled by Microsoft, it's a reimplementation of the .net class libraries while also bringing in a C# compiler as a bonus (Believe me, there are plenty of worse languages to code in). The Mono libraries are Open Source (Same license as Xfree86, and I don't hear anyone bitching about the license of that particular piece of software) and will probably help bring a lot of new neat Open Source applications, giving especially GUI programs a boost.

It works for them, so in theory it could work well for Microsoft or any software producing entity in general.

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Common Lisp HyperSpec
• Common Lisp the Language, 2. ed
• Common Lisp - A gentle Introduction to symbolic computation
• The Scheme Programming language, 2. ed
• Reflections on trusting trust
• Lisp: Good News, Bad News. How to Win Big
• John McCarthy's homepage
• Dennis Ritchie's homepage
• Various classic papers it's a shame ACM never bothered to continue adding to
• Another list of classic papers (this time related mostly to programming language design)
• GTK-Gnome Application Development (not a classic, though, as the field is too young)
• KDE 2.0 Development (not a classic though, as the field is too young)
• Eric Weissteins Mathworld
• Compilers and compiler generators - an introduction with C++ (although I'm not too sure if it deserves being called a classic...)
• Parsing techniques - A practical guide
• Art of assembly language programming (never was a dead tree, but good anyway)
• Paul Carters 386 assembly book (same comment as above)
• An Introduction to Scheme and its Implementation (see comment above)
• How to design programs - An introduction to programming and computing (not a classic, yet!)
• The Gutenberg archives contains much non-copyrighted classic fiction in ASCII format
• Sacred texts has copies of or links to many religious text for various major (or minor) religions

look who you may be helping out th next time you reply to a post on a linux news group

..that kde and gnome teams are keeping up a very good work. Don't lost your time in sad mydesktop vs. yourdesktop flames, but contribute! ;)

While I recognise most people here speak English, another important difference to realise between KDE and Gnome is the language support.
Current KDE languages supported
Current Gnome languages supported
Gnome should get Unicode support with gnome 2 which should help even things up alittle.

Do you think it's coincidence that the proposed release of KDE 3 is set for a mere 3 days after the Gnome 2 release?

It's been available since May 22.

I used it on my Sparc 5 / Solaris 8 workstation at work, but it's dog slow, and many of the more advanced apps don't work (Like the silly panel apps like the Gdict lookup box, the CPU & monitor graphs; but also more advanced apps like Gnome-Pilot ) .

Also, many of the Sun packages have not changed in months, even though some of the apps and packages have seen heavy development since Sun's Gnome release.

My guess is that the Sun Gnome developers are working on Gnome2.0 instead. Really, I don't know what they are doing... there are no Solaris specific mailing lists to monitor, and there are few mentions of Solaris Gnome on the Gnome mailinglists.

I use Ximian Gnome on Solaris. It's faster & more stable then Sun's Gnome, and more packages work (But not Gnome-pilot, which is what I need for my work). But, you are subject to the whims & slow connections of red-carpet.

Does anyone else have any comparisons?

John and I haven't kept in touch in recent years but I wish him the very best of luck with Adobe. He's a very talented man and he deserves success.

df

Show me the slashdot effect :)

You want screenshots? Screenshots being served for you, sir!

http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/

Upgrading is not worth it! Note that this release is labeled as "Alpha", which is developer-speak means "not feature complete and will crash on you all the time".
If you want to live on the bleeding edge, you can install this in addition to your working desktop, i.e. by using the vicious build scripts from Gnome CVS.

There's a few up on the dotplan website:
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/.

There doesn't seem to be an excessive amount of new eyecandy, but that's no surprise since Gnome 2 is supposed to be more a change to the libraries and backend. I'm sure new and updated apps that take advantage of this will follow soon after the actual release.