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GNOME 2.0 Beta

Posted by michael on from the size-13-wide dept.

xer.xes writes: "The first public beta release of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is ready for your testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download here. Please read the release notes first! Due for general consumption in March, 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." LinuxToday or gnome-announce have the announcement. I don't see release notes anywhere - post a link in the comments if you find them. GNOME is having a bug day today.

3 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority... by gmkeegan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    new accessibility features for disabled users

    Having just broken both my wrists 2 weeks ago while snowboarding (right in 3 places, left in 2) this is suddenly of great interest. (took 10 minutes just to type this in :(

  2. Debian Packages? by evilned · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see tar.gz and some RPM's but no .debs. Is there someone packaging them, or will I have to wait till march when it gets out of beta for it to be put in unstable?

    --

    "My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett

  3. GNOME vs KDE for the newbie by Glorat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know this dicussion can start the many flame wars so let me ask this from a personal perspective

    I am a relative Linux on the desktop newbie (although very comfortable deploying on servers) and still prefer the ease of use and performance of the Windows interface. One day, I installed Linux to try out and had a go at both KDE and GNOME (about a year ago) but didn't like it. Today, I sadly develop on Windows to be deployed on Linux

    I found KDE took ages to start up, GNOME was slightly better but Nautilus while featureful was horribly slow. Both were rather confusing with respect to my favourite shortcut keys and mouse commands (especially clipboards and window control) although I hear KDE has a "Windows emulation" mode it wasn't convincing

    So the things that are on my mind are:
    - Have the environments improved a lot in the past 12 months in terms of usability and performance and startup speed?
    - Is it getting much easier for the Windows user like me to get into?
    - What are the main goals that GNOME are trying to accomplish over their new releases? KDE?

    Otherwise, I guess I'll keep my "desktop environment" to nothing but an xterm console and only use Linux when I have to

    Thanks