Gnome 2.0 RC2 Asks For Abuse

A nameless reader submits: "The GNOME Desktop 2.0 release candidate 2 has been released! Gnome 2.0 should be coming out soon! The release notes have some good information."

Comments

RC code name

[joeykiller]

For those of you who don't understand swedish too well: This release's code name, "Glad Midsommar", means "Happy midsummer". The swedes love a good mid summer party.

Mirrors

[neo8750]

archive.progeny.com (US or Canada)
ftp.twoguys.org (US or Canada)
ftp3.sourceforge.net (US or Canada)
ftp.rpmfind.net (US or Canada)
ftp.sourceforge.net (US or Canada)
ftp.cse.buffalo.edu (US or Canada)
ftp.yggdrasil.com (US or Canada)
planetmirror.com (Australia)
ftp.sunet.se (Europe)
ftp.dataplus.se (Europe)
ftp.easynet.nl (Europe)
ftp.unina.it (Europe)
ftp.belnet.be (Europe)
ftp.codefactory.se (Europe)
ftp.tr.gnome.org (Europe)
fr.rpmfind.net (Europe)
ftp.acc.umu.se (Europe)
ftp.no.gnome.org (Europe)
ftp.dit.upm.es (Europe)
fr2.rpmfind.net (Europe)
linux.cem.itesm.mx (South America)

Garnome

[Spock the Vulcan]

As always, if you want to give the latest Gnome a whirl without messing up your existing system, try Garnome
It takes a while to build (about an hour on my 1.0 GHz PIII), but it doesn't touch your existing install - everything goes into ~/garnome.

Re:Does anyone know...

[Ami Ganguli]

I don't have any inside information, but if you look here you can see that they've added an unscheduled release candidate and they had planned two weeks between the last release candidate and going gold.

Assuming we don't get another release candidate (which I think is a good bet - I'm running the nightlies and they feel solid) that places 2.0 around July 7.

How to enable anti-aliasing?

[JamesHenstridge]

First of all, you must enable Xft support (the new font system for X). This is done by defining the GDK_USE_XFT environment variable before running a program. The best way to turn this on for the entire desktop is by defining it in the X startup script (probably ~/.gnomerc, ~/.Xclients or ~/.xinitrc):

#!/bin/bash
export GDK_USE_XFT=1
# set up $PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH if needed
exec gnome-session

After doing this, you may still not see antialiased fonts. For instance, on Red Hat systems, the default /etc/X11/XftConfig file has the following lines:

match
any size < 14
any size > 8
edit antialias=false;

which turns off antialiasing for fonts with sizes between 8 and 14. By commenting out these lines, AA will be enabled for all fonts. If you have an LCD panel, add a line like the following to /etx/X11/XftConfig or ~/.xftconfig:

match edit rgba=rgb;

This will turn on ClearType style subpixel antialiasing.