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Gnome 2.18 Released

Posted by samzenpus on from the brand-spanking-new dept.

xdancergirlx writes "Gnome 2.18 was released today (on time as usual). Detailed release notes are available. Nothing revolutionary in this release but definitely some nice new features, bug fixes, and improvements."

10 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Priorities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Personal security is now fully integrated into the desktop, allowing digitally signed communications, encryption of emails and local files, and user-friendly management of personal keys. Internationalization records progress in all directions, with support for vertical text layout and a full Arabic localization matching the quality standards. The official release incorporates essential tools for developers, which hopefully will contribute to get more and better software for the GNOME users.

    What's more important, for the first time we ship online games, chess with a 3D look, and endless Sudoku entertainment.

    Good thing we've got our priorities straight.

    1. Re:Priorities by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Obviously they're being facetious.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
  2. Re:Yawn by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Riiiiight.. cause that summary really screamed hype to me. I see you got modded up too, moderators can't even be bothered reading the summary now?

    Fuckin' Slashdot.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. That's Nice by dduardo · · Score: 3, Insightful
    So, when are we going to see smart and innovative desktops that dramatically improve user friendliness?

    Just as some examples:
    • As an end-user why can't I extend applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another? i.e. Dragging a search box from one app to another.
    • I have 1000s of photographs. How can these images be automatically categorized and displayed most effectively without having to manually add meta-data. It should be sorting images by looking at similarities between pictures, date taken and other automatically generated information
    • I have 1000s of mp3s. How can these songs be automatically categorized by mood, tempo, etc without manually entering in meta-data? Think of it as Pandora with your own music collection.
    These are some of the type of things that would make using a computer easier to use.

    Are open source desktop developers so focused on trying to make it "easy" for Windows user to convert they get Microsoft tunnel vision and can't innovate?

    It's the year 2007 and we have desktops with the same intelligence as those back in the early 80's.
    1. Re:That's Nice by module0000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your suggestions such as "extending applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another" is unfortunately not possible with our current(or dreamed-about) tech. Great concept, kudos for that, but the "frame" all desktop computing operates from just does not allow for this. You are not suggesting improvements to "desktop linux", but you are speaking of changes to desktop computing as a whole, across all platforms; it's not that 'easy', I wish it was. Concerning your suggestion about organizing photographs by similarities...this is not so impossible. It's not particularly easy once again, but a very rudimentary sorting algorithm could be conceived from light conditions, hard lines(etc a persons profile), this could be worked on. As far as the mp3's...I'm afraid that entirely too subjective to the person listening to them. My mood and tempo desires may differ and most likely do, from yours, and yours from your neighbors. This is a question of personal preference, and I don't see mp3 players administering a standardized personality test to guess at your flavor of mood, out of the X number of popular mood categories. Last but not least...I'm afraid there were no desktop os's HOME users even had access to in the *early 80's*. You could go banging over Xerox's door for their machine, or maybe even dear Mr. Gates'. However, in the early 80's, such hardware would cost you [somewhere near] $30,000? More?

      --
      Trackball users will be first against the wall.
  4. Re:It has nearly caught up to KDE......... by thule · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the thing they were going for in gnome is to start integrating, not just password management, but identity management. Thus, Gnome's new feature manages both gpg and ssh keys.

  5. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by thephotoman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The biggest problem I have with GNOME as a user is Evolution. Simply put, Evolution needs to be scrapped in favor of something else. Its Exchange functionality is non-functional, and its calendar could be easily replaced by something else. Why not just do what they did with the default browser and fork from Mozilla? Surely, it'd suck less.

    Nautilus is in dire need of a code audit, just to ensure that everything in there is up to par. Hells, if I were in charge at GNOME, I'd probably stop developing new features in Nautilus and work on the audit for the next cycle.

    Honestly, though, the one thing that hurts GNOME the most is the six month release cycle. If they'd even just use a single one-year release cycle, just to clean things up, they'd be in much better shape.

    All that said, though, GNOME is my desktop. It's what I learned first, and honestly, KDE's configurability just scares me. Also, I remember too well a time when KDE looked like shit out of the box. Thankfully, that's no longer a problem.

    --
    Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
  6. Re:Did they include... by macshit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Linus' patches don't "fix" anything.

    They remove an unnecessary and artificial restriction -- and also apparently simplify the code, which is always a good thing.

    they add one feature.. in particular, the ability to configure left, right and middle click to do what you like. Which, ya know, is useful to like 3 people.

    It sounds pretty useful to me... Obviously the MS-raised proles will never use it, but many more clueful people use Gnome too ("like, ya know").

    --
    We live, as we dream -- alone....
  7. Re:Did they include... by Wdomburg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No. But some variant of the patches are in trunk for the next release. It really just adds a config option though. Not as big a deal as the brouhaha would suggest. :)

  8. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and honestly, KDE's configurability just scares me
    I used to be the exact same way. However, a few years ago I decided to sit down and configure KDE to my liking. Now that I've done so, I wouldn't even consider going back to Gnome. If you use your computer for hours every day, I would strongly suggest spending a bit of time to configure KDE. The relatively small amount of time it takes to configure everything to your liking is well worth it. In my opinion, it's a much better desktop environment and practically every KDE application is far beyond its Gnome counterpart.

    Also, with the focus on Mono applications, Gnome seems to be getting slower and even more bloated with every release.