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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."

4 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.

  2. 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.
  3. 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....
  4. 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.