The Notable Improvements of GNOME 2.22

Michael Larabel writes "Phoronix has up a list compiling eight of the most interesting improvements on track for GNOME 2.22. These improvements include the Epiphany browser switching to the WebKit back-end, transition effects inside the Evince document viewer, a new GNOME application for taking photos and recording videos from web cameras followed by applying special effects, a mouse tweaking module for improved accessibility, and a new GNOME VNC client. On the multimedia end, GNOME 2.22 has a few new features appended to the Totem movie player and the Rhythmbox player. Totem can now search and play YouTube videos and connect to a MythTV server and watch past recordings or view live TV. Rhythmbox now can utilize FM radio tuners, integration with new lyric sites, improved Podcast feed support, and even has support for communicating with newer Sony PSPs. There will also be a standalone Flash player and flash previewing support from the file browser in this release."

Comments

Different designs

[Tony]

I would however love to see a merger between Qt and GTK . . .

That'd be tough, as Gtk+ is C-based, and Qt is C++-based.

This is one of the few cases where the choice of using a C++ toolkit has turned me off. Basing the entire desktop on C++ makes it harder for people who hate C++ (like me) to participate. It's essentially blocked off a huge section of developers from touching it.

Whereas with Gtk+ (and GNOME, and XFCE, etc) or EFL (the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) it's pretty easy to write bindings for other languages, like Perl or C++ or Objective-C (far superior to C++, IMNSHO) or LISP or (insert your favorite language here). That makes GNOME much more egalitarian than KDE.

It also makes a merger between Gtk+ and Qt technically very, very difficult.

Things may get more interesting on that front, now that Nokia owns Trolltech. I hope they can manage something without scaring the KDE folks.

Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. They *do* have the N810, but the environment is not completely open. Fortunately, they can't take Qt out of circulation, so a project could always fork off, if Nokia proves too domineering.