| GNOME 2.12 boasts "vastly improved" look and feel |
Sep. 06, 2005
Version 2.12 of the GNOME Linux desktop will be released on Wednesday, featuring two new applications, a new theme engine, and improved authentication, according to project member Davyd Madeley. What's more, the look and feel of the desktop is vastly improved, thanks to the new Clearlooks-based theme engine, Madeley said in a pre-release "tour" on the GNOME website.
What's new
Excerpted from the GNOME website: - Evince -- This new document reader replaces GGV and GPDF and uses the sharp new Cairo vector rendering throughout, Evince offers full text searching, text copying, thumbnailing, document bookmarks, and a variety of scrolling modes. Evince handles PDF and PS documents and soon will handle DVI and TIFF files, in addition to OpenOffice.org Impress and Microsoft Powerpoint presentations.
- Keyring Manager -- GNOME has used a keyring for an ever-growing number of authentication tasks since its addition just over a year ago. The new keyring manager offers an interface to inspect personal keyrings, make changes to keys or remove sensitive keys. "It is one of the first applications completely developed by the GNOME Love project, and we're proud to finally have it on board," Madeley said.
- Totem -- GNOME's multimedia player sports a new playlist sidebar. The GStreamer backend now has full support for DVD menus and other DVD features.
- Sound Juicer -- This app imports CDs into your computer's music library, using any format for which you have a plugin. Sound Juicer now also allows users to preview songs before they import them. Lastly, Sound Juicer can play CDs on machines with no analog audio, such as some Dell and Apple laptops.
- Nautilus -- GNOME's file manager now sports a spatial tree file view, popularized in the original Apple Macintosh operating systems. In addition to the thumbnailing of video and previewing of audio in past releases, Nautilus now offers drag and drop capabilities from audio CDs and the ability to play a track simply by double clicking. The browser mode in Nautilus now has a sidebar that shows your bookmarks.
- Search Tool -- The Search Tool now shows file previews.
- Epiphany -- The default browser has new features and more extensions, including the ability to share bookmarks. It also has extensions to provide support for popular web technologies like Greasemonkey.
- Evolution -- The mail client developed by Ximian/Novell sports a cleaner interface and a number of extra productivity features. The new Evolution also has new plugins, including the support for inline PGP handling -- a long-requested feature -- and the ability to do inline media playing. Additionally, Evolution's mail talking library libcamel has been moved into Evolution Data Server and made available to developers.
- System Tools -- This now includes a tool to configure startup services as well as giving users the ability to start and stop services on demand.
- Graphics -- Integration with the Cairo vector graphics library allows for smoother edges, RGBA translucency and better looking, more flexible theming.
- Clipboard Management -- New clipboard management allows for objects to persist in the clipboard longer than the lifetime of an application. "This means that if you cut or copy an object and then exit that application, the item you put on the clipboard will remain until you replace it," Madeley said.
The GNOME Desktop is available for free download here.
GNOME is the second most popular Linux desktop environment, but it lags quite a bit behind first-place KDE.
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