A few days back we reported on a new Mutter release, which is the window and compositing manager for GNOME 3.0, and now with the GNOME 2.29.91 beta release coming up on Wednesday there is also the release of another new GNOME 3.0 component. Perhaps the single biggest new component for the GNOME 3.x stack is the GNOME Shell and this is the package that just reached version 2.29.0.

It's still a work in progress, but GNOME Activity Journal already offers a nice at-a-glance look at your file work over the last few days, offering usage charts, image previews, and quick file access.

The new version of GNOME 2.28 has been released (complete release notes).

A few days ago, I installed the release candidate for Gnome 2.30, which provides an overview of what Gnome 3 will look like when it appears next fall.  Since I've begun using Gnome 2.30, I've become more disappointed by the hour with the way it works.  Here's a list of the top five flaws in Gnome 2.30 that will make me an LXDE user if they are not addressed before the Gnome 3 release.

One thing we have learned from KDE4 is that its not a good idea to make drastic change to a desktop environment that the users have been used to for a long time. Hopefully the Gnome developers will keep that in mind as they work on Gnome 3.0 release for next year.

In my early days of using Linux (around 2000) I used to always install GNOME as well as KDE. I wanted to be proficient in both and had no bias to either one. But then the GNOME developers decided to force everyone

I started running GNOME 2.26 on the Ubuntu 9.04 alpha a few days ago, and I've been pleasantly surprised. While the Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 6 is still very much a work in progress, GNOME 2.26 manages to run like a charm on it.

The GNOME Foundation Board regretfully announces that Jeff Waugh will be stepping down from the board in order to focus on work and other projects. The board thanks Jeff for his years of service to the board and the community, and wishes him success in his future work both inside and outside of GNOME. Jeff leaves big shoes to fill.

Does motivation matter? Open source contributors are increasingly people who are paid to work on open source. GNOME contributor Lucas Rocha asks how this impacts communities over the long term. This is not a new question by any stretch.