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.

GNOME 2.26, the latest version of the open source desktop environment for Linux, has been released. Ars pranced through the garden with the new GNOME release and found that it delivers some nice incremental improvements.

Recently, an early draft of a semi-unofficial art roadmap for the much-discussed GNOME 3.0 was proposed. Though nothing here is ground-breaking, it is the kind of thing we need. Here are a few of the interesting points from the roadmap:

bout half a year ago i was looking around me and seeing stagnation in the gnome community. i was concerned that gnome had lost its momentum and that we were just making boring incremental releases that added very little new functionality. i think i was very wrong. i’d like to take this time to list some things that are happening right now in the gnome community that have me very excited.

I used to think that Gnome 1.4 was the Last Good Gnome. Because when Gnome 2.0 came along, everything I liked was gone. It was dumbed-down to the point of unusability, and the roadmap called for yet more dumbing-down. So I switched to KDE for my main workstation, and IceWM, XFCE, and Blackbox for lower-powered PCs. For all these years I haven't seen much to like in Gnome.

LiMo Foundation and GNOME Foundation today announced a key partnership with the objective of collaborating closely on open source innovation. Starting immediately, LiMo Foundation will become a member of GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board and GNOME Foundation will become an Industry Liaison Partner for LiMo Foundation.
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My recent post about old the beginnings of Gnome and my natural tendency to look at the Roadmap for the next version of Gnome and Ubuntu when an Ubuntu release comes out have led me to a conclusion: Gnome is pretty much finished.

Last week marked the release of GNOME 2.24. Those who already use GNOME will appreciate the new additions, but there's nothing compelling enough in the new version to convince fans of other desktop environments to make a switch.

LiMo Foundation and GNOME Foundation today announced a key partnership with the objective of collaborating closely on open source innovation. Starting immediately, LiMo Foundation will become a member of GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board and GNOME Foundation will become an Industry Liaison Partner for LiMo Foundation.