Last night, the GNOME developers announced the first maintenance release of the GNOME 2.22 desktop environment. This new version brings some bug fixes, new translations and updated documentation. Hardy Heron users can update their systems to GNOME 2.22.1 by issuing the following commands in a terminal window (Applications -> Accesories -> Terminal):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

While you will enjoy this point release of GNOME 2.22, the developers are working hard on the next stable versions, GNOME 2.22.2 (due for release on May 26th, 2008) and GNOME 2.24 (due for release on September 2008).

Below are some of the major features introduced in GNOME 2.22:

The Cheese software - a brand-new application designed to "take care" of your webcam. It allows you to make photos and record videos using your little... webcam! Did we say that it comes packed with a lot of funny effects?

Window Compositing - will offer drop shadows on windows, live previews when hitting the Alt+Tab key combination and some very nice transparency effect. All this, without Compiz!

DVD and DVB Support - Totem has received improved support for DVD playback and digital television (DVB). Moreover, support for the popular MythTV and the Youtube service is also present in GNOME's Movie Player.

GVFS - the new network-transparent virtual filesystem layer for GTK+ is here to make your desktop sessions much pleasant. How? Why? Well, for example: do you remember that simple file transfer/copy/move window that appears (yes! the one with the progress bar and remaining time)... well, because of GVFS, it's now able to show you more than a progress bar! It can also remember the login credentials and be more resilient to failures! But wait, that's not all, as with this technology, all GNOME users will have access to new protocols, such as: cdda:// (used to show the audio tracks of an inserted Audio-CD), gphoto2:// (used to access a connected digital camera's photos).

International Clock - a new function "injected" into the clock applet, which can display multiple time zones from around the world!

More Evolution Improvements - with the brand-new Google Calendar support and custom message labels (tagging) for your emails, better spam filtering and making error dialogs less intrusive on your desktop session by using the status bar rather than pop-ups!

Remote Desktop Viewer - aka Vinagre, complements the existing remote desktop server support and has the ability to discover computers on your LAN (local area network) and bookmark them!

Redesigned "Keyboard Preferences" window -now combines the old "Keyboard Layout" and "Keyboard Accessibility Preferences" dialogs. All the keyboard settings in one place!

More new features in GNOME 2.22:

• magnification and screenreading improvements;
• new mouse accessibility features;
• PolicyKit integration;
• better system tools;
• you are now able to directly open Evolution contacts in Deskbar;
• Gedit, the GNOME's text editor receives printing improvements;
• The Chess game has now network multiplayer support;
• Epiphany brings you download notifications;
• The Archive Manager tool received LZMA (7-zip) support;
• inhibit automatic hibernation and suspend while burning CDs;
• Evince, the document viewer, is now much faster, uses less memory and it's able to support page transitions in PDF slideshows;
• Tomboy is able to organize your notes into notebooks from now on;
• Sound Juicer supports more metadata, including disc number and year;
• extensive improvements to Calculator's precision and usability;
• Seahorse is the new sheriff in town, as it completely replaced Keyring Manager.

If you want to customize your GNOME desktop to look like in the preview image, follow this tutorial.

Download the GNOME 2.22.1 sources right now from Softpedia.