The GNOME developers are optimistic about the GNOME 2.28.0 Release Candidate (2.27.92), they worked for 16 days on it and then made it available for public scrutiny. The changelogs have grown considerably shorter than those of the beta releases, but that is only natural, because GNOME is heading for a stable 2.28 release, which should be here by the end of this month.

As expected, this version of GNOME doesn't have any new features, since the code is stabilizing for the final release. There are many bugfixes to all the desktop components, and the translators have been busy, updating the localizations to support the changes brought by the code improvements.

Vincent Untz's announcement is pretty upbeat: "We're

a few days before the hard code freeze for 2.28.0, and having tried 2.27.92, I think we have something good there. Actually, better than just good. But well, we still have a few days to fix this pet bug that annoys so many people [...] This release is a feature, user interface and string frozen snapshot primarily intended for wide public scrutiny before the final GNOME 2.28 release in September."

Among the more important applications that were fixed, you will find Brasero, which now features an improved sequential DVD-RW handling and overall stability, Empathy, which received a lot of fixes, Epiphany, now with better data-loss protection, GNOME Volume Control, which has a better PulseAudio support, and Totem, which received a lot of usability improvements.

For a detailed list with all the bug fixes and improvements in GNOME 2.27.91, please take a look at the official changelogs. Below is a list with all the updated packages and their respective versions:

Alacarte 0.12.3, Anjuta 2.27.92, At-Spi 1.27.92, Brasero 2.27.92, Bug-Buddy 2.27.92, Cheese 2.27.92, Deskbar Applet 2.27.92, DevHelp 2.27.92, Empathy 2.27.92, Epiphany 2.27.92, Evolution 2.27.92, Evolution-Data-Server 2.27.92, Evolution Exchange 2.27.92, Evolution-Mapi 0.27.92, Eye of GNOME 2.27.92, File Roller 2.27.92, gCalcTool 5.27.92, GDL 2.27.92, gEdit 2.27.6, GLib 2.21.6, GLibMM 2.21.5, GNOME Applets 2.27.92, GNOME Backgrounds 2.27.91, GNOME Bluetooth 2.27.90, GNOME Desktop 2.27.92, GNOME Doc-Utils 0.17.5, GNOME Games 2.27.92, GNOME Media 2.27.91, GNOME Menus 2.27.92, GNOME Panel 2.27.92, GNOME Power Manager 2.27.92, GNOME Python Desktop 2.27.3, GNOME Settings Daemon 2.27.92, GNOME System Tools 2.27.92, GNOME Terminal 2.27.92, GNOME Themes 2.27.92, GNOME User Documentation 2.27.2, GNOME User Share 2.27.0, GOK 2.27.92, GStreamer Good Plug-ins 0.10.16, GTK+ 2.17.11, GTKMM 2.17.11, GtkHTML 3.27.02, gVFS 1.3.6, Hamster Applet 2.27.92, libGWeather 2.27.92, Liboobs 2.22.2, libsigc++ 2.2.4.2, libSoup 2.27.92, libwnck 2.27.92, Metacity 2.27.1, MouseTweaks 2.27.92, Nautilus 2.27.92, Orca 2.27.92, Pango 1.25.6, PangoMM 2.25.1.3, Pessulus 2.27.92, Seed 2.27.92, Tomboy 0.15.7, Totem 2.27.92, Vinagre 2.27.92, Vino 2.27.92, vte 0.21.5, Yelp 2.27.5.

There isn't much time left until the release of GNOME 2.28.0, but, in the meantime, you can try out this 2.27.92 Release Candidate. If you choose to do so, be aware that it is a snapshot of the development code. Although it is a release candidate, the code isn't fully tested and it might cause problems.

Download GNOME 2.27.92 (or the stable 2.26.3 version) right now from Softpedia.