A new functionality will be available in GNOME

May 21, 2015 09:08 GMT  ·  By

The GNOME developers are trying all kinds of interesting interactions with devices outside the desktop environment, and now they are working on a way to get the GPS locations of an Android phone.

GNOME is more than just a collection of packages that make up a desktop environment, it's, in fact, a stack of apps that make up the bulk of an operating system. Not all of the GNOME packages are implemented in any given OS; there are too many of that. That happens because many of these packages are very specialized, which is not all that odd. When you need a specific function, you just install it. For example, there is no need to get a DLNA server by default if you don't need one.

The ability get a precise GPS location on your PC is a useful one, but unless you have a laptop with GPS, you won't be able to get this information otherwise. Some work has been started in this direction, and it looks like it will take a while to implement.

GNOME to get GPS location

The GNOME developers are already working on ways to receive and reply to messages from the Android platform, so this is not the first project that tries to expand the functionality of the desktop environment beyond what regular users would expect.

"This summer, I am working on a project to let GNOME users access GPS location (shared) from a GPS source. Android devices are among the most common GPS sources. So, a part of this project will be on Android. This Android application will work as a location server for Geoclue. This server will be discoverable via mDNS clients like Avahi and Bonjour," wrote Ankit Verma.

From the looks of it, the new functionality is still in the design stages, but the actual development should only last for a few months, which means that we might get to see this feature in GNOME 3.18. The new GNOME version is expected to land in September.