14 DAY TRIAL // The GNOME team has announced last night the immediate availability of the new 2.18 version, which brings important features, bug fixes and improvements: "GNOME 2.18 is out, on time as usual. The top-class free desktop for the masses looks and feels better than ever. This is another progressive release in our road to perfection. It integrates another load of improvements done in the visual design, the performance of the desktop components, and the growing collection of integrated applications. The web browser and the themeable window manager are two good examples to check."
E-mail and local files encryption, digitally signed communications, the vertical text layout and full Arabic localization support are just a few of the new features inside GNOME 2.18. For the first time, GNOME ships online games like a 3D chess and Sudoku.
The GNOME desktop can be found today on many Linux operating systems including Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Mandriva, OpenSuSE or Debian. It can also be found inside the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) device and on a rich collection of mobile devices.
New features in this release include:
￭ Tomboy, the note-taking applet, helps you keep better track of your most important notes by pinning them, making sure they will always easier to find. ￭ Digitally sign or authenticate your documents using Seahorse, the new front-end to GNU Privacy Guard. ￭ Use Seahorse to manage the security of your desktop and your OpenPGP and SSH keys. ￭ Create applications faster using the new Glade graphical interface builder. ￭ Display all your reference documentation using the new integrated help system. ￭ Improved bug reporting ensures that GNOME just keeps getting better. ￭ Encode your audio in more formats including OGG, MP3 or even AAC! ￭ Turn up the volume on your music and movies with the new and improved volume control that now supports advanced sound cards including the Audigy 2. ￭ Take a break and try our two new games: Chess with glChess, where you can play either against a friend or try to master the computer opponent or try yourself in solving a Sudoku with GNOME Sudoku, the Japanese crossword puzzle. ￭ Challenge a friend to an online game of Nibbles, Iagno, or Four-in-a-Row. ￭ Connect to your desktop from anywhere in the world. ￭ If you rotate your photos in the camera, they stay that way when you view them with the Eye of GNOME Image Viewer. ￭ Show your friends how you customized your desktop from the login screen to the appearance of your favorite GNOME applications. ￭ Added support for vertical text layouts in Chinese and Japanese. ￭ Added New text-to-speech drivers including Loqeundo, Cepstral Swift, and eSpeak. ￭ Improved support for Orca. ￭ Improved support for Chinese using the IBMTTS engine. ￭ Improved support for Gnome Magnifier. ￭ Added Thai dictionary to GNOME Dictionary. ￭ Improved results display in GNOME Dictionary.
For more information about the GNOME desktop please visit their home page.
About GNOME:
GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project, dedicated to giving users and developers the ultimate level of control over their desktops, their software, and their data.
You can download GNOME now from Softpedia.