As Heise.de reports the new version of desktop graphic environment for Linux Gnome 2:24 were released today.
Basically, there were no major changes. When you read release notes (http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.24/), you will find out that there really are no major changes were, but several smaller ones. There were hundreds of bugs eliminated, including:
1st Pidgin is exchanged by Empathy (both programms look is terrible):
Empathy also supports XMPP/SIP audio and video conferencing as available on the Nokia N800/N810 devices (video requires H.263 codecs for GStreamer to be installed). Empathy is a great companion to Ekiga, GNOME’s audio/video SIP client (see Section 2.3 ― Ekiga 3.0).
2nd A new utility to monitor the working time has been added:
For many people in business, it is crucial that they track how much time they assign to each project and client. Everybody has their own system for this, from keeping a diary to making a guess. It’s incredibly tedious. In today’s world almost everything you do somehow involves a computer, so GNOME has added a panel application to make tracking your time easier.
3rd Ekiga in version 3.0 presented:
Ekiga is a fully-featured SIP audio/video conferencing client for GNOME. As part of GNOME 2.24 we’re proud to announce the release of Ekiga 3.0.
As well as a new interface that is centered around your phone book and the presence of your contacts, Ekiga 3.0 features SIP presence support, PBX line monitoring, better video codecs support (H.264, H.263+, MPEG-4 and Theora), accelerated video and optional fullscreen and many SIP-related improvements for robust conferencing.
4th Changes in the file management:
As well as icon and list views, GNOME 2.24 now offers the compact list view, popular in several other desktop environments. Choose the view by selecting View ▸ Compact from the menu (or keyboard shortcut Control+3).
As with icon and list view, the size of the icons in the compact view can be changed using the zoom options in the View menu.
The browser mode of the file manager now supports tabs for rapidly switching between directories within a single browser window.
Today’s modern filesystems are able to handle almost any desired character as part of the filename. Unfortunately this is not the case for the FAT filesystem that is commonly used on many USB thumb drives and portable music players, which is unable to use many common punctuation marks as part of the filename. GNOME 2.24 detects when you are copying files with names that contains characters that cannot be used and automatically converts these characters to a “_” without you having to rename the file yourself.
Automatic filename completion (“tab” completion) has also been improved in GNOME 2.24. Completion of filenames in the location bar using the Tab key is now faster and more predictable. It is also possible to complete any fragment of the path and the interface provides more feedback for when there are no other possible matches available.
5th Deskbar gets more senseless features:
The Deskbar in GNOME 2.24 adds several exciting new plugins: a calculator, Google Search (and code search), Yahoo! and Wikipedia suggestions plus updating of Twitter and identi.ca
6th From now on Linux, you can connect multiple monitors and better than ever manage:
More and more computers (especially laptops) are gaining support for multiple monitors (known as multihead). Users need to be able to connect a second monitor, either as a clone (e.g. a projector for giving presentations) or as an extension of their desktop.
7.Sound Themes:
Sound themes in GNOME are now handled by libcanberra, which implements the Freedesktop.org Sound Theme and Naming Specification. Sound themes can now be installed like icon themes. Using libcanberra also means that an application’s alert sounds are less likely to interfere with your music player or movie player, so you can leave those important alert sounds switched on while watching a fullscreen movie.
8.Better support for DVB:
Powered by the GStreamer multimedia framework, GNOME 2.22 introduced digital television (DVB) capabilities into its Movie Player. Determined to make things even better, developers have worked to enhance this support by adding support for multiple DVB tuners (watch multiple channels at once) and better troubleshooting diagnostics.
They have also worked to improve out-of-the-box (zero configuration) support for the majority of infrared remote controls (using the LIRC framework). This makes it even easier to chill out instead of writing that important report.
Also featuring in GNOME 2.24, support for high-resolution YouTube videos and support for remote (non-local) text subtitling.
9.Neue background graphics
GNOME wants to make your computer look good, which is why we work hard on our themes and artwork. For GNOME 2.24 we ran a competition to collect some of the most intruiging desktop backgrounds our contributors have produced and we’ve shared our favorites with everyone.
There were also some changes that sould improve accessibility, some changes for the developers and improved localization.
