Download Gnome 2.18

A little over half a year after the previous release, the folks at Gnome released a new stable version of the desktop environment. As we have come to expect from the people of Gnome, new features are introduced with a new stable version and of course the necessary bugs are also squashed. Version 2.18 brings security and gaming improvements. What exactly has changed in this release can be read in this document or at the bottom of this article. Gnome is not distributed as a ready-made binary, but must be compiled yourself or wait for the Linux distributors to include the new version in their distros. Until then, GNOME 2.18 can be downloaded as source code in the following flavours:

• Platform Sources
• Desktop Resources
• Binding Sources
• Admin Sources

Released on schedule, to the day, it is the culmination of six months effort by GNOME contributors around the world: hackers, documentors, usability and accessibility specialists, translators, maintainers, sysadmins, companies, artists, users and testers. Due to their hard work, we have another great release to be proud of – thanks very much to every contributor!

Meanwhile, GNOME developers around the world are looking forward to working on fresh new features for the next version of GNOME, due in September, 2007.

Everyone

• Tomboy, the note-taking applet, helps you to keep better track of your most important notes by pinning them, making sure they will always be easier to find.
• Using Tomboy to create lists is now as simple as adding a * or a -.
• Never lose track of your work and pick up where you left off by finding the recently opened files, or just search for new distractions with the new Deskbar applet.
• Find out where all your disk space is going with the new ring chart view in GNOME’s Disk Usage Analyzer.
• Save battery power with GNOME Power Manager’s control over your processor.
• Whether you have two monitors or not, the GNOME Document Viewer now supports opening multiple instances of a document at the same time.
• Use the new history feature to navigate your documents like a web page.
• Hand out better printed slide notes and keep your audience engaged with Evince’s new presentation mode.
• 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.

Developers

• 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.

Fun

• 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.

Share Your Desktop

• 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.

Universal Access

• 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.

[break]This is what Gnome 2.18 looks like – click for the original picture