MATE 1.6 is Close

MATE 1.6 is getting closer as some of the core modules has been bumped to 1.6.0 release on their GIT repository. The roadmap indicates that most of their TODO list for 1.6 release has been completed and the rest is a minor task to do. We should expect a MATE 1.6.0 release on April.

I have been working closely with Chess Griffin to bring MATE Desktop 1.6.0 for Slackware users in our MSB project and we are preparing to test the upcoming 1.6.0 release when it's released.

I have personally prepared two virtual machines which i installed Slackware-Current and Slackware64-Current on it. Both are updated with the latest patch and update from Pat.

So far, the basic desktop has been quite stable, with some minor problem as noted in the KNOWN ISSUE file. I really hope that MATE Desktop will bring another great experience for those who liked GNOME 2.

GNOME 3.6 Released

Following several releases, finally the final version of GNOME 3.6 has been released. This is a good news to many GNOME users around the world since they have been expecting this release for some time. KDE has been progressing well so far with KDE 4.9.x and they are now working on KDE 4.10 before going to jump to KDE 5 next year.

GStreamer 1.0 has also been released and it will be likely combined with GNOME 3.6 to provide better multimedia experience to users. I have compiled GStreamer 1.0 package and all of it's plugin in my SlackHacks repository.

GNOME Hell

Now i know why Slackware removed GNOME in the past. Maintaining GNOME packages requires a lot of efforts, since new packages will most likely add new dependencies and it keeps growing and growing on each release.

I tried to compile Anjuta which uses some of the GNOME libraries and the list of requirement is tremendous. That doesn't count the dependencies of the Anjuta's dependencies package. So, if being counted in total, i must install and configure like 15 packages. Geez....

Probably i should call this GNOME Hell instead :)

GNOME's Big Ambition

GNOME 4 and GNOME OS is being targetted to be released on March 2014, which is less than two years from now according to the developers in GUADEC conference. They also expect to have 20% market share by 2014. Looks too ambitious for me, because they failed to impress most of their users with GNOME 3 up to today.

We can see the most visible fact is that Ubuntu is no longer the most favorite Linux distribution out there. Nowadays, people prefer to use LinuxMint, it's derivative maintained by Clem who happened to be the maintainer of Cinnamon as well. LinuxMint succeed to take over the angry and unsatisfied by Canonical's decision to revamp Ubuntu's UI.

Meanwhile, KDE is looking a stable new release in the next few days and it's growing strong each day. Even with some uncertainty of Qt development sometime in the past, they have managed to struggle and keep going on with the roadmap ahead. They are now preparing the next major release of Qt which should be released by next year. KDE 5 will soon be based on Qt 5. Looking forward to see KDE 5.

GNOME 3.4 Released

GNOME 3.4 is now finally released to public. It's the second major release after GNOME 3 was introduced. The Release Notes will cover the changes that has been introduced on this release.

Meanwhile, GTK 3.4 was also released few days before GNOME 3.4 is released. This is the first GTK+ release that works well on Windows. Windows support will be added soon. Several other related libraries were also released such as Cairo, GLib, and Clutter.

GNOME 2.32.1 to be Last Release of GNOME 2.x

GNOME 2.32.1 has been released today by Luca Ferretti and it will be the last release of GNOME 2.x series as the development is now focusing on 3.0 release which should be out next year. I have been using GNOME in Ubuntu 10.10 and also in Fedora 14 on my virtual machine and so far, it has been a great release.

I can't wait for the next GNOME 3.0 even though i still opted to pick KDE if i have to choose KDE/GNOME as my favorite window manager

Since it's only a maintenance version, no new features are introduced in this release. Only bug fixes and translations updates are included.