Month: March 2005

The world’s largest open source desktop event to highlight multimedia, business and government deployments.

BOSTON, Mass. – 11 March, 2005 – The sixth annual GNOME User and Developer European Conference (GUADEC), announced its program slate for GUADEC, which will be held in Stuttgart, Germany May 29-31, 2005. The high-level conference has lined up a roster of industry-leading analysts, developers and thought leaders, as well as top government and business IT officials. The conference is a unique forum for highlighting the capabilities and direction of GNOME, the user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices. GUADEC will also feature meaningful discussions of the future direction of open source projects, including the Open Office suite.

“GUADEC is not to be missed for anyone developing or deploying a free and open source desktop,” said Timothy Ney, GNOME Foundation executive director. “GUADEC looks not only at new technology for managing and locating information like Beagle, but it is also an opportunity for enterprise and government leaders to share information on IT policy and best practices for migration to a Linux desktop. The combination of top GNOME developers with influential users makes Stuttgart a not-to-be-missed destination for hundreds of participants from over 30 countries.”

“Linux continues to be one of the most rapidly growing client operating environments,” said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC’s vice president of system software research. “System software, such as GNOME, that helps individuals be more productive when using Linux are an important factor supporting of that growth.”

GUADEC is being held May 29-31 at Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart, Germany and is co-organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs for Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart Region Development Corporation, and GNOME Deutschland, e.V.

A preliminary lineup of speakers ranges from GNOME founder Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero to top industry analyst Dan Kusnetzky from IDC and IT entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. Additional information on GUADEC can be found at www.guadec.org.

“We’re very pleased that GNOME Foundation chose the Stuttgart Region in Baden-Württemberg for its annual European congress,” Ernst Pfister, Minister of Economic Affairs for the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg said. “Open Source software is a cornerstone for economic development and GUADEC will feature the expertise in our state and its partnership with this innovative global IT community”

“GUADEC (3rd. edition) had a profound effect on our business and on open source development and deployment in Andalusia (Spain),” said Antonio J. Saenz, chief technology officer of ISOTROL, S.A. “The meetings held by business and government IT leaders with developers, thought leaders and individual users gave the region the tools to make our IT goals a reality.”

GUADEC 6 will feature special sessions on Open Office, two days of conference aimed at GNOME developers, as well as the popular and useful User Day, which will feature sessions that will be of interest for individual, corporate and government users of open source software.

About GUADEC

The GNOME User and Developer Europe Conference (GUADEC) is an annual gathering of GNOME developers, enthusiasts and individual, business, education and government users worldwide. It provides a forum for members of the GNOME project to showcase their work and to discuss the future of GNOME development. GUADEC is also home to open source luminaries, top-level government and business IT leaders who discuss strategies, deployments options and the future of open source software. GUADEC is housed in a different European country each year.

About the GNOME Foundation

Comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation provides organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap. GNOME is an entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices. The modern architecture and design of GNOME includes a technically advanced application development platform and a powerful end-user desktop environment. Major leading software industry and computer manufacturers support the GNOME development effort, which is led by a worldwide community of volunteers. More information on GNOME is available at www.gnome.org.

About Stuttgart Region Development Corporation

Stuttgart Region Development Corporation created and coordinates the initiative “Open Source Region Stuttgart”. With more than 40 events to date, some 100,000 visitors to the website and more than 23 million media contacts, the initiative was most effective in making the IT-industry and IT-users more aware of their Open Source software options. http://opensource.region-stuttgart.de/english.php.

New version of the popular, multi-platform desktop environment offers greater ease and convenience.

BOSTON, Mass – March 9, 2005 – The GNOME Project today released the latest version of the GNOME Desktop and Developer Platform, the leading desktop for Linux and Unix operating systems. Version 2.10 improves the usability, stability, and power of GNOME by integrating multimedia, adding development possibilities, and including thousands of changes which refine the easiest and friendliest free software desktop.

In keeping with GNOME’s ‘users first’ philosophy, GNOME makes stable releases every six months. This delivers improvements to users quickly, and allows developers and distributors to plan their GNOME-based products with confidence. As a result, distributions such as Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu will include GNOME 2.10 in the next release of their products, providing GNOME 2.10 to millions of users.

Key features GNOME 2.10 users can look forward to include:

• An integrated video player, one-click CD ‘ripping’, and improved media format support. This makes the Linux desktop’s multimedia support more competitive with the leading proprietary operating systems.
• More auto-detection of hardware and network servers, demonstrating GNOME’s focus on software that ‘Just Works’ without distracting or confusing users.
• Better integration between applications, including improved links between GNOME applications, and use of cross-platform standards, improving both the user and ISV experience.
• Continued polish and stability, based on user feedback. GNOME 2.10 includes thousands of bug fixes and usability improvements since GNOME 2.8 was released in September.

“This GNOME release is exciting”, says Christian Schaller, Fluendo Business Manager and GStreamer development team member. “Not only is GNOME fixing problems for end users, but by working actively with other free software communities like freedesktop.org, GStreamer, and GTK+, GNOME is driving forward the entire Free Software desktop.”

“We’re having lots of fun doing this”, said Luis Villa, GNOME Foundation Board member and contributor. “Instead of just talking about vaporware that takes years to come out, GNOME’s developers are creating concrete improvements and delivering these to our users twice a year. This is something no proprietary desktop vendor matches.”

Availability

GNOME 2.10 will soon be available as part of most popular Linux distributions. For those who can’t wait, the new GNOME LiveCD (available from www.gnome.org/start/2.10/) allows users and other interested parties to test the latest GNOME desktop by burning a CD and rebooting – no installation necessary.

Developers and advanced users wishing to install the GNOME 2.10 Desktop and Developer Platform now may download the software at http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/desktop/ The software includes the source code for the GNOME 2.10 desktop interface and a complete set of developer tools and libraries.

About GNOME

GNOME is a free software project developing a complete, easy to use desktop. Besides including central desktop components like system menus, a file manager, web browser, and utilities, GNOME is a complete development environment allowing developers to create new applications.

More than 500 software developers from every continent, including more than 100 paid developers, contribute their time and effort to the project. Sponsors include industry leaders like Fluendo, HP, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Sun. GNOME is supported on a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux (more commonly referred to as Linux), Solaris Operating Environment, HP-UX, Unix, BSD and Apple’s Darwin.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading Linux and Unix distributions worldwide, including those of popular community distributions like Debian, Fedora Core, and SUSE, and is the default desktop on major enterprise Linux distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Sun Java Desktop System. GNOME is also the desktop of choice for some of the world’s biggest Linux desktop deployments, including large government deployments in Extremadura, Spain, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. GNOME’s technology is used by major Linux ISVs like Firefox, the Eclipse Project, and Real Networks.

More information on GNOME can be found at http://www.gnome.org/

About the GNOME Foundation

Comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap. More information on the GNOME Foundation can be found at http://foundation.gnome.org

Press Inquiries

Please direct press inquiries to gnome-press-contact@gnome.org.

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