Month: September 2012

GNOME Asia Summit 2013 – Call for Hosts

The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting proposals to host the GNOME.Asia Summit during the 2nd quarter of 2013. The GNOME.Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME Conference in Asia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, and also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss both the present technology and future developments.

GNOME.Asia Summit was held in Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Taipei, Bangalore and Hong Kong respectively over the last five years. The Summit’s preference is to find new locations each year as we spread GNOME throughout Asia, and we are looking for local organizers to rise to the challenge of organizing an excellent GNOME event. The GNOME.Asia committee will assist in the process, but there is a definitive need for individuals to be actively involved and committed to the planning and delivery of the event.

You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our official website: http://www.gnome.asia

For those of you who would be interested in hosting the next GNOME.Asia Summit in 2013 you are hereby invited to submit a formal proposal to the gnome-asia-committee-list <at> gnome <dot> org . The deadline for the proposals is October 28, 2012. Please email your proposal to gnome-asia-committee-list <at> gnome <dot> org. We might invite you to present your proposal in more details over our regular IRC meetings, or send you additional questions and requests. Results will be announced by the second week of November, 2012.

The conference will require availability of facilities for one week, including a weekend, during the 2nd quarter of 2013 (between March and June). Final event dates should avoid other key free software conferences or other events that may have conflict and will be confirmed together with other GNOME teams which might get involved.

Key points which proposals should consider, and which will be taken into account when deciding among candidates, are:

  • Local community support for hosting the conference.
  • Venue details. Information about infrastructure and facilities to hold the conference should be provided.
  • Information about how internet connectivity will be managed.
  • Lodging choices ranging from affordable housing to nicer hotels, and information about distances between the venue and lodging options.
  • The availability of restaurants or the organization of catering on-site, cost of food/soft drinks/beer.
  • The availability and cost of travel from major Asian and European cities.
  • Local industry and government support.
  • Please provide a reasonably detailed budget.
  • Provide plans for fundraising at a local level.

Please check the GNOME.Asia Summit check list and howtos when putting together a proposal. Please also feel free to contact gnome-asia-committee-list <at> gnome <dot> org if you have any questions.

Please help to spread the words and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

GNOME 3.6 Released!

GNOME 3.6

The GNOME Project is proud to present GNOME 3.6, the third update to the 3.x series. This latest version of GNOME 3 includes a number of new features and enhancements, as well as many bug fixes and minor improvements. Together, they represent a significant upgrade to the GNOME 3 user experience.

Andreas Nilsson, President of the GNOME Foundation, said: “The GNOME Foundation is proud to present this latest GNOME release, and I would like to congratulate the GNOME community on its achievement.” He described the release as “an important milestone in our mission to bring a free and open computing environment to everyone.”

Highlights for this release include:

  • Big improvements to notifications, including a redesigned Message Tray, smarter notifications, and other tweaks and refinements.
  • An enhanced Activities Overview with an improved layout.
  • A greatly enhanced Files application, with functional file search, a new Recent location, redesigned interface and lots of bug fixes and handy new features.
  • Integrated Input Sources, which makes inputting different character sets (eg. Japanese or Chinese) fast and easy.
  • Accessibility on demand, meaning that universal access features like the Orca screen reader can be enabled with the push of a button.
  • A new Lock Screen. This provides an attractive view when the device is locked, plus handy functionality like media controls and notifications.

There are many other enhancements in GNOME 3.6, including Online Accounts support for Microsoft Exchange, Facebook and Windows Live, much improved System Settings and a redesigned User Menu. Many GNOME applications have also received improvements, including Web, Empathy, Disk Usage Analyzer, Disks and the Font Viewer. This release also includes the first major release of Boxes, an application for using remote systems and virtual machines, and a development preview of the new Clocks application.

You can read about all the changes included in GNOME 3.6 in the release notes. This latest version represents 6 months of hard work by the GNOME community, an open, international association of individuals and organizations. GNOME works to deliver high-quality user experiences based on Free Software. Development is conducted in the open, and anyone can get involved. If you want to support us, you can become a Friend of GNOME.

Read the press release: GNOME 3.6 Released: Evolution in the Making

GNOME 3.6 Released: Evolution in the Making

Groton, MA, September 26, 2012: The GNOME project is happy to announce the release of GNOME 3.6, the third update to GNOME 3.0, originally released in April 2011. This release of GNOME 3 is the outcome of six months of development effort, resulting in major new features, updated applications, and significant refinements in the user experience. It is evolution in the making.

“The GNOME Foundation is proud to present this latest GNOME release, and I would like to congratulate the GNOME community on its achievement”, said Andreas Nilsson, President of the GNOME Foundation. “I am especially happy about our advancements in accessibility and internationalization with this release. GNOME 3.6 is an important milestone in our mission to bring a free and open computing environment to everyone.”

The new version of GNOME 3 will be included in the upcoming releases of partner distributions. “We are excited by the new features in this latest GNOME release, as well as the overall improvement in quality that has been achieved”, said Robyn Bergeron, Fedora Project Leader. “I am confident that Fedora users will enjoy an enhanced experience as a result of the work done by the GNOME community. This new GNOME release includes important new features, like improved accessibility support, the new Boxes application and extended Online Accounts integration. The GNOME community has done a great job for 3.6, and I encourage them to maintain the rapid pace of development that we have witnessed in recent releases.”

The latest version of GNOME 3 was made possible by the ongoing investment in the GNOME project by its partners. Robert McQueen, CTO & Co-Founder of Open Source consultancy Collabora, said: “Collabora is pleased to see the continuing evolution of GNOME with each release raising the bar on usability and quality. GNOME’s focus on tight integration moves it closer to the vision of a modern, powerful, and easy-to-use desktop. We remain committed to the GNOME project and its community.”

GNOME 3.6 has also been receiving praise from well-known figures in the Free Software world. “GNOME 3.6 provides a stronger, easier to use foundation for the enterprise desktop”, said Michael Meeks, Distinguished Engineer, SUSE, “I love the intense polish, bug fixing, attention to detail, and particularly LibreOffice’s improved look with the new gtk+ theme”.

The new features presented in GNOME 3.6 include a revamped notification system, updated Activities Overview, improved Accessibility support, integrated input sources for using different languages, and enhanced Files and Web applications. It also includes general improvements to the GNOME 3 user experience as well as many smaller enhancements and bug fixes. With 3.6, the GNOME Project continues its focus on improving the GNOME 3 user experience with each release.

Ensuring that all users can take advantage of GNOME 3 is a major focus for the latest GNOME release. New advancements in accessibility support and an integrated input methods system mean that everyone will be able to use GNOME, regardless of their physical abilities or languages.

You can find out more about the changes that are included in GNOME 3.6 in the release notes, which were made available today.

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people around the world, it is the most popular environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME’s software has been utilised in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project’s developer technologies are utilised in a large number of popular mobile devices.

The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation works to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.

User Observation Hackfest Announcement

A group of GNOME contributors will be gathering to accomplish important work. A User Observation Hackfest that will be hosted at the openSUSE Summit in Orlando, Florida (USA), on September 21-23, 2012.  The purpose of this hackfest is to gather knowledge to seed GNOME’s Pattern language for user interfaces and consequently improve the GNOME 3 experience for users.

One key aspect of this hackfest is a day trip to the City of Largo, Florida.  The City of Largo has a significant deployment of GNOME in the public sector.  Giving us an exciting opportunity to watch and talk to every day people who use GNOME on a day to day basis and observe how GNOME works for them.

The User Observation Hackfest is open to everyone.  If you are a passionate about GNOME 3 then we would love to hear your voice.  Please come down, register, and see us at the hackfest!

You can learn more about the User Observation Hackfest on the event wiki page.

As a side note, the openSUSE Summit will be running an original fundraising event called Pie for Pi in order to help the GNOME Foundation to sponsorize contributors to attend hackfests.

Sponsors

SUSE

 

City of Largo

 

GNOME Foundation

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