Category: News

GNOME 3.32 Released

The latest version of GNOME 3 has been released today. Version 3.32 contains six months of work by the GNOME community and includes many improvements, performance improvements and new features.

This release features a refreshed visual style ranging from an entirely new set of app icons to improvements to the user interface style. Many of the base style colors have been saturated, giving them a more vivid, vibrant appearance. Buttons are more rounded and have a softer “shadow” border. Switches no longer use the explicit ON and OFF text, instead using color to indicate state.

The application icons underwent a major design overhaul, resulting in a beautiful set of icons and an improved set of guidelines for icon designers.

GNOME 3.32 continues to push the boundaries around HiDPI and graphics too. This release introduces an experimental feature for Wayland desktop sessions that enables fractional scaling. Once enabled, desktops at certain resolutions can be scaled by non-integer values (150%, 175%).

Additionally, several improvements to data structures in the GNOME Desktop led to noticeable frame rate improvements. This results in a faster, snappier feel to the animations, icons and top “shell” panel. Searching in many GNOME apps is faster now too, thanks to major performance enhancements to the GNOME search database.

The complete list of features and improvements are in the release notes.

GNOME 3.32 is code-named “Taipei” in recognition of the most recent GNOME.Asia, held this past August in Taipei, Taiwan.

The GNOME Project is supported by the GNOME Foundation. We rely on donations to continue to drive the project forward. If you appreciate the work we do, please consider joining as a Friend of GNOME.

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GNOME presence in SCALE 17x

SCaLE 17x – is the largest community-run open-source and free software conference in North America – which will take place on March. 7-10, 2019, at the Pasadena Convention Center. 

This event expects to host 150 exhibitors this year, along with nearly 130 sessions, tutorials and special events.

Photo byAgentUhOh7 CC BY-NC 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pasadena_Civic_Auditorium_Oct_2016.jpg

We are happy to be at this event with our booth full of cool stickers, t-shirts,socks and delighted to meet you all. We are booth number 619, don’t forget to pass by and say hi!

Check the page https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/17x for more updates and don’t forget to share some GNOME love with hashtags      

GNOME to be present at FOSDEM 2019

GNOME will be present at FOSDEM 2019 which is taking place this weekend in Brussels, Belgium, February 2 – 3. FOSDEM which is one of the largest gatherings for Free Software contributors.

GNOME will be hosting a booth where attendees can test the latest version of GNOME, talk to contributors and more.

On Saturday 2th GNOME will be hosting a social evening event at the A La Bécasse pub where people are welcome. More details about GNOME’s presence is available on the on the main FOSDEM event wiki page, or by visiting the GNOME booth in the ‘K’ building.

In addition a GTK+ developer Hackfest is planned to be held in Brussels February 4-6, right after the main conference.

Stay tuned for updates!

We’re looking forward to see you.

Photo by Teemu Mäntynen CC BY-NC 2.0

Call for Proposals to Host GNOME.Asia Summit 2019

The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting interested parties to submit proposals for hosting the GNOME.Asia Summit during the second half of 2019.

GNOME.Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME Conference in Asia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, but also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, contributors, foundation leaders, governments, and businesses to discuss the current technology and future developments.

Over the last eleven years, GNOME.Asia Summit has been held in many cities throughout Asia, including Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Taipei, Bangalore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Beijing, Depok, New Delhi, and Chongqing.

The Committee’s preference is to find a new location each year in order to 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 execution of the event.

How to Submit a Proposal:

Interested parties are hereby invited to submit a formal proposal to the GNOME.Asia Committee. The deadline for the proposals is February 24, 2019. Please email your proposal to gnome-asia-committee-list@gnome.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 first week of April 2019.

The conference might require availability of facilities for 3-5 days, including a weekend, during the second half of 2019. Final event dates should avoid other key free software conferences or other events that may conflict. 

The key points that should be included in the proposal, and which will be used to decide among candidates, are.

  • Local community support for hosting the conference.
  • Venue details. Information about infrastructure and facilities to hold the conference should be provided.
  • Preliminary schedule with main program & different activities.
  • 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 industries, universities and government support.
  • Please provide a reasonably detailed budget (sponsorships, expenses, etc).
  • Provide plans for local sponsorship.
  • Provide plans to encourage student and youth participation.

Below, we have included resources for people interested in submitting a proposal. Please do not hesitate to contact the GNOME.Asia committee with any questions at gnome-asia-committee-list@gnome org.

 We are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

– GNOME.Asia Committee

Resources for Interested GNOME.Asia 2019 Organizers: 

[1] Wiki about GNOME Asia: http://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia
[2] Check list: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/SummitCheckList
[3] HowTo’s: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/HowToOrganizeGNOME.Asia%20Summit
[4] GNOME Foundation conference requirements: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Conferences
[5] Sample winning proposal: http://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeAsia/2012Summit/Bids?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Proposal_of_HongKong_GNOME_Asia_Hackfest_2012_20120124.pdf

Please help us spread the word! If you haven’t already, please follow us on Twitter: @gnome_asia and @gnome, and on Facebook.

2018 Year End Summary

With 2018 having ended, the GNOME project now enters another exciting year full of software releases, events, and computing excellence.

Looking back at the past year, 2018 brought us two large GNOME releases, versions 3.28 and 3.30, which delivered improvements across the board, particularly with performance, usability, and overall polish.

Continuing its long held tradition, the GNOME Foundation successfully hosted another iteration of its main conference, GUADEC, in Almería, Spain this past July, with over 200 people attending. In August, GNOME.Asia Summit took place in Taipei, Taiwan, and participants were able to spend time with over one thousand other free software enthusiasts at the co-hosted event with COSCUP and OpenSUSE.Asia. Later, while working with our friends in the KDE community, System 76, Purism, and others, the GNOME Foundation organized the Libre Application Summit (LAS) in Denver, Colorado. LAS hosted community members, developers, and designers from projects spanning the entire FOSS ecosystem to help chart the future for libre computing.

On the technical side of things, significant developments were made to better support Rust for use in the GNOME platform, GJS (GNOME’s JavaScript Engine) was upgraded to support Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey 52, and GNOME made the important decision to move to GitLab. The switch to GitLab is of particular importance due to the overwhelming enhancement it adds to the development process of GNOME software. Most notably, it replaced Bugzilla as a far more usable issue tracking system, and has provided GNOME teams with Continuous Integration (CI) for their projects.

Over the past year, the use of Flatpak for app usage and deployment has grown significantly, making it easier to distribute the latest and greatest software to users without any risk to system stability. This growth was brought about by advancements made to the technology driving Flatpak under-the-hood, and with the maturity of this technology overall. However, the most exciting point of progress came from the launch of Flathub.org as a central web front-end for users to browse and install apps directly from their browser. Flathub is a distro-agnostic centralized software repository that, above all else, has made installing and managing software easy, intuitive, and fun.

The growth of GNOME over 2018 is thanks to GNOME’s talented developers, designers, contributors, and community. Furthermore, the GNOME Foundation was fortunate to receive large donations which will enable it to expand its operations going forward, beginning with several individuals being hired to fill necessary roles in the organization.

The Foundation would like to give special thanks to all of GNOME’s supporters and advocates, and to GNOME’s advisory board members, for their support.

We are looking forward to an exciting 2019! Stay tuned.

GUADEC participants walking outside the 2018 year venue

photo by guillefuertes /CC BY-SA 2.0

GUADEC 2019 to be in Thessaloniki, Greece!

The GNOME Foundation is excited to announce that GUADEC 2019 will take place from the 23rd to 28th of August in Thessaloniki, Greece. GUADEC, the GNOME User and Developer European Conference, brings together hundreds of users and developers every year to further the GNOME Project, and it is one of our longest-standing and most noteworthy events.

Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, is an ancient city with over 2,300 years of history. Located right on the northern coast, it has beautiful waterfront promenades and seaside gardens where visitors can enjoy themselves. Likewise, for those who enjoy quality food and drink, Thessaloniki is highly regarded as a cultural hotspot in Greece and hosts a great supply of trendy bars and restaurants that are scattered throughout the city, along the pedestrianised streets, and along the coast with sea views.

The GNOME Foundation looks forward to hosting GUADEC 2019 in Thessaloniki and has launched a website where those interested in participating can find more information: guadec.org. To stay up-to-date with the latest conference deadlines and registration dates, news, activities, and more, follow @GUADEC and @GNOME on Twitter.

Whether you wish to present your work, take part in the workshops, or simply attend the talks, the GNOME Foundation hopes to see you there!

Thessaloniki from Aristotle University CC-BY-3.0 Nikolaos Oikonomou

GNOME 3.30 Released

The latest version of GNOME 3 has been released today. Version 3.30 contains six months of work by the GNOME community and includes many improvements and new features.

This release features some significant performance improvements. The entire desktop now uses fewer system resources, which means you can run more apps at once without encountering performance issues.

Other highlights include a new content reader mode in the Web application, search enhancements in the Files application, and  improvements to screen recording and screen sharing. The Settings application now has a Thunderbolt panel to manage devices and dynamically shows hardware-related panels only when relevant hardware is detected.

The many other improvements in GNOME 3.30 are in the release notes.

GNOME 3.30 is code-named “Almería” in recognition of the most recent GUADEC, held this past July in Almería, Spain.

The GNOME Project is supported by the GNOME Foundation. We rely on donations to continue to drive the project forward. If you appreciate the work we do, please consider joining as a Friend of GNOME.

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GNOME Foundation receives $400,000 from Handshake.org

Today (2nd August) has seen the launch of handshake.org – a decentralized certificate authority and peer-to-peer DNS service. As part of this, the organisation has pledged significant donations to free and open source projects.

The GNOME Foundation is pleased to be one of these recipients, receiving $300,000 for the GNOME Project and $100,000 for GIMP. Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the Foundation said “I am very grateful to handshake for this pledge. Ensuring that free software can be sustainably funded is a key challenge, and this donation helps fund further development. Further, GNOME cares deeply about privacy and the ability for all to communicate securely and looks forward to further development in the Handshake project”

“Firstly, this pledge serves as a long overdue thank you to the open source community both for the immeasurable contributions to the world, as well as making decentralized currencies and of course, Handshake possible in the very first place.

Secondly, the pledge ensures that any economic gain from this project will be directly beneficial to the open source community, while the distribution of the vast majority of the genesis block to the open source community ensures that they will have the incentive, whereabouts and deep influence in the long term governance of this protocol.” commented the Handshake Team.

GUADEC 2018 concludes

After a few intensive days GUADEC 2018 concluded in Almeria, Spain. GUADEC 2018 included many talks, a lot of fun, intensive hacking and discussions.

The foundation wants to thank the participants, the organizers and sponsors all who helped make the conference possible. The results of the conference is expected to greatly benefit the foundation going forward.

 

GUADEC 2018 group photo – “A great time in Almeria Spain” 

Photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 by Guille Fuertes (guillefuertes)

GUADEC 2018 has started in Almeria Spain

GUADEC, the largest annual gathering of GNOME users and developers, has now started in the lovely city of Almería, Spain.

GUADEC 2018 will feature talks on a wide range of subjects relevant to GNOME. In addition to the talks, hackfests, workshops, and birds of a feather (BOF’s) sessions will follow after the core conference days. Community members will come together and hack on projects relevant to GNOME.  Specific info regarding the BoFs and Hackfest sessions is available on the GNOME wiki.

There will also be a lot of fun with a range of social activities planned. Detailed info about GUADEC 2018 including schedule and venue locations is available on the GUADEC website.

The Foundation thanks all the sponsors and volunteers who make GUADEC possible!

This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.