Category: News

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JU2f_jkPRq4%3Frel%3D0%26showinfo%3D0

We are excited to announce the release of GNOME 3.20. This latest version of GNOME 3 is the result of six months of development and includes 28,933 changes, made by approximately 870 contributors.

3.20 has been named “Delhi” in recognition of this year’s GNOME.Asia organizing team. GNOME.Asia is an important annual GNOME event, and is only possible due to the hard work of local volunteers. This year it will be held in Delhi, India between the 21st and 24th of April.

Making the announcement, the Release Team’s Matthias Clasen thanked the GNOME community for the work that went into the release, saying “This six months’ effort wouldn’t have been possible without the whole GNOME community, made of contributors and friends from all around the world: developers, designers, documentation writers, usability and accessibility specialists, translators, maintainers, students, system administrators, companies, artists, testers and last, not least, users. GNOME would not exist without all of you.”

Highlights for 3.20 include:

• OS upgrades can now be installed using Software
• Wayland support has improved significantly, with kinetic scrolling, drag-and-drop, and middle-click paste
• Keyboard shortcuts and gestures can be easily learned with new shortcut overlay windows
• Privacy controls have been improved with per-application location access
• Quick access to media controls directly from the shell
• Searching in Files has been much improved
• Builder can now build XDG-Apps, a new cross-distro framework for building and distributing desktop applications. These can also be installed directly from GNOME Software

You can find more information about these changes and much more in the release notes.

Press

Press queries can be directed to gnome-press-contact@gnome.org. A screenshot pack is available for download.

We are happy to announce that GNOME has been accepted to participate in Google Summer of Code 2016. GNOME has participated in the program every year since its inception in 2005 and it’s a pleasure to be participating once again!

Google Summer of Code allows students to work for the summer on a Free Software project. Accepted students receive a stipend to be able to focus on their internship, instead of having to find a summer job (“flip bits, not burgers” as they say), and are mentored by experienced project contributors. It is an excellent way to get involved in a wide range of Free Software projects.

Interested students and mentors can get more info about the program on our Google Summer of Code page. Students will soon be able to apply (opens on March 14th) and should be getting in touch with potential mentors now.

Image provided by Google Summer of Code under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0.

We’re happy to announce that the 2016 edition of GUADEC will be held in Karlsruhe, Germany from August 12–14, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a world-renowned research and educational institution.

Karlsruhe is located in southtwest Germany near the Franco-German border and is nicknamed the “fan city” because its streets are built radially around the palace tower. This beautiful and historic city is also home to the two highest courts in Germany, and several of Germany’s intitutions of higher learning.

“We are proud to have GUADEC in Karlsruhe this year and look forward to welcoming the GNOME community in our beautiful city. With the Gulaschprogrammiernacht (GPN) we have a large hacker congress in the city and having GUADEC here will further strengthen the local open source community.” — Benjamin Berg, local organizer

Join us!

Do you have an idea or project you’d like to share with the community during this year’s GUADEC? Stay tuned. We’ll announce a call for participation soon.

If your company or organization would like to sponsor GUADEC, you can find information on sponsorship opportunities in our Sponsors page at GUADEC.org, or contact us at sponsors@guadec.org and we are happy to discuss it with you.

If you would like to join our team of volunteers to help organize future GUADECs, please subscribe to the GUADEC mailinglist. We would love to have you on board!

Photo: “Nacht in Karlsruhe” by Heiko S., CC-BY-NC 2.0

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our friend, Thomas Wood. Commonly known as ‘thos’ on irc, Thomas was a long time contributor to the GNOME Art project, where he curated GTK+ Themes, backgrounds, login screens, and icons. In later years, he also worked on the control center and maintained the GNOME Backgrounds module. Outside of GNOME, he worked on the Moblin platform, which enabled various technologies key to GNOME 3, like GNOME Shell and Clutter.

Thomas lived and worked in London, first at OpenedHand and then at Intel. He helped with GNOME booths at conferences, and was part of the organizer team for GUADEC in Birmingham in 2007. He was a familiar face at GNOME London beer events.

Thomas was known as a highly talented programmer and a conscientious maintainer, and is remembered with warm memories by those who worked with him. He died too soon, and our thoughts go out to his wife and family members.

The GNOME.Asia Summit 2016 team invites proposals for presentations at the conference. GNOME.Asia Summit is GNOME Asia’s user and developer conference, with the goal of spreading GNOME across Asia and encouraging contributions. The 2016 edition of the Summit will be held at the Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad, Delhi (NCR), India from April 21st to 24th.

GNOME.Asia Summit 2016 will follow the release of GNOME 3.20 and will be a great place to celebrate and explore the many new features and enhancements in the release, as well as potential work for upcoming releases.

Proposals by newcomers and experienced speakers are welcomed alike. Please submit yours at: http://2016.gnome.asia/cfp/submission/
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Contributing to GNOME’s success in Asia
• How to Promote GNOME in Asia
• GNOME Marketing/Engagement
• How to run a Local GNOME Users Group
• Asia success stories / Local GNOME Projects
• GNOME and Education

Contributing to GNOME:

• Usability
• GNOME Human Interface Engineering (Icons and Graphic
  Design)
• Hacking on or with GNOME
• Latest developments in GNOME
• QA and testing in GNOME
• GNOME Accessibility
• Writing applications for GNOME 3

Taking GNOME to new places:

• Developing GNOME on mobile devices (smart phones, tablets)
• Developing GNOME on embedded systems or open source hardware
• On-going projects and success stories
• Localization and Internationalization
• Translations
• Input methods
• Fonts

A standard session will be scheduled for 45 mins (35 mins talk + 10 mins Q&A). The session could be a technical talk, panel discussion, or BOF. If you need more time or additional resources, feel free to get in touch with the organizing team.

For participants who would like to participate, but are not sure they’d like to do a full talk proposal, we have shorter lighting talks. These are a five minutes presentation to demonstrate your work or promote an interesting topic. These talks will be grouped together in a single session.

Please provide a short abstract of your proposal (under 150 words). Include your name, biographical information, a photo suitable for the web, a title, and a description of your presentation. The reviewing team will evaluate the entries based on the submitted abstracts and available time by following the schedule.

Submission deadline: Feb 16, 2016
Confirmation of paper acceptance: Feb 23, 2016

All interested contributors are highly encouraged to send in talks.
The GNOME.Asia 2016 Team

*More information about GNOME Asia Summit 2016 is available at: http://2016.gnome.asia/

The GNOME Foundation is proud to honor Telsa Gwynne for her contributions to the GNOME community.

It is with deep regret and sadness that we announce that Telsa after living with cancer for a while she passed away this last Tuesday, November 3, 2015. Telsa was a long-time GNOME contributor who began by contributing to Welsh translations. She participated in the bug squad, managing bugs in the GNOME 2 code and documentation, and she served on the release team. She was heavily involved in GNOME, and served on the Board of Directors in 2002.

While Telsa did not consider herself to be a technical person, she was passionate about Free Software, and enjoyed promoting and using it. She brought many new members to the GNOME community with her enthusiasm and kindness. She will be remembered as an early pioneer in creating a positive GNOME community.

Telsa was one of the few women who contributed in the early days of GNOME. While we wish our community had been an inviting place for women like Telsa, it unfortunately was not. Telsa eventually left Free Software due to misogynistic and demeaning comments towards her. While the community has changed quite a bit since then, and has even fostered programs like GNOME OPW to encourage more women to participate in GNOME, we still have a long way to go in making Free Software a welcoming home for everyone.