It looks like the folks behind the GNOME Project are firing on all cylinders, as they have just released the second beta of the upcoming GNOME 2.28, less than two weeks after the first beta was given to the public.

This increment boasts quite a large list of bugfixes and more than a handful of performance improvements. Also, the developers enforced a string freeze until the final version will be released, ensuring that the translators and the documentation writers will get a stable English interface for screenshots and translations.

Frederic Peters, one of the GNOME developers, said in the release announcement that "This is the seventh development release, and the second beta, towards our 2.28 release that will happen in September 2009. [...] With this release we are now string frozen, no string changes may be made without confirmation from the l10n team."

Highlights of GNOME 2.27.91:

· GLib performance improvements; · GTK+ had some memory leaks that were fixed and gained a compatibility mode; · The Empathy instant messenger now has the ability to use the ConnMan network manager; · Epiphany has an improved find toolbar, both performance and functionality-wise; · The GNOME Control Center features a lot of improvements and fixes; · GNOME Panel doesn't show icons for actions and categories anymore. It also received many improvements and bugfixes.

For a detailed list with all the bug fixes and improvements in GNOME 2.27.91, please take a look at the official changelogs. Below is a list with all the updated packages and their respective versions:

Accerciser 1.7.91, At-Spi 1.27.91, Brasero 2.27.91, Cheese 2.27.91, Deskbar Applet 2.27.91, Empathy 2.27.91.1, Epiphany 2.27.91, Evolution 2.27.91, Evolution Data Server 2.27.90, Evolution Exchange 2.27.91, Evolution Mapi 0.27.91, Evolution Webcal 2.27.90, Eye of GNOME 2.27.91, File Roller 2.27.91, gCalcTool 5.27.91, GConf 2.27.0, GConf Editor 2.27.91, GDM 2.27.90, gEdit 2.27.5, GLib 2.21.5, GLibmm 2.21.4, GNOME Applets 2.27.91, GNOME Control Center 2.27.91, GNOME Desktop 2.27.91, GNOME Developer Documentation 2.27.1, GNOME Doc Utils 0.17.4, GNOME Icon Theme 2.27.90, GNOME Media 2.27.90.fix, GNOME Panel 2.27.91, GNOME Power Manager 2.27.91, GNOME Session 2.27.91, GNOME Settings Daemon 2.27.91, GNOME System Tools 2.27.3, GNOME Terminal 2.27.91, GNOME Themes 2.27.91, GNOME User Documentation 2.27.1, GNOME Utilities 2.27.91, GOK 2.27.91, GTK+ 2.17.9, GtkHTML 3.37.91, GTKmm 2.17.9, GtkSourceView 2.7.4, gVFS 1.3.5, libgnomekbd 2.27.91, libgweather 2.27.91, libsigc++ 2.2.4, liboobs-2.22.1, libsoup 2.27.91, MouseTweaks 2.27.91, Nautilus 2.27.91, Orca 2.27.91, Pango 1.25.5, Pangomm 2.25.1, Pessulus 2.27.91, pyGTK 2.16.0, pyGtkSourceView 2.7.0, Sabayon 2.27.91, Seed 2.27.91, Tomboy 0.15.6, Vinagre 2.27.91, Vino 2.27.91, VTE 0.21.4, Yelp 2.27.4.

Work continues as we are all waiting for the final release, planned for late September. If you decide to try out this version, be aware that it is a snapshot of development code. Although it is buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking purposes.

Download GNOME 2.27.91 (or the stable 2.26.3 version) right now from Softpedia.