GNOME 2.14 Release Notes

1. What's New For Users

The GNOME Project's focus on users and usability continues in GNOME 2.14 with its hundreds of bug fixes and user-requested improvements. But the sheer number of enhancements make it impossible to list every change and improvement that have been made. This page hopes to highlight some of the more exciting user-oriented features in this release of GNOME.

1.1. Performance Improvements Just as you would tune your car, our skilled engineers have striven to tune many parts of GNOME to be as fast as possible. Several important components of the GNOME desktop are now measurably faster, including text rendering, memory allocation, and numerous individual applications. Faster font rendering and memory allocation benefit all GNOME and GTK+ based applications without the need for recompilation. Some applications have received special attention to make sure they are performing at their peak. GNOME Terminal, the terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop, has been optimized in several ways to make it faster and, at the same time, more resource efficient. The GNOME Log Viewer now starts up over 20 times faster than before. Figure 1 GNOME Terminal performance improvements between GNOME 2.12 and 2.14. Time taken is the time to print a list of all English words to the screen. Figure 2 Log Viewer performance improvements between GNOME 2.12 and 2.14. Time taken to start the application and read a 2.9MB log file.

1.2. Richer Searching The GNOME file manager, Nautilus, now offers a powerful search interface available by pressing (Ctrl-F) on the desktop or in a file manager window. Figure 3 Search with Nautilus Searches are easily constructed and can then be saved in a folder or on the desktop. Saved searches can then be opened like a folder at a later date. If the Beagle search framework is available, Nautilus will take advantage of it for faster, more contextual searching.

1.3. More Help The GNOME help browser also includes new features for searching help and documentation installed on your machine. Now with access to both GNU Info and traditional UNIX manpages, as well as GNOME's high quality documentation, it is possible to search most of the documentation included on your system quite rapidly. Figure 4 Search Help, view GNU Info files and read manpages Like with the file manager, users who have the Beagle search framework available will be able to utilize it for even faster and more accurate searching.

1.4. Ekiga Ekiga, formerly known as GNOME Meeting, is GNOME's voice and video-over-IP client. Ekiga supports both the SIP and H323 protocols. SIP, a popular protocol used in Google Talk, Asterisk, and many other software and hardware VoIP devices, is a recent addition to Ekiga. H323 is an older communications protocol, used in Microsoft Netmeeting and some telecommunications hardware. Ekiga also features STUN support to allow traversal through many types of firewalls, including Network Address Translating (NAT) firewalls. This means that you can use Ekiga to make and receive calls without having a public IP address or forwarding ports from your router. Figure 5 Making a SIP call with Ekiga Users can also setup an account with Ekiga.net which will provide them with a SIP address they can use on the Internet to make and receive calls from anywhere.

1.5. Improved Window Management Several new features have been added to Metacity to improve window management. Window edges now have a magnetic attraction, making it possible to "click" windows together. Multiple monitor (head) handling has been improved in Metacity. Metacity will now attempt to displace windows that want to appear across a monitor boundary onto one monitor or the other. To help administrators and users of multiple machines from the same X server, the hostname of windows which are not running locally will be displayed in the title bar. This is especially useful when changing settings on machines graphically to ensure that you're making changes on the correct machine. Figure 6 Running an identical window locally and remotely

1.6. Deskbar New to GNOME is the Deskbar. Power users, keyboard enthusiasts and users of the old panel command line will find this replacement incredibly powerful and easy to use. Deskbar uses plugins (written in Python) to provide search functionality for programs, files, folders, bookmarks, contacts and much more. Deskbar can also use the live search functionality of Google Live, Yahoo and Beagle. Figure 7 Searching for 'net' Deskbar has both an in-panel mode, and a collapsed mode for use on vertical panels or panels with little free space. To search you simply press (Alt-F3) and enter some terms. You can also browse or search your command history.

1.7. Login Improvements There have been many new improvements to the login system (GDM). The performance tweaking seen throughout the desktop has also found its way into the login system. There is also a new enhanced "Options" button in the login greeter that allows for quick access to various login functions. A new "secure remote" feature has been added so that users can connect to a X server securely and easily. The look of the login greeter has also improved by allowing for more user customization. Figure 8 It is now easier than ever to change your login preferences in the totally redesigned GDM preferences window. Note: The file used by users to set their GDM configuration settings has changed from /etc/gdm/gdm.conf to /etc/gdm/custom.conf. For more information see the GDM Project page.

1.8. Fast User Switching GNOME 2.14 includes support for fast user switching throughout the desktop. Both the logout and unlock screen dialogs offer the option to switch to another user. A menu can also be added to the panel allowing quick access to user switching. Figure 9 Fast user switching from the panel Figure 10 Switch users from a locked session

1.9. Shared Calendaring A new feature in Evolution 2.6 is shared calendaring over CalDAV. The CalDAV shared calendar protocol is implemented by a number of groupware servers, including the freely available Hula server. Figure 11 Viewing a shared calendar from Hula

1.10. Smarter Bookmarking The Epiphany Web Browser continues to make browsing the world wide web easier. New in this release is the automatic construction of bookmark hierarchies. This reduces the burden of handling large bookmark collections, but retains the simpler topic-based system of bookmark management popular in Epiphany. Topics are now much easier to select and create; Epiphany will even suggest topics based on past usage. Figure 12 Improved bookmark management and stylesheet control Also in this release is support for user-defined stylesheets, providing improved accessibility and user control over page presentation. Behind the scenes Epiphany can now use Firefox, Mozilla or XULRunner as its backend. If you're using NetworkManager, Epiphany will be able to automatically detect your network settings.

1.11. Better Editor Gedit continues to provide the usability of a simple text editor with all the features you need to develop applications or websites. Features in Gedit 2.14 include improved handling of multiple documents and writing to remote files. For example Gedit now allows for the seamless browsing and editing of SFTP, FTP and WebDAV directories directly from the file browser. It also has improved syntax highlighting of HTML, PHP, PSP and much more. These features combine to make Gedit a powerful text editor that can handle all the tasks that users require. Figure 13 Gedit can handle multiple source files easily, opening and saving them locally or over a network Also new is the ability to write plugins for Gedit in Python. This allows the functionality of Gedit to be extended and customized easily, even if you're not a strong programmer. Some useful plugins that come with Gedit include one to execute external commands, support for tag-based completion, and an interactive Python console. Figure 14 Plugins dialog showing the properties for the External Commands plugin

1.12. Image Viewer The GNOME Image Viewer has a new navigation-driven toolbar. Now when you open an image, you can easily view other images from the same directory. Figure 15 Easy navigation through images from same directory

1.13. Integrated Screensaver GNOME now features an integrated screensaver. GNOME Screensaver is compatible with the "hacks" popular in Xscreensaver, but also has lots of new features unavailable in Xscreensaver. Applications that are aware of GNOME Screensaver will be able to communicate with it to set properties like "do not blank screen" over a standard interface. Dialogs such as the unlock screen dialog are now translatable into native languages and accessible to users with disabilities. These accessibility enhancements allow users with disabilities to easily unlock their displays and are part of the ongoing accessibility improvements being made to the entire GNOME Desktop. Figure 16 Configuring GNOME Screensaver properties Users who wish to continue using Xscreensaver will still be able to do so and should consult their vendor's documentation on the specifics.

1.14. Latest GStreamer GNOME 2.14 utilizes the technology of GStreamer 0.10. The GStreamer multimedia framework is a powerful, pluggable audio and video framework used on Linux and UNIX desktops as well as in embedded devices. This latest major version of GStreamer is faster and more stable than its predecessors. Issues like synchronization of audio and video across different devices has been addressed, as has threading and the dynamic handling of multimedia plugins. You can find out more about GStreamer from the GStreamer website. All of the multimedia applications that ship with GNOME have been upgraded to take advantage of the latest GStreamer; including Totem, Sound Juicer, and Volume Control. GStreamer 0.10 will also allow users to take advantage of multimedia plugins distributed by third-party vendors. This will allow vendors to offer support for licensed codecs where a free codec is not available or distributable (for legal reasons). These may include support for AC3, WMA, MP3 and more. A licensed, yet freely available MP3 plugin for GStreamer 0.10 is already being made available by Fluendo, a long-time supporter of GStreamer.