What's New For Users

The GNOME Project's focus on users and usability continues in GNOME 2.22 with its hundreds of bug fixes and user-requested improvements. The sheer number of enhancements makes it impossible to list every change and improvement made, but we hope to highlight some of the more exciting user-oriented features in this release of GNOME.

3.1. Say Cheese

Figure 2The Cheese program.

GNOME 2.22 introduces a new application, Cheese. Cheese lets you take photos and make videos using your computer's webcam. You can apply a range of different effects like mauve, noir/blanc, shagadelic, and warp. You can share these photos and videos with your friends, load them into F-Spot, or set them as your account photo.

3.2. Window Compositing

GNOME 2.22 introduces window compositing on capable platforms. Fitting with GNOME's "keeping it simple" policy, the features are very low key. The most noticeable changes are drop shadows on windows, live previews when switching windows with Alt+Tab, and transparency effects.

Not all graphics hardware reliably supports compositing, so this feature is currently turned off by default and not yet exposed in the preferences. If you know you have graphics hardware that supports compositing, you can run the following command: gconftool-2 -s --type bool /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager true from the run dialogue, or set the key in the Configuration Editor. To disable compositing, set the key to false.

3.3. Better Networked Filesystems

GNOME 2.22 introduces GVFS: a new network-transparent virtual filesystem layer for GTK+. GVFS is designed to overcome the shortcomings of the older GNOME-VFS system. Improvements over GNOME-VFS include remembering login credentials for the entire session and being more resilient to failures. Many GNOME applications are already using GVFS, including all of the core applications.

With the switch to GVFS, GNOME is now using the Freedesktop.org Desktop Wastebasket specification to handle the storage of deleted files.

Some new protocols are also available. cdda:// will show all of the audio tracks on a CD, available as WAV files. gphoto2:// will give you access to any connected digital cameras.

GNOME's File Manager is now smarter about removable media, and will show you an information bar with possible actions when you insert removable media or browse to a folder on a removable drive.

Technical information about GVFS is available in Section 6.1 ― GVFS and GIO under What's New For Developers.

3.4. DVD, Digital TV, and More

GNOME's Movie Player now offers improved support for DVD playback as well as support for digital television (DVB). Also appearing in 2.22 is a selection of new plugins, including support for MythTV, YouTube and Tracker-based searching. This release also features playlist sharing and the ability to select subtitles for files.

GNOME 2.22 premieres the capability to preview and play Flash content and video using the free and open Flash decoder swfdec.

3.5. International Clock

No need to do any more mental arithmetic to work out what time your teleconference starts in Sydney. GNOME 2.22 now has internationalisation built into its clock. You can add multiple locations from around the world to see the local time and weather.

Figure 3The international clock.

3.6. Continual Evolution

Evolution continues to be improved with new support for Google Calendars and custom message labels (tagging) for your e-mail.

Figure 4Evolution showing a Google Calendar.

Work has also gone into improving the speed of spam filtering and making error dialogues less intrusive on your desktop session by using the status bar rather than popups.

3.7. Remote Desktop

New in GNOME 2.22 is the Remote Desktop Viewer. This application complements the existing remote desktop server support in GNOME. It features the ability to discover machines on the local network and bookmark your favourites.

Figure 5Remote Desktop Viewer interacting with the current desktop.

Users desiring more control over the remote desktop server will also appreciate the addition of an Advanced tab in the properties dialogue.

3.8. Simplified Keyboard Settings

The keyboard layout and keyboard accessibility preferences have been merged into one dialogue, putting every keyboard setting you need in one place. Desktop Keyboard Shortcuts remain separate.

Figure 6The new Keyboard Preferences dialogue.

3.9. But that's not all...

GNOME 2.22 also features many bug fixes and user-required enhancements from the last six months of development, including:

  • directly open Evolution contacts in Deskbar;
  • improved printing in Text Editor;
  • network multiplayer in Chess;
  • download notifications in Epiphany;
  • LZMA (7-zip) support in Archive Manager;
  • inhibit automatic suspend and hibernation while burning CDs;
  • Document Viewer is now faster and uses less memory;
  • Document Viewer can also now support page transitions in PDF Slideshows;
  • Tomboy can now organise your notes into notebooks;
  • Sound Juicer now supports more metadata, including disc number and year;
  • extensive improvements to Calculator's precision and usability;
  • Keyring Manager has been completely replaced by Seahorse;
  • much, much more that you'll have to install or upgrade to see!