Introduction

GNOME 3.0 is a major milestone in the history of the GNOME Project. The release introduces an exciting new desktop which has been designed for today's users and which is suited to a range of modern computing devices. GNOME's developer technologies have been substantially improved for 3.0. Modernised and streamlined, they will enable developers to provide better user experiences with less time and effort. And GNOME 3.0 comes with the same GNOME applications that users know and trust, many of which have received significant enhancements.

Figure 1GNOME 3.0

GNOME 3.0 follows the project's predictable release cycle and comes six months after the last GNOME release, version 2.32. It is the culmination of three years' planning and development and is the project's first major release in nine years.

3.0 is the beginning of a new journey for GNOME. The 3.x release series will continue with the project's predictable six-month development cycles, but will build on the trend of innovation seen in 3.0, delivering significant enhancements to the GNOME user and developer experiences.

The GNOME Project is an international community which works to make great software available to all. All our work is free to use, modify and redistribute, and everyone is welcome to participate in its creation. If you would like to help make our products even better, you can join us.