Gnome is Celebrating it’s 20th Birthday
More than 33 releases since the first release of Gnome.
Gnome was started by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero on August 15, 1997. The primary goal of the project was to create a fully open source alternative of KDE, which was based on Qt widget toolkit that used a non-free licence back then.
Since its initial release in 1999, there have been 33 stable releases of GNOME till date. While Linux caters to power users, developers and sysadmins who prefer CLI, Gnome focuses on ease of use. No wonder Ubuntu, a distribution that targeted PC users picked Gnome as the default desktop environment.
Gnome has made some significant progress in the Linux desktop space with the 3.x family. They have built a distro agnostic software center that allows users of any distro to not only install and update applications, but also update the distribution itself.
Gnome also brought the capability of accessing Google Drive from within Linux desktops, a feature that’s not officially supported by Google.
No wonder that even the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds runs Gnome as his favorite desktop.
Gnome used to be the default desktop environment for Ubuntu, before Canonical introduced its own Unity shell. As a result of that decision, Gnome lost millions of users. But recently, Canonical decided to pull out of desktop space and focus on enterprise. They ditched Unity and went back to Gnome. That means Gnome will return to millions of Ubuntu desktop users.
Happy 20th Birthday, Gnome.
Issue 262/2022
Buy this issue as a PDF
News
-
OpenMandriva Lx ROME Technical Preview Released
OpenMandriva’s rolling release distribution technical preview has been released for testing purposes and adds some of the latest/greatest software into the mix.
-
Linux Mint 21 is Now Available
The latest iteration of Linux Mint, codenamed Vanessa, has been released with a new upgrade tool and other fantastic features.
-
Firefox Adds Long-Anticipated Feature
Firefox 103 has arrived and it now includes a feature users have long awaited…sort of.
-
System76 Refreshes Their Popular Oryx Pro Laptop with a New CPU
The System76 Oryx Pro laptop has been relaunched with a 12th Gen CPU and more powerful graphics options.
-
Elive Has Released a New Beta
The Elive team is proud to announce the latest beta version (3.8.30) of its Enlightenment-centric Linux distribution.
-
Rocky Linux 9 Has Arrived
The latest iteration of Rocky Linux is now available and includes a host of new features and support for new architecture.
-
Slimbook Executive Linux Ultrabook Upgrading Their CPUs
The Spanish-based company, Slimbook, has made available their next generation Slimbook Executive Linux ultrabooks with a 12th Gen Intel Alder Lake CPU.
-
Fedora Linux is Coming to the Raspberry Pi 4
Thanks to significant work in the upstream, the upcoming release of Fedora 37 will introduce support for the Raspberry Pi 4.
-
New Linux Ultrabook from TUXEDO Computers
TUXEDO Computers has released a new 15" Ultrabook running Linux.
-
GNOME 43 To Bring Some Exciting New Features
GNOME 43 is getting close to the first alpha development release and it promises to add one particular feature that should be exciting to several users.