Preview-GNOME 2.20

GENOME 2.20 is out and has already been incorporated in two most popular

Linux distros---Mandriva 2008 and OpenSuSE 10.3. However, it's not yet out as

standard RPM or deb files for installation or upgrade on older distros. So, if

you don't want to install Mandriva or OpenSuSE, you can still check out the new

GNOME. Simply download Foresight Linux from http://torrent.GNOME.org/, which is

essentially a Live CD developed by GNOME developers. Here's a sneak preview of

the popular desktop GUI.

Intuitive new features



If you are among those who often send mails and forget to attach actual

files, then GNOME has something really interesting for you. The default mail

client of GNOME 2.20, ie Evolution, has this nifty feature that is always on the

lookout for words such as attachment, attach, etc whenever you type a mail. In

case it finds a match, it warns you about the possibility of a mail attachment

and requests you to confirm the same before you send the mail. Of course, there

is no great technology behind this but it's really useful to have. Plus, you

will also see a task bar icon of evolution in GNOME 2.20.

GNOME is clever enough to understand the EXIF information from new age

cameras. EXIF or Exchangeable Image File is an image file format that

incorporates specific metadata into JPEG or Tiff files, which when copied to a

computer, tell you the orientation of an image. So, your GNOME File Manager will

automatically discover portrait and landscape images while being transferred

from the EXIF enabled camera to the PC and do the needful changes to their

orientation.

GENOME has another interesting feature that doesn't involve any rocket

science, but is thoughtful nonetheless. GNOME's 'Locked Screen' dialog has a

button called 'Leave a note' where visitors can drop in a note in your absence.

You don't need sticky notes anymore thanks to this feature.

User profiles



A new tool called Sabayon has been incorporated with GNOME, which is a User

Profile Editor where admins can configure user profiles sitting on a live GNOME

session. When a profile is created or edited, a nested GNOME session starts up.

An administrator can use this to change GConf keys inside the GNOME session.

Inside the nested window, the admin can create personalized profiles depending

on the type of work a user is supposed to perform. The best part is that these

profiles can be saved in a central location and deployed across multiple

machines.

If you type attach while composing a mail in Evolution, without actually attaching a file, it pops up a warning

Bottomline: The new GUI has a host of

interesting features, some of which are so simple, and yet one wonders why

didn't anybody think of them before.