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[Fwd: Distribution Update - article]

Two more articles from Glynn and Davyd - both need some work (including
some sensitive material and factual corrections).

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
dneary free fr
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Hey,

So Dave asked me if I had time to put together a brief article as a distribution
update for an upcoming GNOME newsletter that he's trying to launch. I've jotted
down some lines but I could use some help with editing it for correctness and
probably some enthusiasm. I suspect the target audience is primarily the
advisory board, but could also very much include the foundation membership.

Let me know if a wiki is more appropriate.


Glynn

GNOME has had continued support from all of the major distributions
this year, with the latest release of the desktop and developer platform
being a strong part of various distribution releases. 

In October this year, the Fedora community released Fedora Core 6, codenamed 
'Zod', including GNOME 2.16. Red Hat are currently in beta for a new version 
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, also including GNOME 2.16, due out early 
next year.

Earlier this year Canonical announced Ubuntu 6.06, providing long term 
support for the product, with a special emphasis on the needs of large 
organizations with both desktop and server versions. The Ubuntu 
community have also continued their regular release schedule with Ubuntu 
6.10, codenamed 'Edgy Eft', out in October, also leading with GNOME 2.16.

The OpenSuSE community produced 10.2, with a strong focus on a 'design first'
methodology, conducting several hours of usability studies and later
using them to produce their final desktop designs. OpenSuSE was also one
of the first distributions to include functionality taking advantage of
OpenGL with the Compiz window manager. Novell also released their enterprise
product, SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, in March this year.

The OpenSolaris community had its one year anniversary this year, and made
consistent strides in providing an up to date desktop environment, with
GNOME 2.16 being included in Sun's Solaris Express release in November
this year.

Debian continue on their next stable distribution, Etch, which will include
GNOME 2.14 due out early next year. In October this year, Mandriva launched
their Linux 2007 distribution, also including a GNOME based AIGLX and Xgl 
3D-accelerated desktop.

FIXME - include some stuff about Sugar/Maemo/Palm/Others?

The GNOME Foundation would like to congratulate all the distributions for
their hard work during this year, and would like to thank everyone for their
continued support of the project.

-- 
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/board-list
 
>From time to time confidential and sensitive information will be discussed
on this mailing list. Please take care to mark confidential information as
confidential, and do not redistribute this information without permission.

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
-- 
Davyd Madeley

http://www.davyd.id.au/
08B0 341A 0B9B 08BB 2118  C060 2EDD BB4F 5191 6CDA

2006 was an exciting year for the GNOME Project. With a new, leaner 7 person
board behind the wheel the year was started with the exciting news of a
GNOME deployment in Macedonia and Brazil.

GNOME lovers turned out in
droves for the 3rd GNOME.conf.au, run in conjunction with Linux.conf.au in
Dunedin this January. Glynn Foster run the now ubiquitous GNOME Love Wall,
where users could write down what they love and hate about GNOME.

FOSDEM...

March saw the smooth release of GNOME 2.14 including new software like the
accessible GNOME Screensaver, the incredible useful Deskbar and integrated
fast user switching. GNOME 2.14 was shipped with a number of popular desktop
distributions including Ubuntu Dapper and Fedora Core 5.

Google's popular Summer of Code ran again in 2006 with GNOME mentoring 20
projects. Although GNOME received 181 applications, not one was from a
woman. For this reason, the Chris Ball and Hanna Wallach of the GNOME
Foundation decided to launch the Women's Summer Outreach Program. The
program was highly successful with 100 applications being received in just
one fortnight. 6 were chosen to participate in the program.

For some, GUADEC is GNOME. This year Vilanova i la Geltru, in deepest,
darkest Catalonia, was its host. With its longer, revamped format, GUADEC
was a huge success. Both around the conference venue and at the "hacker
village", faces both new and old could be seen talking about, designing,
developing and enjoying GNOME. Memorable events at this year's GUADEC
included the Fluendo party and the Nokia party, with a live band consisting
of seven GNOME contributors.

New versions of several pieces of the GNOME Platform were released in July
including GLib 2.12, GTK+ 2.10 and Cairo 1.2. July also saw the attempted
migration of the GNOME project from the CVS revision
control system to the much newer Subversion. Unfortunately things did not go
to plan and the migration had to be aborted. Not giving up hope, the project
hopes to be using Subversion for revision control by 2007.

It was a year of big software releases both in and around GNOME. Gnucash
reached version 2.0; Ekiga 2.0 was released, had its 5th birthday and won an
award for its excellence; Glade 3.0 released; and exciting new projects like
Jokosher, a GNOME and GStreamer based audio editor and Elisa, a GStreamer
based media centre had their first releases. Project
Portland, the cross-desktop working group announced it's 1.0 release of
cross-desktop compatibility tools.

It was also a year of big GNOME announcements, with OLPC, OpenMoko and
ACCESS (formerly
PalmSource) announcing they're now using GNOME technology in their devices.
Nokia released the 2006 update for the popular Nokia 770 including SIP
support based on the Telepathy framework.
The GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative was formed. Several new GNOME
deployments, including a localised live CD in Bhutan were announced.

Soon enough it was that time again, and GNOME 2.16 released on time this
September. 2.16 contained a number of important pieces of software, as well
as taking full advantage of the latest GTK+, GLib and Cairo, it also include
the Orca screenreader, a fully functioning menu editor (finally), integrated
power management and the Tomboy note taking application. The inclusion of
Tomboy was controversial, because it meant that GNOME also included the GTK#
and GNOME# bindings for Mono applications.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology once again played host to the GNOME
Summit, held in the very modern Stata Centre. The Summit this year was held
as a series of BOFs. Minutes were taken in each which were later submitted
to the mailing list for those who could not attend in person.

The project to revamp GNOME's website was started and the new online
documentation system was begun. Sun donated two Ultra20 workstations to the
project, which were given to Elijah Newren and Behdad Esfahbod for their
outstanding contributions to GNOME. Sun also open sourced Java.

So as 2007 looms ever closer, GNOME finds itself with a new board, the upcoming
Subversion migration and the first freezes of the GNOME 2.18 release,
leaving GNOME poised for total world domination, probably at some point in
2008, undoubtedly a Wednesday, around 1pm.

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