This text is here for archival purposes. The master copy is in the scribus file, i.e. somewhere here: https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-marketing/tree/master/annual-report-2014 The final text should eventually be copied from the file to this wiki page

GNOME Releases

Draft for the annual report.

In 2013 there was two GNOME releases: 3.8 in March and 3.10 in September. Both releases continued building on the momentum from previous releases in the GNOME 3 serie. The new versions marked a significant improvement to GNOME's user and developer experiences.

Highlights for 3.8 included new application launching and search views in the Activities Overview, the introduction of Privacy and Sharing settings, improved animation and video rendering, and input methods integration. A large proportion of the system settings were reworked, a new initial setup assistant was introduced, and Web, the GNOME browser was ported to WebKit2.

3.10 also contained a good number of features and improvements. Initial Wayland support was introduced, as well as a new combined system status menu. Many applications were updated to use the new header bar widget, which was received very positively, and a raft of new applications were introduced, including Maps, Software, Notes, Music and Photos. GNOME 3.10 also included a new geolocation framework, many improvements to system settings, and high resolution display support.

Feature Focus

High Resolution Display Support (HiDPI)

Displays with high resolutions have become increasingly common in the past few years, and can often have resolutions in excess of 2000 pixels across. Screens like this require that interface toolkits adjust their resolution to compensate. Otherwise, the elements displayed on screen can be uncomfortably small.

HiDPI support has been lacking in the Free Software desktop space, and GNOME was the first project to introduce it in the 3.10 release of 2013. Work in this area was primarily done by Alexander Larsson, and was greatly assisted by the donation of a number of high resolution laptops to the GNOME Foundation: first, by Brion Vibber, an indivual supporter, and later by Intel's Open Source Technology Center.

Software

Software is GNOME's new application for installing applications and managing software updates. It aims to provide an "app store" like experience, which makes it easy to find applications to install, either through recommendations, ratings or browsing by category. It provides an application-focused interface, which replaces the previous package-based interface of the past.

An initial version of the new Software application was included in GNOME 3.10, with plans to greatly improve it in subsequent releases. As a part of this effort to provide a more modern application installation experience, Richard Hughes has been working closing with upstream applications to ensure that they provide the necessary metadata, including application descriptions, categories, and screenshots.

Wayland

Wayland is a next generation technology for display and input on Linux. It promises to deliver smoother graphics, with improved animations and transitions. Its modern architecture will provide greater flexibility for developers, and will enable more secure sandboxed applications.

3.10 introduced experimental Wayland support, which provided the ability for developers to test GNOME running on Wayland, and provided the basis for further development work. To do this, GNOME contributors have been working closely with the Wayland development team, and are helping to shape the future of the Linux graphics stack.

Further details about the GNOME 3.8 and 3.10 releases can be found in our release notes.