GNOME Annual Report 2007 - Distributions
Author: Lucas Rocha
GNOME continues to have strong support from a number of GNU/Linux distributions. In 2007, the latest GNOME Desktop and Platform releases were shipped in all the major desktop and mobile distributions.
Earlier this year, the Fedora community released Fedora Core 7 with GNOME 2.18, including improved overall hardware support and more. In October, Fedora Core 8 was released with GNOME 2.20, Compiz Fusion desktop effects enabled by default, and the initial version of the Online Desktop stack including Bigboard sidebar and other components.
In April, Canonical released Ubuntu "Feisty Fawn" 7.04 with GNOME 2.18, networking improvements, easier multimedia codec management and more. October saw the release of Ubuntu "Gutsy Gibbon" 7.10 which included GNOME 2.20, improved hardware management features, Compiz Fusion desktop effects enabled by default and integrated desktop search. In addition to the desktop targeted releases, Canonical is now working with Intel on the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded (UME) project which aims to provide an operating system for mobile internet devices using Ubuntu as a base.
Sun released the Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) in February and May which included GNOME 2.16, and the September release of SXDE included GNOME 2.18. The OpenSolaris community released the OpenSolaris Developer Preview in November, the first milestone for Project Indiana which aims to create a binary distribution of an operating system built out of OpenSolaris. In 2007, in addition to updated versions of GNOME, HAL was integrated with Solaris and OpenSolaris providing better USB, Firewire, CD/DVD support. The first official release of OpenSolaris is planned for Spring 2008 and will ship with GNOME 2.20.
In October of this year, the openSUSE team released openSUSE 10.3 with GNOME 2.20, refreshed artwork, a GTK+ version of YaST, a new 1-click-install technology, Compiz Fusion desktop effects enabled out of the box, virtualisation improvements, and other additions. The 10.3 release also ships with the latest versions of the well-known GNOME-based applications, F-Spot for photo management and Banshee for music management, which received a number of usability improvements.
The Debian community released Debian 4.0, codename "Etch", on August 15th after more than one year of heavy development. The 4.0 release brings important hardware support enhancements and ships with GNOME 2.14, which received many stability and integration improvements.
Since the GNOME 2.18 release this past March, Ken VanDine, lead developer of Foresight Linux, has been kindly preparing Live Media of the latest GNOME stable releases. The GNOME Live Media images include a LiveCD, a VMWare image and a QEMU image available for download at http://torrent.gnome.org and are available the same day as GNOME releases. Additionally, in early December, Ken created the GNOME Developer Kit, which is a Foresight-based image (available as a VMWare live image and installable ISO) with daily builds of the development version of the GNOME Desktop and Platform. The goal is to provide an easy to use platform for testing, developing, documenting, and translating GNOME.
Among the FLOSS mobile initiatives, the GNOME Platform has been used as a basis for OpenMoko, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and Maemo projects. OpenMoko had two initial releases of their distribution and development platform in 2007, mostly targeted for developer consumption. The Maemo project released version 4.0, codename "Chinook", of their SDK; and is now shipping Hildon 2.0, their GTK+ 2.10 based application framework.
The GNOME Foundation would like to thank everyone involved in the development of GNOME-based distributions and we're looking forward to seeing more success in 2008!
Design notes
See sketch here.
