GNOME 2.24

Schedule | Release Notes

With 8.10 comes GNOME 2.24, which just got released a few days ago. (If you're confused, this is how GNOME works: Every even number release is final. Every odd number release is testing. Ex. GNOME 2.23 is testing for GNOME 2.24. It's another way of calling GNOME 2.24 alpha x, beta x, RC x.)

GNOME 2.24 is a big improvement over GNOME 2.22. (Duh.)

One thing everyone's hyped over about is Nautilus tab support. Yes, you heard me right: Nautilus has tabs! Even though PCManFM is lightweight and has tabs, there's not a lot of people who move to it because of its lightweightness. People move to it because it has tab support. Well I'm thinking Nautilus 2.24 is going to bring them back soon with Ubuntu 8.10. See my new article specifically on this here.

Another exciting thing is that many of GNOME (and Ubuntu's) default applications are making their move to GIO/GVFS for back-ends, which will improve performance and fix technical issues. Eye of GNOME (Image Viewer) is moving, so is File Roller (Archive Manager,) Gedit (Text Editor,) and GNOME Control Center (Control Center.) Wait, there's more, three more!: GNOME Media, Baobab (Disk Usage Analyzer,) and Totem (Movie Player!)

Now, down to the details. File Roller Archive Manager supports four new file types! Guess what they are? They're ALZ, RZIP, CAB, and TAR.7Z! How did it achieve this? By getting the help of p7zip, of course! Finally, no more "sudo aptitude install unalz && cd /home/exsecrabilus/Desktop && unalz file.alz". Yay! I wrote a whole new article just for this subject!

See also my article Exit Strategy, which is another project for GNOME 2.24 that will enhance logging off/shutting down from your computer.