GNOME 2.22: A Truly Amazing Desktop!

 

Every six months, the GNOME team prepares a new and revolutionary release of the ever popular GNOME desktop environment. Today, we are proud to introduce you to the latest and greatest features of an 100% FREE and open source desktop. Whether you are on a Solaris machine or the latest Ubuntu distribution, GNOME is there and with every new release it makes your life… Simply Beautiful!

Let’s have a look at the new features of GNOME 2.22:

The Cheese software – a brand new application designed to “take care” of your webcam. It allows you to make photos and record videos using your little… webcam! Say… cheese!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Window Compositing – a brand new technology introduced in GNOME 2.22, which will offer drop shadows on windows, live previews when hitting the Alt+Tab key combination and some very nice transparency effect. All this, without Compiz!
DVD or DVB? – why not both?! Because, starting with the 2.22 edition of the GNOME desktop, Totem will have improved support for DVD playback and digital television (DVB). Moreover, support for the popular MythTV and the Youtube service is also present in GNOME’s Movie Player.

GVFS – this new network-transparent virtual filesystem layer for GTK+ is here to make your desktop sessions much pleasant. How? Why? Well, for example: do you remember that simple file transfer/copy/move window that appears (yes! the one with the progress bar and remaining time)… well, because of GVFS, it’s now able to show you more than a progress bar! It can also remember the login credentials and be more resilient to failures! But wait, that’s not all, as with this technology, all GNOME users will have access to new protocols, such as: cdda:// (used to show the audio tracks of an inserted Audio-CD), gphoto2:// (used to access a connected digital camera’s photos).

International Clock – a new function “injected” into the clock applet, which can display multiple timezones from around the world!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

More Evolution Improvements – with the amazing Google Calendar support and custom message labels (tagging) for your emails, better spam filtering and making error dialogs less intrusive on your desktop session by using the status bar rather than popups!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Remote Desktop Viewer – yet another new application that can be found in the 2.22 edition of the GNOME desktop. It complements the existing remote desktop server support and has the ability to discover computers on your LAN (local area network) and bookmark them! Isn’t that cool?

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Simplified Keyboard Settings – with the redesigned “Keyboard Preferences” window, which now combines the old “Keyboard Layout” and “Keyboard Accessibility Preferences” dialogs. All the keyboard settings in one place… yeah baby!

image courtesy of the GNOME Project

Other noticeable features that can be found in GNOME 2.22 are:

• magnification and screenreading improvements;
• new mouse accessibility features;
• PolicyKit integration;
• better system tools;
• you are now able to directly open Evolution contacts in Deskbar;
• Gedit, the GNOME’s text editor receives printing improvements;
• The Chess game has now network multiplayer support;
• Epiphany brings you download notifications;
• The Archive Manager tool received LZMA (7-zip) support;
• inhibit automatic hibernation and suspend while burning CDs;
• Evince, the document viewer, is now much faster, uses less memory and it’s able to support page transitions in PDF slideshows;
• Tomboy is able to organize your notes into notebooks from now on;
• Sound Juicer supports more metadata, including disc number and year;
• extensive improvements to Calculator’s precision and usability;
• Seahorse is the new sheriff in town, as it completely replaced Keyring Manager.

Source: Softpedia

Apple Mac mini (2-GHz Core 2 Duo)

by Joel Santo Domingo

The Apple Mac mini has been around in one form or another for almost three years, and while the internal components have changed, the general concept and overall design has stayed the same. Pricing starts at $599, but the one we looked at is the upgraded 2-GHz $799 model. It’s one of the forerunners of the green PC, having gone through several generations of substituting energy-efficient notebook-class components for desktop parts since the G4-powered Mac minis of early 2005. The Mac mini has been the lower-priced, entry-level Mac, but now that it’s equipped with the Core 2 Duo processors, it is as powerful as a larger desktop while retaining its power (and space) savings. The Apple Mac mini appeals to both space-constrained and green-thinking PC users.

The Mac mini (2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo) comes in the usual 6.5-inch-square by two-inch-high white plastic and brushed-metal chassis. Like other Apple products, it’s iconic within its category. The system’s IR receiver for the included remote is on the front of the chassis, along with the slot-loading DVD burner. The remote is the same old Apple remote, with simplified controls and a small size that makes it somewhat easy to lose. Now that Front Row 2.0—which gives the mini an Apple TV-like interface so you can easily listen to and view all of your digital media like photos, music and videos—is part of Leopard, the remote becomes more than a novelty. And since the mini’s 120GB hard drive is enough to hold your iTunes library, even including downloaded videos, the mini now gives you the functionality of Apple TV (plus the ability to order stuff in iTunes) for only a few hundred dollars more—and you get a full-blown PC as well. You do have to buy the monitor, keyboard, and mouse separately for the mini.

Like most Apple systems the mini is quiet, with almost no fan noise. (You have to stick your ear next to the mini to hear the hard drive working.). It does still use an external power brick, but now that’s a plus instead of a hindrance. That’s because the brick is more efficient than some internal power supplies, particularly when the system is sleeping or idle. This Mac mini is both Energy Star 4.0 and EPEAT Silver certified, so it will serve you well while making a minimal impact on the environment (though it’s not quite the virtue generator that a Toyota Prius would be). Your power bills will be lower, and since the mini is physically such a small system, the impact when you recycle it will be smaller as well. According to EPEAT reporting, the mini is 90 percent recyclable (65 percent is the minimum needed to get any sort of EPEAT certification). Other components, like the 2.5-inch notebook-class hard drive and integrated graphics, help you cut down on power use in the long run.

Alas, the Mac mini’s performance on the benchmark tests was unimpressive. The Mac mini failed to run 3DMark06 while under Vista via Boot Camp, though its Windows Media Encoder scores were respectable: 1 minute 32 seconds (less than 2 minutes is considered very good). Its Photoshop scores were okay but not great: a slow 2 minutes flat on Photoshop CS2 can be attributed to the systems’ relatively meager 1GB of memory (we recommend 2GB). The time improved to 1:10 when I upgraded to Photoshop CS3, which is Intel-optimized in Mac OS X. For thoroughness, I tested CS2 (2:22) and CS3 (1:03) under Windows Vista as well. Again, good but not great. It is notable that at least for Photoshop CS3, the Mac mini makes a really good Vista PC.

Compared with systems like the HP Slimline 3200 series, the Mac mini is much smaller and has the benefit of being both a Mac OS X and a Windows PC. The HP Pavilion Slimline s3020n PC does have larger hard drives, optional internal TV tuners, and also works with MCE extenders like the Xbox 360. Look for more compact systems to start muscling in on the Mac mini’s turf as 2008 unfolds.

The Apple Mac mini continues to be an energy-efficient computer as well as a design statement. It’s an attractive alternative to Windows Vista PCs, even those with small form factors, since it’s a visual, technological, and spiritual match for the iPods in millions of pockets worldwide. It’s worth putting on your short list.

Source: PC Magazine

Windows 7 (Vienna)

Windows 7 (formerly known as Blackcomb and Vienna) is the working name for the next major version of Microsoft Windows as the successor of Windows Vista. Microsoft has announced that it is “scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year timeframe”, and that “the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar.” The client versions of Windows 7 will ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. A server variant, codenamed Windows Server 7, is also under development.

Microsoft is maintaining a policy of silence concerning discussion of plans and aspirations for Windows 7 as they focus on the release and marketing of Windows Vista, stating that Microsoft doesn’t want to promise features and then fail to deliver, though some early details of various core operating system features have emerged. As a result, little is known about the feature set, though public presentations from company officials have disseminated information about some features. Leaked information from people to whom Milestone 1 (M1) of Windows 7 was shipped also provide some insight into the feature set.

History

Circa 2000, Windows XP and its server counterpart Windows Server 2003 (codenamed Whistler) were planned to be followed-up by a major release of Windows that was codenamed Blackcomb (both codenames refer to the Whistler-Blackcomb resort) and scheduled for a 2005 release. Major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. In this context, a feature mentioned by Bill Gates for Blackcomb was “a pervasive typing line that will recognize the sentence that [the user is] typing in.”

Later Blackcomb was delayed and an interim minor release, codenamed “Longhorn”, was announced for a 2003 release. By the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb, including WinFS, the Desktop Window Manager, and new versions of system components built on the .NET Framework. After the Summer of Worms, where three major viruses exploited flaws in Windows operating systems within a short time period, Microsoft changed their development priorities, putting some of Longhorn’s major development work on hold while new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that included a number of new security and safety features. Development of Windows Vista was also “reset” in September 2004 as a result of concerns about the quality of code that was being introduced to the operating system. The eventual result of this was that WinFS, the Next Generation Secure Computing Base, and other features seen in Longhorn builds were deemed “not ready” for wide release, and as such did not appear in Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.

As major feature work on Windows Vista wound down in early 2006, Blackcomb was renamed Vienna. However, following the release of Windows Vista, it was confirmed by Microsoft on July 20, 2007 that “the internal name for the next version of the Windows Client OS” is Windows 7, a name that had been reported by some sources months before.

Focus

Microsoft’s Ben Fathi claimed on February 9, 2007 that the focus on the operating system was still being worked out, and could merely hint at some possibilities:

We’re going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe it’s hypervisors. I don’t know what it is” [...] “Maybe it’s a new user interface paradigm for consumers.

Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that the next version of Windows would “be more user-centric.” When asked to clarify what he meant, Gates said:

That means that right now when you move from one PC to another, you’ve got to install apps on each one, do upgrades on each one. Moving information between them is very painful. We can use Live Services to know what you’re interested in. So even if you drop by a [public] kiosk or somebody else’s PC, we can bring down your home page, your files, your fonts, your favorites and those things. So that’s kind of the user-centric thing that Live Services can enable. [Also,] in Vista, things got a lot better with [digital] ink and speech, but by the next release there will be a much bigger bet. Students won’t need textbooks; they can just use these tablet devices. Parallel computing is pretty important for the next release. We’ll make it so that a lot of the high-level graphics will be just built into the operating system. So we’ve got a pretty good outline.

Milestone 1

The first known build of Windows 7 was identified as a “Milestone 1 (M1) code drop” according to TG Daily with a version number of 6.1.6519.1. It was sent to key Microsoft partners by January 2008 in both x86 and x64 versions. Though not yet commented on by Microsoft, reviews and screenshots have been published by various sources. The M1 code drop installation requires Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, and creates a dual-boot system with Windows Vista.

Later builds

According to TG Daily, the Milestone 2 (M2) code drop is scheduled for April or May 2008. UI changes are expected to appear in later builds of Windows 7. Milestone 3 (M3) is listed as coming in the third quarter, with the release to manufacturing in the second half of 2009. The release dates of a beta version and a release candidate are “to be determined”.

Features

Windows 7 has reached the Milestone 1 (M1) stage and has been made available to key partners. According to reports sent to TG Daily, the build adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards and a new version of Windows Media Center. New features in Milestone 1 also reportedly include Gadgets being integrated into Windows Explorer, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, the ability to visually pin and unpin items from the Start Menu and Recycle Bin, improved media features, a new XPS Viewer, and the Calculator accessory featuring Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion.

Reports indictate that a feedback tool included in Milestone 1 lists some coming features: the ability to store Internet Explorer settings on a Windows Live account, updated versions of Paint and WordPad, and a 10 minute install process. In addition, improved network connection tools might be included.

MinWin

A minimalistic variation of the Windows kernel, known as MinWin, is being developed for use in Windows 7. The MinWin development efforts are aimed towards componentizing the Windows kernel and reducing the dependencies with a view to carving out the minimal set of components required to build a self-contained kernel as well as reducing the disk footprint and memory usage. MinWin takes up about 25 MB on disk and has a working set (memory usage) of 40 MB. It lacks a graphical user interface and is interfaced using a full-screen command line interface. It includes the I/O and networking subsystems. MinWin was first publicly demonstrated on October 13, 2007 by Eric Traut. The demo system included an OS image, made up of about 100 files, on which a basic HTTP server was running.

Incidentally, the name MinWin was also used earlier to refer to what is currently known as Server Core in Windows Server 2008. However, the two are quite different. While both efforts are to consolidate and componentize the core of Windows, with server core, the functionality of the OS is constrained according to server roles, and unneeded components (which will never be used as the role isn’t supported) are removed from the binary image. However, the dependencies still exist in code, and the code cannot compile without the components. In contrast, with MinWin, the dependencies are consolidated into MinWin and what is not needed is removed at the code level itself. As a result, the code compiles even without any extraneous components and builds a stripped-down self-contained OS kernel image.

Methods of input

On December 11, 2007, Hilton Locke, who worked on the Tablet PC team at Microsoft reported that Windows 7 will have new touch features.

I will say that if you are impressed by the “touch features” in the iPhone, you’ll be blown away by what’s coming in Windows 7. Now if only we could convince more OEMs that Windows Touch Technology is going to drive their sales.

Also, Bill Gates has said that Windows 7 is also “a big step forward” for speech technology and handwriting recognition

Source: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

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