Yes, a brand-spanking-new version of the Gnome desktop is now available for your downloading and compiling leisure (although for most of us, it's easier to wait for the next round of distro upgrades).

Various new user-facing features have been rolled into the codebase, but also of interest is the stuff that's removed. As part of the progress towards Gnome 3.0, the developers have ripped out crusty old code – there are no longer any applications that depend on esound, libgnomevfs, libgnomeprint, or libgnomeprintui. Hurrah for that.

You can see the full release notes here, or read on for a quick summary of the changes.

• Epiphany browser has switched from Gecko to WebKit for better performance
• New utility for managing Bluetooth devices
• Empathy IM client has reorganised GUI
• Media Player can navigate DVD menus and resume playback from last position
• Cheese webcam app has "burst" mode for taking multiple pics in a row
• Volume control supports channel fading
• Menus do not show icons by default
• Power Manager now supports laptops with multiple batteries

Via Tuxradar.com

TuxRadar: At the moment, OpenSUSE has a longer release process than Ubuntu and Fedora - are you planning to change that?

Andreas Jaeger: We've just switched... In the last few years we had an irregular schedule, where we looked at the calendar and when certain things would be released. And every time we had a very long discussion of when to schedule it... Should we schedule four weeks before Christmas? No, that's bad, we're missing the new Gnome version, or the new KDE version, OpenOffice.org, whatever... Every time it was a long conversation.

So now we've decided to go for a strict eight month schedule.

TR: Always eight months?

AJ: Let's see how far it goes! [Laughs] We will have the release of 11.2 in November, and after that we start the eight month cycle. Let's hope that we can go through with it.

TR: What are your personal favourite features of 11.2 so far, as it develops?

AJ: I started Twittering a couple of months ago, and now we have a couple of social network clients in the distribution, like Gwibber. KDE is moving on with social networking too.

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So you've been playing around with alternative OSes for a while and you reckon you've got this Linux thing mastered.

Maybe you're tried Mac OS X and found it a bit too restrictive (or expensive); perhaps you've kicked the Hurd's tyres and thought you'll come back to it when it's something more than just a clever name.

If you're looking for something else to play with, we humbly suggest OpenSolaris. Like Mac OS X, which we looked at recently, OpenSolaris is based on Unix; also like OS X, it's best known for running on a specific processor (in this case Sun's SPARC architecture) but now works on a range of architectures including x86. Unlike OS X though, OpenSolaris is open source, so you can download it for free and start fiddling with it.

We're not interested in a direct, head-to-head comparison, because for many people it's largely a matter of taste which one they choose. But we do want to help people see what makes OpenSolaris a little different from Linux, so read on for our quick-start guide for Linux users wanting to dip their toe into OpenSolaris and see which they prefer...

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The author of debtree, a program that illustrates dependencies between .deb packages, has posted a brief rant about the size of Gnome desktop installations in recent Debian releases.

Specifically, he notes that a default Gnome install in Etch (4.0) was 1,360MB - but in the upcoming 6.0 release it'll be over 3,000MB.

Quote: "One of the main reasons I switched to Linux was because it gave me back control over my systems, but with KDE4 and pervasive stuff like hal and all the various "kits" Linux is on a fast track that's giving priority to flashiness over real functionality and eroding that control." He has also produced some graphs showing the vast dependency chain for HAL.

What do you think - is such complexity merely a by-product of an expanding and maturing OS? Or do we need to step back for a moment and simplify things before continuing the battle for the desktop?

Via TuxRadar.com

At first glance Incognito may seem suited only for the extremely paranoid, because of the totality of tools it offers to hide your online presence.

But those tools, each designed to mask a certain aspect of your online activity, have been around for quite a while. This 430MB-ish live CD has many faithful users, but I can't quote any on its usefulness since their identities couldn't be confirmed. Yes, Incognito is that good.

If you're looking for the ultimate way to encrypt absolutely all your internet communications and be untraceable on the internet, you're looking for Incognito. Find out how to get started by reading on...

Whether you're an anarchist, a covert operative or just someone who wants to exercise their digital rights and hide your online activity, with Incognito you can encrypt your IM conversations and emails, browse securely without the fear of cookies and the browser history revealing your secrets, and best of all, the traffic doesn't reflect in your router logs.

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