Friday, April 10, 2009

GNOME 2.22 Features

Check www.gnome.org for a detailed description of GNOME features and enhancements, with screen shots and references. GNOME releases new versions on a frequent schedule. Several versions since the 2.0 release have added many new capabilities. GNOME now has efficiencies in load time and memory use, making for a faster response time. Desktop search is integrated into the file chooser dialog. For laptops, power management has been improved along with battery monitoring. For developers, a new version of the GTK+ toolkit provides better documentation and improved development tools. With GNOME 2.22, the GNOME Virtual File System (GVFS) provides direct file manager support for virtual file systems, letting you access Samba shares and FTP sites directly.


GNOME Resources
gnome.org Official - GNOME Web site
developer.gnome.org - GNOME developer Web site
art.gnome.org - Desktop themes and background art
gnomefiles.org - GNOME software applications, applets, and tools
live.gnome.org/GnomeOffice - GNOME office applications
library.gnome.org - GNOME documentation Web site for Users, Administrators, and Developers

GNOME Desktop Features
Following are new desktop features:
• File Roller can now work on archives on networked systems. You can also copy and paste or drag-and-drop files between archives.

• For right-to-left languages, window, menu, and workspace components are now mirrored, also positioned right-to-left.

• The GNOME documentation site at http://library.gnome.org organizes documentation into Users, Administrators, and Developers sections.

• An easy-to-use file permissions dialog allows changing permissions for all files in a folder.

• Basic window compositing is provided using drop shadows, live previews, and transparency effects. Support is included for 3-D effects for windows in the Appearance Visual Effects tab (wobble, shrink, and explode).

• Home directories now have data-specific folders set up including Pictures, Documents, Videos, and Music. GNOME applications may use these as defaults.

• With the GNOME Volume Manager, a computer window is now included, listing your file system devices, including CD-ROMs as well as network file system devices.

• GNOME automatically mounts removable devices at the /media directory.


GNOME Applications
The following applications are included:
• The Cheese application manages Web cam photos. For image collections, enhanced browsing is available.

• The GNOME video player, Totem, supports Web access, digital video broadcast (DVB), and DVD. It also provides YouTube and MythTV support.

• Tomboy note taker can now synchronize your notes from different computers. Connecting to a central server, all your notes from different systems can be integrated and synchronized, providing a single set of notes for all your systems.

• The International Clock applet is now used for the time applet on the top panel. It lets you see the time and weather at any location on the planet.

• GNOME sound and video applications can now prompt the user to search for any needed codecs. The mechanism for finding and installing the codec is handled separately by the codec wizard.

• The Disk Usage Analyzer (Accessories Disk Usage Analyzer) details disk and partition usage, as well as usage by directory, with totals for your entire file systems with space availability.

• GEdit has been reworked to adhere to the Multiple Documentation Interface specs. It now has a new syntax highlighting system for script languages such as PHP, Ruby, and HTML.

• The Vinagre remote desktop viewer lets you access desktops remotely.


GNOME Administration Features
Administration features include the following:
• Appearance administrative preferences integrates Theme, Background, Fonts, Interface, and Visual Effects into five tabs in the Appearance Preferences window.

• Seahorse integrates GPG encryption, decryption, and signing of files and text
(Applications Accessories Passwords And Encryption Keys. For Seahorse
configuration, choose System Preferences Keyrings And Encryption).

• Integrates PolicyKit controls for GNOME administration tools such as network-admin and users-admin.

• User Profile Editor (Sabayon) allows administrators to create and manage user profiles on either a current or a remote system. Profiles can contain personal information as well as application preferences, including OpenOffice.

• Integrated power management is controlled with Power Management Preferences.

• The Preferred Applications control panel now has an Accessibility tab with visual and mobility options.

• The GNOME Control Center for basic preferences is integrated into Ubuntu as menus items in the System Preferences menu. You can also start up the GNOME Control Center directly by entering gnome-control-center in a terminal window.

• Mouse accessibility options supporting different kinds of clicks is now integrated with the Mouse Preferences tool.

• The menu editor, Alacarte, lets you customize your menus easily.

• The disk usage analyzer, Baobab, lets you quickly see how much disk space is used.

• For developers, the Anjuta Integrated Development Environment (IDE) provides integrated access to debuggers, Glade UI editor, and Valgrind analysis.


GNOME File Manager Features
Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. You can find out more about Nautilus from the Nautilus user’s manual that is part of the GNOME User’s Guide at www.gnome.org. The Nautilus file manager, as part of GNOME, also has several new features added:

• Nautilus File manager now includes a disk usage chart when displaying properties for file systems. Images are displayed with their appropriate orientation using Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) camera information.

• Nautilus is now more integrated into other applications such as File Roller for archives, the image viewer for pictures, and the GNOME media player for audio and video. You can now preview sound and video files within a Nautilus window.

• Nautilus uses GNOME Virtual File System (GVFS) for remote file systems, which replaces GnomeVFS. GVFS uses the GO object-based abstraction layer for I/O (GIO). With GVFS, Nautilus can support FUSE user-based file system access. Applications no longer have to be written for GVFS access. Any application can access a GVFS-mounted file system.

• With GVFS, Nautilus now manages automounts for remote file systems. Access is stateful, requiring the user input a password only once, before granting continual access.
• Nautilus can burn files and ISO images to DVD/CD writers.

• Context-sensitive menus let you perform appropriate actions, such as extracting archive files. An Open With option lets you choose from a selection of appropriate applications. Multiple applications can now be registered for use with a file.

• The file manager can display network shares on local networks, using DNS-based service discovery. The file manager also supports access to password-protected FTP sites.

• The file manager can display audio tracks on music CDs with the cdda:// protocol and access connected digital cameras with the gphoto2:// protocol.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Ubuntu The Complete Reference

No comments: