GNOME 2.20 officially released

GNOME 2.20 officially released: "The GNOME community announced a new release today after six months of development. GNOME is a desktop environment primarily used on Linux and other open-source platforms. GNOME 2.20 includes numerous improvements and new features that benefit users, administrators, and developers.

GNOME's image viewer features a significantly improved image collection interface and a new Open With menu. The Nautilus file manager can now display a disk usage pie chart in the filesystem properties dialog. Desktop search integration, which first appeared in Nautilus in GNOME 2.14 and can optionally leverage the Beagle and Tracker indexing systems, has now been added to the GNOME file dialog."

Being that I am a Windows user, I prefer the look of KDE over GNOME's MAC-like appearance, though I have been thinking about installing a version of GNOME. I am still a newbie in Linux and I want to experiment some more before I settle on what distribution and GUI combination I will use permanently....

KDE 4 Live CD

Well, I downloaded the image of the lice CD and burned it to disk. It is based on OpenSUSE, with KDE 4 as the GUI. The OS booted, and I logged in, but unfortunately, several components crashed. This left KDE running but severely crippled. In fact, I could do nothing useful at all.

Perhaps it does not agree with my hardware. Maybe I will actually install a version on my machine, if that is possible, but until then, the review of KDE 4 is on hold...

KDE 4: The Shiny New Linux (and Windows) Desktop

KDE 4: The Shiny New Linux (and Windows) Desktop: "Linux users are as evangelical about desktop environments, the all-encompassing graphical user interface software responsible for providing everything from taskbars to office suites, as they are about operating systems. It shouldn't come as any surprise, then, that the first major release in over five years of the most popular desktop environment available is causing quite a stir. Due to be released on December 11th, KDE 4.0 is bringing exhilarating graphical, usability, and functionality improvements to the Unix-like systems it is designed for—and Windows users will get a taste, too."

This new version of KDE is looking pretty interesting so far, though it appears as though there may be a bit of a learning curve with the re-design. Right now, I am downloading the Live CD so that I can check it out for myself. I will come back with a general review of the new system...

Linux.com :: It's official: ATI Radeon drivers to be open sourced

Linux.com :: It's official: ATI Radeon drivers to be open sourced: "AMD briefed Linux.com this morning on a pending announcement regarding the open sourcing of drivers for ATI graphics cards. It's official -- AMD will make code and specifications for ATI graphics cards available on the Internet on September 10."

This is absolutely great news for anyone who is running Linux and is stuck with the current available drivers for ATI cards. If all goes well, perhaps we will actually be able to use our cards to their full extents, at the very least in 2D mode. Apparently, they will have issues with the 3D side, because some of the 3D instructions are based on closed-source software...

I would be extremely happy if I could just be able to use the TV out function the way I would like to. Thank you AMD/ATI, and the open-source coders who will contribute to this project.