Links 25/01/2014: GNOME Desktop/Shell/Alternatives Roundup
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-25 20:51:32 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-25 20:51:32 UTC
Summary: News about GNOME desktop and desktops that are derived from it
GNOME Desktop/Shell
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Most Linux distros bundle GNOME desktop environment (DE) with even minor version numbers (3.8.x, 3.10.x). Like Fedora was released with GNOME 3.10.3. The version 3.11.2 was available in November but it was not bundled .The reason behind it is that GNOME takes a different approach to their software releases. The odd minor versions (3.9, 3.11) of GNOME are development versions of the subsequent even versions (3.10, 3.12). So the .11 version is roughly an alpha version of the .12 branch.
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For a while it looked like Ubuntu 14.04 would stick to a GNOME 3.8 world, for the GNOME packages it ships in Ubuntu Linux as newer packages are partially held back by Ubuntu dependencies for their Unity desktop. Previously blocking the GNOME 3.10 update in Ubuntu was the GNOME Control Center, which ended up being forked by Canonical until their own Ubuntu System Settings can be developed.
Alternatives
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Surely users must be ready for a change from the default Gnome Shell theme by now. I have sampled some of the available Gnome Shell themes on Fedora 20 and now you can see them for yourself. A new shell theme will not change your entire desktop, but it will provide a new look for the activities overview window, and the Gnome indicator applet panel.
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I get a lot of queries regarding the difference(s) between the MATE and Cinnamon desktop environments. And of course such queries tend to come from those new to Linux and Free Software.
For the benefit of those class of users, this very brief article summarizes the key difference between these two desktop environments. Nothing technical, just basic stuff that will help those users to better understand what their options are. And because a picture is worth more than a thousand words, there are a couple of galleries to complete the picture.
Applications
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GNOME has finally updated the look and feel of their text editor, gedit. The app has been redesigned to match the newer GNOME 3 interface guidelines.
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The GNOME Project has also announced today that a new development release of the Epiphany 3.12 web browser for the upcoming GNOME 3.12 desktop environment is now available for download and testing.
Epiphany 3.11.3 adds HTTPS (secure HTTP) support for both the DuckDuckGo and Google search engines, improves the looks of the location bar and the downloads bar, improves filename suggestion for downloads, and cleans up the style of the about: pages.
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Dconf 0.19.3 introduces various improvements in the test coverage area, adds a proper DCONF_ERROR error domain, suppress the GLib deprecation warnings during the build process, correctly handles writability changes in GSettings, displays warnings about missing files only once per source, and it will link to -ldl only if it is required.
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The GNOME Project has released the fourth development release towards the Eye of GNOME 3.12 application, which will be the default image viewer for the highly anticipated GNOME 3.12 desktop environment.
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GVFS 1.19.4 introduces pull support for gPhoto2 and implements truncate and seek support for output streams for the DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) protocol.
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The GNOME Project has announced a new development version towards GNOME PackageKit 3.12, a graphical user interface (GUI) for the powerful PackageKit software, which will be used in the upcoming GNOME 3.12 desktop environment.
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The GNOME development team behind the Glib project, a library used in the GNOME desktop environment, has announced the immediate availability for download of Glib 2.39.3, which introduces lots of fixes.
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Dubbed Spoilers, the third development version of the upcoming GNOME Documents 3.12 software, the main document viewer of the GNOME 3.12 desktop environment, has been made available for testing.
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The GNOME Project has announced that a second development release towards the upcoming GNOME Weather 3.12 application that will be available in the GNOME 3.12 desktop environment is available for testing.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The Register MS Made Millions of Pounds by Participating in the Slop Hype Campaign (It's Still Doing It), Now It Admits That It's Just a Bubble
- the slop frenzy played a role in the Microsoft meltdown
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXX - Pyramid Schemes (Planned Plunder) and Canceled/Botched Surgeries Aren't "Funny", They Cause Serious Harm and Distress
- We were right about Microsoft
- The Real Issue With The Register MS is Not the Politics of Some Staff's "Tweets", It's That The Register MS Publishes Fake Articles for Sponsors (50,000 Pounds Minimum)
- AWS and Google each pay millions for fake articles which beget journalistic bias too (they literally pay the salaries of the 'reporters')
- Microsoft Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): We Need Accountability Because Many People Die and It's Because of Microsoft Diehards or People Bribed by Microsoft to Deploy Microsoft Where Lives Are at Risk
- They're trying to save face right now
- What the Media Misses: It's Not an NVIDIA Issue, Super Micro Computer Inc Also Fell From $45 to $26 in the Period NVIDIA Lost 33% of Its Faked 'Value', NVIDIA is Collapsing Like Intel
- History goes in circles
- Waste of Money: Giving More Money to Toothless Regulators That Don't Even Examine Evidence
- Shame in SRA
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- Ethics in Perspective, Free Software and Morality
- top clients of Jeffrey Epstein are one happy family
- Richard Stallman (RMS) at Universidad Central del Ecuador (Guayaquil), Cuenca, Campus Sur Universidad Politecnica Salesiana (Quito), and Ohio State University
- Long live the message and mission of RMS
- They Paid Workers in 'Shares' (That Lost Almost Half Their Value in One Month)
- Welcome back 1999 or 2007
- Links 14/11/2026: "OpenAI Is Sustaining Enormous Losses" and Slop "Loses the Popular Vote"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, November 13, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, November 13, 2026
- Gemini Links 14/11/2026: Code of Conduct, Back to Gemini, and Gemlog to Inbox
- Links for the day
- Slop Promotion, Including Paid-for Slop Promotion for So-called 'Linux' Foundation (Its Clients Are Slop Companies)
- We've noticed a lot of this lately in "It's FOSS" and to a lesser degree in "FOSS Force"
- Gemini Links 13/11/2026: Productivity Metrics and Antenna Outage
- Links for the day
- It's Not About China or Sex, It's About Corruption at NVIDIA and a Pyramid Scheme Perpetrated Under the Guise of "Hey Hi Revolution" (That Wasn't, It's Manufactured and Hyped by Bribes, Subsidised by Multi-Trillion-Dollar Loans, People's Pension Funds and More)
- What's at stake here is a lot bigger than the "Ponzi hub" of Jensen Huang
- No, You're Not a "Most Valuable Company" When Everything is Down for Half a Day in the Entire Planet
- Still down, still no explanation (maybe they too aren't sure)
- "Techrights Statement on Phoronix" Still Valid Five Years Later
- Our position as stated in early 2022 has not changed
- Vista 11's 'Growth' Has Stalled, It's Measured at Only 17.9% in the US This Year
- That helps put in perspective Microsoft's attempt to discard almost 30% of its remaining workforce
- "NVIDIA is Enron" (Subsidising the Pyramid Scheme That It Profited From), Microsoft is Next to be Down for the Count
- Microsoft increasingly looks like the "next NVIDIA"
- Richard Stallman Travels to South America to Give Talks About Free Software in Spanish, FSF Raises Money
- The FSF is raising money (goal is $400,000) and the FSF has just mentioned the upcoming talks by the FSF's founder
- United States Adding ~300 Billion in Government Debt Per Month, Wall Street Shaves Off Trillions in 'Value' in Less Than One Week
- cushioning "assets" by helping them fake "value"
- Microsoft: Pay Us for the Stuff That's Offline and We Cannot Fix
- Learn to take control of the technology that you rely on
- Links 13/11/2026: "Copyright-Strike-for-Hire" and "Stevie Wonder Photo Lawsuit"
- Links for the day
- The Slop Bubble (or Pyramid Scheme) Relied on Trust and Patience (Being Patient as Losses Grow and Debt Explodes, Trusting the Roadmap of Cheaters and Frauds)
- Remember that it all began with trust
- Anthropic's IPO Depends on $895.4 Billion in Debt (Money It Doesn't Have, It Loses Over 100 Billion Dollars Per Reporting Period), NVIDIA Has Just Lost Almost 2 Trillion Dollars In Value and Its Debt Trebled in Three Months
- This coming week will be very, very entertaining for slop critics/sceptics to watch
- At Microsoft, "Buyouts" or "Global Voluntary Separation Agreement" (GVSA) Not Much Different From Layoffs (Severance Shockingly Low)
- From what we are able to gather, many people are leaving Microsoft 'voluntarily'
- Is Microsoft the Next Fake-Valued Corporation to Lose 35% in "Market Value"? Is Slop Bringing Microsoft Down?
- Will NDAs prevent people talking or journalists finding out the true cause?
- Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) the Latest of Many to Quit Linux Development Over Linus Torvalds' Obsession With Slop (Linus Wants to Work With Bots, Not Humans Who Understand Whatever Code They Write)
- Linus caught the 'brain virus'
- Silent Layoffs at IBM (and Red Hat) Continue in November 2026
- IBM's CEO is "a Palliative Care Doctor Who Slides [IBM] Gently Into the Night"
- Microsoft Asks 60,000 Workers to Leave, Some Leave, Services Go Down
- Microsoft laid off about 40,000-50,000 people in past years
- Gemini Links 13/11/2026: Roku Exits the Smart Home Market and Poor Reporting/Journalism Regarding Slop Plagiarism
- Links for the day
- Links 13/11/2026: "Apple Support Community Forums to Permanently Close" and "The Slop Market is Getting Nervous"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 12, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, November 12, 2026
- Gemini Links 12/11/2026: A Firing of a Boss and Geminispace Growing Fast
- Links for the day
- Bill Epsteingate-Funded BBC "Totally Ignoring the $1.7 Trillion Wiped off NVIDIA Stocks"
- Imagine how many pension funds are tied to this NVIDIA pyramid scheme
- A Few Hours Before NVIDIA CEO Canned (and NVIDIA Shares Plunged) the NVIDIA-Funded The Register MS Published Paid Spam With "AI" 18 Times in It
- Anything to inflate the bubble
- Links 11/11/2026: NVIDIA Decapitated, "The Company That Published Fake Journalists in Sports Illustrated is Collapsing Dramatically"
- Links for the day
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXIX - We Didn't Start the Fire
- It started in 2012
- Photo Ops Are Liabilities
- NVIDIA is not a "family business" and its CEO isn't some modest genius
- NVIDIA’s Total Debt Trebled in Three Months!
- Not the hallmark of a rich company unless its accounting is fraudulent
- NVIDIA Turns Out to be Serial Cheater, Stock Plunges 33% in 5 Weeks
- The "slop bros" have long relied on patience and blind faith
- Adopting LLM Slop is Still Suicide
- Suicide (in the literal sense) is also linked to adoption of chatbots
- On Laundering Licences and Code
- A "Second SCO" waiting to happen
- The Cyber Show on Slop and the Ministry Of Truth in "Nineteen Eighty Four"
- "cultural erasure" by slop
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXVIII - Keeping Both Eyes on the Ball
- One upside of these disputes is that they raise at least two very important issues concerning the law
- Gemini Links 12/11/2026: Encryption is Easy, Human Emacs, and Legislation in Italy
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 11, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, November 11, 2026
