The GNOME Foundation yesterday released version 2.8 of the GNOME Desktop and Developer Platform with significant improvements in usability, speed and ...

The GNOME Foundation yesterday released version 2.8 of the GNOME Desktop and Developer Platform with significant improvements in usability, speed and internationalization.

GNOME is an entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable devices. It is supported on a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux (more commonly referred to as Linux), Solaris; Operating Environment, HP-UX, Unix, BSD and Apple's Darwin. The software also includes the GNOME 2.8 desktop interface, file manager, menus and utilities, as well as the complete set of development tools and libraries.

"This release demonstrates GNOME's major steps toward 'just works' hardware support, system configuration and deep collaboration integration", said Jeff Waugh, GNOME Release Team Manager. "These features will have immediate value for our users, and long-term value for application developers who will be able to integrate important user data such as contacts and calendaring into their applications."

The GNOME Foundation is a member directed, non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap. GNOME is distributed as part of their offerings by leading Linux distributions worldwide.