Foresight 2.0.5 GNOME Edition Release Notes

Foresight GNOME Edition is a Linux distribution for your desktop that features a rolling release schedule that always keeps your desktop up to date; a revolutionary package manager, Conary; the latest GNOME desktop environment and an innovative set of excellent, up to date software applications.

We hope you enjoy using Foresight as much as we do. Because your desktop should be cool.

Foresight Linux 2.0.5 Release Notes

1. What's new
1. GNOME 2.24
1. Track Your Time better
2. Ekiga 3.0
3. File Management
4. Do More With Deskbar
5. New Screen Resolution Controls
6. Extra Pretty
2. OpenOffice.org 3.0
3. Xorg
4. Compiz
5. PulseAudio
6. HAL
2. Downloading and Installing
3. Filing Issues and Bugs
4. Getting Help
5. Contribute to Foresight Linux
6. More information
7. Credits

What's new

Foresight 2.0.5, released September 24th, features the latest GNOME desktop, GNOME 2.24, and a number of updates, including Xorg, Compiz, PulseAudio and HAL.

GNOME 2.24

Track Your Time Better

For many people in business, it is crucial that they track how much time they assign to each project and client. Everybody has their own system for this, from keeping a diary to making a guess. It's incredibly tedious. In today's world almost everything you do somehow involves a computer, so GNOME has added a panel application to make tracking your time easier.

The panel shows you what task you've been working on and for how long. Clicking on the button allows you to change activity and see what activities you've been working on today. If you like, the timer can stop when your computer goes idle.

Activities can be categorized by any grouping you choose, be it the type of activity, client's name or how much you dislike it. You can also view and edit your activity log, insert missing activities and see daily, weekly and monthly graphs to see where you're spending most of your time.

To enable the Time Tracker applet, right click on the GNOME panel at the top of the screen, and click "Add to Panel", and choose "Time Tracker".

Ekiga 3.0

Ekiga is a fully-featured SIP audio/video conferencing client for GNOME. As part of GNOME 2.24 we're proud to announce the release of Ekiga 3.0.

As well as a new interface that is centered around your phone book and the presence of your contacts, Ekiga 3.0 features SIP presence support, PBX line monitoring, better video codecs support (H.264, H.263, MPEG-4 and Theora), accelerated video and optional fullscreen and many SIP-related improvements for robust conferencing.

File Management

As well as icon and list views, GNOME 2.24 now offers the compact list view, popular in several other desktop environments. Choose the view by selecting View, Compact from the menu (or keyboard shortcut Control+3).

As with icon and list view, the size of the icons in the compact view can be changed using the zoom options in the View menu.

The browser mode of the file manager now supports tabs for rapidly switching between directories within a single browser window.

Today's modern filesystems are able to handle almost any desired character as part of the filename. Unfortunately this is not the case for the FAT filesystem that is commonly used on many USB thumb drives and portable music players, which is unable to use many common punctuation marks as part of the filename. GNOME 2.24 detects when you are copying files with names that contains characters that cannot be used and automatically converts these characters to a "_" without you having to rename the file yourself.

Automatic filename completion ("tab" completion) has also been improved in GNOME 2.24. Completion of filenames in the location bar using the Tab key is now faster and more predictable. It is also possible to complete any fragment of the path and the interface provides more feedback for when there are no other possible matches available.

Do More With Deskbar

The Deskbar in GNOME 2.24 adds several exciting new plugins: a calculator, Google Search (and code search), Yahoo! and Wikipedia suggestions plus updating of Twitter and identi.ca.

Also new is the ability to easily download and install new plugins directly from the Deskbar repository on the World Wide Web.

To enable the Deskbar applet, right click on the GNOME panel at the top of the screen, and click "Add to Panel", and choose "Deskbar".

New Screen Resolution Controls

More and more computers (especially laptops) are gaining support for multiple monitors (known as multihead). Users need to be able to connect a second monitor, either as a clone (e.g. a projector for giving presentations) or as an extension of their desktop.

GNOME 2.24 has upgraded its screen resolution controls to make this possible. Utilizing the new XRandR 1.2 specification from X.Org, this dialog enables users to easily set up individual monitors in a number of configurations. Monitors are named and the names appear in the top left corner of the screen for easy identification.

Changes are applied immediately. No restart of GNOME is required.

Some X.Org video drivers do not currently support XRandR 1.2 and so will not be able to take advantage of these features. One such driver is the proprietary nVidia X driver.

Extra Pretty

GNOME wants to help make your computer look better, which is why we work hard on our themes and artwork. For GNOME 2.24 we ran a competition to collect some of the most intriguing desktop backgrounds our contributors have produced and we've shared our favorites with everyone.

Other Updates

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org has been updated to the latest release, 3.0. This new version includes a modest assortment of significant new features and brings improved support for document standards.

Xorg

Foresight features the latest X Window System, including X.org 7.4 and X Server 1.5.1. These releases feature better multi-monitor support, graphics driver support and a number of bug fixes and improvements.

Compiz

Foresight includes the latest version of Compiz, 0.7.8. Compiz provides 3D effects for your desktop, and this new version features new plugins, including a fade pluging and "obs" (opacity, brightness and saturation) plugins, as well as a number of bug fixes and translation updates.

PulseAudio

PulseAudio has been updated to the latest release, 0.9.12. PulseAudio features numerous improvements and bug fixes to make the sound experience better.

HAL

Foresight has upgraded to the latest release of HAL, the Hardware Abstraction Layer. Users should have better support for devices from MP3 players to notebooks suspending to keyboard support and more.

Downloading and Installing

Foresight 2.0.5 GNOME Edition is available for download on one DVD or 2 CDs at http://www.foresightlinux.org/gnome.html. A single CD, Foresight GNOME Lite, is available for download at http://www.foresightlinux.org/gnome-lite.html.

Filing Issues and Bugs

Please report any issues or bugs you encounter while using Foresight 2.0.5. Foresight's issue tracker, JIRA, is available at https://issues.foresightlinux.org.

Getting Help

Help is available in many forms, and you can choose what you're most comfortable with.

• IRC: Visit the Foresight IRC channel, #foresight on Freenode, and ask questions. We have one of the most friendly IRC channels you'll come across with everyone from users to developers reaching out to help answer questions.
• Forums: Our forums continue to grow, and are a good source of information to check if a specific problem or question has come up before.
• Wiki: Documentation on the wiki is growing on a daily basis, with updates often to the Frequently Asked Questions and other how-to's to get you going with Foresight Linux.
• Mailing Lists:
• General List: Subscribe or view archives at http://lists.rpath.org/mailman/listinfo/foresight-distro

Contribute to Foresight Linux

Foresight Linux has a vibrant and friendly community, ready to assist any level of user. Participation is also welcome and encouraged! There are several different ways to engage with the Foresight community:

1. You can find us in #foresight on chat.freenode.net. Foresight users can click the X-Chat GNOME icon in Applications -> Internet menu to access IRC
2. Contribute to the Foresight Wiki
3. Package and maintain software. Visit the Developer Wiki at http://wiki.foresightlinux.com/confluence/display/DEV/Foresight+Linux+Development for more information

More Information

You can find more information about Foresight on our website at http://www.foresightlinux.org.

If you're new to using Foresight, please check out the Getting Started with Foresight User Guide. Click on System -> User Guide. The User Guide contains information on installing software, adding MP3 and DVD support, and an overview of commonly used applications.

Ask live questions in IRC on the Freenode network in the #foresight channel.

Subscribe to the Foresight Linux Newsletter in your feed reader, such as Liferea, at http://feeds.feedburner.com/foresightnewsletter.

Credits

Thanks to Ken VanDine, Antonio Meireles and all the developers and users who contributed to and helped test this release. A special thank you to the GNOME release team for the GNOME release notes, upon much of these release notes are based. Please file any bugs!

Thank you for using Foresight. Because your desktop should be cool.