gnome 2.26.3 trial software / shareware for linux

Libranet 3.0 has been a long time coming, and highly anticipated by its devoted customers.
Due to the extended period of time since their last release in 2003, I was beginning to wonder if they were falling into the catch up mode of development... the endless loop you can enter when youre low on development staff who are working hard to try to keep up with the rest of the distributions out there... only moving fast enough to be one step behind.
Since there was such a large gap in time between the 2.8.1 release and the current 3.0 release, will Libranet stack up? Does it have what it takes to win the hearts of not only the Debian crowd, but the Open Source community in general? Well, my friends, were here to find out.
Main features:
- Linux kernel 2.6.11.4
- KDE 3.3.2, GNOME 2.8.3, and Xfce4
- Gcc 3.3
- X.org 6.8.2
- Evolution 2.0.3
- OpenOffice.org 1.1.3
- Gaim 1.1.4
- Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2/Thunderbird 1.0.2
- K3b 0.11.20
Libranet 3.0 comes in the form of 5 CDs or a single DVD which are available in the form of downloadable ISO images or as physical media shipped via snail mail. At the time of this review, ISO images are the only option. CD media will be shipping on May 31st, 2005 according to the Libranet site and are currently available for pre-order.
Although the major desktop environments included with this release are, shall we say, a bit outdated, theyre well suited for the task at hand: providing a productive desktop experience. There are more up-to-date Debian offerings out there, but theres nothing wrong with working on the desktops provided by Libranet.
In the grand scheme of things, they really arent that old and if you need to bring them up to speed with the current versions, a little creativity with the apt sources list will get you there in a hurry.
Unlike other more heavily modified Debian-based distros such as Xandros and Linspire, adding additional Debian mirrors will not cause irreversible damage to your system.

GDM-Curve provides a blue curve GDM theme for Gnome.

Its a simple blue curve theme.

Fast and secure, SUSE LINUX Professional 9.3 from Novell includes an operating system, more than 1,000 popular open source applications and improved support for mobile devices.
Use SUSE LINUX Professional 9.3 to browse the Web, create and share documents, work with graphics and multimedia files, configure home networks, and develop applications.
Main features:
- Powerful operating system built on Linux kernel 2.6.8
- Enhanced mobility with WLAN and Bluetooth support
- Applications for enhanced productivity, collaboration, connectivity and development
- Easy-to-use desktop interfaces: KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.6
- And much more...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4, released in February 2005, provides significant technology enhancements over the v.3 release. Areas of specific development include improvements in security capabilities, increased server performance and scalability, and enhanced desktop capabilities?all while ensuring a high level of compatibility with prior releases.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports a wide range hardware and software applications, and is the worlds leading enterprise-focused Linux environment.
The following section outlines a few of the major new features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4:
Linux 2.6 kernel infrastructure
Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4 provides the most stable and robust commercial product based on the Linux communitys 2.6.9 kernel. Open source projects such as Fedora provided an environment for the Linux 2.6 kernel to mature significantly during 2004.
As a result, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4 kernel offers numerous improvements over earlier kernels, including many enhanced algorithms and features:
- Generic logical CPU scheduler: Handles multi-core and hyperthreaded CPUs.
- Object-based Reverse Mapping VM: Improved performance in memory constrained systems.
- Read Copy Update: SMP algorithm optimization for operating system data structures.
- Multiple I/O schedulers: Selectable based on the application environment.
- Enhanced SMP & NUMA support: Improved performance and scalability for large servers.
- Network interrupt mitigation (NAPI): Improved performance for heavy network loads.
Improved storage and file system capabilities
Numerous enhancements have been incorporated into Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4 that improve the scalability and performance of the data storage subsystems, including:
- Ext3 performance: Block Reservations and Hash Tree Directories improve the performance of read/write I/O and directory scanning operations.
- Ext3 scalability: Dynamic file system expansion and file system sizes up to 8TB are now supported.
- Logical Volume Management: A comprehensive update to the LVM provides new features such as read/write snapshots and transactional metadata updates, along with a flexible new management GUI. Mirroring and enhanced multipathing are scheduled for delivery by mid 2005.
- Scalability: Enhanced storage LUN management makes it possible to configure much larger storage subsystems.
- Automounting: The inclusion of AutoFSv4 provides sophisticated device access control, supporting features such as browsable mounts and replicated servers.
- Cost reduction: Support for Serial ATA disk storage provides increased performance, higher densities, and reduced cost per megabyte over traditional IDE devices.
New security capabilities
Provision of sophisticated security capabilities has been a specific development focus of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4 release. New features:
- Mandatory Access Control: Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) provides a MAC infrastructure that complements the existing Discretionary Access Control security features provided by the standard Linux environment. In a MAC-based environment, application capabilities and privileges are set by predefined policies and enforced by the kernel. This prevents errant applications from compromising system security.
- Memory management enhancements: Several features, including Exec Shield and Position Independent Executables, combine to prevent applications from being exploited by attacks such as buffer overflows.
- Compile and runtime consistency checking: New buffer validation techniques in the GCC compiler and Glibc library greatly reduce the risk of faulty applications being compromised.
Improved desktop capabilities
Significant emphasis has been placed on providing a feature-rich, easy-to-use, desktop environment for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux family members (including Red Hat Desktop). A brief summary of new features:
- Personal productivity: Advanced user capabilities are provided by the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, the Firefox web browser and Evolution email client
- Plug-and-play device support: Easy handling of devices such as USB disks and digital cameras (as well as photo management applications such as gThumb)
- Multimedia: Applications for audio, video, and streaming content such as RhythmBox, HelixPlayer, Totem, and SoundJuicer
- User environment: GNOME 2.8 provides numerous enhancements for a more consistent graphical look and feel. Comprehensive management tools (e.g. printer and network management and VNC-based application session sharing) and utilities (e.g. Gaim instant messaging, and GIMP image processing) combine to provide a complete and highly functional user experience.
- Interoperability: Technologies that allow user login authentication with Microsoft Active Directory, NTLM authentication for web-based applications, Evolution mail client access to Windows Exchange Servers
- IIIMF: The Internet/Intranet Input Method framework provides the next-generation multilingual Unicode input method framework. It offers many features, such as full Unicode support and the ability to run multiple concurrent language engines.
Miscellaneous features
As a major new release, almost every aspect of Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been enhanced. Some of the more important improvements:
- Compatibility with prior releases: Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4 includes compatibility libraries that enable most v.3 and v.2.1 applications to continue to run without modification.
- Languages: Focused on international standards, such as OpenI18N and GB18030, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has documentation and software available in 15 languages: English, Japanese, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Italian, French, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Devnagari, Bangla, Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati.
- Auditing: In an update planned for mid-2005, a new auditing facility will be available that provides an open, bidirectional socket interface that can be used by auditing applications. It provides comprehensive auditing capabilities for SELinux and standard Linux events.
- File serving: Provision of NFSv4 provides features such improved security, operation coalescing and integrated file locking, while Samba provides easy access to Microsoft Windows printers and file shares.
- Software development: The latest GCC 3.4 compiler toolchain, and a technology preview of the forthcoming GCC 4.0 toolchain, are provided. These offer standards-compliant C/C++ and Fortran 95 development environments.
- Advanced configuration and power interface: Support for the ACPI standard enables a wide range of power management capabilities (battery monitoring, automated power down, suspend), and provides a foundation for increasingly sophisticated features in the future.
- Extras: Optional software is provided on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extras CD and Red Hat Network channel. This includes features such as additional desktop applications (e.g. Adobe Reader, Macromedia Flash), Java environments, and printroom-quality Agfa/Monotype fonts.
Main features:
Server features summary
- Databases - Leading open source databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL
- Development - Environments for C, C++, Java, Fortran with Perl, Python, CVS and Emacs
- Engineering - Computational tools including blas, pvm, and lam
- File servers - FTP, NFS, and Samba (CIFS)
- Mail server - IMAP/POP servers with Cyrus, Sendmail, spamassassin
- Networking - Complete suite of network servers and firewall
- Printing - CUPS/lpr printing systems
- Security - Extensive features including SSL, IpSec, MAC/DAC
- Web server - Apache server with numerous mod/php plugins
Client features summary
- Document preparation - OpenOffice.org office suite 1
- Extensive Microsoft interoperability
- Laptop power management - APM/ACPI
- Mail - several clients including Evolution
- Multimedia support - applications for multiple audio/video formats
- Plug-and-play device support
- RDP terminal services
- Remote desktop sharing/collaboration
- User interface - GNOME-based with optional KDE
- Web browsing - Firefox
- Wireless support
- X Windows system

SUSE LINUX Professional 9.3 from Novell provides everything todays Linux user needs for home computing and computing-on-the-go.
Jump in and join the millions of computer users worldwide who have made SUSE LINUX Professional their choice for home and mobile computing. This product includes a Linux operating system plus dozens of essential integrated tools that showcase the latest that open source has to offer. Read More
The most successful and best-selling Linux distribution worldwide, SUSE LINUX has won numerous industry awards.
Main features:
New Linux user
- Firefox 1.0
- OpenOffice.org 2.0
- GIMP 2.2
- Beagle
- Photo tools
Advanced Linux user
- Xen virtualization
- VoIP
- Mobility
- Security
- Linux Servers
Enhancements:
New
- OpenOffice.org 2.0 pre-release
- Firefox 1.0 Web Browser
- Desktop environments KDE 3.4 and GNOME 2.10
- Xen virtualization
- F-Spot
- Beagle
Udated
- Linux Kernel 2.6.11
- GCC 3.3.5
- glibc 2.3.4
- Mono 1.1.4
- KDevelop 3.2
- Eclipse 3.0.1
- PostgreSQL 8.0
Exclusive third-party software
- Sesam
- Moneyplex
- Cop.Track
- TextMaker
- PlanMaker

Still Life Brushed provides an icon pack for Gnome.

Based on Still Life, with brushed steel look (to integrate with Tiger-ish themes).

Still Life is an icon set which aims to provide realistic, easy, and non-distractive icons. I tried to create a theme with a more realistic look than the default GNOME icon theme, but not with too much gloss and eye-candy, to keep ist usable.

It is mostly adhering to the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines and is still quite young and incomplete. This is a work in progress, much more things still to come.