October 18, 2006 -- After last month's release of GNOME 2.16.0, the 2.17.1 release of GNOME has been announced this morning -- in the development cycle for the road to 2.18.0. The changes are fairly extensive already for being the first test release in the GNOME 2.18 cycle. Of the updated packages in this first development release is new encoding profile support in Banshee, network game support in many of GNOME Games, Gossip fixes, GNOME Power Manager advancements, and much more. We have already fired up GARNOME and have plenty of screenshots of the freshly-compiled GNOME 2.17.1.

September 28, 2006 -- Songbird, the Mozilla Firefox blended audio player, has flew out of the nest today with version 0.2 release candidate 1. Songbird v0.2 RC1 supports Linux, Macintosh, and Windows platforms. We at Phoronix have a visual preview of this latest release.

August 11, 2006 -- The second Beta for GNOME 2.16.0 is now out. GNOME 2.15.91 marks the API/ABI, feature, string, and UI freeze in the GNOME 2.16.0 candidate. We had used GARNOME with GNOME 2.16.0 Beta 2 and now have some visuals today showing a portion of the improvements in GNOME 2.16.

July 15, 2006 -- The fourth development release for GNOME 2.16.0 has been released. In GNOME 2.15.4 are several enhancements (mainly under the hood for this release) but it is certainly attention for GNU/Linux desktop enthusiasts. For those not wishing to take this unstable exploration of GNOME 2.15.4, we have provided screenshots of this release today at Phoronix.

July 11, 2006 -- The ever-popular Mozilla Firefox web browser is coming out today with the first Beta release for Firefox 2.0, which has been dubbed Bon Echo. We had covered the previous Alpha releases at Phoronix, and today we have up a few shots from Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Beta 1. Of the new features is the integrated spell checker and anti-phising tool. The final release for Firefox 2.0 is due out later this year.

June 20, 2006 -- Coming out of Norway this morning is the long awaited Opera 9, after previous Beta/preview releases. Opera 9 is focused on being efficient, productive, secure, stylish, and innovative. Some of the new items in Opera 9.0 include Bit Torrent, content blocker, Widgets, site preferences, and more. Here at Phoronix we have a few shots up of Opera v9.0 under Linux.

June 06, 2006 -- The GIMP, the popular open-source multi-platform image program, has come out this afternoon with what will hopefully be one of the final development snapshots in the road to GIMP version 2.4. There are 28 notable changes in GIMP v2.3.9, which brings the total count for the GIMP v2.3 series up to approximately 260, of course, that's not counting all of the bug fixes and code cleanup. We at Phoronix have taken the GIMP v2.3.9 code and compiled it to visually demonstrate some of the changes in the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

May 14, 2006 -- Released Friday afternoon was Mozilla Firefox Bon Echo Alpha 2 -- the second development milestone in the road to Mozilla Firefox 2.0, which is expected for a release later this year. In this latest Firefox 2.0a2 release, which is targeted solely at developers and testers, are quite a few prominent changes. Rather than simply providing screenshots or the release notes for this feature-filled release, we have independently examined most of the changes, and today at Phoronix we have some details to share in regards to these newly implement features. Whatever browser you may be currently using, Mozilla Firefox v2.0 is suiting up to knock out Internet Explorer 7 and Opera.

May 05, 2006 -- With GNOME 2.14 having come out in March of this year, the development for the GNOME 2.16 cycle is now in full swing. The first GNOME 2.15 release to have come out thus far has been GNOME v2.15.1; as with past releases the odd numbers signify the development builds. With all of the packages that are now integrated with GNOME, we will refrain from sharing the individual changes, but there are plenty of excellent features planned for the upcoming release. We had built GNOME 2.15.1 from source using GARNOME on May 03, 2006. GNOME 2.16.0 is presently slated for a September 2006 release.

March 21, 2006 -- With a few months since Firefox v1.5 had been released, the Mozilla developers have been quick to progress in the Mozilla v2.0 development tree. Being released today is the first Alpha release for Mozilla Firefox v2.0, which is tentatively penciled in for a release towards the end of this year. As the Firefox 2 development progresses, among the many goals Mozilla wishes to address include Really Simply Syndication improvements, redoing their tabbing support, and many other nifty features to come. Today at Phoronix we took a look at the Mozilla Firefox v2.0 Alpha 1 build.