Tomorrow is the planned launch date for Gnome 2.22, the latest release in the ever-improving desktop environment popular with free software users. With the launch planned for tomorrow we thought a quick run-through of the main features of Gnome 2.22 was in order.

Gnome is a multi-platform desktop environment that runs on a range of systems including Linux and FreeBSD. A new version of the Gnome desktop is released every six months, typically shortly before the latest release of new Ubuntu Linux versions, which includes Gnome by default and is probably its biggest user base.

Usability, which has improved dramatically over the 2.x series of Gnome, is still high on the Gnome project’s agenda. Much of the work appears to have gone into the improving multimedia handling and online integration.

One of the new inclusions in this release is Cheese, a tool for managing a computer’s webcam. With Cheese users can take and manage photos and videos using their webcam. Using Cheese users can not only take pictures and video but also add a range of effects to their images before sending them on to friends.

Gnome 2.22 also introduces a range of simple but attractive window compositing elements. Unlike many other compositing tools, Gnome 2.22 is focused on being usable by a range of platforms which don’t require high-end hardware. The features are very low key; the most noticeable changes are drop shadows on windows, live previews when switching windows with Alt+Tab, and transparency effects.

But, because not all graphics hardware reliably supports compositing, these features are switched off by default. To enable them check the instructions here.

Gnome 2.22 also introduces better support for networked filesystems, most noticeably GVFS, a new network-transparent virtual filesystem layer for GTK+. GVFS is designed to overcome the shortcomings of the older GNOME-VFS system. Improvements over GNOME-VFS include remembering login credentials for the entire session and being more resilient to failures. Many GNOME applications are already using GVFS, including all of the core applications.

The Gnome file manager has also been reworked to be a little smarter with removable media, and will show you an information bar with possible actions when you insert removable media or browse to a folder on a removable drive.

For the international travellers among us, Gnome 2.22 now has internationalisation built into the clock so clicking on the date and time toolbar item displays the time zone from multiple areas of the world.

Evolution also continues to evolve. The latest version now includes new support for Google Calendars and custom message tagging to make it just a little easier to find your way around your growing mound of mail.

Some work has also gone into improving the speed of spam filtering and making error dialogs less intrusive on your desktop session by using the status bar rather than popups.