I love GNOME. As I use Linux more and more these days (now averaging over 90%, the only exception these days seems to be some online music stuff), GNOME helps me do my stuff better.

Spent tonight catching up on GUADEC, the GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. All the hackers get together and listen to speeches, meet each other in person, and collaborate on GNOME.

Watched Miguel De Icaza’s keynote speech while reading a PDF document of the slides Glynn Foster presented on the 101 things to know about GNOME.

Miguel had some very interesting comments in his keynote about usability testing, and how users use a computer desktop. He threw out a challenge to the GNOME hackers, and it will be interesting to see over the 2.12 and 2.14 development cycles how the teams start to address usability, especially from a beginner standpoint. People who use GNOME every day, might miss some of the forest for the trees sometimes.

Glynn’s slides took me way back. It’s amazing to me now how long I’ve used GNOME on and off over the years. Going back to my first Red Hat Linux purchase (5.2) in January of 1997, where has the time gone. From the panel tiles, to Eazel, Helix, and how the look and feel has changed over the years to what I’m using today, it’s been revolutionary.

The donation is coming, it’s too bad the GNOME Foundation uses Paypal, as Paypal hates me. I have increased motivation to get my projects done around the house (music server, fixing 2 PCs, lots of cleaning and the basement) so I can dedicate some time to a GNOME project of some sort.