What is Gnome? How important is it? I think most of the newbies out there most likely share the same question. Like Windows Manager in Windows 95 or Explorer in Windoes XP, Gnome react like a windows manager in Linux.

Of course, it does not monopoly in the open source world. There is another popular windows manager in Linux world called KDE. The different of Gnome and KDE is they are using different graphics library. KDE is using Qt+ while Gnome is using GTK+. So, if you are using KDE, you are cannot use application that is developed in GTK+, vice versa. Hopefully my short explanation help you a lot.

So, back to the topic. Gnome actually has a more frequent update than KDE, while recently KDE has postponed their plan for their latest 4.0 version to Octorber. If not wrong, KDE would take maybe 3, 4 years to have a major update. In Ubuntu, there is also KDE version called Kubuntu.

There are serveral changes you can see on the latest Gnome 2.2

Full release notes of Gnome 2.20