GNOME 3.0 release hits six-month buffer

The next major iteration of the GNOME desktop has been delayed by six months.

It had been expected to land in March 2010, but GNOME 3.0 will now rock up in September next year instead.

GNOME Foundation director Vincent Untz made the announcement earlier this week on the outfit's mailing list.

"Thanks to the input from the community, we were able to draw a clear picture of where we stand today and where we will be next March," he wrote.

"The release date for 3.0 was not set in stone: while we're using a strict schedule that allows us to release GNOME every six months, GNOME is above all using quality-based release engineering. That's why our community wants GNOME 3.0 to be fully working for users and why we believe September is more appropriate."

However, GNOME 2.30 is still set to be released into the wild in March 2010 as had been originally planned by the foundation.

Creating a six-month buffer between versions 2.30 and and 3.0 will effectively improve the overall quality of both releases, argued Untz.

GNOME 3.0 is expected to come loaded with a revamped user interface that will streamline the platform and, according to Untz, help beef up interest in the free, open source desktop GUI.

The founder of Linux distie Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, confirmed in September that the platform's April 2010 release (10.04) - dubbed Lucid Lynx - would be based on the GNOME 2.0 desktop. But future versions are expected to support GNOME 3.0 once it lands, he said. ®