GNOME 2.26 was released a few months ago, bringing some small changes and overage polish to the venerable GNU/Linux desktop environment. In six months time, GNOME 2.28 will be released which will bring yet some more polish a few more changes. One year from now comes GNOME 2.30. This release should be a bit different than the other releases before it. GNOME 2.30 will renumbered to GNOME 3.0. That’s right, what would be the 15th release (only even numbered releases count, here.) of the GNOME 2.x line will indeed be the start of the GNOME 3.x regime.
But with GNOME 3.0 is supposed to come GTK+ 3.0. GTK+ is the toolkit upon which GNOME and its applications are written. It standardizes the look and feel of the desktop using widgets for things like title bars, buttons, text fields, and pretty much everything making up the user interface. For the folks that develop GTK+, branding it as a 3.0 release will mean taking a huge step forward. Unfortunately, for both the folks that develop GTK+ and the folks that develop GNOME, baby steps are usually the norm. Its no wonder they picked little gnome feet for the logo.
