Five months ago, we were only just beginning to recover from the enormous task that was GNOME 2.0. We were committed to a six month release cycle for 2.2, and after such a long period of development and point-releases, we were excited to be working on new features again. We were, as the release code names suggested, "Back to the Future".

Today, we bring you the fruits of our first six-month-turnaround release! Not content with mere success, we've managed to squeeze the six month process into five, raise the bar for performance and stability and add a host of new features and tools to the Desktop. Perhaps this is a dangerous precedent!