Today we’ll compare three of the better known launchers for Linux – Launchy, GNOME Do, and Kupfer. While they all have roughly the same function, each has a different take on how it should be done, and the configuration capabilities vary greatly from one to the next. Here, you’ll see what makes each one unique.

On May 23, 2012, Linux Mint 13 "Maya" was released. There are two desktop flavors available, the MATE Edition and the Cinnamon Edition. MATE is a fork of the GNOME 2 desktop since the GNOME project has abandoned GNOME 2 in order to work on GNOME 3 development. Cinnamon is a project started by Linux Mint in order to include a classic GNOME 2 style interface in a GNOME 3 environment.

The main chore that you'll want to be handled via the GNOME Do is opening applications. Summon it with Super+Space, type a few letters and in a blink of an eye it will start guessing the program you want to launch.

GNOME 3.8 has been released today, the new version bringing many new features and enhancements, including a new application view and overhauled window layout for GNOME Shell, new setting panels for privacy, search and notifications and of course, many updates to the core GNOME apps like Web (Epiphany), Boxes, Documents and more.

Let's take a look at what's new!

GNOME Shell is a new completely revamped user interface for GNOME. GNOME Shell brings a new window manager called Mutter which is a combination of Metacity and Clutter. This reportedly makes Compiz unnecessary(and incompatible too).

There’s been some grumbling among the Gnome community about if and when Gnome would have a major overhaul. Well with Gnome 3 we’ll have it in the form of Gnome Shell. It pretty much replaces the panel and window manager in a normal Gnome installation with a fully composited environment with some great new functionality.

Linux Mint 10, aka Julia, is the latest release of Linux Mint, the desktop-oriented distribution based on Ubuntu. Like most distributions, Linux Mint has editions, or versions, for several desktop environments. There is, for example, GNOME, KDE, LXDE, Xfce, and Fluxbox editions. The main edition is GNOME-based, and is always the first one to be made available for the public.

There has been some discussion recently about the future of GNOME. I have seen this blogged on Planet GNOME, on the LugRadio Forums, discussed in corridors and elsewhere.

Linux Mint 12, code-named Lisa, is the latest release of the popular desktop Linux distribution. This is the version of Linux Mint based on Ubuntu Desktop, not the one based on Debian. That one is called Linux Mint Debian Edition, or LMDE.