The development team of GNOME desktop environment launched the first beta version of GNOME 2.26. The announcement comes from Frederic Peters, who stated: "This is the sixth development release, and the first beta, towards our 2.26 release that will happen in March 2009. By now most things are in place, and your mission is easy: Go download it. Go compile it. Go test it. And go hack on it, document it, translate it, fix it."