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I've proposed: "Direct Selection of "active" tasks with key combos"

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/DesignersPlayground/KeyboardShortcuts

Which to me will work faster and be faster to set up.

With my proposal, you can arbitrarily foreground/raise any of the N windows you've mapped just by pressing say winkey+N, AND very importantly, you can change those mappings very quickly.

[..] a lot of distros make their own tweaks to Xorg, KDE or Gnome, and the drivers they include. Most desktop-oriented distros, like Fedora and Ubuntu, also include their own tools for configuring displays.

In this case the only tool I use is called "gnome-display-properties" and it's apparently a completely standard gnome component (see a picture here). That's nice because it means that it will be around in future.

two most common graphics cards (ATI and nVidia) both include manufacturer-made setup tools which are greatly superior to the ones included with most distros.

Noooooo don't do that. Seriously; if you can avoid cards that need manufacturer specific configuration you'll find it's much easier to upgrade to a new distro/release/etc. later. It's worth boycotting both ATI and NVIDEA simply because of the extra hassle and security risks induced by the binary blobs they add to your system. Having selected an Intel system for the first time in my life because of this (I used to use ATI when they had the best support for open source X drivers), I really have to say I'm really happy with the choice. The performance is even fine for the limited 3D gaming I do.

I just use the autogenerated Xorg.conf, and then run the config tool from the manufacturer.

Actually, Fedora takes this one stage further. There is no X11 configuration at all (/etc/X11/xorg.conf is simply not there unless you create it specially). Everything is dynamically created at server start up. When it works, this is great because you can completely change your monitor over with no need to change anything. This means I haven't ever installed Fedora's X configuration generating system.

Gnome isn't NEARLY as guilty.

Compare http://projects.gnome.org/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNOME_applications to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_KDE_applications

It's knot even a kompetition!

Yes, rotating at multiples of right angles is much faster and is indeed non-destructive. It's missing the point however. Due to human anatomy and the configuration of joints in your arm, some lines and curves can only be quickly and easily drawn at an exact angle. For that, you need to be able to dynamically rotate the view of the image, not the image itself. It's true that it's not exactly a dealbreaker when the feature is absent, but if it's there, it makes painting incredibly pleasant and fun.
Anyway, feature I (and I suspect many others) want is in the bug tracker here if you're interested. Sadly, no developers seem too keen on implementing this (that I know of).

To quote Richard Hughes, the developer responsible for the braindeadness in the first place, and repeatedly trying to brag his competency of being a dickhead in the bugzilla(https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047).:

Every time somebody writes "Linux is about choice" something inside of me dies. Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done.

Source: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/09/23/linux-is-about-choice/

It seems that he interpreted his own words as "Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. But for me, I can fucking make whatever 'choice' and screw everybody else. Bwahahaha!"

And his recent rants:

And so, long story short, we decided to revert the change for F12.

Part of being an open source maintainer (and also my job at Red Hat) is to ignore trolls, but some of the messages I was getting yesterday were just personal attacks and abuse. That’s not cricket at all.

(Source: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/11/20/the-fedora-12-installing-saga/)

But he was the one who was being a troll first. Quotes from the bugzilla:

• "It's not insecure. We've had the mechanism checked. The default policy may not be to your taste, but this is the "desktop" spin, not the "server" spin. " (btw, the two "spins" don't actually exist. --ed)
• "There's nothing to discuss here."
• "You either trust the Fedora repos or you don't."
• "I don't particularly care how UNIX has always worked."
• "You missed the "in my opinion" line in your reply."
• "There are other, *easier*, ways of rooting the system. "

Now, I'm wondering how on earth did someone got a job for being a devtroll. Red Hat pays him to develop, but trolling the bugzilla? I don't remember anyone "attacking him personally" on the bugzilla. I wasn't following the mailing lists though.

And he now seemed hurt because the users actually bothered to donate their own time correcting his mistake.

Grow up.

To quote Richard Hughes, the developer responsible for the braindeadness in the first place, and repeatedly trying to brag his competency of being a dickhead in the bugzilla(https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047).:

Every time somebody writes "Linux is about choice" something inside of me dies. Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done.

Source: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/09/23/linux-is-about-choice/

It seems that he interpreted his own words as "Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. But for me, I can fucking make whatever 'choice' and screw everybody else. Bwahahaha!"

And his recent rants:

And so, long story short, we decided to revert the change for F12.

Part of being an open source maintainer (and also my job at Red Hat) is to ignore trolls, but some of the messages I was getting yesterday were just personal attacks and abuse. That’s not cricket at all.

(Source: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/11/20/the-fedora-12-installing-saga/)

But he was the one who was being a troll first. Quotes from the bugzilla:

• "It's not insecure. We've had the mechanism checked. The default policy may not be to your taste, but this is the "desktop" spin, not the "server" spin. " (btw, the two "spins" don't actually exist. --ed)
• "There's nothing to discuss here."
• "You either trust the Fedora repos or you don't."
• "I don't particularly care how UNIX has always worked."
• "You missed the "in my opinion" line in your reply."
• "There are other, *easier*, ways of rooting the system. "

Now, I'm wondering how on earth did someone got a job for being a devtroll. Red Hat pays him to develop, but trolling the bugzilla? I don't remember anyone "attacking him personally" on the bugzilla. I wasn't following the mailing lists though.

And he now seemed hurt because the users actually bothered to donate their own time correcting his mistake.

Grow up.

it insists on UTF-8 encode file names

AFAIK, that's GTK+ stupidity rather than GIMP stupidity. You need to set the G_FILENAME_ENCODING or G_BROKEN_FILENAMES environment variable.

Would http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47948 be the reason why? A very basic feature of even MS Windows will not be implemented for ages. Other stuff appears to be more important than a decent desktop.

I guess the people who wrote Gnote cared that Tomboy runs on mono.

Except that it isn't. According the GnomeShell page on Gnome Live, "Much of the code of the shell is written in Javascript and Clutter and GNOME platform libraries via GObject Introspection and JavaScript bindings for GNOME."

GObject Introspection is actually quite cool IMO, it makes it much easier to create bindings from dynamic languages libraries that use GObject, like the GNOME platform, GStreamer, etc.

Hear, hear. Since I've replaced metacity with a simple tiling manager (xmonad) and stuck to one application per workspace, I have one thing less on my mind: arranging the freaking windows in the first place. This has the added benefit of maximizing screen real-estate for each application and every running app is two keystrokes away (Alt + workspace number). It takes some time to get adapt but it's worth it. The manager is a little rough around the edges (for example doesn't work well with GIMP) since it's still experimental but I still feel more productive.

What really bothers me with the GNOME Shell is that the project doesn't have a goal beyond: eye-candy, flat searchable menus and switching "paradigms".

I'm missing desktop sharing and conferencing software like Livemeeting. I'm also missing some ease-of-use dealing with very simple things like cutting and pasting a link to a windows share and using it to look at a remote directory without having to edit all the slashes.

Regarding desktop sharing, are you aware of the newer features in Empathy? It can do video/voice and desktop sharing (for xmmp at least).I believe (like Livemeeting), both end would need to have Empathy installed.

Regarding the link clicking, I'm guessing you mean UNC paths like \\smbserver\share\somefile.doc now you've mentioned it, I'm missing it too. A bug was filed in 2007 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446136, nothing has happened unfortunately.

Alex

Between mono and this you may just want to start switching early.

I'm also missing some ease-of-use dealing with very simple things like cutting and pasting a link to a windows share and using it to look at a remote directory without having to edit all the slashes.

If gnome (and linux in general) wants to escape the geek-in-a-basement marketshare, it has to focus on the average non-tech user. And no, pasting a link to a windows share is not what this user does.

Instead, this user is interested in finding "that god-damn file" that he saved somewhere yesterday morning and has no idea where it is. He doesn't organize his files, he doesn't care about file hierarchies, he just wants his file. He also wants to easily find that openoffice window that got lost in the 20 windows he opened and never closed in the last hour. Believe it or not, no desktop environment makes it really easy to do such basic stuff.

IMHO Gnome Shell and Zeitgeist is a step in the right direction for the average user.

Looks like ice cream, Batman, and football are the culprits.

Vala supports properties and contract programming.

Vala supports properties and contract programming.

Vala supports properties and contract programming.

We have not yet had to reply to any DMCA takedowns yet - all the content on the website must have a share-friendly license before content can be uploaded.

Say someone develops a video game in the vein of Quadra, Quadrapassel, or KBlocks. These games are free software, and they implement substantially the same rules as Tetris. The Tetris Company claims that other computer programs that implement the rules of Tetris infringe the copyright in Tetris, despite a U.S. Copyright Office publication to the contrary. If someone develops a Free video game with the same rules as Tetris and hosts a mirror of the game on LegalTorrents, how do you plan to handle a DMCA request from The Tetris Company?

especially the "stores data in the cloud" bit - hasn't the Danger fiasco told us that's a bad idea jeans? But gjs looks cool.

Actually, I think you've got cause and effect backwards. Other GNOME guys have been hearing about big-shell's use of JavaScript informally from Havoc, and decided to adopt it for gnome-shell since it's worked so well for litl. If you look at the commit history of gjs you'll see it's about evenly divided between litl people and gnome-shell people now.

I haven't had any of those problems yet. Although, I have seen my laptop screen's brightness suddenly drop while I was typing, only to happen again a few hours after I reset it to where it was.

Currently there is a notification sitting on my screen, saying that the xserver running on this machine is screwed up, pointing to a random blog entry.

I've also run into another problem with some of the GUI admin tools.

X wasn't meant for use in low bandwidth, high latency applications. It's meant for use over a LAN. The X critics always like to trot out their special cases where usability falls to the floor. VNC's killer feature is compression of a protocol already designed for efficient use of bandwidth. X was designed to work with rudimentary, "stupid" servers which wouldn't have the resources (RAM primarily) for significant local caching of data, something that VNC exploits in its design. This necessitated some of the extra "verbosity" in X protocol. If you want you can use a compressed X protocol today to get a usability comparable to VNC over a low bandwidth link.

Just as an FYI, you can install evince on Windows too. They've got a Windows installer.

Although having a PDF reader on any platform is a good idea. Having one that is removable is a good Idea. Personally I want the real option for IE and WMP.

It's certainly not documented anywhere inside Ubuntu's Help Files. I looked. It wasn't there. I swore at being stuck in 640x480 and then reinstalled from CD

While I agree with you that presenting a dialog (any dialog for that matter) partly outside the screen is really bad behavior from a usage perspective, the Alt+drag combination certainly is in the help files. It took me less than 30 seconds to find it, and this was the first time I ever read any of the help files.

You can find it if you click New to Ubuntu and navigate to Desktop Overview->Windows->Manipulating Windows (here).

I guess Ubuntu will have to cope with the other 6 releases before Windows Vista III the terminal. Ubuntu unashamedly release is timed to contain the latest Gnome, http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.28/ of course it includes its own release notes as well http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910. I'm sure your probably aware of good stuff in EXT4; GRUB2; Empathy; Software Centre that have been heavily documented everywhere including serious numbers of Application Improvements in Firefox and OpenOffice. Linux itself continues on spewing greater and improved hardware support which include the usual greatness http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux26Changes Check out 2.26.28 - 2.26.31 oh and X and Mesa and... Oh is that a Win 7 cry for attention I know whats new and Better Vista don't cut it!

Obviously, you are mistaken. If you do not see bluetooth PAN options, it may be: 1) BT PAN disabled/unavailable on your phone; 2) bug in NM -- google for fedora 12 network manager test day, it was tested back then.
Also notice, that BT DUN (I think more popular than PAN) networking is coming to NM after release.

"Really? Only last week I was looking at NetworkManager - and it didn't support this - even in the development version... based upon the information I could find."

Well, take a look at http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/2009/07/10/unwire-with-networkmanager/ .

Note there's two types of Bluetooth tethering (two possible protocols) - DUN and PAN. Some mobile devices can only do one or the other, some can do both. Only PAN has been implemented so far, there's no DUN support yet unfortunately. That's coming, probably for F13.

he probibly ran into missing documentation on the stuff he wants. Among Open Source projects, this is often what seperates Django from Rails ... click on the links to see which one I think is better, or make your own judgment call. http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtkmm/unstable/

he probibly ran into missing documentation on the stuff he wants. Among Open Source projects, this is often what seperates Django from Rails ... click on the links to see which one I think is better, or make your own judgment call. http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtkmm/unstable/

I'll probably get shot for this, but I found Same GNOME ridiculously addictive. There are clones of it for other desktop environments, but there is something nice and polished about the GNOME version that I found lacking in the clones.

the goal should not be 'unconfigurable' but 'no configuration needed 90% of the time, and configurable the remaining 10% of the time'.

Another example of "unconfigurable" is file rename behavior in Nautilus. Click-to-rename behavior (like in Windows) was implemented once, but was later removed completely rather than making it a configuration option.

the goal should not be 'unconfigurable' but 'no configuration needed 90% of the time, and configurable the remaining 10% of the time'.

Another example of "unconfigurable" is file rename behavior in Nautilus. Click-to-rename behavior (like in Windows) was implemented once, but was later removed completely rather than making it a configuration option.

It's called Dia... nice Visio clone runs on Windows and Linux.

http://live.gnome.org/Dia

"a lot of GNOME development is done by RedHat/Fedora dudes, and I constantly get the feeling that they are a closed book and don't pay attention to engaging the community"

Case in point here's an issue from 2003 which has bugged many users and has been repeatedly reported and begged to be fixed but never got solved (btw this issue - fully hiding the panels - doesn't affect KDE 3 not sure about KDE 4 since I haven't used it extensively):

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127973

If anyone is actually interested:
http://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-quarterly-2009Q1.pdf
http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q2.pdf

No "large enterprise distro" currently ships with KDE as the main DE. SUSE is the only one that has decided to ship KDE by default, and that too very recently. Also, Linus's infamous statements are not a factor for people when deciding which DE to use. Seriously, they're not.

The reason why KDE is growing so much is because their community is insanely motivated. The only other community I've seen more motivated is the Drupal community. KDE is able to project a halo of (mostly valid) hype around itself which attracts users and hence contributors, which results in more features and hype, and so on.

OTOH, a lot of GNOME development is done by RedHat/Fedora dudes, and I constantly get the feeling that they are a closed book and don't pay attention to engaging the community and gaining contributors. There are exceptions of course, such as Richard Hughes and Dan Williams.

No "large enterprise distro" currently ships with KDE as the main DE. SUSE is the only one that has decided to ship KDE by default, and that too very recently. Also, Linus's infamous statements are not a factor for people when deciding which DE to use. Seriously, they're not.

The reason why KDE is growing so much is because their community is insanely motivated. The only other community I've seen more motivated is the Drupal community. KDE is able to project a halo of (mostly valid) hype around itself which attracts users and hence contributors, which results in more features and hype, and so on.

OTOH, a lot of GNOME development is done by RedHat/Fedora dudes, and I constantly get the feeling that they are a closed book and don't pay attention to engaging the community and gaining contributors. There are exceptions of course, such as Richard Hughes and Dan Williams.

How GNOME and KDE spend their money

Sep 16, 2009 10:20pm GMT

Bruce Byfield

Quarterly reports are the stuff of business. In most people's minds, they are as far from the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS) as anyone can imagine. All the same, as non-profit organizations, many FOSS projects issue them. And while your first reaction may be to avoid quarterly reports, they can give some insights into projects, especially if you read between the lines.

For instance, if you have been assuming, as I have, that GNOME has more corporate support than KDE, and a larger budget, a look at the latest report for GNOME and KDE may surprise you. Together, the two reports give an entirely different impression than you might assume.

Neither quarterly report has much in common with the glossy publications offered by multi-national publications. Both are PDF files with undistinguished layouts and a minimum of graphics. Even head shots of people mentioned or reporting are absent. Compared to corporate reports, those of both GNOME and KDE are practical, unadorned publications.

Of the two, GNOME's (its first, covering June, July, and August 2009) comes closest to the spirit of a corporate report. It includes not only the obligatory message from GNOME's executive directory, but also reports from the Release, Bugsquad, Marketing, Web, Usability, Accessibility, Documentation, Art and Localizations Teams. Although some of these reports were outdated by the time the report was released, their overall impression is of a multi-tiered multi-national's executives reporting in. In general, the report fits in well with GNOME's traditional tendency to favor the corporate side and with its recent interest in marketing. Like most quarterly reports, it is as much a public relations document as an effort to provide concrete information (although it does both). The one non-corporate note is at the beginning, when executive director Stormy Peters asks readers, "please let us know if you find it useful!"

In comparison, KDE's report for March through June 2009 is less than one quarter the size of GNOME's. Although it includes the usual redundant introduction -- this time by Aaron Seigo, it contains far fewer individual summaries from GNOME's report. These differences may reflect the greater experience that KDE e.V. -- the German non-profit that manages KDE -- has with the whole idea of reports, and has the advantage that it is more likely to be read completely. At the same time, because it is so short, the KDE report seems less corporate, an impression that is fitting for the project's more community-based orientation.

Beyond these general impressions, what is most interesting is the financial accounting in the reports. The two reports are not strictly comparable, given that many FOSS activities occur in the northern hemisphere's summer rather than spring. Nor is it always obvious in either report what falls under each line item. Still, some differences emerge.

For instance, GNOME lists an income of just over $102,000 for the quarter covered by its report. This income includes $65,000 from the Desktop Summit, $20,000 from "advisory board fees" (which I interpret mainly as donations from corporate sponsors), and $12,400 collected by the Friends of GNOME, a promotional and fund-raising project.

Omitting the Desktop Summit as a one-time source of income, these figures mean that GNOME has traditionally relied on corporate supporters. Corporate supporters continue to provide the bulk of GNOME's income, but the total from Friends of GNOME suggests that GNOME may be switching to a more community-based source of income. However, given that GNOME reported an approximate income of $54,000 per quarter in 2008 (ht

That would be nice and good, except that Go-OO is not a fork

Marveled at Slashdot's inflation of the go-oo.org mess; a few points

        * This is hardly a fork - and it's not even something very new in practical terms. As I said very clearly, we're still contributing the majority of our work to Sun, (and hence OO.o) under the JCA, and will continue doing so for the bits that touch their code.

Try again.

That's an article from 2004 that's not fully relevant anymore. The GNOME IPC method described there, Bonobo, was mostly replaced by D-Bus in GNOME 2.4, with a full deprecation planned for GNOME 3.0; there are some lingering accessibility issues left to resolved before all the Bonobo is gone.

With KDE also adopting D-Bus some time ago, Open Office is the slow kid here. Everybody else is jumping on D-Bus as the way to handle cross-application message passing on Linux systems, because it's not like anybody ever really like all those awful CORBA-derived message bits anyway--that's some of the worst software ever designed. People have been suggesting that the UNO object model only used by OO be replaced by a D-Bus based approach for at least some things for years now. But since that object model is central to so much of Open Office and the code base is huge, that's a really hard bit of refactoring to do. Frankly, I'm surprised that the OO Clipboard works as well as it does, and I'd rather see people continue hammering away at the data problems there first before moving on to message passing.

Perhaps this is a good point in time to switch to Pidgin (multi-platform and my personal choice), Adium (Mac OS X), Empathy (Gnome), Kopete (KDE), or some other, more trustworthy client?

Yep. There's absolutely no way to use an iPod under Linux

Now, don't you start your whining about your precious Ogg and FLAC or-anything-else-support neither!

Now STFU, you fucking Troll...

Well, some say it is dead while others say that it is not

Apparently, it is now called QuteCom

However, it seems its kind of in a "sleeping" state

The answer is very simple, and strikes at the heart of what is wrong with the open source movement: regular folks prefer products they can use without much effort. It's called "usability" and for-profit companies invest a lot of money and time always finding ways to make their products more "user-friendly".

It seems to me that open source developers have heard of that "usability" thing, just two examples here:
http://usability.kde.org/hig/
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/

And where did you get the fact that for-profit companies don't use open source development method? Just a one example, search here for 'Who is sponsoring the work'.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php. Personally I think that nobody wants this great OS is because people aren't ready to risk their existing pre-installed OS since switching an OS is a non-trivial risky thing which takes time, however good the new OS might be. And people are often content if something works just enough even tho something else might be more productive in the long run. "NOBODY in a for-profit company like Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, IBM, ect., would ever let a new computer ship without the capability to install a printer and print from within applications out-of-the-box."

Can you honestly argue that every single device that you have plugged into a computer shipped by the above companies has worked out-of-the-box? If you can you're an extremely lucky individual. I myself have had nightmares with getting devices to work with, for example, Windows 98, ME and even WinXP even tho it has good hardware support. And computer/OS distributor can't have perfect hardware support because printers have drivers which need to be specifically programmed for a certain OS so if a device company decides so, it can make drivers for its device only for one OS leaving the others without support (which might be added by someone else who is willing to do reverse-engineering). "Open source projects are the opposite: they concentrate on pleasing the "experts", with the result that the products are usually good, but of no interest to the general population." The GNOME project, the other one of the biggest desktop environments for Linux, focuses on simple interfaces and actually annoys power users since cutting down on choices makes for less features. For example I am a power user and dislike GNOME applications and I also think that most open source applications are nowadays made for non-power users. As an example here, Mozilla Firefox is an open source project and it seems to be quite good for newbies too.

"One more example: installing applications on the XO often requires making use of the command line. well...99% of people out there have no idea what a "command line" is. How clueless can a team be?" I thought that 99% of people in the target areas also have no idea what a "graphical user interface" is. Command line is efficient, flexible, fast, consistent and lets user automate tasks easily so it might not be that horrible if people would learn it. But I agree that applications might be good to be installable with a GUI tool like synaptic.

(Sigh, you are a fucking troll..."Niggerponte" indeed...)

The Gnome HIG says:

Label all buttons with imperative verbs, using header capitalization. For example, Save, Sort or Update Now.

You're right that no dialog box should ever go "Are you sure? [No] [Yes]" and that's been true in GNOME since 2.0 came out seven years ago. Maybe you're not using GNOME apps?

Fluendo offers paid codec support. Of course, you have to pay. Fluendo is integrated in Ubuntu and you are prompted to purchase the Fluendo codecs when you run into a file with an unsupported codec.

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist

I'm suprised Shuttleworth didn't mention Zeitgeist, which is a solution to the difficulty of manually managing files and folders and is, as I understand it, being considered for inclusion in GNOME 3. The basic idea is to group files (and other activities, like web bookmarks and email contents) automatically according to human-relevant criteria, like "edited last week" or "related to this document I'm writing." It's still very much a work in progress, but it looks like it could be pretty great.

How is Apple's UI guidelines any better then the GNOME project's? http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/

Disclaimer: I am 15 and have absolutely no experience in development...