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You should be modded up because you actually have a point, the Gnome developers are the ones doing all the cutting edge stuff. Like storage http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/ And also they are actually attempting to use SVG to render the entire interface including widgets, not just icons. http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/0 2/03/129215&mode=thread&tid=152&tid=106&tid=13 1 http://librsvg.sourceforge.net/ What I dont understand is why we need 100 different SVG projects when we could get more accomplished if we all worked on cairographics.

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  Reality: The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given - the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE, and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared to any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" really means.
• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  Reality: Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (indeed, all systems do) - but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet [ximian.com] by Ximian [ximian.com], which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various very tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations - KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.
• Myth: KDE is more popular
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when both GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. Indeed, the systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

  One of the few solid measures of popularity is the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead, with both Hewlett-Packard [hp.com] and Sun Microsystems [sun.com] committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use - Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

• Myth: Konq

a really big foot like this one ?

The link your page that shows that Gnome can do MDI is interesting.

You are raising some interesting issues. Some of them are well-know, but some others (e.g. middle point for sliders) haven't been reported earlier, as far as I know.

Please try to report them in Bugzilla. This is the best way to make sure that the GIMP developers do not forget about these problems. Some of them already have their own bug report and there is no need to submit a duplicate bug report, but you can add some comments to the existing one if you think that you could give a better description of how some problems could be solved.

You can use bugzilla.gnome.org to report GIMP bugs or search for existing ones. Or you can use the friendly interface from bugs.gimp.org if the default interface to Bugzilla scares you.

1. Adjustment layers

Planned for a future release. Contributions are welcome.

2. 48-bit color support (and don't point me to buggy cinepaint)

Planned for a future release. Again, contributions are welcome.

3. COLOR MANAGEMENT.

A part of this should already be handled by your X server (see Xcms, xcmsdb and related tools). For the other part, see the next item.

4. L*a*b color space

Also planned for a future release, when GEGL is integrated into the GIMP. Look at the GEGL Task List and scroll down to the item "Additional ColorSpaces and ColorModels". You will see that L*a*b is mentioned there.

For all of these, the GIMP and GEGL developers would be more than happy to accept any contributions from users of developers. Providing a patch implementing the missing feature is of course the best way to contribute, but paying someone for doing it may also work in some cases. Bribing some developer with money, food, books, movies or any geeky stuff may also help. ;-)

1. Adjustment layers

Planned for a future release. Contributions are welcome.

2. 48-bit color support (and don't point me to buggy cinepaint)

Planned for a future release. Again, contributions are welcome.

3. COLOR MANAGEMENT.

A part of this should already be handled by your X server (see Xcms, xcmsdb and related tools). For the other part, see the next item.

4. L*a*b color space

Also planned for a future release, when GEGL is integrated into the GIMP. Look at the GEGL Task List and scroll down to the item "Additional ColorSpaces and ColorModels". You will see that L*a*b is mentioned there.

For all of these, the GIMP and GEGL developers would be more than happy to accept any contributions from users of developers. Providing a patch implementing the missing feature is of course the best way to contribute, but paying someone for doing it may also work in some cases. Bribing some developer with money, food, books, movies or any geeky stuff may also help. ;-)

That is a UI flaw. Drawing straight lines is a common thing that users do. Including it as a non-apparent feature (which makes the user hunt down the documentation) is just plain stupid.

You are right: this is a UI flaw. The problem is known and this will eventually be solved. You can have a look at the following bug reports. The second one deals more specifically with the issue that you mentioned (as a coincidence, I forked it off the main bug report today).

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51108

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124040

That is a UI flaw. Drawing straight lines is a common thing that users do. Including it as a non-apparent feature (which makes the user hunt down the documentation) is just plain stupid.

You are right: this is a UI flaw. The problem is known and this will eventually be solved. You can have a look at the following bug reports. The second one deals more specifically with the issue that you mentioned (as a coincidence, I forked it off the main bug report today).

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51108

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124040

SVG support is useful, as I use SodiPodi (a great svg tool, and the latest CVS version is really good, I expect it will become 0.4 soon) a lot to create diagrams and pictures. Being able to import them into the gimp without having to export to png first will help me.

Gimp keeps impressing me as being the most versitle image program, that is free and open source. It is now so easy to use compared to photoshop! Features are being added everyday, and if the feature you want its not there, then make a feature request. If you don't request, then don't complain. Most of the requests are trivial and can be implemented quickly, so if you are developer with some time to kill then add it and make a lot of people happy.

Then there is the GEGL project, which is a new version of the GIMPs core engine, witch will extend beyond the the traditional RGB-8 and provide several new colour spaces, which is what a lot of people wan, it will be coming in future gimp releases. (post 2.0)

I'm happy with gimp, and when you try you will be happy to. For 95% of people who use graphics tools, gimp is overkill, and the gimp developers are working VERY hard to satisfy those 5% who complain. Graphics manipulation is complex, and you should be very happy people have made this wonderful tool for free, rather than having to shell out $$$$! Photoshop would probably be a lot more expensive today if it wasn't for the gimp, so even if you don't use gimp then your being indirectly benifetted.

there is already a bug for it set with a 'Future' milestone (last updated in July)

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79025

a better bug (marked as a dupe of this one) with links to tutorials etc. is

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98262

and from the various comments in them it doesn't seem the gimp developers really either understand what this functionality is really about or how useful it is.

I am really surprised that the gimp team doesn't have some pro PhotoShop users on board to give feedback on -really important- missing features. At least they could pick up some good books on PS photo retouching (probably what 90% of the users would like to do with Gimp, honestly, does anybody think more than 1-2% would use this SVG thing?) and read up on it...

I don't mean to rib on open source projects, most of the time they are great because the developers are the primary consumers (Apache, Linux, ...) but when it comes to vertical apps often the dev team could use the input of some experienced users so needed functionality would be implemented before whiz-bang stuff...

I know, I should be grateful (and I am) but it really peeves me how such a hugely important piece of functionality is in limbo and other much less useful things (but with probably a more 'cool' quotient) are going in...

there is already a bug for it set with a 'Future' milestone (last updated in July)

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79025

a better bug (marked as a dupe of this one) with links to tutorials etc. is

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98262

and from the various comments in them it doesn't seem the gimp developers really either understand what this functionality is really about or how useful it is.

I am really surprised that the gimp team doesn't have some pro PhotoShop users on board to give feedback on -really important- missing features. At least they could pick up some good books on PS photo retouching (probably what 90% of the users would like to do with Gimp, honestly, does anybody think more than 1-2% would use this SVG thing?) and read up on it...

I don't mean to rib on open source projects, most of the time they are great because the developers are the primary consumers (Apache, Linux, ...) but when it comes to vertical apps often the dev team could use the input of some experienced users so needed functionality would be implemented before whiz-bang stuff...

I know, I should be grateful (and I am) but it really peeves me how such a hugely important piece of functionality is in limbo and other much less useful things (but with probably a more 'cool' quotient) are going in...

I dunno, maybe you should file a bug for it or something? Just bitching about it on Slashdot won't get you anywhere.

Offering some kind of MDI interface for the GIMP has been suggested several years ago. This may be a good solution, as long as it is optional because some people prefer the current interface.

You can find some discussion about that in bug report #7379. The feature may be implemented in GIMP 3.0, or earlier if I find enough spare time to implement it or (more likely) if someone else takes the job and implements this feature.

Note that version 1.3.x and the upcoming version 2.0 offer the option of displaying a menu bar in the image windows, if this is what you are interested in. But if you want a shared menu bar on top of a big container window and a shared status bar at the bottom of that window, then you will have to wait until someone implements a real MDI solution.

The NLP required for this is far off, but it sure will be cool when we get there.

I guess "far off" is relative, but take a look at GNOME Storage. It's pure theory either; look at the pretty screenshots.

The NLP required for this is far off, but it sure will be cool when we get there.

I guess "far off" is relative, but take a look at GNOME Storage. It's pure theory either; look at the pretty screenshots.

As someone else noted (in an article with a link done as text, not as an , and with an extra blank in it), Mac OS X has a possibly-interesting scheme for starting and stopping system services. Here's the section on System Initialization in the Mac OS X online documentation; in particular, look at the Startup Items stuff.

It's a dependency-based scheme, like at least some of the other proposed system services mechanisms; see the section on adding your own startup items.

Note also that Boring Old Init isn't itself changed; /etc/rc runs SystemStarter as its last act, and that starts up the system services. SystemStarter can also be used as a command to start, stop, or restart services, so this isn't just a system startup mechanism.

NetBSD 1.5 and later have a new rc-based system for controlling services; it's also dependency-based. FreeBSD 5.x has rcNG, which is derived from the NetBSD scheme.

(Note that all of those systems have a BSD-style init, and thus don't have run levels.)

Those schemes don't address one of Seth's complaints, however - according to his description in his blog, he doesn't like having shell script wrappers doing the configuration, he wants it done in the service's process itself:

In other news, reshaped SystemServices around the futile, idealistic goal of having daemons contribute the servicesinstead of silly little shell script wrappers in the future. Ever poked through RH's /etc/init.d/ scripts? Its absurd... they do so much stuff in there that should be included in the bloomin' C code. If you need a check for something, just have the program itself do it.... But of course, these programs were designed to be run with lots of magic brittle flags rather than running and situating themselves intelligently.

(I express no opinion on this one way or the other; if you like or don't like the idea, send bouquets or brickbats to him, not me.)

Note also that it appears that he is not designing something just for desktops - in particular, he says:

The boot process: So first the kernel loads itself, and calls ServiceManager (instead of "init"). The ServiceManager starts the DBus service manually,

and checks to see if it should be doing a graphical bootup. If it should be, it starts the GraphicalLogin service (which of course may have dependencies to start first).

Now, whether the kernel should start ServiceManager directly, or whether it should continue to run init and have ServiceManager started from an rc file, is another issue; I'm not sure that there's a compelling argument to eliminate init other than to discourage people from continuing to use the current rc script scheme (which might be Seth's motivation for running ServiceManager as process 1 - he might want to discourage rc script tweaking).

Perhaps one of the reasons why people thought of ServiceManager as being purely for desktop systems is that they thought that, as D-BUS is somewhat associated with freedesktop.

But, I'd hesitate to call it easy to use. The standard C++ language bindings in particular are astonishingly bad:

• they were originally designed long before C++ had standard string and container types and so use char * (with invisible attributes like the const-ness of a pointer controlling vital behaviour like who is responsible for freeing the object) along with their own unique way of dealing with arrays and iterators
• early CORBA implementors supported either fast-but-dumb pointers or slower-but-safe reference-counted smart pointers, so when the standard finally caught up it standardized both (typename_ptr and typename_var), with predictably disastrous results (crashes or memory leaks if you mix-n-match them, which may be unavoidable if you use third-party libraries)

The situation is reported to look better from other languages, and I can personally confirm that the Java bindings are a delight to work with by comparison (of course in Java it's even easier to just use RMI).

As for the wire-level protocol, I have no complaints about IIOP now that it has readable corbaloc: URLs (the CDR marshalling details are still messy but unless you are writing your own ORB they are taken care of for you). I'm actually a bit surprised that IIOP isn't more widely used on the Internet and in the open source world (outside of GNOME of course) -- it's the distributed computing open standard, it interoperates across languages and OSes, it has numerous open-source implementations, and It Just Works(tm).

Instead we are getting stuff like web services and SOAP, whose wire format is just as incomprehensible to humans (don't kid yourself that XML is easy to read -- have a look at a fully-decked-out SOAP message some day) while using many times as much bandwidth and memory and taking at least ten times as long to parse. (And I say this even though I currently write SOAP gateways for a living.)

How does this relate to or even integrate with the new accessibility features in GNOME 2.4?

Have you tried Gimp 1.3.20? Eveybody knows that gimp 1.2 sucks, but Gimp 1.3.20 is actually very good. Its got CMYK support now, and many other advanced features. Ive know several PROFESSIONAL graphics designers that are concidering changing to it. So before badmouthing gimp please try the Bleeding edge version, and if you need a feature thats not included, add it to the Wish list.

Download it from the gimp site. You WILL be impressed.

Obviously, thousands and thousands and thousands of people can do this. We have in GNU/Linux and the BSD's OS' which are either equal to or far superior to their proprietary equivalents.

Service-based business models have cropped up around Free Software. Indeed, Free Software is the best software to use if you want to engage in a service-based business model, since it makes service easier, as bugs are more easy to track and fix. Furthermore, many companies donate some of their programmers to work on Free Software, to fill (or help fill) needs that they may have. Finally, many programmers contribute to Free Software on a part-time basis.

From Ximian support:

Question

On what operating systems can I install Ximian Desktop 2?

Answer

Ximian Desktop 2 is supported on the following distributions:

* Red Hat 7.3, 8.0 and 9 (Intel)

* SuSE 8.2

Of course you can always roll your own.

You are making a lot of unfair genralizations about the desktop, based on some screenshots of Java Desktop System. Not all distros have this problem, certianly not REAL desktop distros like Mandrake 9.2. Java Desktop System isbased on the older Gnome 2.2. Gnome 2.4 has fixed ALL your problems.

First you say the start menu is in the wrong place, vanilla gnome already places it in the top left corner, so that point is invalid, complain to sun, not gnome.

The new gnome applications menu is very well thought out, with descriptive names, few layers and can easily edit menu items with a right click. So that point is invalid too.

Installing applications have always had a authentication dialog box, long before MacOS X had even been written, just click on the RPM and install. The so called dependancy hell only occurs if your using the RPM tool from the command line (and urpmi and apt-rpm solves that) or use a RPM not designed for your distortion.

Users can see all their programs from Start here > Applications, theres no need to go into /usr. Thats the equilent of c:\windows\, which is also confusing and unintelligible.

The Documents menu is basicly the home folder with another icon, and linux has had /home way before the My Documents featue.

As for linux geeks, they are fleeing to harder window managers such as ratpoison, evilwm and openbox, KDE and GNOME both heavily focus on ease of use, and If you have a problem, complain to them, not troll on slashdot which the developers don't read.

The parent can basically summed up as : I am a Mac fanboy who despite having 5 fingers on my hand I use a one button mouse, because its how computers work, not how people work.

Sorry, but Linux IS ready for the desktop, which Apple has stolen a lot of technology from them. See Safari which is a port of KDE's konqueror browser. Go back to KDE/GNOME again, find out that your problems don't exist because you last tried linux on Debian Potato which is obsolete, and troll again.

Here it is

Any chance of making the Gnumeric GUI a little less, um, sluggish?

That depends on where the sluggishness is coming from. If the Bug Isolation Project builds are sluggish but standard Gnumeric binaries are not, then that is something I need to look at. Our instrumentation may be taking up more than its fair share of your time. On the other hand, if you see the same problems in regular Gnumeric, then your best option would be to file bug reports or contact the developers directly. They will be able to help you out more directly than I can.

When entering data the toolbars enable/disable with an annoying lag (instantaneous with Excel).

And F9-ing a (sub)formula in the formula bar is a big missing item

Sounds like a perfect item to suggest in either a bug report or on the mailing list. The Gnumeric developers (of whom I am not one) are generally pretty responsive to MS Excel feature parity requests.

Any chance of making the Gnumeric GUI a little less, um, sluggish?

That depends on where the sluggishness is coming from. If the Bug Isolation Project builds are sluggish but standard Gnumeric binaries are not, then that is something I need to look at. Our instrumentation may be taking up more than its fair share of your time. On the other hand, if you see the same problems in regular Gnumeric, then your best option would be to file bug reports or contact the developers directly. They will be able to help you out more directly than I can.

When entering data the toolbars enable/disable with an annoying lag (instantaneous with Excel).

And F9-ing a (sub)formula in the formula bar is a big missing item

Sounds like a perfect item to suggest in either a bug report or on the mailing list. The Gnumeric developers (of whom I am not one) are generally pretty responsive to MS Excel feature parity requests.

Any chance of making the Gnumeric GUI a little less, um, sluggish?

That depends on where the sluggishness is coming from. If the Bug Isolation Project builds are sluggish but standard Gnumeric binaries are not, then that is something I need to look at. Our instrumentation may be taking up more than its fair share of your time. On the other hand, if you see the same problems in regular Gnumeric, then your best option would be to file bug reports or contact the developers directly. They will be able to help you out more directly than I can.

When entering data the toolbars enable/disable with an annoying lag (instantaneous with Excel).

And F9-ing a (sub)formula in the formula bar is a big missing item

Sounds like a perfect item to suggest in either a bug report or on the mailing list. The Gnumeric developers (of whom I am not one) are generally pretty responsive to MS Excel feature parity requests.

Any chance of making the Gnumeric GUI a little less, um, sluggish?

That depends on where the sluggishness is coming from. If the Bug Isolation Project builds are sluggish but standard Gnumeric binaries are not, then that is something I need to look at. Our instrumentation may be taking up more than its fair share of your time. On the other hand, if you see the same problems in regular Gnumeric, then your best option would be to file bug reports or contact the developers directly. They will be able to help you out more directly than I can.

When entering data the toolbars enable/disable with an annoying lag (instantaneous with Excel).

And F9-ing a (sub)formula in the formula bar is a big missing item

Sounds like a perfect item to suggest in either a bug report or on the mailing list. The Gnumeric developers (of whom I am not one) are generally pretty responsive to MS Excel feature parity requests.

Any chance of making the Gnumeric GUI a little less, um, sluggish?

That depends on where the sluggishness is coming from. If the Bug Isolation Project builds are sluggish but standard Gnumeric binaries are not, then that is something I need to look at. Our instrumentation may be taking up more than its fair share of your time. On the other hand, if you see the same problems in regular Gnumeric, then your best option would be to file bug reports or contact the developers directly. They will be able to help you out more directly than I can.

When entering data the toolbars enable/disable with an annoying lag (instantaneous with Excel).

And F9-ing a (sub)formula in the formula bar is a big missing item

Sounds like a perfect item to suggest in either a bug report or on the mailing list. The Gnumeric developers (of whom I am not one) are generally pretty responsive to MS Excel feature parity requests.

The Gnome Office page is useful to find application replacements. I'm surprised it wasn't linked from the article.

Exact prices have not been decided as yet, but this is an excellent opporunity for non-coders to help opensource programs, and earn a bit of money too. Specifics to be announced on the mailing lists in the coming weeks.

Official announcement here

Exact prices have not been decided as yet, but this is an excellent opporunity for non-coders to help opensource programs, and earn a bit of money too. Specifics to be announced on the mailing lists in the coming weeks.

Official announcement here

Exact prices have not been decided as yet, but this is an excellent opporunity for non-coders to help opensource programs, and earn a bit of money too. Specifics to be announced on the mailing lists in the coming weeks.

Official announcement here

• There is a "standard" API, but it's using the old, limited feature Xlib API.
• Today, there exists two very popular alternative Desktop environments, which in turn are based on two different Widget-toolkits. These are Gnome (uses GTK+) and KDE (uses Qt).
• Developers wishing to develop on Linux will usually pick one of these two Toolkits, as almost all Distributions offer both environments (and associated development libraries).

So the problem isn't a lack of API details (GTK API's and Qt API documentation), but moreso an issue of choice.

It looks a good idea, this with storage FS can bring Linux to the Home Desktop.

Nautilus should become an OO Filemanager in the means of Finder.

here

and

here

Say goodbye to a *once* good Desktop and *always sucking* Filemanager.

The decision just made, some mins ago these 2 mails arrived the Nautilus list.

Nautilus should become an OO Filemanager in the means of Finder.

here

and

here

Say goodbye to a *once* good Desktop and *always sucking* Filemanager.

The decision just made, some mins ago these 2 mails arrived the Nautilus list.

Don't believe me, have a look at these pictures:

He's one showing that bigfoot is a big Linux user.

Here's one that clearly shows bigfoot and his wife marge.

Here's proof that the government thinks bigfoot is real

Do you need more than three independent sources?;-)

gnome storage slashdot thread

Unlike KDE, gnome is free
Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Ximian and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now that novell has taken over ximan you can expect gnome to get put under corpirate lock.

Ximian has been working mostly on mono, evolution and ximian desktop, that is based on gnome but not gnome. Novell taking over ximian doesn't mean it's taken over gnome. By a far shot. And even in the almost impossible case it did, the source is here with a free license. Anyone is free to fork.

Nautilus is much better than konqueror.
Wrong, if your using nautilus for anything more than a simple finder clone you can forget it. No split screen, no ioslaves and forget about being able to have a decent file dialog.

I agree that konqueror is better. But the file dialog is in gtk, not nautilus itself. It's being reworked for gtk 2.4, btw.

Gnome has eye candy
Yes, my pirated Win32 fonts with the patent infringing font renderer. Bit stream vera sans looks like Tahoma put through a shreadder!

Huh? You mean that situation isn't the same in other linux desktops? Last time I tried to get an usable free font, the only choice was Vera. Also, what's wrong about the font renderer? It's used by many projects and I still haven't heard about patent enforcement on it. Hell, if we are gonna talk about patents, Adobe patented tabs.

Not to mention that its got a religiously offensive name

Epiphany? Why should it be offensive? Even if you take the religious meaning (it's a word with two meanings), it doesn't sound offensive to any religion. Except if you consider that religious people go always medieval when they hear there are other religions around, of course.

Gnome is themeable
Yep, choose from High, low and medium contrast, default, and clean ice.

http://art.gnome.org

Wan't to change the colour scheme? USE GCONF NOOB.

Actually, it's in ~/.gtkrc

Gnome has multimedia framework
Its a kludge of esd combined with broken xine libraries. No wonder it crashes all the time and dosen't work on 95% of video files

http://www.gstreamer.net . It's very different when compared with xine libraries, btw. Versions 0.6.x have been very stable. As for video files, the integration of latest ffmpeg will fix that.

Overall, it's a funny post. But just in case someone seriously considered the flawed points...

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

This is also done when .org, .net, .com, .ca, etc. are confused. For example, Gnome and Gnome

• Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME

  The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.

• Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use

  Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME, and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian, which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small and lame Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

• Myth #3 - KDE is more popular

  In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

  One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach

Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME

The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.

Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use

Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian [ximian.com], which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

Myth #3 - KDE is more popular

In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

Myth #