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Having nothing better to do (and wanting to do a bit of testing on the localization stuff we are working on), I decided to download the latest beta of GNOME - GNOME 2.3.5 (Jebe) . Since the RC release freeze is imminent, and the feature freeze is already in place, the system that I am running currently will not be significantly different from GNOME 2.4, when it is released on September. In this article, I would be briefly describing the new features and applications of GNOME 2.4. However, I would concentrate mainly on the packages in the core GNOME system, and will not be going beyond those.

Installing the packages (WARNING: slightly hairy) To GARNOME or not...

I had heard that installing the GNOME packages in the right order could be a tricky process, and I was looking at GARNOME and other tools for an easy way out. However, after some poking around, I decided to do the install by hand. This decision was largely prompted by this document, and I am really grateful to its author.

The system

The usual convention before doing a description of any large scale installation process is to give a short summary of the specs of the machine in question, and so, without much ado, here it is:

Processor: 700 Mhz Pentium III
RAM: 192 MB
Swap: 250 MB
OS: Redhat Linux 9.0 (Shrike)
Kernel: 2.6.0-test2

It is obvious that this is not a very modern machine, but such boxes are quite common in where I live (India).

The installation

Most of the files needed for compile and install are downloadable from the directory ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/2.3/2.3.5/sources/. There are also a few "extras" which are usually included in stock "development machine" installations, like the Docbook 4.1.2 DTDs, etc. If you don't have them, the ./configure script will complain, and you will find them in your distro CDs.
I did not download the gtk2, the glib2 and the pango packages. More or less up to date GTK2 and glib2 are already included in RH 9.0 and I usually keep in sync with the Pango development process through CVS (I have to keep track of certain outstanding bugs in Pango w.r.t bengali rendering). If you follow these steps, please ensure that you have the devel packages installed as well.
To avoid a mess, I had decided to install the new GNOME packages under /opt. That meant that the new libraries and the header files would be installed in /opt/lib and /opt/include. So, I had to set the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /opt/lib/pkg-config (by issuing export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/lib/pkg-config) so the pkg-config utility searched /opt/lib/pkg-config before the usual /usr/lib/pkg-config. I had also added the line /opt/lib to the file /etc/ld.so.conf. Moreover, the usual ./configure was replaced by ./configure --prefix=/opt so the installation folder was /opt.
I followed the following sequence while installing packages. It works for me, and it may or may not work for you.

1. atk
2. libart_LGPL
3. libgnomecanvas
4. libxml2
5. libxslt
6. libIDL
7. linc
8. ORBIT
9. intltool
10. GConf
11. libglade
12. libbonobo
13. gnome-mime-data
14. gnome-vfs-devel (needed to insta

Having nothing better to do (and wanting to do a bit of testing on the localization stuff we are working on), I decided to download the latest beta of GNOME - GNOME 2.3.5 (Jebe) . Since the RC release freeze is imminent, and the feature freeze is already in place, the system that I am running currently will not be significantly different from GNOME 2.4, when it is released on September. In this article, I would be briefly describing the new features and applications of GNOME 2.4. However, I would concentrate mainly on the packages in the core GNOME system, and will not be going beyond those.

Installing the packages (WARNING: slightly hairy) To GARNOME or not...

I had heard that installing the GNOME packages in the right order could be a tricky process, and I was looking at GARNOME and other tools for an easy way out. However, after some poking around, I decided to do the install by hand. This decision was largely prompted by this document, and I am really grateful to its author.

The system

The usual convention before doing a description of any large scale installation process is to give a short summary of the specs of the machine in question, and so, without much ado, here it is:

Processor: 700 Mhz Pentium III
RAM: 192 MB
Swap: 250 MB
OS: Redhat Linux 9.0 (Shrike)
Kernel: 2.6.0-test2

It is obvious that this is not a very modern machine, but such boxes are quite common in where I live (India).

The installation

Most of the files needed for compile and install are downloadable from the directory ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/2.3/2.3.5/sources/. There are also a few "extras" which are usually included in stock "development machine" installations, like the Docbook 4.1.2 DTDs, etc. If you don't have them, the ./configure script will complain, and you will find them in your distro CDs.
I did not download the gtk2, the glib2 and the pango packages. More or less up to date GTK2 and glib2 are already included in RH 9.0 and I usually keep in sync with the Pango development process through CVS (I have to keep track of certain outstanding bugs in Pango w.r.t bengali rendering). If you follow these steps, please ensure that you have the devel packages installed as well.
To avoid a mess, I had decided to install the new GNOME packages under /opt. That meant that the new libraries and the header files would be installed in /opt/lib and /opt/include. So, I had to set the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /opt/lib/pkg-config (by issuing export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/lib/pkg-config) so the pkg-config utility searched /opt/lib/pkg-config before the usual /usr/lib/pkg-config. I had also added the line /opt/lib to the file /etc/ld.so.conf. Moreover, the usual ./configure was replaced by ./configure --prefix=/opt so the installation folder was /opt.
I followed the following sequence while installing packages. It works for me, and it may or may not work for you.

1. atk
2. libart_LGPL
3. libgnomecanvas
4. libxml2
5. libxslt
6. libIDL
7. linc
8. ORBIT
9. intltool
10. GConf
11. libglade
12. libbonobo
13. gnome-mime-data
14. gnome-vfs-devel (needed to insta

Having nothing better to do (and wanting to do a bit of testing on the localization stuff we are working on), I decided to download the latest beta of GNOME - GNOME 2.3.5 (Jebe) . Since the RC release freeze is imminent, and the feature freeze is already in place, the system that I am running currently will not be significantly different from GNOME 2.4, when it is released on September. In this article, I would be briefly describing the new features and applications of GNOME 2.4. However, I would concentrate mainly on the packages in the core GNOME system, and will not be going beyond those.

Installing the packages (WARNING: slightly hairy) To GARNOME or not...

I had heard that installing the GNOME packages in the right order could be a tricky process, and I was looking at GARNOME and other tools for an easy way out. However, after some poking around, I decided to do the install by hand. This decision was largely prompted by this document, and I am really grateful to its author.

The system

The usual convention before doing a description of any large scale installation process is to give a short summary of the specs of the machine in question, and so, without much ado, here it is:

Processor: 700 Mhz Pentium III
RAM: 192 MB
Swap: 250 MB
OS: Redhat Linux 9.0 (Shrike)
Kernel: 2.6.0-test2

It is obvious that this is not a very modern machine, but such boxes are quite common in where I live (India).

The installation

Most of the files needed for compile and install are downloadable from the directory ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/2.3/2.3.5/sources/. There are also a few "extras" which are usually included in stock "development machine" installations, like the Docbook 4.1.2 DTDs, etc. If you don't have them, the ./configure script will complain, and you will find them in your distro CDs.
I did not download the gtk2, the glib2 and the pango packages. More or less up to date GTK2 and glib2 are already included in RH 9.0 and I usually keep in sync with the Pango development process through CVS (I have to keep track of certain outstanding bugs in Pango w.r.t bengali rendering). If you follow these steps, please ensure that you have the devel packages installed as well.
To avoid a mess, I had decided to install the new GNOME packages under /opt. That meant that the new libraries and the header files would be installed in /opt/lib and /opt/include. So, I had to set the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /opt/lib/pkg-config (by issuing export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/lib/pkg-config) so the pkg-config utility searched /opt/lib/pkg-config before the usual /usr/lib/pkg-config. I had also added the line /opt/lib to the file /etc/ld.so.conf. Moreover, the usual ./configure was replaced by ./configure --prefix=/opt so the installation folder was /opt.
I followed the following sequence while installing packages. It works for me, and it may or may not work for you.

1. atk
2. libart_LGPL
3. libgnomecanvas
4. libxml2
5. libxslt
6. libIDL
7. linc
8. ORBIT
9. intltool
10. GConf
11. libglade
12. libbonobo
13. gnome-mime-data
14. gnome-vfs-devel (needed to insta

It must be those shitty linux fonts your using. Back to windows until your a bearded gnu/hippy who's eyes are sharp as a goats vision.

• GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
• KDE User Interface Guidelines
• From Apple, the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines and the pre-Aqua HIG

Since version 2.0, the default GNOME window manager is metacity. For more information I suggest you visit www.gnome.org instead of asking really basic questions on /.

emptybody asks: Have they taken foot casts...?

Yes. Scientists are especially puzzled by the missing toe.

1) RTFM
2) STFW
3) Learn gnu/english
4) Suck Havoc penningtons "HIG"
5) Recompile your Kernel
6> type cowsay I am leet and post output to slashdot.
7) Install potato
8) ???
9) GNU/PROFIT!

Awkward and inconsistant user interfaces

I must agree on this one, that why I believe things like Gnome's HIG can only help usability.

Inconsistent location of files. /usr , /usr/local , /bin , /sbin, and the like

I've been using Linux for a couple years and I
still don't know what the difference is.

As the other reply mentioned, this is off-topic.

But on the other hand, I run Linux on a p166mmx laptop /w 96mb ram.

I run Debian on it, with the Ion window manager and XFree86 3.3.6 (cos I don't like the glidepoint, and I use mostly console apps on it), but you could use IceWM, Blackbox or XFCE, all of which are in Debian Stable (Woody).

For a web browser I use Dillo mostly but Mozilla for some stuff (SSL etc). I don't use email on that machine though.

For productivity I have vim :P but AbiWord and Gnumeric would work okay I would imagine.

Basically, keep it sensible, and don't go for any memory intensive stuff (KDE / GNOME). Recompiling the kernel would help.

It's a nice laptop actually, apart from the HDD has a maximum transfer rate of 4mb/s, which is it's downpoint. Still, it's adequate for it's needs.

Martin

Fight Microsoft where it hurts: ignore them.

But in the mean time,

• KDE 3.1.3 was released
• Gnome 2.2 was released
• Novell bough Ximian
• SuSe was granted Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (EAL2) of the Common Criteria
• Opera is gaining users

Looks like someone already did.

Check their website.

So are Red Hat and Sun, my friend. Go look at ChangeLogs and MAINTAINERS files. Ximian is just one part of it.
Measuring how big that part is is of course difficult and close to pointless, but for anyone actually involved in GNOME it's absolutely clear that Ximian is just one of the acting parties, and not even the biggest one at that.

A rough and unscientific test would be to actually grepping the e-mail addresses on the foundation membership list. There are of course several caveats with this method; these are all contributors but grepping doesn't tell the level of involvement, and many contributors may have registered with another e-mail address than their company one. I know that's true in at least two cases below. Anyway, here are the results:

1. Sun: 33
2. Ximian: 23
3. Red Hat: 5 (but important contributors like hadess and DV, and perhaps some more, seem to not have registered with their redhat.com addresses)

HP doesn't give a rats ass about GNOME anymore, Mandrake has always perferred KDE, and IBM isn't really involved much with the Linux desktop at a whole.

They're still sponsors, which is the only thing I claimed.

The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

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 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 #4 - Konqueror is

Novell acquired Ximian, not GNOME. Ximian is not GNOME, they're only one of the companies behind it. Other significant companies behind GNOME include Sun and Red Hat who also contribute loads of resources, and also many additional sponsors like HP, Mandrake, and IBM. Not to mention the huge amount of independant volunteers, that made the project even possible to begin with.

So there seems to be a huge difference with GNOME compared to the examples you mentioned -- this one will undoubtly survive even without Novell, should they decide to leave it for some reason.

Many of this conf settings are still avalaible through gconf-editor. See Galeon advanced settings

In fact the new gnome philosopy is that normal users
have acces to a limited set of settings avalaible from yhe application but advanced users should use instead gconf-editor to control everithing else.

Why are you posting crap like this when there are important pieces of news like the release of KDE 3.1.3? I bet the next ask slashdot will be about having sex with mares!

--
irc.efnet.net #gnaa - 1-800-759-0700

The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

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 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 #4 - Konqueror is

a) Rechargeable batteries

OR

b) KDE 3.1.3

OR

c) Sex with a mare

Get it before its slashborked!

KDE needs to get HIGifed for a start, because the GUI is CBARS (cluttered beyond all resonable standards). Konqueror has *16* tabs in its konfiguration dialog (compared to just four in gnome's epiphany epiphany tab).

There needs to be a standard on folder icons/emblems/backgrounds etc, so if I use the happy face emblem in nautlilus for example it will appear in konqueror as well.

There needs to be standardization on the keyboard shortcuts. In mozilla based browsers ctrl-t opens up a new tab, ctrl-t in konqueror opens up a xterm! (Why?)

Don't frighten your users. In Xscreensaver the password dialog contains a BURNING monitor icon (and people have actually thought my computer was warning me that it was going to catch on fire with that icon).

Strip out the bloated text editors vim/emacs. Just install nano by default and gedit for the gui. After all most people only want to EDIT FILES and NOT make coffee with their text editors. Provide rpms for the expert users but don't install it by default.

NEVER force the user to go into the termnial. It should be hidden out the way.

Don't expose the user to any of the in iternals of linux. Most linux users don't even know what /dev/hda means.

Most of my other complaints have been solved already this year thanks to the hard work of the OSS desktop community, keep on trying.

There are a lot of hidden prefs (in keeping with the style of GNOME 2) which control behaiour that cannot be set by a preference dialog (some of these were in a pref dialog in Galeon 1). See the tab location part of the ExtraPrefs document on how to change it.

There are a lot of hidden prefs (in keeping with the style of GNOME 2) which control behaiour that cannot be set by a preference dialog (some of these were in a pref dialog in Galeon 1). See the tab location part of the ExtraPrefs document on how to change it.

But the reason it takes so long to fix them is stupid design.

The myth that complexity is only achieved through complicated design is pervasive in computer programming, typified in Windows, and becoming more prevalant in Linux applications as Gnome and KDE become the standards.

The UNIX operating system was highly complex even in the days when it was dominated by small programs that were designed with the The Unix Philosophy. Small programs that did one thing well were the rule and complexity was achieved by utilizing clean well documented interfaces, standard data storage formats (ASCII), and non-captive UIs. The result is that most bugs can be tracked down to a specific small program that can either be fixed relatively quickly by the maintainer, or be replaced with one of a number of equivalent programs (either permanantly, or until the bug is found and fixed).

Windows design is mostly large programs that try to do everything for themselves, although they do share library functions. The result is huge masses of code that can effectively hide bugs indefinately (shatter), cannot be replaced with another program without breaking the OS (integration), and that the company seems to think of as "not our problem".

The issue I have with the desktop environments is that they seem to be following in the footsteps of Windows design, creating a tangled mess of (what should be) unecessary dependancies, huge libraries, and code that no one person is inheirently familiar with. As yet, I am unaware of any security problems inherent in either Gnome or KDE, but I do consider it a bug that installing a spreadsheet requires also requires a sound library to work properly.

Complex ends can be achieved through simple means and complex programs or OS do not need to be complicated.

Yes, GObject is over complex. Regardless, it's useful anyway. Find more info here.

For example, for the C program that I'm writing right now, I decided to use GLib -- the base utillity library used by GTK.

I initially chose it for portability reasons, but soon discovered it had a wealth of cool stuff in it. In addition to providing the standard data structures (trees, hashes, linked lists), it also has a string type ( GString, ) which handles a lot of the string issues that C programmers get bogged down with.

A lot of the gotchas (buffer overflows, et. al.) mentioned in this article have to do with these string issues, and using GLib's GString data type has enabled me to avoid those.

There is another library similar to GLib, The Apache Portable Runtime, used in the Apache webserver, and also in Subversion.

In addition to all this, I'm using XML as the storage format for my program, mostly because libxml takes care of the file parsing issues so I don't have to.

Bottom line, choose your libraries carefully, they can make a world of difference.

Thomas

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 for the complaining home user. it's more important for

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 for the complaining home user. it's more important for

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 for the complaining home user. it's more important for

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 for the complaining home user. it's more important for

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 for the complaining home user. it's more important for

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 for the complaining home user. it's more important for

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 for the complaining home user. it's more important for

Not exactly. GDK is an *abstraction* layer with multiple backends, the X11 one being the most prominent. To quote from the GTK/GNOME developers' website: "Instead of directly building on top of the X Window System, GTK+ introduces an intermediate layer, GDK, which isolates GTK+ from the details of the windowing system. This simplifies things for the programmer and increases portability." See the webpage. Through GDK backends, GTK has been ported to MSWindows as well as DirectFB(see also here).

I hope that helps.

Not exactly. GDK is an *abstraction* layer with multiple backends, the X11 one being the most prominent. To quote from the GTK/GNOME developers' website: "Instead of directly building on top of the X Window System, GTK+ introduces an intermediate layer, GDK, which isolates GTK+ from the details of the windowing system. This simplifies things for the programmer and increases portability." See the webpage. Through GDK backends, GTK has been ported to MSWindows as well as DirectFB(see also here).

I hope that helps.

There's no Mac support for the higher-capacity Nomad products due to a tiff between Creative Labs and Apple people... and it all started going sour right around the date of release for the iPod. Anyway, if you are a OS X nerd that buys one of these things myself and a few others are trying to get either Gnomad2 or GnomeDAP up and running under Gnome 2.0 using libnjb (current cvs). Wish us luck...

What's wrong with xpdf? or GGV?

What happened to file roller? Why is it crippled! Please complain as soon as possible

Sorry, not around here, the open sores developers have stopped wanking to shit like that and are now wanking to the arrangement of "user interface widgets" Gnome 2.3.3 was released today so come and join the orgy.

Unforuntatley I couldn't orgasm because they crippled file roller.

Sorry, not around here, the open sores developers have stopped wanking to shit like that and are now wanking to the arrangement of "user interface widgets" Gnome 2.3.3 was released today so come and join the orgy.

Unforuntatley I couldn't orgasm because they crippled file roller.

Sorry, not around here, the open sores developers have stopped wanking to shit like that and are now wanking to the arrangement of "user interface widgets" Gnome 2.3.3 was released today so come and join the orgy.

Unforuntatley I couldn't orgasm because they crippled file roller.

I've been using this GTK-shadow patch for some time now, it was included in the 0.22 release of Garnome that I've installed several months ago. My experience with it is that it's nice, it looks impressive but there are two things I really hate about it. When the shadow covers a window with a movie (played with MPlayer) or TV (from my tuner with Zapping) the shadows are not drawn and where the shadows are supposed to be you can see the blue background of that Xv window. Another not-so-important thing is that tearing off a menu completely destroy the effects because somehow the shadows stay in the same place when you move the menu around. The only way to fix that window again is to close the tear-off menu and to open and close it again without tearing off. Other than that it rocks. It even looks great with dark themes (for which I care a lot).

Previewing my comment in Galeon 1.3.5 I've discover a third problem... If you have a menu with shadows that gets covered by a pop-up window (I set Gaim to pop up the replies from my buddies) a certain area around the shadowed menu overwrites portions of the pop-up window. Hmmm... I guess there are enough reasons to not include this sweet patch in the main GTK sources...

Is there anywhere out there a configuration applet for GTK2? You know, something to configure the colors and fonts and manage odd things like drop shadows for menus without having to choose somebody else's idea of a nice desktop in a pre-built theme?

As a longtime KDE user, I'm used to just popping up the control center and configuring such things. KDE has always somehow taken care of the GTK applications' appearances as well. Some recent GTK2 applications, however (i.e. Ximan Evolution) began ignoring KDE's configuration. I got rather tired of seeing these sticking out like a sore thumb on my desktop and decided it was time to configure them to match my colors and fonts using a native GTK tool, instead of "cheating" by using KDE to configure my GTK applications.

Ummmm, where to start, that was the question.

I couldn't find anything but the theme selector in Red Hat 9's GNOME desktop. That let me choose other people's ideas of a nice desktop, but not my own. I tried the old "gnomecc" tool from the command line, but it wasn't there. Finally using an strace I figured out that the appearance of gtk was controlled in .gtkrc.mine and .gtkrc-2.0.mine. Great! Apparently this is how KDE controls the appearance of GTK applications -- it edits these files for me. But now some applications are not getting the hint properly. Okay, I'll edit the files by hand, no problem. I looked at the existing files... Not so great. Not intuitive.

Color format looks like the odd (0-1,0-1,0-1) tuple used by some GTK apps (notably The GIMP) in alternate color palette dialogs. I start up the GIMP and start trying to construct matching colors using that format, and then inserting them into .gtkrc-2.0.mine. After changing a few of the color options by trial and error, more gtk2 widgets do indeed match my KDE colors. Unfortunately, many do not, and the font still sucks.

Since there's nothing helpful in the .gtkrc and .gtkrc-2.0 files themselves, I start looking around for documentation. Back in the old days, X Resources for dotfiles were always documented in application manual pages. Maybe GTK apps do the same thing?

No dice.

So I get on to Google Groups and start looking. I find references to a file at gtk.org. Pretty soon I am digging through this little gem at developer.gnome.org, among others.

I couldn't believe that changing the appearance for a few GTK applications was orders of magnitude more complex and user-unfriendly than editing my old .Xdefaults or .XResources files had been. After another hour or so of studying, and some more trial-and-error, I was finally able to get my GTK2 applications to completely match my simple KDE colors and fonts -- which had taken me all of two minutes to select when I chose them way back in the KDE2 days and which I've been using ever since.

So... now we have GTK2 drop-shadows... Who the hell will ever figure out how to turn them on? Before we add yet more GTK2 appearance options, wouldn't it be prudent to get an application into GNOME to configure them all? Is there already one (other than KDE control center, which doesn't yet seem to completely work with GTK2) and I've just missed it?

In any case, for a while after Red Hat 9 came out I wondered if there was any real reason I was using KDE over GNOME... This episode gave me my answer!

nice work for an oss project, but the ui still needs some polishing. i was looking at the screenshots and noticed that some things were obviously designed by engineers not ui designers or graphic artists (e.g., there is no padding around the text label in the "print preview" button). i guess this makes since most artists and designers are not hardcore programmers.

Since it's cool to pick nits in the Famous People's code, given an opportunity, shouldn't that name pointer be declared const? It sure looks like an input parameter in the original code linked to in the article blurb. Heh.

see the list archives.

The short answer is yes, but it's an issue that is being looked at.

The default size is the same as MS Excel (256x64k). That helps ensure that all the funky xls files out there that depend on those limits work out of the box. However, those values are simple #defines. All coordinates are 32 bits internally. A quick edit and a recompile will change the bounds.

> Windows XP has USB 2.0
linux-usb.org
Linux seems to have had this since June 2001

>it has low-latency audio
this depends on the kernel, but there are already distributions focused on this

Linux Journal

> it can play DVDs, MPEG-4 media player
MPlayer is faster than the WMP and plays video better, IMHO

> it has translucent windows
I guess everyone misses this...

> built-in NAT
What is built in? automatic you mean?

> drag-and-drop CD recording
have you ever tried the _Built-in_ Nautilus cd burner? gnome.ftp

> it has an encrypted
Last I checked this is also built in, take a look at the Linux Kernel
> compressed file system
same as before, but it is not automatic and takes more setup, but CramFS, cloop, etc have been in use for a while

> they have fine-grained access controls
I guess the Journaled, enterprise file-systems don't count?
XFS
JSF

> they have a common language runtime
They are pushing and developing modern programming languages so that we aren't all stuck programming in C.
Take a look at Pel 6, Jython

> (I also know that most of this stuff is available on linux, but it's also kind of a pain in the ass.)
Most of it is pretty simple, mplayer or Xine are genrally default in Distributions, there are distributions _just_ for sound, and anyone look at the alcs and encryption can gereally configure them
On the other hand, I install new things really easily with Gentoo
`emerge new_cool_app`

One could make the leap to believe that this means companies will embrace free, open source! software. Maybe. Or one could look deeper and see that companies are looking to standardize - something that open source software doesn't seem to doing.

There may be places in businesses that open source software will be able to make good progress in - I hope so - but it reads like IT managers are looking to the old standards (IBM, Microsoft, SAP, etc.) for the near-term fixes that they need and any new, whizbang ideas (e.g. wi-fi) will be met with strong resistance...

It would be more convincing if your example wasn't about an OS that prides itself on being the most Free and is officially called Debian GNU/Linux. As far as I can tell, the Debian guys go out of their way to include GNU software whenever they can. That's fine with me, but please don't pretend that Debian somehow represents every other Linux distro in the amount of GNU software included in the core OS.