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Gnome 1.1.4 Released
sheldie wrote to us to say that those wild and wacky Gnome guys have released Gnome-core/gnome-applets 1.1.4. As we've said before, they are currently in a feature-freeze, working towards 1.2. Of course, I do think that the best part of 1.1.4 is the name: "Ponies for Sale!" does a great job of drawing it all together. *grin*
I agree with you -- but that's what meta moderation is for.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Your Milage May Vary.... be sure to grab a copy of gdk-pixbuf, too! Enjoy!
Democracy frequently yields more than two viable choices. It is only the US system of winner-take-all at the precinct level that caused the two party system. In many democratic nations, if party C gets 10% of the vote, they get 10% of the seats.
But that's neither here nor there.
"BSD and System-V" - trivial. They're just two variants of the same system.
"VI[M] and Emacs" - what about "classic" vi and elvis and vile? What about XEmacs? What about joe and jed? What about xedit, kwrite, and gnotepad?
"RedHat and Debian" - Hah! Redhat may be the current marketing winner, but no one has any clear title to number two. But this is a topic on Gnome, and Gnome runs on a lot more than Linux! So don't forget BSDs or the commercial unices...
"Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt" - Okay, you got one. But it's only a temporary win. Considering how quickly these desktops came on the scene, it's very plausible that one or both could be shoved aside with next year's entry. Just think of the possibilities inherent in an "Enlightenment Widget Kit", or if GNUstep decides to suddenly take off!
The point is, when you try to divide up the world into halves, you're always going to fail.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
For a while, the Gnome team had a bonobo fetish. While technically "bonobo" only refered to the set of CORBA interfaces, lots of other stuff got slapped with similarly inspired names -- hence "Tasty Yellow Banana".
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
"Make a Linux API...Adopt either Qt or GTK, (preferably GTK) and strip out all the widget stuff...so it can function as a full API for the system."
You're forgetting two big roadblocks for your scheme. First, where are the API Police going to get the authority to enforce your rule? If you remember, Redhat tried to standardize on Gnome and inadvertently spun off Mandrake in the process. Second, Open Source is more than just Linux (why do you guys keep forgetting this!). Both Gnome and KDE run on *every* Unix system, both free and proprietary. If you managed to get your way and mandated a standard Linux API, you would end up locking out non-Linux source code. An application that currently runs on every unix-like system would end up working only on Linux, or on every other unix but Linux.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You know, the whole idea of comparing software development methods and licenses to economic systems like Capitalism and Socialism, or political systems like Democracy or Fascism is retarded on a number of levels. It's like comparing apples to concrete. I think people jump at the "parallels" for the same reason they compare enemies to Hitler, or whoever. While they may amuse the writer for a little while, and annoy or rile up the reader for a little while, these kinds of comparisons contain no information.
Not to mention that "political" and "economic" systems are not really seperable, nor do they ever really exist in "pure" forms, but these kinds of comparisons always assume that to be the case.
The whole thing is like dunking women in tubs of water to prove whether or not they are witches; it does not really matter if they are witches or not, and, the chosen method for proving the goodness or badness of the aledged witch does not actually indicate whether or not she is a witch. In short, it's just a pretext for drowning a woman people don't like.
The issue if "GPL == Socialism" is of the same nature.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
> "RedHat and Debian" - Hah! Redhat may be the current
> marketing winner, but no one has any clear title
> to number two.
There are at least three distributions which are based upon Debian. One of them, Corel Linux, has been aimed squarely at the desktop market, and has the marketing machinery of a fairly large software company behind it. Whilst I agree that there's no clear "number two" distribution, Debian is shaping up to be the biggest "metadistribution".
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
I'm really glad we have the choice between GNOME and KDE, and both interoperate *very* well with each other. I run GNOME at school and KDE at home, but I have no trouble switching between the two. My GNOME windows are themed differently than my KDE ones, but it's not a huge problem.
;)
Choice is good. That's why Windows sucks
æeee!
And plenty of minorities. You always have choice. And then you have major standards behind two. E.g.,:
They are the majority, with plenty of minorities. This may not be the best way, but the best way we know of.
Proprietary software is like socialism, with Microsoft the epitome as communism. One choice, and we punish you if you try to choose otherwise.
Me? I'm a Gnome wennie (then again, I'm a RedHat-baised wennie too ;-).
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Now using XML we can automate the semi-weekly Gnome vs KDE flamefest....
<?xml version = "1.0">
<!DOCTYPE = GnomeversusKDE [
<!ELEMENT Flame (KDESucks | GNOMESucks)>
<!ENTITY KDESucks "KDE Sucks!, GNOME Rules">
<!ENTITY GNOMESucks "GNOME Sucks!, KDE Rules">
]>
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Dull-named stable releases:
1.0.0 GNOME
1.0.50 October GNOME
Cool-named unstable releases:
1.1.1 Beantown
1.1.2 Curse of the Bambino
1.1.3 Tasty Yellow Banana
1.1.4 Ponies for Sale
Let's just hope there's space for one more 1.1.x before 1.2 arrives!
HERE
The article explains that a bunch of old Apple/Mac programmers are more or less incharge of interface for GNOME 2.0 (as far as the file manager and back processes of the file manager) and that HelixCode is incharge of the internal "plumbing." It also said that HelixCode is really looking to put together a office suite.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Linux doesn't take itself too seriously. (As in the people who create for it.) I mean we have these hilarious codenames for GNOME releases, and there's other items like the "Most Doomed" List, which if I recall is a list of programmers whose programs have the most bugs. Fantastic sense of humor.
I guess this is a good example of the ethic behind Linux compared to Windows. While amusing codenames are entertaining, I think as an investor I'd find it hard to invest in a company that was offering. Microsoft Windows 2000: Large Unfriendly Bear or the like. (Though the codename I just mentioned would be a good codename for Microsoft.)
Of course ethically I couldn't invest in MS anyway, but that's another story...
Keep up the humor guys!
I hear a lot of people on one side say that Linux should have a standard window manager, and a lot of people on the other side saying that choice is good. There is a perfectly good compromise between the two, but it cannot be achieved because the GNOME and KDE developers are, to put it nicely, brain-dead. Both KDE and GNOME have very nice widget sets, Qt and GTK, respectivly. The problem is that they provide an API, not just widgets, so you have to utterly unrelated libraries tied together. The reason people are pushing for a standard interface in mainly app compatibility. Choice is fine, but when one desktop does not nativly run the apps of another desktop, then its not the same OS anymore. They are adopting the emacs train of thought, thinking that they ARE the OS. Sorry, but there is no reason that a widget set should have printing services. The best thing to do would be this. Make a Linux API. It has Posix, but something to access the higher level system would be nice. Yes, X has this to an extent, but it is a pain in the ass to program to all these different layers. Adopt either Qt or GTK, (preferably GTK) and strip out all the widget stuff, and flesh out the rest of it so it can function as a full API for the system. Then make a strict API for the system API to talk to the window manager, and move all the widget stuff into there. Thus what you end up with is a system that is almost as customizable as the current system, but without the hassles of having to deal with so many APIs. Policy should be seperate of implementation. Thus an app could ask for a window, do operations to the window, etc, all through the system API, but the look and feel would be governed by whatever window manager one had installed.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
If you want a really good looking and customizable desktop, run enlightenment by itself. Much nicer IMHO.
/. I develop an inverted comb of icons. such as:
E is customizable in the way that emacs is. You know there's a way to do it, but damned if you know where/how to change it.
E is quick, but it's lacking in some serious respects. Namely in the themes arena. I'm not talking about the lack of themes (good lord! there's a lot), but the way themes are managed. If I want to change the color of my titlebar, I don't want to have open up some huge theme hunt around for the one line and change it from "SlateBlue" to "Salmon" or whatever. What E (and all themeable WMs in general) is a WYSIWYG theme editor, on the level of Windows's Contol_Panel|Display. Just a nice place where I can click on a title bar and say "make this putrid green" and WHALLA! It's done.
I also would like to have looks and feels seperated like how they are in Afterstep. (Which has config files that are pretty easy to understand). (In all honesty I haven't divulged down into the depths of E themes, just far enough to say, "This is too involved for such a trivial task. Fuck it.", so this may actually be the case in E, but if it is, it's not as obvious as it is in AS.)
The other feature I'd like to see introduced is more control over icons in E. 1. I'd like to be able to have icons uniconify to where they were iconified from, not always the active screen. 2. I wish the icons wouldn't constantly resort themselves. It gets damn confusing. (I icononify and uniconify alot. I can keep track of what's what if the icons would just stay put.) Finally I'd like to beable to turn that damn icon box off. I REALLY don't like icon boxes; they're too confining (which is coincifently why I don't like taskbars/lists and CDE style button-based pagers). I websurf in a VERY atypical fashion. As I read a page I open interesting links in a new window and continue to read the original page. I then group relavent icons together. For instance when I read
SSS
CCC
11
2
(where S = story, C = comments, # = newslink)
I can only work this way if icons go to the root window and can be moved anywhere I want. (forcing icons to stay in an icon corral on the root window is not acceptable. Infact it's just wierd.)
Because of these short commings I'm going to start playing with sawmill.
Was he a member when GNOME (the original not the KDE clone) started? It's no wonder he's a member. He even has the RMS trait of taking offense when a member of the media calls Gnome Open Source software.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Proprietary software is like socialism, with Microsoft the epitome as communism.
Au contraire... mon frere. I would call Microsloth more of a facist dictator, forcing everyone to adopt their corrupt regime - or else (drag finger across neck). Socialism/Capitalism are economic systems, democracy is a governing system. Sweden implements both, and does a fairly decent job of it.
Open source is more like socialism. In a co-operative system, everyone is equal, contributes labor to an organized cause, and everyone is entitled to equal benefits. Sound familiar? There is nothing inherently wrong with socialism - the problem with the large, failed implementations that we were facing during the cold war, were the tactics they used strong-arm tactics to keep their members in line. One drawback to co-operation is the lack of competition - which is the redeeming quality to capitalism.
Where in the capitalist framework do you fit code-reuse? At least in the open source movement, there is a mix of competition with co-operation so that those guiding the path don't get complacent and sloppy. It also helps to be working under the shadow of Microsoft, so that there are constantly critics questioning the quality open source software. This pushes the community to refine until it's bullet-proof... almost.
Programmers unite!
- passion
Please Gnome developers, do something to fix the PROBLEM of huge launchers and other TOO LARGE CRAP on the panel. Like lots of people who use their computers for work, screen realestate is precious to me. Having HUGE non-resizeable, mostly hideous looking buttons on the screen does not help sell Gnome or Linux to desktop users or their managers as a viable option. It makes Linux and Gnome look immature and badly designed.
If you've marked the panel sizeability issue as a "won't fix", PLEASE at least do something about the icons for GMC and the buttons on the panel. "Fungus & Clay" are not pleasant, attractive associations for your onscreen look, but that's what they look like to me. Hint: adding a dingy warm patina of brown-gray to all your icons is not a good strategy for harmonizing an icon set into looking "designed". It's looks more like they were picked out of dumpster. Learn COLOR--the Impressionists put it on top in the mid-19th century and it's here to stay.
(Themeing zealots who want to tell me that your wonderful theme solves all these problems just save your breath.)
Does anyone know anywhere unstable gnome debs can be found. I just want to give unstable a lookover and not have to deal with the source cleanup. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Don't worry about the Gnome UI just yet. As previously noted Eazel will be handling the UI for gnome 2.0. The company core is made up of some of the original macintosh UI developers as well as some people from Macromedia as well. I do, however, think that there should be another repository of people who have graphic and UI skills available for opensource application writers to choose from or call upon. Tigert (Tuomas Kuosmanen) can't do it all himself. Maybe I'll work on starting that up tonight. Just a repository/place for artists to submit icon work and examples for developers to check and see which one fits their mood for an application. Anyone interested in helping? I'll probably end up doing it in Zope/python since that's my new bag as of late. If interested shoot me an email at the above with the subject of ..ummmmm...."UI Design" and let me know. Artists can shoot me an email as well if you want me to let you know when things get going.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
"Gnome was Miguel's answer to KDE, and later was adopted by the FSF....but that is a story in itself, since I thought WindowMaker was initially adopted as the 'official' environment of the FSF."
Hmmm, why is it that no one ever joins GNU, but everyone keeps getting declared a part of it? I remember the day when WindowMaker was adopted. The WindowMaker page had a statement similar to "Apparently, we are now the official window manager of the GNU Project..."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The editorial in Linux Magazine in the latest issue argues for settling of either kde or gnome and abandoning everthing else in favour of pushing one to being finished and creating a "standard". Well, ideas like that would have left Linux in the dark ages. I couldn't believe that the editor of a Linux mag could miss the point of the OSS revolution so completely. Go get a copy and tell him how it is.
I've been playing with blackbox window manager lately and I think it's great! Very clean, nice menus, and runs kde or gnome apps without breaking a sweat. My problem with gnome and kde is that they are customizable to a point, but no matter what you do, it always looks like gnome. If you want a really good looking and customizable desktop, run enlightenment by itself. Much nicer IMHO. Anyway, I think that there's a lot of great reasons to have multiple window managers, multiple GUI environments etc.