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Gnome Development Roadmap
dfallon writes, "A GNOME development roadmap is available over on developer.gnome.org. Highlights include: a 1.2 release targeted for April, followed by another 1.X release in late summer (1.4?), which will include Nautilus, the desktop shell being worked on by Eazel, which will lead into a 2.0 release sometime in the fall. " This is, of course, subject to the mad revisions of Nat and Miguel - but it's cool to see what the future /might/ hold.
Surly it is about time that developers start using months for release dates. There is approximately 1 country in the world that uses Fall, most other Englsh speaking countries use Autumn.
And also for those people not in the northern hemisphere, they are in autumn now (or very soon), so the release date is a bit meaningless.
And of course those people in the tropics don't actually have 4 seasons, only 2, wet and dry.
Just a though, why not start using Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4?
Gnome is quite nice however seems rather bloated in an almost nightmarishly windowsish way. I wonder if there can be install profiles for the various desktops based on what you want or on more terms of fuzzy logic and such with things like small, modest, large, gargantuine, bloated, and then finally windows? Also seems like the apps are sometimes not playing nicely together still and that kind of scares me.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
What I'm looking forward to is seeing how Mozilla will be intergrated into Gnome. I think that eventually the layout engine from Mozilla will be used as a component for Gnome, through Bonobo or some such thing, making possible viewing HTML or XML content in the new file manager, help browser, or any other Gnome application where it would be usefull.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Sample generated Katz headlines:
"The Hidden Music Industry, Digital Democracy and Cyber-Terrorism"
"Why Do Sexbots Feel Pain?"
--
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Is there another WM that someone else finds viable?
---- sonoffreak
Hmm, then again, we could bring up a war between England and a certain small group of ragtag guerillas occupying a few colonies on the eastern mainland of the US, circa 1776 or so. :>
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I've played with Sawmill some lately. There are some things about it that I rather like. Its nicely themeable without feeling Over The Top like Enlightenment does. Plus, the flexibility of using LISP to define commands seems promising.
But Sawmill is still young, and not as stable as one would like a default to be. Further, it is *slow*. On my box, Window Maker beats it into the ground, and I've never thought of WM as "light weight". Perhaps this is a direct result of the above mentioned LISP scripting. I'm not sure. I hope that the John Harper can speed up the code some in later versions. If it ran faster on modest hardware (another requirement of a default WM, IMHO), I'd play with it a lot more.
I'll definately be keeping an eye on Sawmill, though...
--Lenny
I feel for some reason compelled to address this issue, although I don't know why because it won't change anything, but oh well.
I don't understand why it is that everytime there is a post on Gnome or a post on Kde that the opposite group of zealots decides to reply to the post with their trolling and flames and whatever. What doesn't make sense is that, the reason why most of us switched to Linux (either permanently, or for use in conjunction with Windows) is because Linux gave us a lot more freedom with what we can do with our software. As of now, there exists two very good desktop environments, Gnome and Kde. Each has its pros and cons, its advantages and its problems. But since the choice is up to the user as which to use (especially since every distribution I know of distributes both Gnome and Kde), why argue over it? Personal preference isn't that big of a deal. Just because user X uses Gnome doesn't mean that you can't use Kde. And no amount of flaming will somehow stop development on one of the environments, and increase development on the other. I think it is good thing that we are presented with a choice as to which desktop to run (or none at all). This is the best competition we can get in the free software world, which is a good thing.
Of course, the other issue is that, if there is so much flaming on Gnome and Kde, why is it that people never argue over Enlightenment or Sawmill, or AfterStep and Window Maker? I'm not encouraging this, but I think that these flame sessions are getting quite childish.
To get on topic, I'm very excited with the future of Gnome and I think that with the pending 1.2, 1.4, and 2.0 releases we shall see something that will compete very nicely with Kde 2.0.
-- BLarg!
I have a general question, and then some personal observations.
First, isn't the religious reason for Gnome the fact that QT is not GPL, and KDE needs QT? Maybe I fundamentally misunderstand the situation, but couldn't the effort that created Gnome have created a GPL work-alike to QT? In fact, as I recall, the KDE developers could not even VIEW the QT source when KDE was originally written, so mimicking the documented interface and functionality of QT should have been trivial (from a design standpoint. I am not trying to minimize the amount of work involved.)
This is not a troll. I intend this as a serious question. I am sure that there is a perfectly valid answer, that is why I am asking.
With the above aside:
In my personal experience KDE is slow on a slow system, and fast on a fast system. On the other hand, Gnome is S-L-O-W on a slow system, and slow on a fast system. As a matter of taste, I prefer KDE's less "frilly" appearance, and find it nice to use. Gnome is not bad, but I don't see what the performance penalty is buying me.
The general response to this question is "Gnome is not slow for me." If this is true for you, perhaps you have some configuration hints you can share. I don't have any benchmarks to back up my impression that Gnome is (considerably) slower than KDE on the same hardware, but a lot of people agree that it is a dog, and I don't think that it is just a conspiracy to get people on a slippery slope of using non-free (lebre) software (in this case QT.)
The short version: Why should I run Gnome instead of KDE, assuming that I don't care about QT licensing quibbles? What do I gain for the (possibly only perceived) poor performance of Gnome.
(To disclaim again, I am posting these questions in good faith.)
-Peter
I'd also like to encourage the Gnome hackers to seriously consider working on an IDE similar to KDevlop. That is simply an amazing piece of work. You have all the documentation and tools necessary to rapidly create KDE applications...and it's very easy to use and intuitive. I know that Gnome has Glade and gIDE and there has been talk of integrating the two, but somehow that doesn't seem like the answer. I think Glade should be integrated into an IDE, but gIDE is no KDevelop, no offense to the author(s). A very functional IDE that even new hackers could use, would go a long way to getting further involvment int the gnome project.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
The people that worked on Harmony (some left when Qt2's QPL was blessed to work on KDE) couldn't look at the Qt1 source since they were mimicking it. As for KDE, there isn't any contamination issue looking at Qt's source. Many bugs are found in Qt by the core KDE developers. Their heavy pounding on it has made it better.
;) Finally, for (3), well there's little you can do to change the mind of those that just want Linux to remain for the brightest among us.
But more importantly, KDE is hated for (1) it's use of Qt and that whole license stuff, (2) it's use of C++, seen as the most evil language you can write in, and most importantly (3) it's target of new users who were moving from Windows, aka newbies.
(1) has become moot with the free license now, but many people haven't gotten the message and will just hate Qt/Troll Tech forever. As for (2), C is a horrible language to mock objects like Gtk+ does. Some complain about the use of moc, preparsing the headers. I would complain just as much at Gtk's use of mock-inheritance and all. C++ works and it's a heck of a lot easier to program in for something like this.
I haven't used KDE, and I'm not interested in getting you to switch at the moment. However, I am curious why Gnome is so slow for you, just because it doesn't seem that bad to me :-) There are two big things that can make Gnome look slow:
-> Pixmap themes. Pixmap themes suck. In particular, they suck memory. Big-time. Evidently imlib or the GTK+ pixmap engine (one or the other) leaks like a sieve, and it's even worse than a memory leak, because what it leaked is X pixmaps. This means that your X server memory usage has a tendency to grow without bound if you use pixmap themes heavily. Also, pixmap themes get redrawn way too many times (this is really a problem for GTK+ in general I think, but particularly painful when using a pixmap theme), and are very very slow in general.
-> gmc. This is probably the most useful thing about Gnome, especially for newbies. It would be nice, therefore, if it wasn't a horrible hack of porting a serial, text-based interface into a graphical, asynchronous environment. This is a large part (IMO) of why everyone wants Nautilus. gmc is not only unstable, buggy, and prone to randomly grabbing the X server and not letting go (last I checked), but it `feels' very slow. This is due to the fact that it's designed on a one-operation-at-a-time basis, so even the UI (redrawing windows, responding to clicks, etc) gets short shrift while it's running.
I use the ThinIce GTK+ theme and get decent performance (I also don't use gmc, and mainly stick the panel on the side of the screen for the CD player, pager, clock, and ICQ client)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I am not a Gnome user (yet), but I have to admit that the website rocks. It's an impressive one-stop source for all kinds of Gnome related projects, including a Slashdot-like discussion area and an awesome web interface to the 'live' CVS tree that provides hyperlinked cross references inside the source files!
It's a good model to follow, and other open source projects should definitely take note.
having used both to varying degrees, you should use gnome(kde) if you have an aesthetic or functional preference of gnome(kde) over kde(gnome).
no other reason. (assuming, as you said, that you don't get into the whole license issue) both of them do more or less the same thing, although each has little strengths that the other lacks. for example, i prefer the gnoe panel to the kde panel, but i refuse to use the gnome filemanager. kfm on the otherhand make a good basic file/web browser when i don't need javascript or https. so i use the gnome panel with kfm. or sometimes i get sick of one or both of them and go back to using a plain vanilla windowmanager (if you can call enlightenment plain) until the next version comes out. so if youve tried both, and decide that one works better for you, stick to that one. but if you have the time, you should still check out new releases form "the other side" every now and then. i gave up on the gnome panel a long time ago for example, but now with their "tasty yellow banana" release, i decided to tried it out again and was very impressed.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Coincidence?
Raster might create beautiful innovative eye candy but I've looked at his code and it exactly matches what others have said, "what a mess". Well Raster is a rock star of the Linux world, but are Open Source rockstars a good thing? Hmmm, what is VA going to do when Enlightenment is not included on the next release of RedHat? That will be a sticky situation.
I'll try to help.
Yes. But most Gnome developers won't even discus that these days.
Yeah. That's what team KDE said. In fact there was an attempt to do just that in a project called "Harmony". As soon as Troll Tech announced that QT-2.0 would be under an OSS / Free Software license called QPL the developers on that project quit and went to work on KDE.
This is incorrect. They could view the QT source all they wanted but they couldn't distribute modifications.
A desktop interface is very much a matter of preference. There are people out there who prefer FVWM2 for reasons other than performance. Try them all and use whatever you like. There is no need to worry about benefits that don't affect you.
Get a faster machine. After you get a really fast box there really isn't any need to worry about the performance of the desktop.
Why not just use whatever works for you ? If Gnome doesn't like your machine or the way you configure it so just use KDE and stop fretting. It's not like the KDE desktop will stop you from using the Gnome apps or vise versa.
At the very least Gnome has a far better FreeCell program. Better even than the Windows 9x version.
That won't stop them from moderating us both into oblivion. :)
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
This is good. TINAFB (this is not a flame but) does it seem like GNOME is playing "catchup" with KDE in more than one way? They've been left behind with the release versions, they've had to come up with their own implementation of a COM-like mechanism, and they don't have an integrated office suite or a web browser. (Clarification: GNOME Office is not *yet* integrated, from what I can tell.) What exactly will they offer that you can't get with the other desktop?
I'm actually curious about this- Gnumeric is awesome, and I could probably never convince anybody who uses windows/excel currently to even *try* linux without it- but what do they offer that you can't get with KDE? What's the added value? How would you sell GNOME to your manager, especially if he's read some article waxing poetic about KDE?
I felt that KDE was too ``german'' in it's looks and feels (no offence meant to germans, but I'm sure some of you know what I mean). So I preferred GNOME over KDE. However, GNOME was slow. Especially when switching desktops, I would have to wait for -too long- to get a netscape away and six terminals where I wanted them.
So I decided to just skip the desktop race, and go with enlightenment, straight, mean and lean. Much to my surprise, this didn't change the situation... After a little wondering, I started out on a new track.
Now, with GNOME and icewm as my window-manager, I have a lean and fairly mean desktop system going, and it's *MUCH* faster at desktop switching than enlightenment ever was.
Clue: If GNOME is too slow for you, try replacing the default window manager. Try icewm (has an *ugly* default theme, but has others which are nice and readily available from T.O.). Or try sawmill (haven't done that myself - yet).
For historical reasons, enlightenment is the default window manger in the GNOME releases done by redhat and others. This is changing. Enlightenment is - hands down - the most artistical window manager I've ever seen and used. But there's just (IMO) too much of artistical sophistication instead of lean code in that one, to perform well on ``old'' systems (my dual PPro with a Matrox I for example).
GNOME with icewm rocks. It seems faster on FreeBSD 3.4 than on Linux 2.2 though, but on the other hand, Linux wins when it gets to disk I/O etc. on the day-to-day workloads. GNOME is not slow in a sane configuration, it's just slow in it's default configuration.
gmc IIRC is going to be re-written from scratch (or a written from scratch file manager substituted for it)
these GTK+ Pixmap theme / flickering / sluggishness issues are likely to be fixed with gdk-pixbuf and gtk 1.3 (which is only in CVS at the moment).
These are not GNOME issues per se, but because of what it relies on.
About gmc, I think most everyone agrees with you, Nautilus is GNOME's messiah.
-- adraken
This is Nautilus -- the eazel-written GNOME 2.0 Filemanager/Desktop.
-- adraken
I completely agree, the desktop issue isn't an either-or dillema. GNOME and KDE (especially with a window manager that supports both -> Enlightenment) work well together. GNOME has a much nicer panel (and applets) than KDE, but KDE has more well-developed applications. So, use both. It can be a very simple, very inclusive desktop.
-- adraken
You may run WindowMaker with GNOME, it works almost perfectly, except WindowMaker doesn't have session management (or at least doesn't work with GNOME'S), therefore it gets screwy. If you plan to try GNOME again, try sawmill with it.
-- adraken
*insert Daniel's comments here as to why GNOME seems slow* In addition to this is the fact that Enlightenment is currently the default Window Manager for GNOME. This will change to sawmill soon because it is so fast and it integrates so well with GNOME (it stays out of the way when it should). (Sawmill author is even going to GUADEC -- GNOME Conference in Paris)
-- adraken
In fact, when you compile mozilla, it builds a GtkMozilla widget, so that you can link to this library and use the mozilla rendering engine as a widget, very cool. (somewhat like how Internet Explorer can be used as an ActiveX control in Windows (case in point: Winamp's minibrowser))
-- adraken
Any idea when 1.4 (stable version, 1.3 is unstable) will be out? I tried the CVS code recently and it seemed a long way from releasable -- unstable, test program segfaulting like mad, etc..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
So, I'd like to propose that next time there's a Gnome or KDE article, people just skip commenting on the theoretical but largely imaginary flamewar.
--
The developers of Eazel claim their product will be "revolutionary". Currently it looks like Midnight Commander++ - certainly nothing to get worked up over.
Expect to see Aqua ripoffs on linux by 2003.
Next comes widget themes for Gtk+. Keep in mind that themes that have pixmaps for every widget take up a LOT of memory. The flat-colored themes are the least expensive, but least visually apealing. Try looking at the various theme entries on themes.org and note the sizes. Pick a list of your favorite themes and use the one with the smallest size (the size of the theme is not a perfect guage, but it's a good start).
If GNOME still seems slow try these tips:
- Don't use transparent windows, and if you must, don't use shaded transparency
- Exit netscape if you're not using it. It's a pig.
- Don't run GNOME and KDE apps at the same time. They both have huge libraries.
- Grab the source for glib, gtk+ and gnome-libs and re-compile with "-O2 -finline-functions -mxyz" where xyz is your platform (e.g. "pentiumpro"). The GNOME coding standards require lots of little functions, so the "-finline-functions" parameter will really help.
Hope this helps!But the biggest reason we prevailed in the cold-war is that the inexorable dialectic of corruption undid the ideological trappings of Leninism from around their regimes and revelaed them as modern day Pharoahs.And nobody really likes slaving and dying for Pharoah.
No, people enjoy slaving and dying for President, Congress and Coca Cola-Microsoft-Ford-Monsanto-Walmart. Please, cut on the propaganda language, and talk about the facts.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Both have their good sides.
IMO it isn't important which you run - there's no
problem with running GNOME applications inside KDE
and vice versa, so you can just pick the best of
both worlds.
With Qt 2.*, the licensing is no longer much of an
issue (and even with Qt 1, you could have a look at its source, just not re-use it or add your own
modifications).
My personal preference is KDE simply because GTK's API is (IMO) painful for programmers (I'm sure many of the GNOME developers will disagree with me here though) because of its attempt to simulate an
OO-style API in a language that simply wasn't
designed for this sort of stuff - causing, among other things, oddities like stupid bugs (such as an attempt to add a listbox item to a pushbutton) to compile without problems.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Duh, that's what he just said more or less.
KDE is a whole desktop environment INCLUDING a window manager. Thus, it's more than just a Window manager.
GNOME is also a desktop environment and currently lacks a window manager (people generally use Enlightment or Window Maker I think) but it will soon have one of it's own. Either way, you can say it's more than just a window manager.
Anyway, the issue as to which platform is best is completely moot - both environments are only as cool as the applications written for them. I don't have much experience with GNOME apps, but I feel justified in saying that many of the applications written for KDE are total crap and seem to have been written by kids without any sense of the importance of finishing anything. The offending apps are mainly GUI with fairly little functionality behind them, and come with poor or no documentation at all.
Maybe QT makes things too easy. Judging by the above characteristics, we seem to be looking at the OSS equivalent of a generation of self-taught VB programmers here (shudder).
Don't try to use KDE in a business environment or you'll probably get burned. I cite as particular hazards: Netscape's extra propensity to crash under KDE, Kmail's lack of IMAP support and KOrganizer's general bugginess and half-hearted implementation of a "to-do" list.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yes, I might. Let me look at it again. They say Gnome 2.0 will be based on GTK+ 1.4. Fine. They also say Gnome 2.0 will release 'around fall 2000'. Ok. So you *could* infer that GTK+ 1.4 will be released around fall 2000
:)
However, the Gnome folks don't speak for the GTK+ folks, and the GTK+ 1.4 release could be scheduled for any time prior to or after the Gnome 2.0 release, which is already pointed at a rather vague target. I'd like to hear from someone who knows something about GTK+ developement when I can start using the new version
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
It is ridiculous to say there is no difference between USSR and USA. Even if the commoner is slave in both, at least the USA has `bread and circuses.'
As a person, who (as opposed to most of Anonymous Cowards here) lived in both countries, I can testify that in "bread and circuses" both countries were approximately worth each other, yet in both propaganda shown the other side as something between Roman Empire, Hell (christian version) and Moon surface.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Actually, there was a thread on debian-devel the other day that indicated that the memory (actually, X pixmap) leaking may not, in fact, be fixed. People were reporting that their X server was using over a hundred megabytes of memory if left running overnight; the only commonality was that they were running Gnome and using various imlib-based things (pixmap themes, transparent Eterms, etc)
This is actually worse than your average memory leak, as the only way to recover the memory is to restart X.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
If I could I'd clean up every piece of messy code I could get my hands on. Heck, I'd rewrite the entire system from scratch.
:)
:) ) -- the logical extension of its current development path -- or collapse under its own weight. Or possibly both.
The fact is, though, that I do not have an infinite amount of time in which to work, and that therefore, I rely on other people to fix things I don't have time to get to. Does this make sense? I'm not sure it makes sense to me
In any event, E is way too broken on a fundamental level to be fixed. I switched to Sawmill and never looked back; I predict that E will either eventually become an entire operating system (possibly even incorporating a kernel
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I tend to disagree on both points.
1. is related to a C vs C++ issue, yes. One of the main problems I have with gtk (and I've programmed in both) is that it pretty much tries to do C++ stuff in C, and has to use some relatively ugly kludges to get it done.
Yes, I know gtk-- exists, and I have tried it, and it gets nowhere near Qt/kdelibs as far as usability for the programmer is concerned (at least IMO), partially because it has to use what gtk does.
As for 2., I know there's some redundancy and you don't get the same look and feel unless you configure it twice, but unless you're on a really slow machine, it's not that big an issue.
Interoperability between KDE and GNOME is going to improve, not to get worse (with KDE 2.0, you can use drag and drop from a KDE application to a GNOME application and vice versa).
KDE will use DCOP for a number of things GNOME will do with CORBA - given enough time, the other problem you mention will be solved with a DCOPCORBA bridge.
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And when Debian defines their spec for licenses requiring that it be free for both personal and commercial use.. that sorta screws KDE over (provisions in the QPL
Why is requiring a commercial QT license worse than the provisions in the GPL which make it illegal to use GPL software in commercial products under ANY circumstance? You would be having a fit if somebody was putting GNOME code into a commecial product. QT realizes that despite the zealots, commercial software isn't going to go away any time soon, so they might as well make money from businesses using their code.
You have to expect a little zealotry from Debian, the call it "GNU/Linux", which seems like needless RMS ass-kissing to the non-zealot linux user community. (GNU/Debian GNU/Linux 8.2 GNU/CD 4, the entire GNU/source-tree of GNU/Emacs)
Seriously, the fact that KDE is less buggy, compiles on the first try every time, and adheres to most of the existing X standards that GTK ignores more than makes up for the crufty QT license. Speaking of which, I have read the QPL, and it seems fine to me. The continued availability of QT is assured, despite the FUD thrown out by the GNOME crowd. If TrollTech folds or is bought out, QT reverts to the BSD license.
0 1 - just my two bits
> My personal preference is KDE simply because GTK's API is (IMO) painful for programmers
Try Gtk--, the C++ binding to gtk+. Looks very Qt-ish, except it uses template functions for signal/slot connections instead of a gross macro hack to the language.
I use plain ol twm myself, there's something zen about having a completely blank desktop when you're not using anything.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Yeah there was a lot of very scary stuff going on and the "Commies" were behind most of it. Vietnam was "clearly" part of that trajectory. Even allowing the possibility that the whole Indo-china problem was not a plot hatched in Moscow, (I know it wasn't) they could hardly be complacent about it. It sure looked like a Commie plot, and certainly if you were an American policy planner, could you possibly doubt that the opposition in Moscow and Peking would make the most out of any opportunity arising from new satellite states in S.E. Asia?
The problem is, it was not a decision of one politician or group of politicians at that time. "Blame Commies for everything" at that time was "the" direction of american international politics, and at that time it was as "natural" for american politician to think in this direction, as thinking that planets make circles and epicycles around the Earth was "natural" for medieval astronomer despite better explanations being easy to come up with.
The Leninist strain of Marxism was something that simply had to be fought off actively. It was contagious, as it offered really bad people a way to get everything they always wanted --with the cooperation of people of good will. I cannot say that the necessity of resisting Leninism justified all means used...
That was Stalinism, not Leninism (and certainly had nothing to do with Marx) -- and it is well known that Communists themselves managed to turn domestic policy away from it as much as the dominant political force was able to soon after Stalin's death, so this was not tied anywhere to their main doctrine. Ideology/philosophy/religion often have very little to do with dictatorship and oppression -- by now ideas of "capitalism" and every major religion (with Islam being most prominent lately) were quite successfully used for the same goals, yet US didn't try to fight all of them at the scale anywhere comparable with communist ideology. It's also very likely that many of those countries would end up more tolerable (similar to USSR in 50's-80's) if US and other western countries didn't demonstrate so much hostility toward them just for the sake of anti-communism.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'm not a troll, and I've already proved it. Now *you* try to prove it's not. Twit.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction