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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.
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.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
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.
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.
*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
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.
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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!