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Core Developers Discuss The Future Of GNOME
Jon writes: "George Lebl and Maciej Stachowiak, GNOME core developers, recently attended the Australia Linux Hacker's conference, Linux.conf.au. Check out the article LinuxWorld Australia is running based on their talk at the conference. It looks at the future of GNOME and other interesting tidbits. Also, check out this link to see summaries of other talks - including Alan Cox's '
Classified Progress Report and Briefing.'" The GNOME folks indicate that Nautilus could be the default file manager as soon as next month :)
Now the issue is multimedia support - once again, Gnome will come up to speed somewhere in the two year lag range. Its interesting that I note that most uber-smart unix geeks I know are just throwing in the towel and running an SSH client from windows into their BSD boxes. Why? Because they're tired of seeing "plugin not suported" when they try to do anything interesting on the web.
Yes, using c for an object oriented coding is kind of f*cked up. That's why (at least I think that's why) the GNOME dudes are developing Inti, a c++ application development platform that has a gtk-based GUI toolkit that's supposed to make writing consistent GUI apps pretty easy. I suspect that the moment it gets real stable, it'll supplant a lot of the Gtk C coding being done right now.
I am really looking forward to stuff using the X Render extension (anyone have any examples of anyone using it? Docs on how to use them? I so want real transparent terminals...)...
The RENDER extension is definitely being used, by Qt. KDE's CVS version of Qt now includes patches to make it do font rendering. The great thing is that this is all at a very low level, so it's completely transparent to the application programmer. All of my KDE applications have well-kerned, well-hinted, fully anti-aliased proportional fonts. The same is possible with gtk+; in fact I'd heard that someone had it working at one point.
As far as docs, I don't believe there is much right now. There is an incomplete Xft manual page for the library dealing with the font stuff (basically renders fonts in truetype and feeds them to X using the render extension). There is also probably likely to be something at the render mailing list.
Real transparent terminals...as I understand it, that requires a seperate extension. Render creates the option of alpha blending, but it takes something else to do it on the window level, rather than on top of an opaque window.
Isn't that the filemanagers have some way to go, or that silly apps tell me KPACKAGE NEEDS TO BE RUN AS ROOT! rather than asking me for the password, or that one is more or less favoured by closed source developers, that Ximian installer force installs all its packages, or that one is more or less free than the other.
Its that they both ignore each other. Half my apps don't work properly. The standardized drag and drop doesn't work across in any distribution with the latest GNOME and KDE, dragging from Konqueror to the GNOME desktop doesn't work. Neither does any other cross app drag and drop.
* Drag and drop is broken
* I have 2 sets of mime types
* My KDE panel applets won't launch in the GNOME panel, and vice versa
* When I add an application the the kpanel, it doesn't appear on the foot menu, and vice versa
* KDE and GNOME don't even include apps from each other on their panels
* Childish KDE developers write a GNOME theme importer which calls GNOME `legacy' and childish Eazel developers make Eazel services showcase any app for any toolkit, as long as it isn't KDE and QT.
* QT and GTK are themed using different engines, with no reason why.
Thisn isn't competition. This is insanity, artifically partitioning all my apps. Neither desktop will win. No OS uses a single partition.
Imagine a Windows user clicking Start to reveal `MFC applications' `VCL applications' etc. End users don't give a fuck about toolkits and never have. Why is the KDE team writing KPhotoSuite? Why shouldn't KWord work really well with the GIMP?
Windows uses more than one toolkit. It just does it well. For God's sake, stop partitioning my desktop. Write a combined style guide for GTK and QT based apps. Make sure both toolkits use the same theming engine, and have a similar range of widgets aviable.
And for God's sake, stop using your brilliant minds to hurt each other and combine them to actually make Linux a useable desktop.
I'll have hope the first time a Linux developer actually writes a software installer and doesn't call it `gnorpm'.
I must have missed the part in the article in which the Gnome developers are 'dissin'' their own project. What I saw was a brief explanation on what was motivating improvements, and how the 1.4 was aimed at those improvements. Perhaps I am rising to a troll but as far as I can tell this was anything but an example of anyone dissin' anything.
.99p16 but I avoided X for a long time. My experience with gnome, X 4.02 (with Matrox acceleration) has made me a fast clean easy to use desktop. I doubt I will ever abandon command line, but maintaining multiple machines with X is a pleasure at this point.
The only thing I can think, is that the reader here prefers over aggrandized marketing lingo to what is generally self-effacing programmer attitude (in which we learn that programmers always say it is broken even if it isn't 'broken' so as to avoid expectations. as opposed to marketers who never say anything is broken but call bugs features.)
I personally have enjoyed gnome lately. The apps are functional and the toolkit seems to be making it easier for developers to produce some pretty professional looking apps. In combination with Debian (using apt-get) I have been able to keep up to date with gnome and easily added new apps as I heard of them. There is alot of work to go but there seems to be a lot of action. I have been continuously running Helix (Ximian) Gnome desktop for over a month and it is far more stable than any other gui I have ever used. Gimp-print outputs without flaw... And Gimp itself is a rock of stability. The Sawfish desktop is quick and very flexible. Infact running recent Gnome with nightly builds of mozilla, xemacs, eterm, gimp, gpilot, gphoto and xmms has been a pleasure.
Yes there are bugs, and I am an expert user (and thus can pretty much figure out just how I mangled everything, but given a month or two at this rate, and I think ya'll will be suprised.
I am really looking forward to stuff using the X Render extension (anyone have any examples of anyone using it? Docs on how to use them? I so want real transparent terminals...)...
As to Nautilus, well I am still a strong advocate of the command line where file management comes in. Still occasionally I call up the file manager... Certainly not the worst I have seen. Nautilus seems nice looking, and I guess it will appease folks who don't understand cp and mv, but bash with filename completion means I move damned fast when I want a file.
Anyhow,
I am not a 'normal' user with experience since Linux
d
This is not true. A remote app is running on the remote computer. It has no access to your system for security reasons. Instead of being a client to the LOCAL X server, it is a client of the REMOTE X server. It does not have any access to your filesystem, and doesn't even know what your username is on your local box. It certainly would look nice, but its just not possible.
At my work, we use NFS-shared home directories, so when I run apps on other boxen, they do show up with my theme. Obviously, this is not the case with root, which is local to each machine.
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Last I looked and tried GTK with Drag and Drop, it was nightmare. Unless you are a gtk/gnome monger, forget it.
And the other thing is speed. Lord good gravy gnome is slow. Its bloat with fudge added in. Waiting for hardware to get faster is not a way to make your software improve, efficiency wise.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
every month? or every 6 months?
Just what I needed...
A file manager that plays mp3's, browses the web, zooms in, displays the actual text of files within the icon, contains the nuclear launch codes, has support for themes, is very configurable....
HEY!!! Did that just say what I think I said? Yup, I guess these open source blokes have finaly gone a bit too far with this "World Domination" thing.
47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)
Narrator: "In their ongoing battle to slashdot sites out of existance, CmdrTaco and his minions, Jamie and Timothy find themselves in a dire predicament."
CT: "That linux.com.au site seems to be holding up very well. Any ideas men?" Jamie: "This business is getting harder and harder. How can we see our power manifested unless we can slashdot some sites. Don't they know who they are dealing with?"
CT: "Obviously not. Our only solution is to post the link again." Timothy: "Wait commander, won't the hordes of lemmings who read the page more than once a day realize that you posted the same story twice? They won't beleive it."
CT: "You're right, a bit too obvious. Why don't YOU post the story."
Jamie: "Excellent idea, then, when they are slashdoted, I can post a story claiming they were CENSORED."
Narrator: "Meanwhile, far from the geek compound in homes and NOC's across the world, geeks and wannabe geeks experience a strong sense of deja-vu, and wonder at the effects gallons of Jolt has injested while sitting a climate controlled room. The ones who realize what is going on on the other hand are a bit quicker in the future to minimize slashdot when their PHB's walk by."
I guess if the good discussion has already happened, we should just have some fun.
I think you're missing one problem - one of the goals of GNOME is to provide interoperability and consistency between and among programs. That means sharing as much code as possible. Which then means libraries. If you want printing functionality - don't write your own, use gnome-print. If you want to communicate with other programs, don't make up your own protocol, use CORBA (ORBit). If you want to allow your app to embed others, don't write the code yourself, use Bonobo. If you want to draw to the screen, don't make up your own toolkit, use Gtk. If you want to use audio and allow it to mix with everything else, don't make your own library, use gnome-audio.
You see, the problem is consistency. The fewer libraries, the less consistent everything is, and programmers have to code their own everything. Why not put it all in ONE BIG LIB? Because not everyone needs everything. If I'm not embedding other objects, I surely don't need Bonobo. If I don't print, why link with gnome-print? Anyway, if you like life on the bleeding edge, download all the libraries and play. I personally prefer to wait until it all comes in a nice package. And then you don't have to worry about any of that.
Engineering and the Ultimate