GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform Beta

ambrosius27 writes: "To quote from Jeff Waugh's announcement: "The API frozen Developer Platform Beta, 'Everyone's Excited and Confused', is ready for your porting pleasure!" You can find the full announcement on Gnotices. The GNOME developers have been hard at work. Feel free to download, create/port applications, and, most of all, send in nicely detailed bug reports!"

Comments

Confused

[PineHall]

The API frozen Developer Platform Beta, 'Everyone's Excited and Confused'

I am now confused. Should I be excited?

Logo Change?

[The Great Wakka]

Perhaps for GNOME 2, they should change it to a RIGHT foot instead... just a thought.

screenshots link

[Proud Geek]

Well, this is a developer link, not for people who don't enjoy building it themselves, but here are some nice screenshots.

Re:screenshots link

[jdub!]

Hi there,

Not only did Sun provide their usability study to the GNOME community for review and reflection, the GNOME Usability Project has been working very hard on both our Human Interface Guide and some basic changes they feel are essential for the GNOME 2.0 Desktop release. You can find these on the GUP website.

These have certainly not been ignored, in fact, they have spawned an incredible amount of discussion and development work. The screenshot you see of the new control centre is a port of the 1.5 version that Ximian have been shipping as a preview component of their GNOME 1.4 desktop.

Many of the superfluous options have been removed from GNOME's user interface, which is a very important step in the right direction for usability. Don't worry, all those crazy options that we geeks love will be still be around, they'll just be harder to get to (so umpteen million options don't crowd our preferences dialogues).

Indeed, the concept of configuring so many seemingly disparate parts of the desktop, such as GTK+ themes, window manager themes, backgrounds, etc., will be simplified with the new Metatheme system, which integrates all of these into a simple dialogue. You can very easily make your own metathemes too.

I hope these address your concerns about GNOME developer's desire to improve the usability of our desktop. :)

Re:Gnome should join KDE.

[Glenn2372]

On one hand, I can see that. But remember the beef that most Slashdotters have with Microsoft: lack of choice = beginnings of monopoly = hell on earth.

I say let each develop and make the best that they can. Fair competition is a good and stimulating environment.

Re:why gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pointless competition is only holding linux back."

Funny, because competition between GNOME and KDE is *EXACTLY* what has made both GNOME and KDE mature so much.

Why don't you send this message to gnome-devel-list or kde-devel-list?
I'm sure you'll hear a lot of things you don't expect (such as that the GNOME vs KDE war does not exist).

Re:In relation to Ximian Gnome

[fib11235]

Ximian takes a stable Gnome release, and builds a product around it.

Assume that they will need a fair amount of time to wait for Gnome 2.0 to stabalize, and get there 2.0 version out. I would guese at least 3-4 months before some beta product is announced, and at least 6 months untill they switch over.

I think Gnome 2.0 will generate substantial interest in getting applications ported over. That's the real ticket.

Re:In relation to Ximian Gnome

[GrenDel Fuego]

Gnome 1.4 was released April 4th of this year. Ximian Gnome 1.4 was released April 24th. (Dates from Slashdot).

Since Ximian employes a lot of the main Gnome developers, they're probably working on their product as gnome is testing, so the release time shouldn't be that far off from the Gnome 2.0 release date.

Be prepared for lots of new desktops!

[Rob Kaper]

From GNOME 2.0 Release Schedule and KDE 3.0 Release Plan:

• December 10: KDE 3.0 Beta1 release
  
• January 14: KDE 3.0 RC 1 release
  
• January 16: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta 1
  
• January 30: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta 2
  
• February 20: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
  
• February 25: KDE 3.0 Final release*
  
• March 15: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final
  

* (or RC 2 in case it is necessary)

Notice how the planned GNOME releases are closer together than the KDE releases. Is there any indication when GNOME 2.1 will be out? KDE usually takes 4/5 months between releases, so I expect KDE 3.1 in July, with a 3.1.1 bugfix release in August and of course a 3.0.1 bugfix release at the end of March of begin of April.

GNOME did not have as many recent releases as KDE has with the 2.x series (GNOME underwent the same large overhaul as KDE did during the transition to KDE2), so what kind of a release schedulet can we expect of GNOME after 2.0?