GNOME 2.0 Beta

xer.xes writes: "The first public beta release of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is ready for your testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download here. Please read the release notes first! Due for general consumption in March, the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface." LinuxToday or gnome-announce have the announcement. I don't see release notes anywhere - post a link in the comments if you find them. GNOME is having a bug day today.

Comments

Gnome or KDE?

[ciryon]

This is nice news. I am running KDE now and I believe that KDE 3.0 will be the ultimate *nix desktop. But perhaps this Gnome beta can prove me wrong.

The anti aliased fonts, is that the gtk hack that came some months ago? It looked really ugly. :-P

Ciryon

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[AaronMB]

No, its not the gtk hack. GLib 2.0 supports full anti-alias support.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[GenCuster]

No the anti aliased fonts are part of gtk2. They look great.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[st. augustine]

The anti aliased fonts, is that the gtk hack that came some months ago? It looked really ugly. :-P

No, it's the proper, internationalized anti-aliasing that's been in the works for a while. For a good list of all the user-visible changes in Gnome 2, check out Havoc Pennington's "What's New in Gnome 2" page.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[st. augustine]

The anti aliased fonts, is that the gtk hack that came some months ago? It looked really ugly. :-P

Oops - forgot the screenshot.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[mrcparker]

This
screenshot and this can be so cool if implemeted correctly.

Any other screenshots along this line?

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[MaxVlast]

Boy that looks like Windows with different colors. Not trying to be a troll here, but what's the point of striving harder and harder to make Linux interfaces as close to Windows as possible? Sure, people say the secretary factor, but either a) the secretary will not be a linux user, or b) people underestimate the ability of others to do something new.

To me, it seems more confusing to have something that works and looks somewhat like Windows, but not quite than something that is well-designed and faithful to itself.

But, I'll probably be modded into oblivion, so what's the point?

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

AA does not belong in Glib. You're talking about GDK.

Glib = libc wrappers and basic functions
GDK = drawing kit
GTK = toolkit

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

not to be a troll here, but windows keeps trying to look like the mac, and see what it has done for windows.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[MaxVlast]

Exactly. Windows keeps getting worse. It's a result of not having coherent ideas and the conviction and assuredness to adhere to those convictions. I don't like BeOS, but it has that going for it. The Mac has that going for it. I don't like the Amiga, but it had it, as well. NEXTSTEP had it in spades.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting?

The only reason you posted was to say "I like KDE, I use KDE."

I dunno about you guys, but this kinda post is far from interesting, it's rather cliche around here.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[crivens]

I agree to a certain extent, but I think that if an aim is to pull Windows users to Linux, then for a certain portion of that group you need to provide a familiar environment.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Karn]

I can't believe you are saying Windows is actually getting worse.. I think 99% of the population will tell you that Windows has gotten MUCH better in terms of UI, security, and stability. It's still not UNIX, but it's a hell of alot better than Windows 3.1.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell can you not like BeOS?

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[rgmoore]

Reducing the barrier to entry is a big potential advantage, and I think that you're wrong to underestimate it. Every user interface difference between what people are using now and what you want them to switch to is one possible reason for them not to switch. Integrate over every difference, and you wind up with a big barrier to changing. Of course every beneficial difference is one reason for people to make the switch, so you shouldn't be afraid of making improvements. But there are a lot of cosmetic things that probably should be kept the same just because people expect them to be that way.

The net result is that the "start button" is going to be in the lower left corner, new icons are going to be placed starting in the upper left, etc. There's no fundamental reason that those things have to be in those places, but people are used to them being there from using Windows, so they will automatically look for them there. If that makes it easier for a Windows user to switch desktops, it's more than enough justification for making that the default behavior. And yes, I do realize that the menu bar in Windows can be moved around; the fact that it's still on the bottom with the start menu at the far left on essentially every Windows desktop is simply proof of how conservative most users are.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[MaxVlast]

Well, one of my points was "sorta like" is worse than different. I know I find that I am most frustrated with things that only work a little bit like the things that they're supposed to look or work like.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[MaxVlast]

Well, I didn't consider Win 3.1. That doesn't even count on my scale.

Regarding UI, I think Windows is a mess, always has been a mess, and always will be a mess. It is ugly, it doesn't work properly, there are numerous aspects fundamental to the functioning of the UI that are purely annoying (like the tendency to steal keyboard focus and throw up windows over the current active portion of the screen.)

Win2k is miserable. Everyone keeps going on about how good it is, but I just don't see it. I set up a Win2k machine for Kazaa and to play some games, and it is hardly stable. The explorer is a piece of crap. It barely works! When I'm using it for file management, none of my file ordering or icon location choices are retained, it's flimsy. I can't tell you how many times it has just stopped working, requiring that I ctrl-alt-delete the explorer (which also kills my web sessions.) I just don't see what everybody's so excited about. It simply sub-par, and it annoys me that people are excited by all of the new features and capabilities when the core is completely rotten.

And that's what Linux folks are trying to get? File managers that are web browsers? The god-awful abomination of a start menu? If that's what you want, you can keep it.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[MaxVlast]

Oh, yea. And security.

Security and stability? Let's put the webserver in the kernel for speed. Lets think about security after we make things go really fast (on a 2GHz processor, you don't notice that it's slow anymore!) so that Max's webserver logs are 50% dumbass IIS virus attempts. Let's make the mail system so fundamentally faulty that the average business user is _terrified_ of his e-mail. Terrified of getting e-mail! Congratulations. We have functionality that nobody wants to use for fear of the consequences. That's getting better?

Win 3.1 wasn't an OS, but DOS was stable and fast. That's about all I'll say for MS's accomplishments in the last twelve years.

Oh, and they make a good mouse.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I know this may be hard for your childish little mind to comprehend; but listen anyways and hope you learn my idea through osmosis: Maybe you are a fucking novice that can't configure your system worth shit? Sorry, but honestly; Linux is a _FUCKING PIECE OF SLOW, UNSTABLE SHIT_ if you configure it wrong. If you configure it correctly, it's an aesthetically acceptable, fast, enterprise-level server that I would drop Windows for in a heartbeat. Same goes for Windows. Try being not so amateurish with your posting. Thanks. ~Trolls, America.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[MaxVlast]

I agree that keeping the barriers to entry low are important. I think that installation and cooperation are more dramatic barriers to entry than the start button. If a system has a sensible UI, even if it's different, people are going to have a better time than a half-bred UI that serves many masters and pleases none. My windows-using friend borrowed my PowerBook running Mac OS X. He used it for a while, and liked it. He thought some things were strange, he had to ask me a few questions about it, but he didn't reject it for lack of a start menu. Most people aren't that stupid. And the people who are that stupid typically are taught what they need to know by others, they don't acquire that knowledge on their own. So it doesn't much matter. My point is that different isn't necessarily scary (it can be, but it isn't by definition) and I'd much rather see something that was (gasp) original, creative, different, and effective, rather than the derivative drivel that has characterized so much of what we buy.

The start menu is dumb. The Windows start menu is dumb but we're stuck with it. The start menus in Linux are even dumber because they are so completely decoupled from what's on the system that they're utterly inconsistent across different distros and different peoples' desktops that I don't consider them to be a factor. If nothing, I consider them to be a confounding factor.

Multiple desktops are a great idea. Multiple desktops confuse more people than any other UI feature I have ever seen. By your reasoning, they should be left out.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[MaxVlast]

You effectively said nothing. You said that they can both suck if you make them suck. Well, duh.

My contention is that Windows Explorer is lousy. That has nothing to do with how I configure my machine. I expect to be able to use the interface in the way it was designed and have it work the way it ought to. Is that a lot to ask?

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Flower]

What's new and more importantly what's new that is useful?

I just went and checked out some screenshots for Enlightment and WindowMaker. The default screen for E 0.16 looks completely unintuitive. There is obviously a window showing a desktop in the lower left but I have no clue what the window below it does and the window in the lower right is anybody's guess. After years of using Windows I had an easier time of figuring out the Mac and CDE interfaces.

Now let's look at 0.17 CVS screenshot. Without being able to do some test clicking, it looks like a varient of the traditional taskbar. Go here and there is very little to distinguish it from any other WIMP interface.

WindowMaker is different and I used to use it all the time under linux. The Dock is pretty nice. However, it is still just another WIMP interface.

The stuff that really differentiates&lt sp? &gt Gnome, E, Windowmaker and the rest from Windows is the ability to do multiple desktops, the abilty to roll-up windows and the like.

A screenshot is only going to tell you so much.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[crivens]

I never thought that Enlightenment was a real product; I thought it was a joke! No seriously! When I ran it for the first time, I thought "you have to be kidding! You expect people to use this?". Actually I thought it more an experiment than a joke, but I laughed regardless.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[robbkidd]

Boy that looks like Windows with different colors. Not trying to be a troll here, but what's the point of striving harder and harder to make Linux interfaces as close to Windows as possible?

GNOME 'n' KDE panels and window manager themes are much more configurable than the Windows taskbar and locked in windowing interface. Dockable applets for one, that look much better when included in a side panel than do toolbars in taskbars moved to the side.

It comes down to configurability. A Windows user, an Apple user and a Solaris/CDE user can log in to their individual GNOME sessions and make their environment something comfortable to them. And the really wackball users can go wild with minimalist or really complex panel arrangements. All done with the same set of installed libraries and apps. Wonderful if you're running remote X workstations or thin clients.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

If you have 2 buckets of crap, and someone replaces half of the bucket of crap with perfume, you now have 1.5 buckets of crap, and half a bucket of perfume. NOT a real improvement.

When Microsoft adds a web-server by default to the operating system, then patches it for 3/4 of the severly crippiling bugs, that's a downslope on the security grid. It doesn't matter that there are 3 security improvements that weren't in older versions of Windows. There still are 4 holes that you need to deal with, that you didn't want, and that you didn't enable the app that is being exploited.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Afrosheen]

Maybe I'm trolling here, but I don't see a HUGE start button, a confusing new windows menu, craploads of processor-consuming eye candy and transparencies UI improvements. Even my friend, a die-hard Windows user, turned all the extraneous BS off in XP. XP works best when it's acting (looking) like win98.

"It's still not UNIX, but it's a hell of alot better than Windows 3.1"

I can name about 20 desktops/wm's that are better than win3.1. At least it had speed and stability in it's favor.

With all the new guis, the people working on them should focus on cohesiveness and consistency of action. Don't do this at the expensive of configurability. The thing that Apple has always had in their corner is the Platinum spec. If you're coding for Apple, your program has to adhere to their UI standard. For the most part KDE apps act this way, can't really judge Gnome since I have bad luck with it.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

My intention was to say nothing.. I apologize if I was harsh, you seem to be well-spoken and I understand your distaste for Microsoft's interesting shall we say browser :>. I'm just saying, Windows isn't always as bad as Linux-zealots say it is; when you can "get" Linux just as bad as these people have "gotten" Windows.

You hit the nail on the head by saying that I intended that they can both suck. You are EXACTLY right.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[GrenDel Fuego]

The transparencies here are cool, but god is that background awful.

Heh.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Shelled]

What you say is true, but emulating Windows is also a trap. It's hard to argue that the Windows model is an ideal way of managing the desktop, no matter what MS research on Windows users says. (Have they ever tested the Win desktop on Mac users?). A good example is the one you mentioned, forcing the wrist to the lower left of the screen every time a user wants to start an app. Where's the logic in that? Or in the adherence to a single desktop? These are configurations MS is forced to maintain because their market base became accustomed to it in '95.

It's also the reason MS can't make wholesale improvements. Their users would rebel over anything too new, no matter how much better it works. Should window managers then follow the same path, lock into a single desktop model for short term gain and foresake long term development potential. This Windowmaker/FVWM user votes no.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if we could look at GNOME and find the *fuck* out whether it's better than KDE, but it appears that once again, Slashdot has linked directly to the main site instead of mirrors, making everyone miserable.

Re:Gnome or KDE?

[FooBarWidget]

Why bother? It's not about GNOME against KDE, or KDE against GNOME.
It's together against Windows.

Re:URGENT: MASSIVE MOZILLA SECURITY HOLE FOUND!!

[therealmoose]

I hope nobody fell for this...

They sure release often

[Penrod Pooch]

So, those of you that has tried it. Is it reasonably stable or are they rushing it to fight KDE?

Re:They sure release often

[luge]

Well, from where I stand, it looks reasonably stable. There are very few bugs being filed against it right now, and I use it every day with very few problems [well, nautilus is crashy as all get out, but otherwise everything seems to work fairly well.]

Caveat: like I say, pretty few bugs are getting filed but it's hard to say if that is because of the number of people using it or the number of actual bugs. We'll know better after the beta.

Re:They sure release often

[bartok]

"Is it reasonably stable or are they rushing it to fight KDE?"

Realeasing a beta can hardly be described as rushing software out. Besides, people who prefer KDE won't switch to GNOME just because some new version of it comes out before a new version of KDE. This is also true for people who prefer GNOME.

anti-aliasing?

[swimmar132]

What's the word on font antialiasing in this release?

This is really great

[ColGraff]

I've always thought that GNOME looked nicer than the windows or mac desktops (almost as nice as BeOS), and it's really cool to see that it's getting even prettier. To anyone who reads this who works on GNOME: thank you very much for working on this, and even more thanks for releasing it under the GPL.

It's people like the ones who work on GNOME who are going to make Linux into the desktop OS it has the potential to be.

Re:This is really great

[Anonymous Coward]

URL for screen shots since my linux box is down for the count?

Re:This is really great

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought that GNOME looked nicer than the windows or mac desktops

I guess you haven't seen the screenshots yet?

Re:This is really great

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Gnome -meaning i like the way it works, but pretty is not something you could ever say it had going for it.
GNOME is (superficially) downright ugly.
I mean ass-ugly.

Re:This is really great

[King of the World]

Dotplan
(also,
1, 2)

Re:This is really great

[matman]

Do you mean that the default theme is ass-ugly? It's easy to switch themes.

Re:This is really great

[SoLoatWork]

Are you kidding? Gnome is fugly as hell! I mean cmon.. mod me down.. but you are telling me Gnome looks nicer than Windows and Mac?! seriously..! KDE maybe.. but Gnome has always looked like it's from 1994 to me..

Re:This is really great

[stankyho]

Customization is whats its all about. Gnome can look very nice. With the right WM.

http://reames.org/images/gnome-e.jpg

Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[gmkeegan]

new accessibility features for disabled users

Having just broken both my wrists 2 weeks ago while snowboarding (right in 3 places, left in 2) this is suddenly of great interest. (took 10 minutes just to type this in :(

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[JanneM]

And they claim doing sports is good for you...

/Janne

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was worth every minute.

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[l0wland]

There's 6 minutes between the original posting and your reply. How in earth's name did you do that in 10 minutes ?

:-)

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[Anonymous Coward]

Karma whoring taken to the next level.

Impressive.

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[Viking Coder]

There have been previous slashdot articles on unique keyboards. I might investigate a Twiddler from HandKey corporation if I were you (if you can use your fingers freely, but you can't flex at the wrist).

Also, there was a reference to a keyboard that was two pucks that each moved in one of eight direction (64-possibilities) that you could use without fingers! If you can't flex fingers or your wrists, this keyboard might work for you, as it works largely on shoulder and elbow movements.

I'm trying to figure out what having broken wrists would mean. Do you have full use of your fingers, but you can't flex at your wrists? Do you just get to type with a couple fingers? How are you typing?

Also (of course), you could investigate voice recognition systems. Dragon Naturally Speaking (I think that's what it's called) has an entry-level system for about $100.

If any of these sound interesting to you, and you want help digging up further information on them, feel free to ask me. Just tell me which ones to look into for you.

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[segfaultdot]

You might try the bat keyboard. I've not tried it myself, but i've heard positive reviews of it. It's an eight button chording keyboard similar to the twiddler, but i'ts a more stable surface. Not to cheap at 199USD, but it might help you out.

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[Pyrosz]

Not to mention.. is it 10 minutes to the point of saying it has been 10 minutes to type the first part or is it 10 minutes to type in its been 10 minutes? :)

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[SeanAhern]

It's an obvious troll, but I'll bite.

If that's "proof" of what a "stupid and dangerous" sport Snowboarding is...

Then there's hordes of evidence that pretty much every activity that we engage in on a day-to-day basis is stupid and dangerous.

Driving cars, riding public transportation, breathing air around anything resembling civilization, eating food, getting excited (better not have sex!), expressing opinions, typing on your computer, ......

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[captredballs]

If you think thats bad, I read an article the other day that said sleeping more than 8 hours a night made your life shorter! And all this time I've been told that I need at least 8 1/2!

Maybe its a happier vs. longer type of thing. I like bacon and if I die a year or two earlier, I'll have it once a week. That's moderation, eh?

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[gmkeegan]

I have about 80% use of fingers on left hand, 15-20% on right. This encompasses flexibility, mobility and strength (grip...) No flexibility on either wrist. I've switched to a trackball from optical mouse, but something like a Twiddler sounds great. My left hand/arm is doing all of the typing and tires from being elevated over the keyboard instead of resting on the wrist-rest like it has for years :)

Thanks for the pointer. I'll try to post a followup/eval.

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[ethereal]

...and that's the real reason the IOC doesn't like it when you 'boarders get all doped up, don't ya know :)

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[Cow4263]

ZZZ has a new keyboard like everyother week.

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[Black Parrot]

> > > new accessibility features for disabled users

> > Having just broken both my wrists 2 weeks ago while snowboarding (right in 3 places, left in 2) this is suddenly of great interest. (took 10 minutes just to type this in :(

> There's 6 minutes between the original posting and your reply. How in earth's name did you do that in 10 minutes ?

It also has new accessibility features for psychics.

Re:Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're forced to type with your penis, times seems to move quicker.

oh, dear

[GregWalrath]

I know this is totally off-topic, and I know this probably wasn't anyone's choice at /., but I just came to the main page here and saw an ad for . . .

Visual Studio .NET.

Suddenly, my feet are very cold.

Re:oh, dear

[x1l]

It is going to be so fucking funny when a bunch of trolls get together and put up a ad for dildos.

Re:oh, dear

[chez69]

Please don't give them any ideas (OSDN Self serv ad system)

Re:oh, dear

[mini me]

I just saw it as well, great ad!

It says:
This is a box. -- the ad is inside a border (a box)

Then it says:
You may think outside of it. -- And what is outside of the box? Well the Slashdot page is.

MS might want to rethink that ad.

could a port to windows be done?

[the_2nd_coming]

I am not talking a Cygwin thing, I am talkina an actual shell replacment.

I think it woul dbe realy cool it it could be done. Ximian for everyone!!!!!

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[Penrod Pooch]

Why? Maybe I'm daft, but I don't see the point.

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[pe1rxq]

Sure, its called linux. It replaces windows' shell completly!

Jeroen

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[the_2nd_coming]

for a consistent UI throughout an office with mixed OSs.

many offices still use Windows (if you had not noticed) so how cool would it be tohave your gnome and eat windows too?

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it would be sweet to have something like cygwin on Gnome.

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use KDE! A windows-style interface that even copies the bloat!

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[Anonymous Coward]

GTK+ 2.0 is supposedly going to run on Windows as seamlessly as it does on X, but you have to remember that a lot of GNOME and GNOME apps (ill-behavedly) use Xlib calls, making them unportable.

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[Penrod Pooch]

Hmm, I'm not a very experienced Windows user, but as far as I can tell Gnome and the Windows UI work pretty similar, even if they don't look the same. I also doubt that anyone but an extremly small minority would go through the trouble of changing the Window UI for something else. I think it would be better to spend the limited development resources to make Gnome better for *nix platforms.

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[technomancerX]

"I also doubt that anyone but an extremly small minority would go through the trouble of changing the Window UI for something else."

Actually, you're mistaken. There's a fairly sizable Windows shell replacement community. In fact, there's at least one company, Stradock, that makes their living at it. For a ton of links to replacement shell sites check out Desktopian.

I do agree that it's not something the core Gnome team should be thinking about, though.

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[Anonymous Coward]

well I am sure it would be possable to move the shell and Widgets over and then just replace them with windows apps or somthing.

Re:could a port to windows be done?

[Anonymous Coward]

?????????????

Oh my god! A pervert!

What next, a bathroom in sportcar, oh no I've got it! We just proclaim you a moron.

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny and first. Congrats.

Do my bidding.

[NiftyNews]

A beta release? Why not just start announcing Alpha releases too?

What, you're still reading this? Get back to work testing my future software for me for free!

GNOME 2.0 Release Schedule

[bob@dB.org]

from http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/schedule/

• January 28 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Alpha 2
• January 30 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Alpha 2
• February 11 UI FREEZE - no more UI changes w/o approval of release team (excludes 1.4 feature porting)
• February 11 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta
• February 13 Porting FREEZE - porting complete as per GNOME 2.0 Porting Guide
• February 13 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta
• February 18 String FREEZE - no more localizable string changes w/o approval of release team
• March 4 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
• March 6 DEEP FREEZE - release team approved fixes only from now to final
• March 6 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
• March 27 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final
• March 29 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final

Re:GNOME 2.0 Release Schedule

[HeUnique]

hmm...

1 beta, 1 release candidate, and then - final version...

Am I the only one to think this schedule is stupid? GNOME 2.0 is a major revision with an entirely new libraries - and yet - 2 releases before final? didn't someone actually think that people need more time to find the bugs???

Or does the GNOME people want to have the same honour as Nautilus (the most unexpensive piece of application I ever tested)?

Re:GNOME 2.0 Release Schedule

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off. KDE release schedule is fast - HeUnique shoots his load and squeals with delight. GNOME release schedule is fast - HeUnique slams them.

You're just a fucking predictable little zealots aren't you?

Re:URGENT: MASSIVE MOZILLA SECURITY HOLE FOUND!!

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, i nearly pooped my pants ...

silly fool

Eye Candy

[Ween]

Does anyone have a url where I can preview some screenshots of the new gnome interface?

Re:Eye Candy

[Penrod Pooch]

try here

Re:Eye Candy

[Ween]

to answer my own question and for all those who want to see as well as I, the url is:

http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/ (developer.gnome.com)

Re:Eye Candy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but thanks for asking.

Re:Eye Candy

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a flame, just an opinion.. but... that looks butt-ugly to me :-(

Some juicy screenshots

[segfaultdot]

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Re:Some juicy screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

WOA! You can see Slashdot on one of the screenshots! Now they'll get famous!

Re:Some juicy screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they're JPG (which are - of course - lossy) you can't really tell what it looks like. Of course, smaller than PNG but pretty useless.

Re:Some juicy screenshots

[MicroBerto]

Bahhh!... the recursion is hurting my brain!

Re:Some juicy screenshots

[BlowCat]

They are PNG:

$ wget http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/images/magnifie r.png
$ file magnifier.png
magnifier.png: PNG image data, 1400 x 1050, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced

.debs?

[pong2015]

Does anyone have any .deb's, or do I actually have to make all the packages...? = )
ie: is there any way I can just toss a line into my sources.list?

Re:.debs?

[mvdwege]

Yup.

They're already in the main Debian archives. You have to be daring enough to run unstable though.

Mart

Re:.debs?

[mountain_penguin]

hmm well imm running sid here and
get this :
apt-cache search gnome2
bonobo-config - The Bonobo Configuration System for GNOME2
gconf2 - GNOME configuration database system. (daemon and tools, for GNOME2)
gnome-common - provides scripts and macros for gnome and gnome2 development
libbonobo-config-dev - The Bonobo Configuration System for GNOME2 -- development
files
libbonobo-config0 - The Bonobo Configuration System for GNOME2 -- shared library
libbonoboui2-0 - The Bonobo UI library
libbonoboui2-common - The Bonobo UI library -- common files
libbonoboui2-dev - The Bonobo UI library - development files
libeel2-1 - Eazel Extensions Library (for GNOME2)
libeel2-data - Eazel Extensions Library - data files (for GNOME2)
libeel2-dev - Eazel Extensions Library - development files (GNOME2)
libgconf2-4 - GNOME configuration database system libraries (for GNOME2)
libgconf2-dev - GNOME configuration database system development files. (for GNOM
E2)
libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 - The GNOME Canvas pixbuf library
libgnome2-0 - The Gnome 2 library - runtime files.
libgnome2-dev - The Gnome 2 library - development files.
libgnomevfs2-0 - The GNOME virtual file-system libraries (for GNOME2)
libgnomevfs2-common - The GNOME virtual file-system library common files (for GN
OME2)
libgnomevfs2-dev - The GNOME virtual file-system development files (for GNOME2)
libgtkhtml2-0 - HTML rendering/editing library - runtime files. (for GNOME2)
libgtkhtml2-dev - HTML rendering/editing library - development files. for (GNOME
2)
librsvg2-1 - SAX-based renderer library for SVG files. (for GNOME2)
librsvg2-dev - SAX-based renderer library for SVG files.(development files)
which is just the libs no aps build with it :( am i missing something or is it going to arrive in the next few days?

Re:.debs?

[mvdwege]

Oops. You're right. I am so used to Gnome mostly being a collection of libraries, that I totally forgot to check for the availability of the desktop software itself.

Mart

mirrors

[I Want GNU!]

The main FTP site seems to be down, but at ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/MIRRORS.html you can find a list of mirrors.

A few of them are:

ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Gnome
ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/gnome.org/
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/gnome/
ftp://ftp.twoguys.org/GNOME

Re:mirrors

[I Want GNU!]

Apparantly the FTP isn't down (it just was for a second when I tried, it probably is getting flooded with requests), but it still is a bit slow at the moment.

Debian Packages?

[evilned]

I see tar.gz and some RPM's but no .debs. Is there someone packaging them, or will I have to wait till march when it gets out of beta for it to be put in unstable?

Re:Debian Packages?

[isenguard]

There are debs of an earlier version of the gnome2 libs in unstable already, and they install alongside the gnome1.4 stuff without any problems.

The difficulty is that the gnome2 core apps (panel, control-center, nautilus, etc) are replacements for the gnome1.4 core apps, and so at some point users will have to upgrade to gnome2-core (I assume). In other words, while the libraries can be parallel installed, individual applications can't be (though of course you can still use old gnome1.4 apps alongside new gnome2 apps). Anyway, the upshot is that gnome2-core isn't in unstable yet, but you can get all the libs.

Re:Debian Packages?

[Jebediah21]

I haven't installed the new Gnome packages (lack of sleep and time) but you should be able to use Alien to change the RPMS or tarballs into a DEB. Try searching for Alien on Freshmeat.net

Re:Debian Packages?

[cananian]

Some newer versions of the gnome2 libs are in
http://sinfor.lcs.mit.edu/~cananian/debs, but as another reply mentioned, you'll probably have to wait a little longer for the non-library parts. If anyone wants to do the porting (probably shouldn't be very hard) I'm willing to host the debs at the address above.

You can get a gnome2 version of gnumeric from my archive, since that's what I'm working on.

Re:URGENT: MASSIVE KDE HOLE FOUND!

[volcanic_god]

February 21, 2002 Associated Press:

Recently, a massive security hole has been discovered in the widely popular Linux desktop software KDE. Customers are urged to go directly to this site and download the latest version.

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/pre-/releases/gnom e- 2.0-desktop-beta/

Hehehehehe!

for existing GNOME applications?

[Karma Sucks]

That's not true, as far as I know. Existing GNOME applications don't work on GNOME2. Just like KDE2 doesn't work on KDE3.

What makes GNOME so accessible compared to KDE? I can do everything in KDE with the keyboard and DCOP, can you do that with GNOME?

Also, is there anyone out there actually *using* GNOME2? It seems to me that in the GNOME world most GNOME1 users are ignoring GNOME2. I haven't heard or seen much about GNOME2 anywhere.

Re:for existing GNOME applications?

[RollingThunder]

It (gnome 2) just hit public beta ... why would there be a lot of people using it before it even hit beta?

Re:for existing GNOME applications?

[ambrosius27]

You're right that GNOME1 applications don't work *on* GNOME2, but they do work *with* GNOME2, since the GNOME1 libraries are fully parallel installable with the GNOME2 libraries. In other words, you can have your new desktop environment, the applications that make use of the new and better libraries, and still use your favorite applications that haven't been ported yet. It's a beautiful world.

I can't really comment on comparisons with KDE, as I'm not familiar with KDE's accessibility. However, accessibility has been a driving force in GNOME2 development. Sun, in particular, has been very active in this area. See, for example, their work on the Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) or the GNOME on-screen keyboard or the screen-magnifier (see here). You can find more about the GNOME Accessibility Project (GAP) here. All this is being designed for GNOME2; so, we'll see more of the implementation of the accessibility stuff with this release onward.

As for the question of who is using GNOME2, well, the developers are using it mostly -- which you might expect since GNOME2 beta just came out! ;-)

Cheers!

Re:for existing GNOME applications?

[tal197]

You're right that GNOME1 applications don't work *on* GNOME2, but they do work *with* GNOME2, since the GNOME1 libraries are fully parallel installable with the GNOME2 libraries.

I had a look at the GNOME2 stuff a while back, but it looked like you couldn't (easily) install python-gnome without breaking all existing python-gnome (and pygtk) apps from 1.2. Has this changed yet?

The problem is that, while the Gtk developers renamed the libraries (with a 2 suffix), the python bindings still call the package 'gtk'.

So, 'import gtk' could get you either version, and the APIs are totally different (even more than between the C APIs).

Re:for existing GNOME applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

your statement sucks.

installing gnome 2 parallel to gnome 1. 150 mb gnome 2 basic installation parallel to gnome 1 with 150 mb (stripped bins) 300 mb for something halfhearted.

GNOME2 looks like Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME2 looks very much like Windows now. Look at the scrollbars and so on. I thought GNOME users hated the Windows look? They flamed KDE1 to death because of this kind of resemblance.

Re:GNOME2 looks like Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL - looks VERY much like KDE1.

Well done, Stallman. You diverted roughly half the coders for a long time, and they've succeeded in producing what the other half had done years ago.

Either RMS is in the pay of Microsoft, or someone from KDE asked him to keep all the losers busy while they worked on the real interface!

Re:GNOME2 looks like Windows?

[ethereal]

The scrollbars, the gnome menu, and also the file browser look very similar to Win2k in some of the shots. Although I'm hoping that these just happen to be themes.

Re:GNOME2 looks like Windows?

[BlowCat]

Look is not everything. API is radically different from KDE.

Re:GNOME2 looks like Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea but Gnome is still a piece of shit. Even KDE 1 kicks the crap out of Gnome current and beat. LOL you gnome wankers. Keep up the good work and fight the good fight against a better free desktop. Cause we all know how far you get on idealism.LOL.

APT-get the Red Hat packages

[Nailer]

For Red Hat users, packages of Gnome 2.0 for Red Hat 7.2 should be available within Gnomehide reasonably soon, depending on how fast Havoc Pennington updates GNOMEhide (usually within a week, judging by previous announcements).

Add the following lines to your sources.list

# Red Hat Linux Rawhide
#rpm http://apt.nixia.no redhat/rawhide/i386 cds
#rpm http://apt.nixia.no redhat/7.2/i386 gnomehide

And if you still don't have apt-get, then visit Freshrpms, download it, use it, and wonder how you ever got along without it.

PS - If any of you have the bandwidth to host a publically avaliable apt repository for Red Hat, then please post to the freshrpms mailing list and tell us all about it.

Re:APT-get the Red Hat packages

[DavittJPotter]

OK, quick question: Can you use the apt-get RPMs on Mandrake?

Re:APT-get the Red Hat packages

[ZaMoose]

There's a source rpm here:
http://enigma.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=615

Or, just search RPMFind.

Re:APT-get the Red Hat packages

[DavittJPotter]

Thanks! Trying it out now...

Re:APT-get the Red Hat packages

[Anonymous Coward]

a few rh7.2 rpms can also be found at
rpm http://utelsystems.dyndns.org/apt redhat testing
rpm-src http://utelsystems.dyndns.org/apt redhat testing

Gnome 2.0 Released!!!

[Cyno]

As we all know 'beta' is the codename for released commercial products like Netscape 6.0. So Gnome 2.0 has been released? ;) IMHO it is a hell of a lot more complete than XP, what a horrible experience. Ick! *bad taste in mouth*

Re:Gnome 2.0 Released!!!

[captredballs]

Referring to Gnome as "just a shitty windowmanager" is awfully shortsighted, don't you think? As I understand it, Gnome doesn't even include a window manager, but uses external ones like sawfish and enlightenment.

Maybe you can explain to us how a component model and gui framework is the same as a process that manages the presentation of X windows clients.

KDE1

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks eerily like KDE1 in fact.

Re:URGENT: MASSIVE MOZILLA SECURITY HOLE FOUND!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://goatse.cx/">
goatse.cx? really now, you could have at least used something that looked like a security site...

Well they had to stick it in there somehow. Its been down for a while, you know.

GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Glorat]

I know this dicussion can start the many flame wars so let me ask this from a personal perspective

I am a relative Linux on the desktop newbie (although very comfortable deploying on servers) and still prefer the ease of use and performance of the Windows interface. One day, I installed Linux to try out and had a go at both KDE and GNOME (about a year ago) but didn't like it. Today, I sadly develop on Windows to be deployed on Linux

I found KDE took ages to start up, GNOME was slightly better but Nautilus while featureful was horribly slow. Both were rather confusing with respect to my favourite shortcut keys and mouse commands (especially clipboards and window control) although I hear KDE has a "Windows emulation" mode it wasn't convincing

So the things that are on my mind are:
- Have the environments improved a lot in the past 12 months in terms of usability and performance and startup speed?
- Is it getting much easier for the Windows user like me to get into?
- What are the main goals that GNOME are trying to accomplish over their new releases? KDE?

Otherwise, I guess I'll keep my "desktop environment" to nothing but an xterm console and only use Linux when I have to

Thanks

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Lumpy]

Download ROX filer. and then replace the Bloatware called nautilus with ROX (to replace the desktop you need to run ROX as ROX -p=default)

This one change will increase the speed of Gnome by at least 300% no you dont get the nice-n-integrated everything that Nautilus is but you also lose the one thing that makes gnome slower than tar.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[WildBeast]

That's what I do to. And it's fine with me. I've been trying GNOME and KDE since 1998 and I haven't seen much improvement in the interface. Actually the look is still almost the same. I still won't use Linux as a desktop OS, it's a server OS.

I'm pretty happy with my setup, Windows on the dekstop and Linux on the server side is the perfect balance for me. I got the best of both worlds.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Glorat]

I will try that =P
I'm getting larger HD on my laptop so I can try Linux once again.

Just one thing. I will be using Mandrake (newbie distribution) and last time the darn package manager insists that Gnome requires Nautilus to be installed *and* Nautilus has all those hooks into Gnome :(

Suggestions always welcome

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[pthisis]

you also lose the one thing that makes gnome slower than tar

Actually, tar is pretty fast--it's bzip2 that makes it seem slow. Try gzip or lzop instead, or don't compress if you are storing compressed files--though maybe cpio is somewhat faster than tar.

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

Sumner

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Cro Magnon]

One option is to use one of the lightweight desktops such as Xfce (www.xfce.org)

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[hyperstation]

or just be patient, since bzip2 compresses better than gzip :)

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

Astroturf FUD. What division of Microsoft do you work for?

I have been using Linux as my desktop OS for probably more than 3 years and I couldn't be happier. Ximian Gnome, if you care.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[prog-guru]

FVWM 2.4 and gnome-panel for me, I try to use gtk apps when I can, but run a few QT apps too. rxvt is my file manager, this has worked pretty well for a year now.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[ahologounis]

I have to agree, I wish it wasn't so. I use win2k on the desktop simply because it works. Please don't flame me. I have a 750 athlon running Suse 7.3 as a desktop machine and while kde runs fine there still is something missing. I use Redhat on my servers, I have 2 and they are flawless in that capacity, but then again they get configured from the commandline. I think that Linux ,especially kde have come along way on the desktop but by no means are they truly there yet. I think one day they will be though.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Vintermann]

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/articles/w hy_care/ and http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/That's why I'm optimistic for gnome. These people in the usabillity project, when their work really starts to show, Gnome upon GNU upon Linux will have the best user interface of all, incl. WIN & macOS.

I really have faith in them. That's why I stick with GNOME.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never used KDE (I don't like the look of it - icons have too many colors...looks kind of gaudy but maybe that's configurable)

I'm a big fan of Ximian Gnome. Its much less clunky and more attractive than vanilla Gnome IMHO. I recommend it.

I also liked Windowmaker and Blackbox when I used them, they're much more lightweight than running a whole Gnome or KDE environment.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[reaper20]

Go into the Nautilus preferences and there is a checkbox - [] Use Nautilus to draw the desktop (or something similar to that, I don't remember)

Turn it off and Gnome's responsiveness/speed will greatly increase.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

The better question about performance of Nautilus is... Why is Windows/Explorer so much faster? It has a lot more features and more useful features, yet is amazingly faster than Nautilus. I turn off all the "make it pretty" features of Nautilus and it is still slow as shit.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[tempest303]

yeah, or you could just stick to GMC. ;) It matches Rox's speed, but beats the hell out of it for features.

As it is, though, Nautilus2 for Gnome 2 is a big improvement for performance it seems. I tried some Gnome2 development snapshots last weekend and Nautilus was pretty responsive. Heck, 1.0.6 isn't bad, but it could definately use some improvement. What I like about Nautilus though is features, features, features. Lots of good stuff, like the ability to use scripts with Nautilus, and using as an SMB browser (when you get gnome-vfs-extras installed that is). And let's not forget the uber-l33t SVG icons it supports, too. :)

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Lumpy]

WHEN will someone integrate bzip2 with tar? I would love to use the tar -xzvf foobar.tgz on bz2 files... like a tar-x2vf foobar.tbz2

dreams of making tar more friendly again....

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

but GMC doesnt have a desktop mode. This is the one thing that ROX will replace Bloatulous with completely.

Gnome is getting bigger, slower,and full of cruft.. Time to start the unGnome project to make a fast desktop system that is useable on hardware that is 5 years old.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Fizzlewhiff]

Nautilus seems to get slower with each release. I use gmc now as my file/desktop manager and I have been a much happier person.

I really don't understand why Nautilus needs to have so many features, ie web browsing and themes. On my installation, Red Hat 7.1, Ximian Gnome 1.4, Gnome starts, sets my background, then Nautilus starts and sets my background. I click on the slashdot link on my desktop, Nautilus starts and loads the site in its file pane and then in the left pane asks if I want to open it with Mozilla, Opera, or Galeon. Now Galeon is associated as my html default viewer. In my opinion Galeon should load the website and Nautilus should not even execute at all. Perhaps this is all resolved in 2.0. Other than Nautilus, I am very impressed with Gnome.

KDE is nice too. I used both for a while until I decided I liked one better. It's nice having more than one desktop option. What kind of influenced my switch to Gnome was Ximian's Red Carpet. I always had dependancy hell when keeping KDE up to date on Red Hat. Gnome was easy to update using Red Carpet so I eventually removed KDE.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

Has the world gone mad? Nautilus has got quicker and quicker in this humble user's experience, even on my now relatively-creaky 450 MHz PII. Still has a little way to go, but not much.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware has a patched version of tar with a -y option for bzip2. It is really handy. Hope it gets integrated into the official tar sometime

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[gmhowell]

On Debian, I think it is tar -jxvf foo.tar.bz2 and on RH, I think it is tar -Ixvf foo.tar.bz2.

Try it out.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Junta]

but gmc *does* have a desktop mode, duh...

That aside, anyone who would claim that gmc offers similar performance to rox needs to try both on a pentium 166 or so and then get back to me...

Feature-wise, I like ROX a hell of a lot better. Many more hooks for keybopard and shell like cpaabilities than gmc. It doesn't have as much eye-candy as Nautilus, but icons are still well done. The one thing I do kinda miss occasionally is the tree view for directory navigation, but the respnsiveness and the well done keyboard interaction make it worthwhile.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Junta]

It already is (for GNU tar), though not as cleanly as compress/gzip, and no where near universal. The default for modern tar builds straight from gnu.org is to use -y. Early versions of tar with bzip2 used -I, and a lot of places currently use -j, I think because of some command conflict with I. If you use, say slackware or sorcerer, you have the -y option. Now combining it with the z option might be possible for decompressing, but for compressing you really need separate options, as bzip2drastically does better for text, but for non-text data is comparable to gzip but remains dog slow..

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Wolfier]

What's wrong with a desktop mode?
A well-designed desktop should allow you to create files on the desktop. Just my opinion.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[unapersson]

Have you tried:

tar -jxvf file.tar.bz2

Works fine for me ;-)

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

Score:-1, Fucking Moron. It's a shame the moderations aren't more descriptive.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Graymalkin]

Nautilus runs fast for me on my YDL installation on my Powerbook. I'm running Ximian as well and my PB is a Lombard 333. Nautilus takes a second or two to start up but once it is running the going is pretty smooth. The start up speed doesn't bother me much because it is as fast or faster as an Explorer window on my PC. I think Nautilus has so many features so it can be held up to Windows Explorer which has a huge featureset and is actually competitive with the modern Windows desktop rather than playing catch up with Windows 3.11. I'm not much of a theme guy but I do like the ability for a file manager to discern some context for my files and know what they are and adapt the display of them accordingly. For me it is useful to be able to scroll a directory full of pictures with thumbnails and tags telling me how big the picture is. That is how I scan through photographs when I'm looking at them after getting my film back from processing, I don't brose through a list of names hoping to remember that image10056.jpg was that really awesome shot of the Rockies I took a couple months ago. That is just me though, some people just want a flat list hold the mayo so gmc works just fine.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Junta]

Nothin wrong with Desktop mode, just saying gmc had it too... And actually, I kinda prefer the Desktop being treated as "special" as it is in ROX, as it can only contain links to files/locations and links themselves. Guess it is kind of a moot point in Linux, but especially in windows it is bad that the desktop can hold files. Under windows if you have roaming profiles, login must wait for all files to download to local drive (and enough local space must be free for the profile). Since the desktop is in the profile, this can make things really slow for people who just dump everything onto the desktop. I guess on Linux it becomes more of a stylistic issue since data over nfs is laoded as needed...

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Wildfire Darkstar]

Try "tar xjvf foobar.tar.bz2".

No, I don't understand where the "j" came from, but it gets the job done....

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[matman]

As a developer and network admin, Windows pales in comparison to Linux, for me, as a desktop OS. I run Windows in VMWare so that I can use MMC consoles to admin some NT domain services, but past that, I can't stand Windows. Somehow, every time I use it, it manages to piss me off. I know that these are hardly objective observations, but for me, using Windows as a desktop OS would probably cause me to commit crimes.

Linux's flexability and it's tendency to force me to understand what I'm doing is what sells me on it. Oh, and it's free :) What's lacking, in my eyes? 3D graphics, advanced audio/video tools, easy and consistant printing, and good mime support (I do not consider Windows to have good mime support either). Groff/Lyx does a good job of typesetting, but it would be nice if Abiword improves. These issues are being worked on, so that's good :) Give it time, and it'll get better :)

If Linux doesn't do what you need in order to make it a viable desktop OS, that's cool. If you could lend a hand in improving things, that would be good :) If not, thanks for using Linux where you can :)

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[kubrick]

I think Nautilus has so many features so it can be held up to Windows Explorer which has a huge featureset and is actually competitive with the modern Windows desktop rather than playing catch up with Windows 3.11.

This is why I don't run Nautilus -- because I don't think emulating Windows Explorer is the right way to go, especially considering the amount of resources required. File management nerdvana, for me, was Directory Opus 5 on the Amiga... nothing else even comes near it.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[scrytch]

Funny thing, it's Linux I just can't stand as a desktop OS, because it's always so damn *slow* whenever I want to do desktop-ish work on it. I can use emacs to write code on either platform, but when I want to run off some handouts, I just get the job done faster in Word. I used to run windows for IE, now I run windows for Mozilla. I discovered it's just Mozilla on Linux that gives the project a bad name...

I don't want to be "forced to understand" what I'm doing. I already know what it's doing behind the scenes. I'd rather it stay behind the damn scenes where it belongs.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[juju2112]

To run KDE you really need a current machine with a decent amount of RAM. I haven't run any tests so I can't say what exactly the system requirements are. But I can say that it runs plenty fast on my machine (Duron 700 w/128mb RAM). And yes, KDE has gotten awesome in the past 12 months.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Graymalkin]

Nautilus acting like Windows Explorer is less Nautilus emulating Windows and more Nautilus better following the concepts laid out by the Macintosh HIG which is one of the best books on computer itnerfaces I've read. Windows has gone from an almost unusable state where iconic representations had little to do with the actual underlying concept of the object being manipulated to emulating what MacOS had done and use consistant and easy to understand metaphors. Nautilus like Windows has begun to better noun then verb principals, seeing an object and then telling the program to do something to that object. File management is basic and not really the aim of either Explorer or Nautilus, both are trying to do their best to present media to the user, the actual content of the file rather than a mere representation of the file itself.

This is why Windows has a thumbnail mode, you can browse through a directory full of pictures by visual cues rather than archaic file names which may or may not have anything at all to do with the actual content of the file. Like I said it is going to be easier to find a picture I took if I can see them all rather than just names of pictures. I guess its just me in this case, I use Nautilus and Explorer to browse through my files which are mostly pictures and music files and the occassional bits of source code. Actual management of files isn't really my prime concern when I open up Nautilus or Explorer. I don't need to go in an rearrange them very often.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[Anonymous Coward]

RXVT is freaking cool.

xterm is fat and slow and ugly and doesn't support stuff like pixmaps, gnome-terminal and Konsole are, despite being widely used, far far worse than xterm or Eterm or similar.

Eterm is okay, nxterm is okay...

But rxvt is the fastest terminal emulator out there, is really small, supports all the modern must have stuff like pixmaps.

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie

[kubrick]

Nautilus acting like Windows Explorer is less Nautilus emulating Windows and more Nautilus better following the concepts laid out by the Macintosh HIG which is one of the best books on computer itnerfaces I've read.

Macintosh HIG are good, but I find the Macintosh Finder too restrictive for the more powerful tasks. This is why I liked DOpus 5 -- regex-like multiple renames, great for renaming multiple pictures, etc. Also things like filetyping by a multitude of file attributes -- extension, name, size, bytes in file headers, etc. All that and an extensible API, so others could write archive browsers, FTP modules, etc. that fit into the same space... some of this is old hat now, but wasn't at the time.

The Macintosh GUI always felt to me like a very carefully dumbed down interface. The best thing about many Amiga programs was that they were usable on that level, but if you went looking there were layers of complexity that were well designed and didn't mess up the entire user experience. (Not all programs were that good, of course, but a larger percentage than on any other platform, I found).

Anyway, I don't know why I'm bothering to mention it... just preaching an aesthetic of usabilty *and* power that few people seem to be able to combine well :/

xvoice.sourceforge.net

[bcboy]

It doesn't use the new gnome hooks, but it's usable today.

Re:wrong extensions....should be jpg

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you're good if you write binary image files. Most people use GIMP or Paintshop.

Re:Some juicy screenshots - how old are these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone mentioned seeing Slashdot in one of the browsers of these, but the date on the slashdot article is December 7th.

Are these screens even accurate? Or has Gnome 2 been in development that long with no visual changes?

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks.

Merge!

[Sir Homer]

It's getting to be a pain in the @$$ to have two different desktop enviroments with little competability for each other.

That raises two important questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Nautilus still a slug and is the API still a mess?

Re:That raises two important questions

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think the API was ever a mess, you never groked it.

offtopic: Quixote image

[Anonymous Coward]

one image on one of these screenshots, this, was once upon a time the logo of Lucas (LinUx en CAStellano, Linux in Spanish). But they got legal threats (copyright violation) and had to put it off.

how do the gnomes moderate slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is always huge amounts of biased moderating everytime a GNOME story is posted. It's always in favour of GNOME. If Miguel posts something it shoots up to 5 immediately, no matter what he said. If someone even mentions KDE, it's moderated down immediately.

Who has all these points? It's as if the GNOME have unlimited mod points on GNOME stories. Anyone?

Re:how do the gnomes moderate slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think it's more that every time a GNOME story is posted, there are dozens of uninformed and irrelevant posts from KDE zealots about how far behind GNOME is. Not every post that mentions KDE, of course, but many, many of them. And then there is the inevitable deluge of responses from GNOME (and KDE) people who should know better. Jeez, the technical discussion on GNOME 2 here has basically been confined to about a dozen posts on antialiasing (which is overrated anyway). Just about everything else is people with too much time on their hands and too few outlets for their sexual energy arguing the same tired KDE vs. GNOME points that have already been beaten to death here and in other forums.

Of course, I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said 1000 times before either, but what the hell...

Cut and paste?

[lbredeso]

I'm assuming that there is no decent cut and paste in this release. That is the one feature that I *love* about Windows.

Re:Cut and paste?

[akeru]

And your assumptions would be wrong . . . (isn't it nice when that happens?) All of the default text widgets have standard right-mouse popups that include cut copy and paste for that "ease of use" the Windows provides, if you like that slow method of pasting text. And it still, of course, supports the wonderously speedy select middle-mouse paste.

--Shahms

Re:Cut and paste?

[be-fan]

When will people figure out the joys of context sensitive menus? Linux GUIs don't use them nearly enough. While they may add one level of indirection over a shortcut button (such as the middle-mouse crap) its a much more general and flexible method. The middle mouse button is too important to be held hostage to something as specific as copying text. It takes a millisecond to do right click->copy vs middle click (the real meat of the time is in the text selection) and there is no reason why it has taken so long for a decent right-click copy to be implemented. Of course, this is all moot anyway. All of this stuff should have been fully configurable from the beginning.

Re:Cut and paste?

[Wolfier]

>And it still, of course, supports the
>wonderously speedy select middle-mouse paste

Depends on what you do. Middle-mouse paste is sure speedy sometimes, but one thing that isn't addressed in X is its single selection buffer - I still cannot paste to replace a selection - as soon as you make the selection, your previously-copied stuffs are *gone*.

A universal deployment of the clipboard concept would be great - the clipboard content should *NOT* be identical to the current selection.

Re:Cut and paste?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another way that all X desktops that I"ve tried really suck.

No Window Memory is another.

Staggering, Cornering, or Tiling freshly opened windows is another.

Making assumptions about icon placement or toolbar/dock placements and not remembering PRECISELY what the user wanted...

Nitpicky stuff like that, with a general "Bad Feeling" make Gnome and KDE both real losers in my book, and the real sad part is that dispite the fact that I hate them so bad I force myself to use them on some of my machines for the feeling that they're just the best I'm going to get on the *nix desktop. I've tried several others -- they suck even more, or seemed to, at least.

Re:Cut and paste?

[Tepic]

In GTK (the version used in Gnome 1.4 and I think in Gnome 1.2) you can select text with the right mouse button. This text is not copied, but it is replaced when you paste text using the middle mouse button (it is highlighted in gray rather than blue, with the default theme).

Re:Cut and paste?

[tal197]

In GTK (the version used in Gnome 1.4 and I think in Gnome 1.2) you can select text with the right mouse button. This text is not copied, but it is replaced when you paste text using the middle mouse button (it is highlighted in gray rather than blue, with the default theme).

This feature has been removed in 2.0, due to fears that it would confuse users coming from Windows. Ctrl-U could be used to remove the existing text up to Gtk+-1.3.13, but that seems to have gone too now (at least in 1.3.14; not sure if this is a bug or not).

can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[AugstWest]

honestly, that's just such a HUGE thing in a desktop environment.

consistent keystrokes that can copy and paste between apps -- is that so much to ask?

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[ainsoph]

I have absolutely no problems cutting and pasting between apps in Gnome. If anything, KDE's klipper caused me more problems then anything.

So, what you talking bout willis?

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[Waffle Iron]

consistent keystrokes that can copy and paste between apps -- is that so much to ask?

Dude, that would be, like, taking freedom of choice away from the people. Every application needs to be free to negotiate data transfer with other apps as it sees fit.

What if an application knows that it handles data better than anyone else? Why should it give up its data to some inferior process? Why should it accept data from some flawed source? Remember, it's Garbage In, Garbage Out. Apps need to be able to protect themselves from other people's garbage.

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[CynicTheHedgehog]

I'm waiting for CDE-style cut, copy, and paste strokes. Like SHIFT-DEL, SHIFT-INS, CTRL-C, CTRL-V, CTRL-X...it may sound lame, but I grew up on Windows and Solaris, and the X clipboard is just...well...shitty. Copying and pasting URLs is a nightmare unless you have Konqueror where you can hit that little X. That auto-select middle-click crap is for the birds.

I haven't really used Gnome, but I'm getting fed up with Klipper...is any of this implemented in Gnome?

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[Alan]

The problem is that you can cut/paste fine between gnome apps. Or KDE apps. Or java apps. Or motif apps. Each with their own way of doing it, and each with a 50% chance of being able to cut/paste from one type to another, and have it work the same way.

IE: cut in gnumeric and paste into gedit. Not a big deal. But cutting text in xarchie (the original) and paste into say, gimp? I don't think so. Or maybe, but it won't be the same way as it works for other apps.

The other thing I miss is cut/paste of non-text elements. I'm not talking full OLE, but why can't I cut an image in the gimp and paste it into abiword? That's what I want from gnome :\

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[captredballs]

By default, konqueror is set up so that if you middle-click/paste anywhere in the main frame, it opens the url that was pasted. Its awesome.

1. highlight the url
2. click
3. read.

-Michael

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or java apps. Or motif apps.

Doesn't Sun's JVM use Motif? :P

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[IamTheRealMike]

Yeah yeah, old news (thankfully :)

This problem is to do with a rather vague spec on how the clipboard in X works. Qt in particular interpreted it wrong, but the new version (3) does it right. GTK has always done it right afaik.

So - in approximately 5/6 months time once people have finished upgrading to KDE 3/GNOME 3 most apps (which these days tend to be written for one or the other) will be conformant and that'll be the end of it.

Yes you would be right in saying this is a stupid mistake to make and it's hurt the Linux desktop considerably. It has done, but that's the price you pay for not having 1 person in charge. When your working to commitee standards (especially very complex ones) with multiple implementations, misinterpretations will happen. That's life, especially Linux life. I'll live with it, because I prefer democracy to dictatorships even though sometimes dictatorships are more efficient.

Damn me - it's the Linux effect. I'm turning into more of a MS hating zealot every day! :(

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[Alan]

Except for the swing apps :) Might be the same thing, who knows?

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[Greg Merchan]

Application support is the only thing missing that
prevents cut/copy/paste of non-text data (or even -say- RTF text).

X itself doesn't care what kind of data you cut/copy/paste. It's only the apps that do.

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[Alan]

Yup, exactly. It's all there, but the apps don't support it without some (I assume) major diddling). And when some do, you still have the problem that you can't do anything with older or non-gnome non-kde apps.

I guess part of the blessing and the curse of free software is that you can use whatever you want. You can use bobstoolkit for your gfx routines if you'd like, regardless of the fact that it doesn't support functions x,y,z.

Windows never has this problem because they use one toolkit, and one API, and it's all built into that api. Maybe the cut/paste functions that are in the gnome/kde API need to support more than just text (or they should enforce cut/paste ability to applicable widgets, instead of leaving it up to the programmer to remember to write the code to make it happen).

I'm sure part of the problem is programmer laziness. If the toolkit(s) that people programmed in had all this done for them already, in such a brain dead way that they didn't have to worry about it, there would be far less bitching (IMHO). Of course, it might already be in there and easy to do, but is it so easy that the program doesn't have to do anything to it? If so then great, now make it work for pictures, and other data types :)

#include
/* yes, I am a programmer, no I'm not a gtk/kde programmer, yes I know I shouldn't bitch and I should just do it myself. */

Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet?

[X-ViRGE]

Copying and pasting between any decently modern apps works perfectly fine. The only problems lately have been Qt2, which did not conform with the X clipboard standard. GNOME has conformed with it for quite some time, and Qt3 will supposedly conform as well.

It still looks like...

[ChaoticCoyote]

...Windows. I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- in fact, it may be a Good Thing for moving people off the MS desktop onto Linux.

I'm just wondering what's innovative about Gnome 2 -- what makes this something special or different? And why did it need to be incompatible with apps written for previous versions? I can still run old Win 95 apps on Win 2K, for the most part.

I'll appreciate polite and informative answers...

Re:It still looks like...

[nadie]

You ask what makes Gnome different from MS Windows? It is software libre.

Re:It still looks like...

[ywwg]

if by "looks like windows" you mean it is a WIMP interface, then ... duh. if by that you mean "the default theme looks like windows," then ... change it. I mean seriously, is there an operating system that doesn't "look like windows" anymore?

Re:It still looks like...

[bogado]

Gnome 2 has a diferent API, or new version of several base libraries. You can still have the old versions of the libraries installed and you apps compiled to use GNOME 1.4 will work just fine, buit they will not use any of the new features. In that respect it is the same for win95 and win2K, the only diference is that some of the new dll in win2k has the same API so the old applications won't have to load an older version. This is works fine if your API will not change from one version to another (MS usualy changes APIs in a additive way, the new API has as a subset the old API). Linux apps usualy are open sourced so it tends to update the API more often, but allowing the old apps to compile to the new version.

GNOME 1.0

[cpeterso]

didn't someone actually think that people need more time to find the bugs???


Don't you remember GNOME 1.0??

Re:Some juicy screenshots - how old are these?

[Alan]

What it looks like is that someone has posted the various ss of apps running or ported to gnome2 that have gone through the gnome2 dev list over the last few months. There's probably a lot that are out of date visually or functionally.

the geeks will have something to do today

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, its true. The geeks will have something to do today.

How about neither KDE or Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need something faster and more light weight then give FVWM95 a try, along with ROX Desktop.

GTK+-2.0

[chtephan]

The development version von GTK+ (v1.3) is incredibly slow for me.

I suppose it has something to do with it's new double buffering mechanism.

I personally think it makes it really unusable. Klicking around and XFree takes up to 100% CPU.

Has it something to do with a buggy XFree driver or is it a general problem? (tdfx driver)

Wow

[qurob]

Mark this a troll, redundant, offtopic, but at least hear me out

"Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface"

So, they are about 4 years behind Windows?

I'm partial to KDE, and moreso ICEWM :)

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that Windows had a 10 year head-start, isn't it depressing that "4 years behind windows" translates to under 6 months of development time in the Gnome world?

Re:Wow

[qurob]

Windows = OS

GNOME = WM/GUI

Pronounciation

[n08ody]

How is Gnome pronounced?

Nome with the G silent, or Gu-nome?

Is this the .Net version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, I'm sure waiting for that one. Me and the other 2 people on Earth who actually think this is a good idea.

Re:OH GOD, DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!!!

[chez69]

Free advice: Check the whole link before clicking

Re:could a port to windows be done? I've got it!

[Havokmon]

Hmmm...

We could start a project to map xlib calls to corresponding Windows API calls.. But we'd have to name it using a recursive acronym..

I've got it!
LINE - Line is not an emulator!!

Re:wrong extensions....should be jpg

[Hal-9001]

I imagine they used png because of it's lossless compression. The compression used by jpeg would probably overwhelm the antialiasing that seems to be the big selling point of GNOME 2.0.

Truetype fonts

[crivens]

God Gnome looks so much better with Truetype fonts! (As does anything IMO).

Does anyone think that a major distro will include a Gnome beta in future releases?

I know I could download, compile and install it, but I just don't have the time for that.

Gnome looking good

[MicroBerto]

Everyone always talks about making gnome look good and all, which most think it does.

But if you ask me, if you want ANYTHING to look nice, just apply the latest Mozilla Modern themes! I have mine in gnome and sawfish and it looks quite badass!

non-text paste

[mikeee]

I heard MacOS X has some wacky 'services' thing similar to cut-and-paste that involves passing mime-ified data around between apps. ANybody know details on this?

Re:non-text paste

[j7953]

I heard MacOS X has some wacky 'services' thing similar to cut-and-paste that involves passing mime-ified data around between apps. ANybody know details on this?

But OS X doesn't run an X Window System by default.

What would be interesting to know is if cut & paste on OS X also works between X applications using different toolkits and between X applications and Aqua applications when you run a rootless X server in parallel to the Aqua desktop. If that does work, than Apple's system might indeed be interesting for Linux as well.

Re:could a port to windows be done? I've got it!

[Anonymous Coward]

ahem...
http://line.sourceforge.net/

Re:could a port to windows be done? I've got it!

[moebius_4d]

An xlib port to windows is already underway, and Donald Becker is doing it. See w11

MacOSX *is* the ultimate *nix desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad Steve Jobs is still obsessing about building the box. If he wasn't mentally ill, he'd release Mac OS for the intel platform and that would be the game. Done. El fin.

Someone tell me why they re-hired him?

I swear - if you could buy a Mac Desktop binary for your linux or BSD or Solaris unix back-end, can you imagine what the world would be like? Seriously! All the Apple Corp. experience with designing usable UI coupled with the unix industry (incl. the volunteer industry) experience with building a high-powered backend...

But the bastard wants to sell you the box, and there's apparently no one inside the company with the balls to tell him he's being an idiot.

Re:MacOSX *is* the ultimate *nix desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Too bad Steve Jobs is still obsessing about building the box. If he wasn't mentally ill, he'd release Mac OS for the intel platform and that would be the game. Done. El fin.

AFAIK Apple still makes most of its money from selling hardware.

I'd like to see OSX for Intel just as much as the next guy but imagine what would happen if Apple would stop 'obsessing about the box' and just concentrate on selling software.

Can you say BeOS? Thought you could.

Re:MacOSX *is* the ultimate *nix desktop.

[fredrik70]

And what about software for the x86 version of OSX? Also, do you think MS would allow apple to go for the x86 market ad still produce Office for MacOS?
Doubt Apple would like to go into direct confrontation with MS...
Apple is also more of a hardware company than a software company, that's weere they make their money. Sure I would love to have MacOSX on my box home but I doubt it will ever happen unless I buy a mac... maybe in a year or so.. too much debts now!
tada

Contrary to popular belief...

[Pope Slackman]

{Windows|Mac} and unix coexist rather nicely.
Unix is an excellent server platform, but a poor desktop[1], while Windows/Mac are decent desktops, but not something I'd put on a server[2].

Otherwise, I guess I'll keep my "desktop environment" to nothing but an xterm console and only use Linux when I have to

That's what I do, as SSH and a web browser are pretty much all that's required to admin my FreeBSD box.

C-X C-S
[1] X bites no matter how many layers you drop on top of it.
[2] Servers don't need framebuffers.

Hey joe@M$.com

[Penguinoflight]

You aren't fooling anyone, so just bug off.

FYI, X windows never resembled windows 3.x in ui and functionality. Windows XP is just starting to come up with a few of the features of X windows, and they're doing it wrong.

Gloves with wrist protectors

[daveym]

Level makes nice gloves with wrist protectors built in...you should check them out (if you plan on boarding again, that is!).

Re:OH GOD, DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free question: are you one of those Linux computer geniuses?

It's not GNOME.

[Penguinoflight]

This is about Slashdot, not about gnome. Every time KDE has a story, the moderation is equally lopsided. But this really isn't too bad, because these products are both good, and shouldn't have people saying BOO to their releases.

Slashdot has it's downs, but there aren't any nerd sites better that are of near size.

Not a whole lot different

[Tremul]

I've looked at several of the screen shots and their doesn't appear to be a whole lot of differences between 2.0 and 1.2. It looks like hte old gnome with a new theme or window manager. Could someone give a quick rundown on exactly what has changed UI wise besides anti aliasing?

I've been a KDE user for some time now. I think that it is far superiro to GNOME. I've haven't ever understood why you would write such a large project in C. The function names must get horrible after awhile.

Re:Not a whole lot different

[thesfinx]

The changes are not directly user-oriented(UI). The GNOME2-platform has a LOT of changes in the background. The development platform is where the BIG changes are.

I think that GNOME 2.2 will have some other look 'n feel, but the development platform will remain the same. (binary compatible).

I'm running the snapshots from Ximian. GNOME 2 rocks :-) as far as I can tell.

Have you ever written a program for KDE or GNOME? I mean, did you actually look at the function names? They are quite logical.

screenshots

[apachetoolbox]

Here's some screenshots!

Re:wrong extensions....should be jpg

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron.

Re:URGENT: MASSIVE MOZILLA SECURITY HOLE FOUND!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me but would you mind if I add this nice troll to my Troll Library? Thanks in advance.

I took a shot of my desk.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unexciting.. but getting neato :D

http://www.speakeasy.org/~norton/gnome2-desktop- be ta.jpg

Re:Some juicy screenshots - how old are these?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first 6 are from the GNOME Desktop Alpha 2 and the last 6 are from Desktop Alpha 1

Re:wrong extensions....should be jpg

[prisonernumber7]

Just for the sake of it.. =)

Real artists use gzip > file.jpg.

Why dont they release in one big file

[HanzoSan]

I hate having to download and install 23092039 diffrent files, ill never update gnome.

Re:Why dont they release in one big file

[Anonymous Coward]

I recompiled GNOME the first year I even used Linux.

Granted, those were the days of 1.2, and I haven't been up on GNOME lately, but I'm sure the process has managed to complicate itself somehow. But hey, my point being it wasn't that hard.

Re:Why dont they release in one big file

[sonnyjz]

I totally agree with you. It is such a pain to download and compile all of those programs. Even with my scaled down version of it, it still takes a LONG time.

Re:wrong extensions....should be jpg

[Anonymous Coward]

jpeg's are also really crappy for solid color, most screenshots look really crappy as jpegs unless you have the quality all the way up, at which point, you might as a well use a png or gif anyway. :)

Re:Gnome or KDE?-Path to peer.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are we going to do about all the users migrating from a non-Windows OS? Start menu? What's that?

Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie-"Just Work".

[Anonymous Coward]

We generally anything we've grown up with will "just work". Anything we've just encountered will not "just work". It may "work sometime" It may "work harder". It may "work in the mountains". It may "work under the sea". But by the implicit definition most windows users use, it will never "just work".

Re:URGENT: MASSIVE MOZILLA SECURITY HOLE FOUND!!

[jabapi]

goatse.cx? really now, you could have at least used something that looked like a security site...

... but the goatse looks like a security HOLE.

Totally right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'ma gnome user and even if I respect KDE I never thought about switching to kde 2.0 or kde 3.0 only cz of a beta realease or evena RC so I don't think KDE users will do the switch onlx cz of gnome 2.0 beta ;)

Good God were you right

[Spuggy]

Nailer,

Been using apt for a few hours now and you're pretty much right, I have no idea how I got along w/out it before. It's by far the most useful program I've seen for Redhat in terms of installations yet. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal sticking w/ manual RPM installations, but after dealing with missed dependencies time and time again and seeing how this resolves it, I can't complain at all.

-Greg

how to compile

[alczervik]

Where can I get instructions for compiling all of the GNOME 2.0 source code at the specified link.

kill all choads

[Anonymous Coward]

> Confronting the KDE propaganda machine.

oki choad, time to smash a stone to your head.

> The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and
> message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous
> newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD
> are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are
> correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal
> of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE
> project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and
> FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small
> way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by
> the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

shut up.

> * Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME
> > The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the
> reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of
> this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is
> particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared
> any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.

yeah but compared to the other named ones KDE is not a commercial product, where rich companies put millions of money into the project. they pay for scienctists, big companies that does marketing research and stuff.

> * Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use
> > Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected
> to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME
> have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a
> simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user
> testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are
> from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful
> rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that
> administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the
> correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation
> and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian [ximian.com], which
> makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE
> users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven
> systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various
> tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations.
> KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which
> make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

you are mixing things here:

- redcarpet is a product by ximian. they move towards $$$ with redcarpet pro now to get some bucks for their support system.
- ximian is a company of its own they have NOTHING to do with GNOME. GNOME is an own project where some XIMIAN develops and depends on but generally we dont speak of XIMIAN GNOME (since XIMIAN is not the legitimate owner of GNOME)
- the idea behind redcarpet aint that bad but the problem is getting the packages just in time :)

> * Myth #3 - KDE is more popular
> > In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most
> KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior
> userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls
> are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie
> to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a
> zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential
> elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to
> measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system.
> The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain
> applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications
> for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they
> are barely running KDE at all.

yes, and no one has anything against mixing systems and software. no one said anything negative about that. but thats the problem if people had worked on one desktop as we gonna repeat this here. then there would have been powerfull apps for that desktop so there would be no need to mix applications but no... someone needed to start another desktop and reinvent the wheel with the apps. now the unix community in general are 20 steps back.

> One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop,
> and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to
> using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the
> previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME
> project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity
> and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development.
> The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach
> fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the
> basic computer/user issues.

- yeah and dont you see it now ?
- dont you see the eyewashing things behind it ?
- didnt god gave you a brain to use ?

sun, redhat, ximian... these 3 companies work on gnome. as you correctly said SUN is acting as beeing the OWNER of gnome now. you read a lot of mails on a couple of gnome mailinglist where they act like 'NAZIS' giving orders and tell people what to do and what not (instead asking quietly). sun is following their own business interests here e.g. substitution of CDE with GNOME 2 (anyone realized why gnome 2 comes up looking like CDE default installation ?). practically gnome is already under their control, people from outside who wants to contribute or want to bring in their own ideas are beeing rejected. its opensource but the roadmap is clear so forking it is getting impossible not to mention that the developerbase is a closed community.

now some problems:

ximian wants .NET and C#. sun the inventopr of JAVA. now dont you think both will collide when it comes to gnome 3 or gnome 4 ?

> * Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
> > Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror not a
> bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work done on it.
> However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE faithful is
> completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable
> and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively
> It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either
> Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest
> incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE
> FUD during its development).

you are a clueless person.

- konqueror is more than a browser it integrates browser, filemanager in a nice plugin system way AND it is FASTER than NAUTILUS. ask me i have tested all 3 versions. nautilus for gnome 1, nautilus for gnome 2 and konqueror for kde 3.
- nautilus on the otherhand is STILL unusable. ok definately faster under gnome 2 but accessing the menues with the changed new widgetset is QUITE UEBERSLOW. still not compareable to konqueror.

but dont worry, kde 3 offers a browser and filemanager at least. we on gnome 2 can wait months before we get a halfway usable browser not to mention that nautilus still sucks. if you dont belive me wait until the official release dates then you see how many persons actually rant about that.

> * Myth #5 - KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to
> the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
> > See also: Qt/TrollTech. This is the most common wail heard by KDE developers,
> and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for
> GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than
> GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE
> apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being
> the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0
> release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.

then get your ass moving and enchance the software. not to mention that using a OOP programminglanguage is the best decission for writing an entire DE the QT widgetsset is more enchanced QT3 with its new database support etc.

> GNOME applications get much more testing in their 0.x stages and despite
> shorter development phases they mature and reach stable featureful release
> states much more quickly. Some examples of this are: the superb Evolution
> (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image
> manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet, X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS
> (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade and Anjuta.
> All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass their KDE counterparts.
> It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE
> in applications, and pulling still further ahead.

sorry did you say testing ? dude i am into that shit better than you. lets pic that stuff out.

- evolution, ximian product. its gpl'ed but the exchange server support is what matters. thats the purpose why evolution is so (more or less good it is still full of bugs and the addressbook is worthless). ximian paid the evolution hackers to do this product for free they get the money from selling exchange stuff to customers and companies.

- oki gnumeric is perfect. no doubt.
- pan is GTK only so its not gnome related.
- the gimp is GTK only so its not gnome related.
- abiword is GTK with some support of GNOME mainly done by abisoftware a company that pay their employee so abiword finally is not gnome related it doesnt support the gnome framework at all.
- redcarpet: see evolution.
- xchat the chatclient with the most problems ever but oki i am using it myself now.
- XMMS is not gnome related.
- GALEON is indeed a good BROWSERFRONTEND but thats almost all on gnome i need to start 2 apps galeon to browse and nautilus to manage files on kde i have konqueror 2 things in one app not to mention it is mozilla independant. wait until gnome 2 comes out then wait another couple of months until the GECKO engine of mozilla is ported to gtk2+ currently mozilla native is ported to gtk2 but it still requires glib1 (so i need to install gtk1/glib1 and gtk2/glib2) to get mozilla compiled using gtk2. not to mention that the embedded gtk mozilla part is not yet done. blizzard is investigating into these things but they are not done and as long as this is not done as long you dont get a new galeon 2 for gnome 2. (oki galeon 2 is under development its nearly finished now because they #ifdef'ed the mozilla components out. temporarely you see a window with menues and full galeon support but no rendering engine in the middle of the window)

> It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is vastly more
> advanced. With the forthcoming 2.x release, a number of impressive behind the
> scenes technologies will finally mature: component technology (bonobo), media
> (Gstreamer), internationalisation (pango). As a developement platform, GNOME
> 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what is more, because it
> is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the
> Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.

seriously no one belives this. even apes wont belive you. 2-3 years ahead ? 2-3 years back yes. gnome 2 will be slower than gnome 1 from UI usage. a lot of ports cant be done correctly just in time for gnome 2 so they mainly port some stuff now (because they are under highly pressure now) sure they have written a a lot of stuff new and changed a lot of the framework, doesnt change the fact that it is never 2-3 years ahead. while you stick on a gnome 2 desktop with no serious basic programs for a while (like email client and browser) you can use KDE3 fine without problems. all necessary applications are there already and you dont care if 1-2 applications still needs a while. on gnome you need to wait for the BITTER NEEDED tools. even gnome developers tell you to use gnome 1 with gnome 2 together. what crappy idea is this ? so why does one want gnome 2 at all if he still requires running gnome 1 to get his beloved applications running. even your beloved evolution (soon 1.2 will be out with soup and .NET) support wont be ported to gnome 2 until evolution 1.4 is out (which takes another couple of shit months).

> Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes
> application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.

i judged and my conclusion is that you are wrong.

> * Myth #6 - KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
> > KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when
> Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not
> know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects.
> Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects; and
> masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory are two of the
> most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.

not to speak writing a widgetset in C like GTK that does raceconditions on the system over and over. not to mention about the garbage collector stuff within kde. a lot of gnome applications are leaking memory over and over because the coders are dump jerks.

> Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow
> startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt
> (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif
> when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash.
> One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking)
> used to bandage up the design and coding flaws in the decrepit KDE
> architecture to see the truth.

try some sex dude.

> * Myth #7 - GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
>
> Fundamental misunderstanding. The KDE project releases as one big lump of code
> due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The
> project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest
> modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component
> releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but
> not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the
> entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped
> (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will
> regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in
> fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand
> the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks
> later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.

hahaha you gave me a final laugh dude:

i like the way kde release stuff. they take their time, get the stuff working and do some intensive testing before releasing packages. gnome in the otherside does exactly the different here an example of gnome-utils changelof for gnome 1.4:

- changelog:

01-01-2002 - added de.po, hk.po (version changed to 1.4.0.6)
20-12-2001 - changed some *.c and *.h files (version changed to 1.4.0.5)

what i want to say is they change some minor fucking unworthy to mention things and bump the version. same for gnumeric once you get gnumeric compiled and installed, go to ftp.gnome.org and leech another new version.

> * Myth #8 - The Qt toolkit is cross-platform and yet takes advantage of each
> individual platform
> > The Qt toolkit (the software at the heart of KDE) is supposedly a
> cross-platform toolkit allowing the lucky developer the opportunity to write
> Windows/Linux/Mac software all at once. And yet, among the magical mythical
> claims made, the most nonsensical is that it makes applications which take
> advantage of the distinct features of the different platforms. This is of
> course, nonsense. Qt is a bloated, slow layer that is slapped over a native
> system's APIs in an attempt to make all the systems look alike. It no more
> takes advantage of Linux/Windows/Mac than Java does - in fact it offers many
> of the disadvantages of Java with few of the advantages. If you have ever
> wondered why the KDE desktop looks so much like Windows... you need look no
> further than Qt. Qt is a lowest common denominator toolkit, and that LCD is
> Windows - Trolltech's, the creator of Qt, real market.

at least you can port qt and kde apps. look on gnome it depends on so many different programminglanguages, it depends on so many other (wherever you get them applications) that you need ages to get a basic system ported to either windows and wherever.

> * Myth #9 - TrollTech is a friend of Free software
> > To Be Written. Ideas: Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this
> violated the GPL, didn't care, stole others' GPL code by porting it to link
> (in violation of the license) with Qt and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE
> core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for
> writing closed-source with Qt, and hence KDE. Trolltech only moved towards the
> GPL because of the success of GNOME. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare (3
> licenses to deal with). Gradual migration of features belonging in KDE into Qt
> (and so into TrollTech's IP portfolio), allowing easy porting of apps to the
> revenue generating Windows world (see TheKompany for a perfect example),
> thereby making KDE an irrelevant launcher of Qt applications. Claims made that
> Qt is GPL, while true, hide the real truth. There cannot be a real fork of Qt
> for the KDE project: Core developers work for Trolltech; any fork would need
> to be full GPL and hence ban any closed-source apps from KDE altogether (all
> KDE apps must link with Qt); Any commerical licensees of Qt (non-GPL) would
> and could only follow TrollTech. KDE is stitched up good and proper.

you are totally clueless once again you proof it.

some years back there was only 2-3 widgetsets out one of them was the leading MOTIF widgetset which was closed source and during this time outdated. people tried to write a DE and searched for a OOP compatible widgetset so they found their way to QT which filled all their needs. sure QT during this time wanted to earn some money or do you think a company could exists, feed their family and pay the bills by writing free software ? thats plain sick and plain wrong. we should be thankfull to trolltech that they offer QT under a GPL compatible license now and you fuckign shithead have nothing better to do than piss around. what kinda asshole are you ?

evil propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

hello there,

i am mainly gnome user and migrated to gnome 2 some das ago. i must say that doing this was a hard task. i dont want to sound like a troll nor do i want to rant shit but here the problems that occoured:

- gnome 2 got a shitload of new libraries and modules that you need to compile its mainly a complete BREAKUP of previous gnome 1 currently the CVS looks more than a warfield than really usable, not to mention all the problems, bugs etc. and if you look at their roadmap then gnome 2 should be done middle of march, this is exactly 30 days from today on (15 Feb. 2002). i doubt and seriously i really doubt that they get a working DESKTOP done until that time. at the end there is no TESTCASE possible.

- gnome 2 development plattform SUCKS yes it suck terrible. seriously not well planned. not to mention that there is no single letter written in the README's or INSTALL files that at least detail the requirements correctly. no you need to play trivia with the configure.in files. not to mention that the buildscripts are so broken at the moment that a lot of autogenerated files must be made manually e.g. make gnome-mokka.h only to get the file.

now result:

if i compare the above stuff with the current CVS of KDE3 and QT3 then i must say 'well it takes some hours to compile but at least it compiles' even the testphase for kde 3 seem to be longer for me than that for gnome 2. i think that after KDE 3 comes finally out its probably the better decission for people who wants a desktop.

issue commercial companies:

attentive readers of gnome mailinglist will find out that a lot of SUN people behave like they were owners of GNOME. e.g. you get strange looking emails from them with directives and orders. example: 'we want this and we want that' sure if they pay fine for gnome then why not. same for ximian and their sick roadmap with .NET i mean a lot of gnome developers got so pissed that they wanted to cut off the head of miguel de icaza because of the shit shouting out on reports and other crap.

issue evolution:

evolution is a nice pim for gnome, probably the best on the market right now but it has a lot of issues. the new current CVS uses .NET technology already because they added some more dependencies to it like SOUP.

gnome development community itself:

i havent see so many people on one place that carry their nose that high in the air i wonder how they still see their own road when they walk. hope none of them hit a wall by mistake. mainly patches welcome but stay out of our community. no ? you dont want to stay out ? you are a troll +b !*ruediger*@* (this is a fake ident) but as i always said pride comes before the fall.

gtk 2 matures gnome, the gimp matures gnome:

no not today but i see it comming, all these people hung out on the same channel and influences them. a lot of people dont like desktops and really get pissed by the idea that they cant use simple gtk applications anymore because of the big dependency. well oki yes.. yes... yes you can say, hum install packs i dont care but thats not the point a lot of these people are EXPERTS (well no one is really stupid if he/she decides for linux, so its no need to make people more stupid in the public as they in reality are) besides its a known and most used phrase of the gnome developers "why do you want to compile, a normal user should use RPM's or DEB's".. excuse me isnt it open source ? like SOURCECODE ? like 'i want to tweak' ? so why the fuck does some of the 'usability sun or redhat suckers' come up with that shit ? either help or shut the fuck up.

oki now some sentences to kde:

well i always eye on kde and to say the truth, 'yes kde is more usable' it is better thought, better planned and kde 3 offers programs already that you can use for daily work. look at gnome after the gnome 2 release comes out, then where are the apps ? they still needs to get ported (if not dead already) i mean i have a nice sweat desktop and a shit on it. using nautilus to watch pron pictures all the day is not what i call serious work. kde 3 comes with so many applications, more than my heart can carry. but on the otherhand kde has some sideeffects that makes me avoid using it. e.g. no 'the gimp' i dont like the idea (i am selfspeaking here) to mix widgetsets, thats what i have done 7-8 years back on linux and it made me sick. i want a unified desktop (thats the reason for a desktop) and i want unified applications. now kde offers a lot of applications. but the reason why people more and more decide to use gnome instead of kde is simple because of the gimp and because of the possiblility to hack in 'C'. at least they are my reasons. but neverthless KDE 3 will make it. now why comes that a gnome user says this. its simple because of all the applications.

now i tested gnome 2 what do i get. nothing. the same applications, same gnome utils, some ui refered changes but basically a gnome 1 desktop (nothing new) oki from the coding point of view a lot of shit changed (no doubt) but apps. where are the apps. its the same like buying a xbox with 1 game it makes no fun so i better go for the old well known playstation 2 with 200 games. its simple. not only that kde 3 has a longer roadmap, no there are already so many applications available for it because a lot of people had the time porting it.

you guys on KDE dont need to worry, gnome may become good but it never touches KDE you guys dont only offer KDE on the release day, you also know that people get the applications for it. unfortunately its not the case for GNOME.

Re:evil propaganda

[FooBarWidget]

I can't believe this, you're still trying to spread this FUD?

No, don't even try to justify yourself with personal attacks such as "you suck fucking moron". Nobody cares.

Re:evil propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

"you suck fucking moron"

Re:evil propaganda

[FooBarWidget]

*YAWN*
Am I supposed to feel insulted now? If so, that's one horribly flawed and unsuccessfull attempt to do so.

Re:evil propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

go out for a ride you fucking fat brat. i bet you never seen a twat of a girl in your whole life.

Re:evil propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

*YAWN*

I see you're still poorly attempting to insult me... Get a life jerk, you will never succeed.

Re:evil propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

i am still here you nigger. i bet you are a fucking mirc lamer. please come into our #lwz channel so we can kick your fucking ugly ass out of the channel.

Your answer

[festers]

http://canvas.gnome.org:65348/gnomefaq/html/x104.h tml

Re:Your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

a stupid space in "html" goofed it up. grrr.

*gasp*

[Anonymous Coward]

Those have got to be two of the ugliest screenshots I have ever seen. They make my ears hurt.

Maybe if the backgrounds were quieter they would not make my stomach feel so bad.

Re:gnome finally lost.

[Anonymous Coward]

you can't hide the truth. mark it flamebait if you wish but this won't change facts.