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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.
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.
I'm the stranger...posting to
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
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.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
Sure, its called linux. It replaces windows' shell completly!
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
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Oops - forgot the screenshot.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
try here
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
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?
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Add the following lines to your sources.list
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.
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.
IAAL,BIANLY
It (gnome 2) just hit public beta ... why would there be a lot of people using it before it even hit beta?
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
This
screenshot and this can be so cool if implemeted correctly.
Any other screenshots along this line?
It doesn't use the new gnome hooks, but it's usable today.
"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.
.technomancer
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?
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
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?
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...
All about me
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!
~~~~~~~~~
dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.
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.
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!!
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
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.
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?
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.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
An xlib port to windows is already underway, and Donald Becker is doing it. See w11
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
{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.
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< sp? > 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.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
>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.
"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.
Look is not everything. API is radically different from KDE.
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.
I hate having to download and install 23092039 diffrent files, ill never update gnome.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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.
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"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
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).
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
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
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).