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Gnome 2.0 RC1
lurgyman writes "The GNOME Desktop 2.0 release candidate 1 has been released! It looks like it's finally on schedule for its projected June 21 release." The release notes have some good information.
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Well, if we have a GNOME 2.0 release candidate, maybe it's time to finally ditch XP. What do you think, is there any reason for anyone to still own that anti-privacy OS anymore, or should we just make do with Win2K so we can play some games?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
GNOME 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1: "Fever Pitch"
s / nome-2.0-desktop-rc1/
../project/experimenta l main
i pts/README
:-)
q uad/
The GNOME 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1, "Fever Pitch", is ready for your
bug-busting and testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download
here:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/pre-gnome2/release
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.
Progress
The following tarballs have been updated since last week's snapshot release:
at-spi, eel, eog, esound, gail, GConf, gdm, gedit2, gnome-applets,
gnome-desktop, gnome-games, gnome-media, gnome-mime-data, gnome-panel,
gnome-session, gnome-system-monitor, gnome-terminal, gnome-utils,
gnome-vfs, libgail-gnome, libgnome, libgnomecanvas, libgnomeui, libgtop,
librep, libwnck, libzvt, nautilus, rep-gtk, sawfish, yelp
Testing the GNOME 2.0 Desktop
Binary packages and build scripts have been contributed to make installation
and testing of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop simpler.
Debian:
The following sources.list line will allow you to install the latest
experimental packages. Please see the debian-gtk-gnome list for more
information about these releases.
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian
GARNOME: http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/garnome/
GARNOME downloads and builds from released tarballs. It includes a
number of ported applications and utilities, and is designed to be a
distribution of GNOME rather than an updater.
jhbuild: http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/jhbuild/README
jhbuild builds directly from CVS, and includes required developer tools.
It handles dependencies and errors gracefully, to minimise build time
and frustration.
vicious-build-scripts: http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/vicious-build-scr
v-b-s builds directly from CVS, and includes required developer tools
such as autoconf, gettext, etc.
Ximian Red Carpet Snapshots: (See the GMOME2 Snapshots Channel in Red Carpet.)
Binary packages for Red Hat 7.2 and 7.3 are available from Ximian's Red
Carpet. These are built nightly from CVS snapshots.
Build Requirements
- The tarballs included in the release.
- Some very basic packages not distributed with this release, such as
image libraries, popt and freetype. These should all be included with or
available for your distribution.
- Python 2 with expat xml modules for libglade (some modules still require
the libglade-convert script, however we do plan to ship glade2 files).
- Docbook DTD 4.1.2, Docbook XSL stylesheets and a valid system catalogue
file for scrollkeeper (which in turn is required by many desktop
components for documentation).
- You need recent GNOME 1.4 developer platform packages if you plan to
install the GNOME 2.0 platform libraries alongside 1.4.
A dependency graph for the developer platform and desktop release is
available on the dot.plan website:
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/notes/
Testers
If you have incredible talents at breaking GNOME, perhaps even to rival
Telsa's infamous path of destruction (and excellent bug reporting of said
path), this release is made for you!
When reporting bugs, use http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ or bug-buddy. Make sure
you choose the correct version number, as reports against particular
versions are easier to triage reports against unspecified releases.
Before submitting a bug report, try running the software from your terminal
to see if it provides extra information, and please make sure that you build
everything with full debugging support.
Bug Squad
Whether you're testing GNOME 2.0 or not, you can still help out with the bug
busting efforts by triaging and tracking bugs in bugzilla. Join the bugsquad
mailing list, and hang out on #bugs (on irc.gnome.org) to get involved -
Thursday is always bug-busting day!
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-bugs
For help with bugzilla accounts, email bugmaster@gnome.org.
Distributors
This release is not intended for inclusion in distributions. However, binary
packages for bleeding edge testers on your platform are very welcome. Please
email the release team if you have built
packages for your platform.
Hackers
When reporting bugs is simply not enough, and you'd prefer to make your own
(or, indeed, fix the ones you find), this release is also made for you!
Have a look through bugzilla or the TODO file included with many modules,
and make sure to send your patches to the maintainers via the appropriate
mailing list, or bugzilla.
Happy testing!
- The GNOME 2.0 Release Team
alas there is no alternative out here in the stix.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
great, now all the big distros are going to scramble to put out another release to include this. *sigh*
oh for a stable desktop!
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Is FreeBSD supported out of the box?
The Garnome part of GNOME is such an underrated program. Without it, I definately would not be using GNOME2 today, I'm not that much of a gearhead.
... it also does KDE(!) ... kudos to jeff and the other gnome hackers.
Garnome makes it braindead easy to have a GNOME2 desktop
Gnome will not be a good product without testing.
Please don't wait for the final product to come out.
It is you obligation (ok, maybe not) as a user of "software libre" to contribute something. If you cannot program, you can at least test the stuff on your hardware.
You would be sureprised at how few tester there are. I have found that if I submit a valid bug, it is fixed quickly. YOUR INPUT COUNTS!
here are some gnome 2.0 (beta) screenshots:
http://www.gnomedesktop.com/scr/gdb3-1.jpg
http://www.gnomedesktop.com/scr/gdb3-2.jpg
http://www.gnomedesktop.com/scr/gdb3-3.jpg
http://www.gnomedesktop.com/scr/gdb3-4.jpg
http://www.gnomedesktop.com/scr/gdb3.jpg
http://gnomedesktop.com/scr/limebubble.jpg
http://gnomedesktop.com/scr/beta2-8.jpg
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
I wish Gnome would put up some updated screenshots. I guess I'll have to install it myself and make the screenshots myself [isn't that what Open Source is all about? the good angel whispers on my right shoulder].
I'm glad to see the release candidate available, but it's actually a week overdue, not ontime.
I don't really know. I'm really looking forward to Gnome2 since I've been quite happy with the current release. My perceptions have usually been the opposite from yours: after using both desktops extensively, I usually find Gnome to be smoother, more responsive, less resource-intensive, and more intuitive than KDE. Of course, that's all just my personal opinion. I'd really have to say that they're both shaping up quite nicely and they're both "high-level" desktops.
According to this (from the dot.plan):
June 07 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
They are are a week behind schedule.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
I don't know what distro you use, but as far as Redhat or Debian goes, they pretty much release whenever they feel the product is ready, not when a new desktop comes out. In fact ever time a new Redhat Desktop comes out, everyone whines "why are they realeasing now and not including X with it?". If your distro puts out a new release the day Gnome 2 comes out, I suggest you find a new distro.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Heres one. This isnt actually RC1 but I installed it a few days ago so it should be fairly close.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
I think GNOME should start to differentiate itself in some way, and I expect we'll start seeing them diverge somewhat as GNOME realise they can't out-KDE KDE, and instead try and do their own thing.
Well, since KDE is up to version 3 and Gnome is only at version 2, obviously KDE is 50% better.
wipe your drool!
I want 2D games back.
I think they need to boost their bandwidth on that site somewhat..
I took another two screenshots:
EoG and xbill
The new terminal program, yelp (help system) and the sound recorder. You can see the anti aliasing support at work in the yelp window.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Mabey it'll beat duke nukem forever!
Looking good, but I wonder...
1) Is that the default theme for Gnome 2.0?
and
2) What's up with the 2 (X) buttons on each window?
Who cares if its a Microsoft like UI, its still Linux and its still stable isnt it? One of the things that helped Microsoft become such a standard WAS their UI. I say if Gnome makes their UI like Microsoft, more power to them. It will only help bring more of the mases away from MS and closer to Linux. In fact, anyone that comes up with a clone of the MS UI for Linux will quickly gain a user base.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
I'm not sure what you mean when you ask "Can Gnome compete with KDE"?
I've installed both KDE-based systems and Gnome-Based systems and shown them to Linux newbies- everyone from relatives to co-workers (caveat: I work in an engineering dept.)
After spending a few hours playing around with each one, my personal experience is that Gnome is their preferred choice, apparently because the icons and screen widgets look better, the interface appears simpler, and most of the engineers like the graphical virtual desktop manager on the gnome panel as opposed to the KDE version.
Granted, I use Gnome a lot and there are some deficiencies.. Nautilus is very slow. Sawfish has focus problems. The panel can behave in unexpected ways. The library dependencies for applications like Evolution are scary, but it generally works well and many people use Gnome as their full time desktop.
It looks to me like KDE may be slightly more stable, and may be easier to program for. Still, the differences between gnome and KDE from a user's point of view do not seem so great that you can call one "high level" and the other "mid level". They both look high level to me.
So, does someone want to try to explain the qualitative user-experience differences between KDE and Gnome, or is it as I suspect very minor?
If you haven't already tried, gnome 2 and all packages are really sweet. If you are using gnome 1.4 definitely switch. I use a Pentium II 450 w/384mb of ram and gnome 2 flies. Even nautilus 2 is snappy on my old clunker. The windows move around much faster, programs load quicker and everything is really futuristic looking. You can really spruce up the desktop with nautilus themes such as those found on ximian's site. Definitely check it out, KDE is just plain ugly to me (it also feels blocky). Let me emphasize IT'S FAST!
Its using the default Gtk theme, but I'm using metacity as the window manager. The default window manager is sawfish. I dont know why it has 2 X buttons :)
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
...more than just niche companies are writing desktop applications for it. Your video games comment illustrated the point nicely. I personally believe that KDE3 is superior to windows, and with any luck GNOME2 will be as well (downloading it now). Yet I still run a system with windows 2000 on it so I can play video games.
I have, through my years of computer experience felt the pain of using the better product despite it's lack of broad acceptance. I started off with an Atari 800, and then later worked on an Atari 1040ST. For their respective times both of these computers offered exceptional value over what else existed. The only problem was the market share problem; not enough people writing software to make them worth using.
So, expect to be paying the Microsoft tax for some time to come to use certain pieces of software...
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Having used both window systems quite heavily, I tend to thing that they were designed from (with?) different points of view.
It seems that gnome is far more configurable from the front end than KDE, but kde has better app integration and tools.
I like them for different reasons and fortunately, I can get 90% of the functionality I want from either system.
Kind of like the difference between Mercedes and BMW...
Mandrake 8.2 shipped with KDE 2, but now has an update to KDE 3. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to do the same for GNOME 2. I'd give it a couple of months, though, for testing.
I don't know that GNOME 2 will drive up too many distro version numbers. It's pretty safe to assume that Red Hat is already working on 8.0 with GCC 3.
What language supported in gnome2?
g no me-2.0-core/
here is the list
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/status/
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
Not! Based on KDE3 packaging, it'll be a year before Gnome 2.0 makes it into sid.
You heard it here first!
Heh! I'm not answering that one!
:-)
I mean, if I were to agree with you, we could start a flame war here.
here you can find some other screenshots of gnome 2, enjoy!
;-)
screenshots
pretty, isn't it?
just in case you are wondering where those wallpapers come from, I guess some of them are from deskmod , or a similar site, but I could be wrong...
I prefer a Mercedes with Gnome to BMW with iDrive... ;)
While I realize this release wasnt supposed to 'look' much different, they still could have taken advantage of new eyecandy availible to x and gtk2. Even kde supports tranparent menus. Besides anti-aliased fonts and alpha blending in widgets, nothing else looks much different. These hackers dont realize the reason why MS and OSX look so professional is for 2 reasons.
1.) consistancy (yes! we have metathemes, but kde and gnome themes are completly incompatible)
2.) cool little features like drop shadows on the menus and windows, alpha blending and animations on mouse over widgets or icons, faded menus, transparency, etc....
As long as there is no inovation, these desktops will never look as good. e17 has the right idea, its a shame that their development process is so slow (no one has enough time to develop on the half written libs they created).
"Think, It aint illegal.....yet" - George Clinton
I really hope those screenshots are from desktops from people with visual impairments, because otherwise everything is way too damn big. The fonts are huge, the toolbars are even bigger. People talk about XP's Luna interface wasting screen space, but it's nowhere near as bad as those screenshots.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's all adjustable (well, the fonts anyway. the toolbars probably aren't so adjustable), but even so, I'd hope GNOME doesn't want to put itself forward as a huge screen real estate hog. Most people prefer a lean, trim, unobtrusive interface when trying to actually get some work done, which those screenshots definitely are not.
> Looks like they are doing a good job in creating a Microsoft-like UI
1 54 824_shot.png
Only with the default settings. Here's a screenshot showing (an
older version of) Gnome looking a little different...
http://adminsystem.galion.lib.oh.us/2002_06_14_
(That's on my workstation, so it'll become unreachable when
I power down for the evening, sometime around 5:30pm EDT. Just
as well; we're only on a T1 here...)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Just out of interest, what parts of KDE do you feel are lacking in configuration? I can't think of a single area where I haven't been able to configure KDE to do precisely what I want. Particularly in the 'look and feel' department, it is *far* more configurable than Gnome.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Yet I still run a system with windows 2000 on it so I can play video games.
Is that windows 2000 the full retail version, or is it the cut-down version in the Xbox BIOS?
Will I retire or break 10K?
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian ../project/experimenta l main
KDE seems, to me, like a "single product". It's huge, I can see why it's nice for some people and how newbies can benefit since everybody has the same programs... but it's big, clunky and slow. I view GNOME as a collection of libraries and tools. GTK and GLib are much, much, much faster than QT, and so most GNOME apps are faster than their KDE counterparts. The downside is, of course, that they aren't as consistent as KDE apps (which, in my eyes, are even more consistent in design than Microsoft programs). I like KDE. I think it's great. But I'm not going to install it on my computer. I'd uninstall QT if it weren't for one program. Heck, I don't use the GNOME desktop either (I use blackbox) but I use plenty of GNOME tools (i.e., Galeon) since they're the best stuff out there. Though some GNOME developers wouldn't agree, I'd say KDE and GNOME don't compete... nor should they.
It cannot at the moment. I used gnome from version 1.0 to 2.0 beta 5. The 2.0 beta5 version made me switch to KDE 3. I was really disappointed when I saw that the "beta" version of gnome 2.0 was worse than 1.4. Long ago I chose Gnome because of some good reviews I read about the Gnome design opposed to the kde design. When I first installed KDE3 I was surprised to the richness of the environment and the ease of use. KDE has still bugs and is indeed too much "windowish", but is far superior to gnome.
I noticed KDE2/3 is faster than GNOME v1.4 on my old Pentium II 300 Mhz with Red Hat Linux 7.1 and 384 MB of RAM. How much faster/slower is GNOME v2.0?
:)
This faster speed than v1.4 is great news for me. I don't use Nautlius in GNOME because of the slowness.
Thank you in advance.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
war3 works perfect on winex, i have war3beta and play it all the time using opengl.
Damn - are those back/foward history links new? They need to be far closer to the icon they're beside. Don't make me think.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Should it compete with KDE?
How much further would OS software be without all of the effort duplication?
If your office is in Redmond, you really have to like all the fragmentation in the OS world. You can sip that latte in comfort, knowing that the competition's lack of focus is your own best friend.
Diversity is swell, but not priceless, unfortunately...
My vote is that the two efforts drift together, with the paint-and-powder aspects turned into themes. The desktop switcher both Gnome and KDE contain is welcome evidence of this trend.
Someday I'll be skilled enough to put a few hours in, instead of trash talk...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Personally i found that kde2.x was generally slower than gnome 1.4, but if you used nautilus then that made gnome1.4 a bit slower than kde. Then i upgraded to redhat 7.3, kde3 feels far slower than kde2.x and gnome1.x, and gnome2 (from the ximian snapshots on redcarpet) is significantly faster than the previous versions of gnome (probably because nautilus2 is really fast) and any version of kde (especially kde3). This is most obvious on my slowest machine, a P2 266 where kde3 is basically unusable, but gnome2 feels pretty responsive - fast enough to use happily.
I agree with you on some points. Gnome2 seems to mostly a worthless upgrade to me. I never liked Nautilus in Gnome1 and have tried the Gnome2 version. While the Gnome2 version is alot faster the Gnome2 version still royally sucks. As for KDE3 being any better, there I disagree. As for overall power and usablibility I think Gnome 1.4 defeats Gnome2 and KDE3. I think part of the problem with Gnome2 is it is trying to be a little too much like KDE3. KDE3 did have more to show from the upgrade, but overall was just as uneventful as I see Gnome2 being. Also KDE3 still has stability issues that I didn't have in KDE 2.2. mcop seems to randomly decide to crash when closing Konqueror. I was hoping it was fixed in KDE 3.01, but doesn't seem to be. I have tried 3-4 ideas of how I might workaround the bug(cleaning out config files, etc). I am hoping KDE 3.1 will be better. I am still waiting for viewports in KDE.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
That's good for you. But I still prefer GNOME. They both have bright futures.
Just out of interest, what parts of KDE do you feel are lacking in configuration?
Now, it may be me, or it may be kde, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make a window be ignored by ALT-TAB.
Similarly, I can't figure out how to have frameless windows.
And... where is the KDE version of red-carpet?! (I know - that's Ximian, not Gnome, but still...)
...will be sure to report every single one.
Why bother.
...will be back here six times a day to read about them.
But really, if all you need from a library is one function, or ten functions, and the code works, and the project has no bearing on Gnome- take the code, as the license allows you, stick it in your header file, and be done with it.
And then all of a sudden every application has a copy, so memory use is up. New bug fixes aren't picked up or need to be applied many times.
Cut and paste coding is evil. You can mitigate maintenance hassles by linking statically (you'll still have multiple copies in RAM, but that's often okay), but duplicating code is a major programming sin.
Sumner
rage, rage against the dying of the light
> Now, it may be me, or it may be kde, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make a window be ignored by ALT-TAB.
It works for me (i'm using sawfish+kde)
> Similarly, I can't figure out how to have frameless windows.
It works for me (i'm using sawfish+kde)
> And... where is the KDE version of red-carpet?! (I know - that's Ximian, not Gnome, but still...)
There will never be a KDE-version of red-carpet. This is because generally, red-carpet is a POS, imho. Get a real installation software from your distro maker. I use Gentoo, and emerge is great. Apt-get is also wonderful for installing such things.
Ah... advanced window manager issues.
As the previous respondant has indicated, you can quite easily use Sawfish as KDE's window manager -- it's probably the most configurable wm out there. You'll find similar issues with Gnome 2.2, which is going to move from Sawfish to Metacity as the wm (basically because no one understands Rep well enough to pick up the code).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
I'm sorry, but I don't think sawfish is the standard window manger for kde. Hence, we run into the same issue as with all OSS - Oh yeah, it works, you just have to do this and this...
Sorry folks, that doesn't work in the main stream...
And, red-carpet works just fine. Is there better? Sure. Is there worse? You betcha.
> I'm sorry, but I don't think sawfish is the standard window manger for kde.
Well, you can't do the above things with Metacity either (pretty much the GNOME version of kwin).
Anyways, you can use any _NET_WM compliant window manager with either GNOME or KDE. This is the whole point of freedesktop.org, btw, and more.
> Hence, we run into the same issue as with all OSS. Sorry folks, that doesn't work in the main stream...
I doubt the average user wants to remove the frame from their window anyways.
ps2 - 199
dvd controler - 20
being able to play great games, and watch dvds on ur 50" tv screen. priceless.
Good point. I'm looking at that actually, so I can play The Sims on my tube, while my son plays Warcraft III on his iMac.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
1) I find it faster.
2) I like the tabbed browsing.
Well, good arguments. I've noticed that most of the reviews say that Mozilla is a lot faster than IE, and much more secure, so I'll be loading the recent build on one of my Linux boxen this weekend to compare.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
By the looks of this screenshot, somebody is taking a course in "Ethical Crap".
(Unfortunately, its a fairly old screenshot.)
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
Some people like to have two distinct buttons, one which closes the window, and one which closes the program. perhaps this is teh source of your two buttons?
Another possibility is that you (or someone) had the one button, and wanted the three on the right, but after editing the config so you had that, did not get rid of the one on the left for whatever reason. Not being familiar with your window manager, I could not be sure...
Hmmm, have you compared today's MS gui to Apple's gui? I dont know about you, but the Windows GUI today is alot easier to use than the Apple one.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
A bunch of recent GNOME2 packages are available right now (and have been for ages!) in unstable, and just about every new package makes it into experimental about as soon as it's released. Christian Marillat, Takuo Kitame et al kick all kinds of ass, and you do 'em disrespect by not checking your facts before mouthing off.
...absolutely correct.
Why bother.
The version of Gnome released with mdk 8.2 is 1.4.0, with few updates for the desktop apart from a few apps from their previous release. I'm perfectly willing to accept that their focus is on KDE, but I happen to be one of those people who don't really like it. I found so many things broken in mdk 8.2 that worked fine in 8.1 that I threw it out in favour of Slackware which works like a charm.
Uh, viewports are a function of the window manager. I know KDE's tightly integrated window manager doesn't support them, but they have been talked about as a possible feature in future versions. As for not being it know to, I don't know where you get that idea. Metacity doesn't have them, but Metacity isn't Gnome2. There is a port of sawfish to Gnome2 in the works, as far as I know it will have viewports. Personally I think the author of Metacity is on crack, tho he seems to think everyone else is. If you really want to get down to the point it is more a matter of how well replacing the window manager works between Gnome and KDE. There are just more window managers that play nice with Gnome than there are that do with KDE, mostly because of how tightly KDE intregrates it's window manager.
Personally I can't stand any of the standard Gnome window managers with their totally clunky method of moving windows between desktops and viewports by the Send to X. I much prefer grab window and hot key. Enlighenment provides this functionality and many other very useful features I haven't found in any other window manager. I have in the past tried to get Enlightenment to work with KDE and found they don't work well together. I also found when I first tried Enlightenment and Gnome2 that they didn't work well together, but if I remember right last time I tried a Gnome2 beta they did work well together. I would have probably totally abandoned Gnome as a desktop except for two things. Mainly because of applets. They provide useful information and on panels can almost complete stay out of the way. Speaking of which, that is one nice thing about KDE, you can now have the panels totally hidden. Which I would use for my main panel. Though I would still require the option panels that showed a few pixels. The second thing, which I could probably live without, is the tasklist on the panel. There are other of getting similar functionality, but I really like the hiding ability, quick accessability, and all they provide. This is especially an issue because I like to maximize windows. I don't think I will give up that habit till monitors are Alot bigger.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
It is all about the applications. Give me choice. I rate the chances of survival of an open source program that only provides binaries for an awkward Gnome configuration very very low indeed (some users are lazy like me, others have neither the time nor ability to figure how to use new software let alone a whole new operating system or having to compile and/or install their own software). Cross platform closed source proprietary program with a reasonabley sized userbase has more market share giving it potential to adapt and survive.
If developers really value market share they will develop applications that are either use a portable toolkit (pure gtk/qt) or program in cross platform way. You may not like Windows and certainly it may not be your choice of operating systems but what is your primary motivation, do you want people to use your application or your operating system?
Dont underestimate the importance of being able to try out software like the Gimp, StarOffice, Mozilla, Abiword, without the need to install a whole new operating system.
Many Gtk projects understand this and provide a basic solid working gtk only version with easy to install statically compiled binaries for a variety of common systems that let the user get the job done. And the projects that really want to promote Gnome also provide a lovely Gnome or Gnome 2 version with lots of nice addons and extra polish to give users as many incentives as possible to use the Gnome Desktop.
I guess the core arguement i am making that - irrespective of whether the source code is available or not - a larger more diverse developer/stakeholder/userbase/ecosystem the better a projects chance of not just surviving but flourishing.