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A User's First Look at GNOME 2.0
Gentu writes: "OSNews has just published a review of the Gnome 2.0 desktop environment and its verdict is not so positive. The author feels that the new version is limited in many ways and with a UI not well designed."
s/he/she/g.
Take a look at the reviewer's name.... and her website http://www.eugenia.co.uk/.
What the reviewer has done is done is very simple
Ignored release notes
Ignored Various READMES
Ignored known gotchas
The reason galeon wont work is that the mandrake rpm sounds like it is compiled with nautilus1 support, and nautilus 1 has been clobbered
The one thing loud and clear through all the development process is INSTALL GNOME2 IN A SEPARATE PREFIX!!
Personally I cant think of anything missing with my install of gnome2 (parallel with gnome1.4)
If people cant read release notes they should just pull down ximian RPMs
REDTUX
Eh? Your comment on Nautilus makes no sense.
Nautilus is a desktop and file manager. Of course turning it off gives you a naked desktop, because you no longer HAVE a desktop-manager. How is this Nautilus' fault?
But please do not listen too much to what the reviewer said, because it is totally opposite to most others experience.
Firstly, for all persons I've ever spoken to about GNOME 2.0, it feels way faster than GNOME 1.x
Secondly, there is a centralized place for configuration. It is called "Desktop preferences" and it is either in the GNOME-menu, or in "start-here:". The reviewer got this fact completely wrong, almost on the edge of malciciousness.
He does have some valid points however. The theme-issue is inherited from GNOME 1.x, and was sadly not possible to fix in GNOME 2.0 without much delay.
The other issue, which does speak against intuitivity is the menu-panel. It makes no sense to move the menu-panel, as it is totally meant as a top-menu in all it's design.
However it is still possible to remove the menu-panel and just use a bottom GNOME-panel like Windows or KDE. You just have to create the new panel before you remove the menu-panel, as GNOME won't let you remove all of your panels.
The current production version of Galeon is for Gnome1. If you want to run Gnome1 apps, you need Gnome1 installed. A major reason for bumping version from 1 to 2 is that the ABI (and API) is not backwards compatible. And as you point out yourself on the Mac, you need both systems to run legacy stuff. As more applications become stable on Gnome2, there will be less need for Gnome1 to be installed.
So, the oprions are: have Gnome1 installed as well; run Galeon from CVS; or wait until Galeon for Gnome2 is out.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Exactly! Thank you, thank you.
Here's something people fail to realize: even if you dislike your interface in some way, with a well designed interface and some training, you can be faster with the interface that is subjectively offensive than the one that you feel is somehow 'comfortable'. Configurability is the hallmark (in general) of a poor UI design. It means that you didn't know how to do it properly in the first place, so you're passing the buck to the user.
The advantages of a rigidly stardardized interface are often completely ignored, but they're what allow most people to sit down at any computer and start typing.
Look, I'll admit that I really like GNOME as far as desktops go. More often than not I end up just using blackbox or evolution or windowMaker, but I do like the GNOME desktop and I've been looking forward to the 2.0 release. Anyways, I'd like to offer the thought that it's too soon to be judging GNOME 2.0. A lot of the apps aren't ported to it yet. Distributions aren't shipping it yet. A project like Gnome isn't like Mozilla where you expect everything in one package. There's a lot of other projects, not officially part of Gnome that go together to make it. When all these parts have been put together and companies like Ximian and RedHat start shipping a complete Gnome 2.0 product, then I'll start getting critical with it. Until then, I think it's too early to pass judgement.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Scriptability: You mention AppleScript, and claims it is like having shellscript for GUI. No it isn't: you are bound to use that specific language. They could easily have supplied a network protocol (like KDE's DCOP) or any other more generic interface. Since they didn't, everything has to go to this dreadful language. Any experienced programmer would instantly fear "an easy-to-use, approachable, English-like language".
Way to do your research, lil buddy.
The AppleScript system is open. In fact, AppleScript just happens to be the default language Apple gives you to use within their "Open Script Architecture" (OSA).
For example, you could use JavaScript to tie into all the hooks AppleScript can. There is an older list of other OSA languages available as well.
As an experienced programmer, I find AppleScript useful. When I'm scripting a bunch of Mac apps, the english-ness and gimpy-ness of AppleScript has never bothered me. Why? Because I'm not doing any "real" work. If I'd like to do a combination of "real" work and scripting apps, I could easily use a language from the above list, or call the script events from C or a C module access by a real language.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
The main reason Sawfish 2.0 sucks is that no-one is working on it right now. It's based on the old GTK+ architecture and despirately needs a rewrite. Metacity is what GNOME (at least Sun GNOME) will ultimately use. It's currently more limitted than Sawfish, but it's really great. Try it out!
As for the 2 panel quirks, please report the bug to either GNOME or Ximian (who's going to release Ximian GNOME 2.0 soon). It should be *really* easy to fix. It sounds like a bug that no-one noticed. If you're quick, it might end up in the next Ximian or GARGNOME update.