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A Preview of Ximian's Gnome 2.0 Desktop
TweetZilla writes "Dennis Powell has a good preview of Ximian's newest desktop. But does anybody care at this point? How many people still use Ximian's desktop? As opposed to Evolution?"
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How many people still use Ximian's desktop? As opposed to Evolution?
Ximian's DESKTOP -> WM
Evolution -> Mail Client
What kind of comparison is this? And as a matter of fact, I use both...
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
The article doesn't describe anything other than how excited this guy was about the features he saw, which he really didn't go into, and there are no screenshots.
Will Ximian give me back my view-ports and edge-flipping? Gnome2/metacity/sawfish2 in RedHat 8.0 totally pissed me off with their lack, and opposed stance to such features. Don't they realize how addictive those things are? It's like UI heroine, and I'm jonesing! If Ximian implemented those features along with some other standard missing preferences like user defined key-bindings (right now you have to use gconf-editor to set them), I think a large portion of Gnome users would switch. Go Ximian.
Oh, and on an aside note, is Michael on crack? Evolution vs. Desktop?!? It must be the lack of viewports that's fucking him up.
> a number of very nice looking typefaces that exactly coincide with the ones Microsoft ships;
> as a result, their browser renders pages "best viewed in Internet Explorer," as the incompaibility
> is euphemistically called, exactly as if in Internet Explorer.
Erm, fonts != web rendering technology. If it's broke in Gecko it's broke in Gecko, and having the right fonts won't make any difference. Or does he mean, "best viewed in Windows"?
What's euphemistic about it? And why does the author call it an "incompatibility" when he means a "recommendation"? Euphemism, n.: "an inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive".
As another user points out, the article offers so salient points regarding any actual new features or improvements, just a general mish-mash. Then to round off it sounds off on a whole load of random mismatched arguements about how free software's wonderful. We've heard it all a thousand times before.
I get so annoyed by people writing pretentious twaddle using words they don't understand because they think it looks impressive, while simultaneously making grammatical, spelling and typographical errors all over the shop. You ain't fooling no one...
Next please.
You see when I go to a link that's going to tell me about some booth at a linux I want some graphical content.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
When I first started using linux GUI's, Ximian's Gnome desktop was one of the early one's I ran through and tried.
Even now, it's still rather impressive: nice themes, runs fairly quick/smooth, interesting suite of applications. Changing settings was also quite easy.
I've since tried running RedHat 8.0's packaged Gnome, and was considerable less impressed. The thing runs like a wounded Yak, and it's not nearly as pretty as Ximian.
Oh, and as a really nice point for GUI newbies... installing Ximian Gnome was "extremely" painless on RedHat, using a webpage piped through a shell: (substitute "links" for "lynx' as needed):
lynx -source http://go-gnome.com/ | sh
Um, nobody cares. That is, no one outside the geek development crowd. This thing is aimed at people who want to run Linux, but want to have it look nice and do what they want without having to spend all day setting it up, or all year learning how to install/compile/rpm/apt-get/whatever.
In fact, most places that would use Ximian Desktop, like actual companies, don't want the latest, greatest. They want something that has been around for a little bit, that they know is not going to break right away.
I, for one, will be quite happy if it fulfills half the expectations this guy sets up for it. I've been looking for something that I can put on my Mom's computer that will still give her all her Windows functionality and ease-of-use. If Ximian Desktop 2.0 does this, she doesn't care what the number is (indeed, she probably won't even realize there is one!).
Troy
It's either someone who is a rabid GNOME2 user, or a KDE user who has some childish bone to pick with Ximian for some reason. Nevermind all the work from Ximian that can be found at gnome.org. What a loser. I'm using KDE 3.1 myself, but kudos to Ximian for their pending release.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Go to sawfish wiki, interesting things, like how to emulate it with workspaces, how to get it working as always (so you can have worksaces AND viewports, and sending to hell those who say you are mad for using that or for viewport), how to get a nice pager for sawfish and many more.
It's not like Ximian's desktop is *bad*. It's certainly a nicely polished interface for those of us who like to have a constant and stable desktop, with simple ways to change things we'd like.
Ximian certainly offers that, but IMHO, Gnome2's desktop framework offers this as well. Ximian though, in contrast to just Gnome2, is a bit easier for most Windows converts than just plain Gnome/Gnome2. Also, Ximian's desktop is rather inclusive of some pretty "user-friendly" tools.
I think KDE and Ximian's Gnome2 are going to be the usual first-used desktops by most converts. This is important for those who care about making Linux a more "popular" desktop for the general populous. We should always try to encourage this type of activity, because it inspires choice.
After a convert learns about all the features, and shortcomings of their "starter" environment, they will inevitably change something, or just find something they like more.
Without a "starter" type desktop though, they wouldn't be as encouraged to find something they like more, thus stifling the overall acceptance of Linux as a general purpose desktop.
We should always try to change the negative to be positive, if it is possible. A good Linux desktop, which wins converts from Windows, will increase the popularity of Linux, thus increasing the acceptance of OpenSource software, thus increasing how much people rely on OSS, and then people will care more about it than they previously had. At least a little.
It's a chain of events that will lead more use of OSS software in general, and something we should continue to help the growth of. Not say "why the hell would anyone use that shit? I use WindowMaker and it's just fine!". Maybe once those converts are on Linux for a while, they may agree. Give'm the opportunity.
--SuperBug
Not to defend the idiocy of comparing the Desktop (Ximian) to the Mail Client (Evolution), I feel that it was made due to a situation that was present about a year ago. Before redhat 7.3, you could not get Ximian Evolution without having Ximian's gnome rpms or without compiling from source. The former screwed up much of the automatic update mechanisms of certain distros and the latter delved the user into dependency hell, usually requiring a .01 increase in a library version number. When distros started to include Evolution as a standalone, many users just ditched Ximian entirely, as for many, Evolution was the *only* reason to go with them. Just a thought...
There are two main reasons I'm holding off on RH8:
a) No Ximian available
b) The GNOME it comes with doesn't do viewports. I can't live without my 3x2 workspace. Keyboard shortcuts are no replacement for moving the mouse to the edge of the screen to go to the next one. It just feels more natural.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
No, those are two completely different things!
Workspaces are totally independent desktops. If you slide something off the edge of one, it just vanishes. In order to flip between them, currently you have to drag the mouse down to the little toolbar applet and click on a different one. Pain!!
Viewports are like a window on a single, much larger desktop. You can drag a application off the edge of one viewport and onto an adjoining one, which is why you have edge-flipping. It is also possible to open a window much larger than the physical display and scan around it.
Personally, I use viewports and edge flipping all the time!
The lack of viewports in RH 8.0 is the single greatest reason why I haven't switched yet.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Oh, by the way, what IS Ximian, really? Isn't it just a mod of Gnome?
Ximian is a company that does a couple of projects -- Mono, Evolution. They also put out a "distribution" of GNOME, much like RH and Mandrake put out distributions of Linux. If you like Ximian's desktop more than the one that comes with, say, Red Hat, you can use it instead.
This may seem a little odd to some people, but GNOME is a somewhat larger, looser, more distributed collection of projects than KDE or GNUStep, and it's actually quite convenient if you want to use GNOME.
Please, someone, let KDE 4.0 and Gnome 3.0 be the same.
I doubt it'll happen. Too many differences in what the two projects are trying to accomplish. KDE people are trying to essentially produce a clone of what MS has done, and directly compete with them for Windows users. Smaller, programs more tied to each other, less independence for individual projects. GNOME people are trying to take an umbrella of projects and "condense" them into a desktop environment. Larger, more modular, programs more independent and simply packaged together. Rather like a Linux distro, come to think of it.
May we never see th