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Gnome 2.2 Released

heydrick writes "This message confirms that Gnome 2.2 is officially released. And a month ahead of the originally planned six-month release cycle. Check out the Gnome 2.2 Start Page and use a mirror to download."

405 comments

  1. hrm.... by xao+gypsie · · Score: 1, Funny

    And a month ahead of the originally planned six-month release cycle...

    it seems that Blizzard could learn a lot from these guys..

    xao

    --


    xao
    http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
  2. I've never seen by Fafnir_b · · Score: 2, Funny
    Slashdot so close to being slashdottet...

    But anyway, cudos to gnome team. Can't wait to see this nautilus-cd-burning thing in action - could be something for my dad (who seems to hate gtoaster).

    1. Re:I've never seen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's actually pretty funny.

    2. Re:I've never seen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great. Bring out the KDE weenies to start the flaming. It's like they have no confidence in KDE so they must bad mouth Gnome every chance they get. Blah.

    3. Re:I've never seen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm a KDE user, but that doesn't mean I'd badmouth the gnome project. My only problem with anything gnome related are my own philisophical differences with Miguel De Icaza, but he's not really running the show anyway.

      Glad to see gnome getting a good cd burning program. I have been using k3b on KDE for some time and its been great. If the gnome app better I'll start using it.

    4. Re:I've never seen by hdparm · · Score: 1
      I never understood this whole damn Gnome/KDE war. To the extent I appreciate reasons development teams may have, funding in particular.

      For the life of me, I cannot figure out flame wars between KDE and Gnome users, though.

      These two desktops together are arguably the most important enabler for wider Linux acceptance. It's such a cool thing being able to switch between them whenever one wants to. Especially these days, when most of the gtk/qt apps work well in both environments.

      I love both and switch between them on regular bases. Both look nice, speed is comparable and I'm never bored with the same look&feel for ages.

      That war is totally crazy, if you ask me.

    5. Re:I've never seen by AsparagusChallenge · · Score: 1

      That's because there's not such war. I found this explanation somewhat convincing. Not a war, at most a contained set of incidents.

    6. Re:I've never seen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're not weenies, we don't even care about gnome because we're happy with our desktop which is decades ahead of gnome.

    7. Re:I've never seen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try Eroaster, very similar to windoze burning apps. Also try Simplecdrx

  3. the Gnome Liberation Front has won! by Marco_polo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh wait.. Gnome for Linux... I thought this was about the heroic struggle to free the garden gnomes from their plight

    http://www.freethegnomes.com/

    --
    I am the lord of the pun. Dance Knave!
    1. Re:the Gnome Liberation Front has won! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ha ha ho ho ho hee hee hee. Umph-ha ha ha ha hee hee ha ha.

      Good one.

  4. Sweeet! by 3Kirt · · Score: 1

    Now i can stop checking the mirrors every 5 mintues.

    :)

    1. Re:Sweeet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wish you would. I already told you who the fairest is, and it AIN'T YOU.

  5. lets kick the tires and light the fires... by theIG · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Time to fire up good old wget.

  6. dam it!... by reactivo · · Score: 1

    I lost my time this weekend updating my GNU/Linux Debian system to GNOME 2.0...

    1. Re:dam it!... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dunno about you normal users, but unstable users have been using 2.2 for a long time :)

    2. Re:dam it!... by luther · · Score: 1

      I lost my time this weekend updating my GNU/Linux Debian system to GNOME 2.0...

      Are you sure ? There is no such thing as gnome 2.0 in debian right now, the packages you upgraded to are either the final 2.2 ones or the release candidate ones.

    3. Re:dam it!... by krappie · · Score: 1

      Yeah.. god knows how much effort it takes..

      # apt-get install gnome

      3 debian

    4. Re:dam it!... by Pastis · · Score: 1

      I use Debian and I run Gnome 2.2 (afaik gnome 2.1.90 a Gnome 2.2 release candidate).

      I upgraded Saturday 1st 13h00 GMT. Perhaps do you use an outdated mirror?

  7. Startup notification by ultrabot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yet again, perfectly in time to be included in the next Red Hat.

    GNOME can now show that an application is starting, so you don't feel the need to click a second time. For instance, if the application supports it, the cursor may change to a clock while the application starts if the application supports startup notification. Unlike some past attempts at UNIX startup notification, the new standard is reliable and robust, in keeping with the GNOME philosophy of things that "just work."

    Does anyone know whether the KDE equivalent is a past attempt they are talking about?

    --
    Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
    1. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      No they are talking about xalf which had many problems. Startup notification is a freedesktop.org spec so KDE and Gnome apps should be using this, at least in the future. (I'm not sure how much KDE has jumped onboard freedesktop.org standards).

    2. Re:Startup notification by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative
      Does anyone know whether the KDE equivalent is a past attempt they are talking about?

      Yes. The KDE system was a good first attempt, but suffered from not having toolkit/desktop integration as well as it could have. If an app didn't support it, or crashed on startup, the throbber would hang indefinately. This system has toolkit/X integration, and is only activated for programs that flag themselves as supporting it, so it's more robust and useful.

    3. Re:Startup notification by Eros · · Score: 1

      Regarding past attempts at startup notification. No I don't think they are talking about the KDE equivalent. They are most probably talking about Xalf. I library that you set in your LD_PRELOAD variable, that allowed startup notification on all sorts of apps, not just Gnome, IIRC.

      I thought Xalf was pretty cool and would make a point of installing it if my distro didn't. And most distros probably didn't because there would always be an odd application or two that for some reason or another wouldn't load with it. Eventually, nobody maintained it for 2.0 and it was drop so far as I know.

      It's good to see some application notification is back in 2.2.

    4. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      perhaps, but just as likely they're talking about the previous gnome equivalent - which had a way of, ahem, not always noticing an app had started already, or permanently failed to start.

    5. Re:Startup notification by asobala · · Score: 1

      The KDE attempt is a failed past attempt; however, the spec for startup notification has been developed with input from GNOME and KDE guys on freedesktop.org and will be implemented in a release of KDE Real Soon Now.

    6. Re:Startup notification by ewhac · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Pardon my curmudgeonliness, but what the hell is wrong with looking at the disk activity light? That's usually a fairly accurate indicator that the machine's in the process of loading and running your program.

      Schwab

    7. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Erm, if the app is already cached in memory, the disk light won't do anything. But the app will still be loading (Moz takes about 5 secs from disk, 2 uncached here).

    8. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      In my experience, the HDD light indicates one of the following:
      • A running process is reading or writing one or more file(s) (web browser caching files, media player reading media, compiler parsing source & writing binary, etc)
      • updatedb is running
      • a program is being loaded from disk
      • a zombie process is running amuck, often leading to...
      • memory exhausted, swap like crazy
      Not to mention, many people have their case under their desk, so the HDD light isn't much use for routine visual feedback anyway.
    9. Re:Startup notification by Moritz+Moeller+-+Her · · Score: 2, Informative
      If an app didn't support it, or crashed on startup, the throbber would hang indefinately.

      Are you lying? Have you last used KDE in 1997?
      You are wrong.
      The (configurable) throbber will quit no matter what happens after 30 seconds.


      I have yet to find an application that does not "SUPPORT" KDE startup notification. Netscape, Mozilla, all GNOME and KDE apps, OpenOffice, AcrobatReader, gv and lyx all support it.

      Are you telling me that the GNOME startup notification will work only with GNOME apps and that it is more "robust and useful" because of this? I can't believe it.

      Are there really any technical differences? AAFAICS, both GNOME and KDE agreed on a common protocol for X11 startup notification support:

      https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/xdg-list/20 02 -October/000801.html

      --
      Moritz
    10. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, actually it was mostly GNOME guys. In the grand KDE tradition, KDE didn't bother... they had something that kinda sorta worked... enough to give bragging rights to zealot morons on slashdot, and that's all they cared about. Never mind that it was a disgusting hack prone to serious problems, it was good enough for the KDE PR machine. Yeeehaawww, KDE r00ls.

    11. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Has anyone ever suggested that you should calm down a bit?

    12. Re:Startup notification by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Are you lying? Have you last used KDE in 1997? You are wrong. The (configurable) throbber will quit no matter what happens after 30 seconds.

      Not really, I'm just inaccurate. I realised about a minute after I posted it that my wording was sloppy there.

      I have yet to find an application that does not "SUPPORT" KDE startup notification.

      That's because it gave you startup notification regardless of whether the app "supported" it or not. Hence for many apps, the throbber would hang there until it was killed by a timeout (yes, 30 seconds, i remember now).

      Support in this sense means that the app signals the startup notifier when it's done loading (the notification is also cancelled when the first window opens, but that's unreliable iirc). You add the line StartupNotify=true to the .desktop file to signal support.

      Are you telling me that the GNOME startup notification will work only with GNOME apps and that it is more "robust and useful" because of this? I can't believe it.

      No. Again, sloppy wording, the startup notification is a freedesktop.org spec that both KDE and GNOME are using (or will be using), as well as 3rd parties. That means that eventually hopefully all apps will support it. In fact, any app linked with GTK2.2 gets supports for it semi-automatically I think.

      Bit of trivia: so far there have been > 250k hits in the screenshots dir!

    13. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the startup notification in GNOME 2.2 is very similar to what's in KDE 3.1, using a spec agreed on by GNOME and KDE.

      Unreliable past attempts were hacks based on LD_PRELOAD, that's what's meant by "past attempts."

    14. Re:Startup notification by jfedor · · Score: 1

      Pardon my curmudgeonliness, but what the hell is wrong with looking at the disk activity light?

      The light is often in another room. Ever heard of the X protocol?

      -jfedor

    15. Re:Startup notification by dark_panda · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      The (configurable) throbber will quit no matter what happens after 30 seconds.

      Is it just me, or does that sound dirty? Not to mention rather pathetic.

      J

    16. Re:Startup notification by jfedor · · Score: 1
      • a zombie process is running amuck, often leading to...
      • memory exhausted, swap like crazy
      A zombie process is a process that finished, but nobody has wait()ed for it yet. It cannot "run amuck".

      -jfedor
    17. Re:Startup notification by Havoc+Pennington · · Score: 1

      GNOME 2.2 uses a common spec agreed on between
      GNOME and KDE, the common spec was primarily
      designed by Lubos Lunak of KDE and is similar
      to what KDE 3.1 uses.

      The older attempts are things that replace
      XMapWindow() via LD_PRELOAD and things like that.

    18. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe.

      A "no" and a "yes" got modded up, figured someone should take the middle ground.

    19. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wow! how funny! fuck you, bitch!

    20. Re:Startup notification by JohnFluxx · · Score: 1

      Talking about the start notification... In the new kde I've noticed on a dual head display (not xinerama) loading konqueror on the second head causes it to actually show on the first head, leaving the throbber on the second head throbbing for the secs.

    21. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, IRIX has had that feature for atleast 10 years when they switched from a custom windowing system to X-windows with 4Dwm. Im running IRIX 6.2 right now and it is dated at 1996, and that feature worked correctly then, and it works now.

    22. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're lying.

    23. Re:Startup notification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YES, it does, you MORON!

    24. Re:Startup notification by jonathan_ingram · · Score: 1

      I hope you reported that at the KDE Bugs database, then.

  8. i'll have to try it by mandreko · · Score: 1

    I've always liked KDE, but more recently i've been moving more towards Gnome. I'll have to wait for a debianized copy, but I'll be glad to see what kind of new stuff we have :)

    1. Re:i'll have to try it by the+Man+in+Black · · Score: 2, Informative

      And here you are:

      http://people.debian.org/~walters/gnome2.html

      I'm personally running the Sid version, which works great with a few minor quirks (Rep hangs on occasion and needs a good -HUP spanking), nothing horrible to deal with. There are also unnoffical Woody packages, if that's your bag.

      Enjoy!

    2. Re:i'll have to try it by Strike · · Score: 1

      GNOME 2.2 is in Debian unstable already, for the most part. Packages that are versioned 2.2.0 are, anyway. They were out before GNOME 2.2 so they are probably really RC versions of the same packages, but the gnome metapackage (as soon as it becomes installable), will install GNOME 2.2 for you.

    3. Re:i'll have to try it by 13Echo · · Score: 1

      Once I got my hands on Gnome 2, through Dropline Systems (for Slackware), I was hooked. It is light-years beyond Gnome 1.4 in terms of usability. It's functional, and is fast (for a modern desktop environment).

  9. Bitstream Fonts? by Kaypro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Looks like the Bitstream Vera font family didn't make it in this release. Anyone know an ETA on it?

    1. Re:Bitstream Fonts? by luge · · Score: 4, Informative

      The final license stuff is still being taken care of by the board. It's been a year in negotation; we didn't want to rush or hurry that just for one release.

      --

      IAAL,BIANLY

  10. Gnome 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thanks to all the developers who have really put in to get this release out the door - it looks unreal!

    For those who have not already, check out the screenshots http://vhost.dulug.duke.edu/~louie/screenshots/2.2 /

    1. Re:Gnome 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm...

      Looks like a passable imitation of MacOS X. Well done Gnome team!

      Long live Macintosh! Even if it runs on a Linux box...

      Chris

    2. Re:Gnome 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah looks sharp, have to say though, I wish they'd ditch those stupid rounded corners on the menu bar (or at least make is so you can get rid of them). I alway's found those silly looking on Mac's and was anoyed when they started doing that on Gnme too.

      Mainly I just find they look stupid if your running a gdmflexiserver session in a nested window. (which I do quite often, so I find it really anoying visually)

    3. Re:Gnome 2.2 by Drakonian · · Score: 1

      Wow - those fonts are gourgeous. Can someone please tell me how to get fonts like that in Linux? Do they come with GNOME 2.2? I continually have problems with hideously ugly fonts. If my desktop looked like that I'd never boot into Windows!

      --
      Random is the New Order.
    4. Re:Gnome 2.2 by theblackdeer · · Score: 1

      If it's just fonts keeping you from using linux, check out Corefonts on SourceForge. It's a legit way to get Microsoft's IE core fonts (Verdana, Comic Sans, Tahoma, Trebuchet, et. al.) installed legally in Linux. It's worth it, as it makes using linux so much nicer.

  11. Hey! by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 1
    When did they get that nifty dialog box with the even more nifty slogan? I can't find it in 2.2rc1. Anyway, I simply love that phrase.

    Where we're going, we don't need roads

    Oh yes. Sums up the whole of free software, that does. I like it lots.

    I guess I should put something relatively on topic. Oooh, I know, this'll make fellow slashbots happy:

    YOU CAN NOW HAVE TRANSPARENT PANELS!

    Yes, 'tis true. Transparent panels rock. There are a few minor glitches, not all applets support it yet, but everybody loves transparency.

    1. Re:Hey! by intermodal · · Score: 3, Funny

      not all applets support it yet, but everybody loves transparency.

      Yeah...especially Nvidia, ATI, and everyone else in the graphics card biz.

      *pulls rip cord on his ancient Trident card to get it going again*

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    2. Re:Hey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey that rip cord line made me smile. Thanks for that

    3. Re:Hey! by zonix · · Score: 2, Informative
      Where we're going, we don't need roads

      From 'Back To The Future' movies - it's Doc's line. :-)

      Anyway, nice work GNOME team - now, to the future!

      z
      --
      What would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
    4. Re:Hey! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Funny

      YOU CAN NOW HAVE TRANSPARENT PANELS!
      I was under the impression that X didn't support transparency (Since it predates the invention of glass) and so the only way you could get it was an ugly hack involving taking a shot of the root window and bluring, which created some really strange effects if you stacked windows up. How have they got around this?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    5. Re:Hey! by asobala · · Score: 1

      Yup. That's right. An ugly hack involving taking a shot of the root window, which creates some really strange effects if you put a window behind a panel :) Still, it's better than nothing. Alpha blending in X would be sweet though.

    6. Re:Hey! by akeru · · Score: 2, Informative

      They "got around" this by taking a shot of the root window and bluring. But I don't know what "strange effects" you're talking about. In general, the technique works well, but deffinately falls under the "hack" category. The *real* solution would be to use XRender, but well, that's a-whole-nother ball of wax that I don't want to get into.

      --

      Let's hope that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space 'Cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth.

    7. Re:Hey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The strange effect would be if something was behind the panel besides the root window, like another window- it wouldn't show through in the transparency.

  12. Sun by sexx0r+hermoine · · Score: 0

    I thought Sun just released 2.0. What are they trying to do, fall behind as far as possible?

    1. Re:Sun by spinlocked · · Score: 1

      Have you ever tried to compile GNOME on Solaris? Trust me, it's not just a ./configure, make && make install. Last time I tried (~3 months ago) it took hours and hours of tedious dependency resolving and source hacking just to get it to compile cleanly, let alone work. Somethings just wouldn't compile, or would compile then seg fault when run. It's been a significant porting effort (and QA effort) that Sun has undertaken and congratulations to them for getting this far. I for one am hugely grateful.

      Now if only we had mousewheel support...

      --
      # init 5
      Connection closed.


      Oh... ...bugger.
    2. Re:Sun by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just had my sysadmin install it and everytime I try to start it from the dtlogin, I get gnome-session segfaults. Lousy, Sun distribution.

    3. Re:Sun by spinlocked · · Score: 1

      I just had my sysadmin install it and everytime I try to start it from the dtlogin, I get gnome-session segfaults. Lousy, Sun distribution.

      Have you still got the box it came in?

      --
      # init 5
      Connection closed.


      Oh... ...bugger.
  13. Does gnome support the fish protacal yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It probably dosen't, since it dosen't even have a decent file open/save dialog yet., the KDE one is much better.

    1. Re:Does gnome support the fish protacal yet? by diamondc · · Score: 2, Informative

      there is a gnome-vfs addon that supports ssh. its part of gnome-vfs-extras, I think.

      The new file selector will be implemented in GTK 2.4

      --
      "I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
  14. Wheeee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yesterday, when i found out i'd finally be able to run GNOME 2.0 on the school's Solaris machines, i was incredibly cheerful, and thought, okay, the last annoying thing about solaris [for me] is now dealt with.

    Suddenly this does not seem like i am getting such a good deal. :/

  15. Looks like... by mikerod · · Score: 1

    ...sid will have gnome 2.2 and kde 3.1 in the same week.That is a big coincidence :-)

    1. Re:Looks like... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      unlike the gnome*cough*KRAP*cough*2.0 release, probably not.

  16. Transparent? by endrek · · Score: 1

    Does the panel support transparencies yet. It doesn't seem to say indicating no, and that's dissapointing.

    1. Re:Transparent? by Skeezix · · Score: 1

      Yes.

    2. Re:Transparent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, translucent panels are in.

    3. Re:Transparent? by luge · · Score: 1

      Yes, it does. It's really just not that big of a deal :) so it didn't make the release notes.

      --

      IAAL,BIANLY

    4. Re:Transparent? by RossyB · · Score: 1

      Of course, many people have been using transparent panels since GNOME 1. All the code does it take a snapshot of your wallpaper and crop it. A one line 'convert' call will do the magic.

      In fact I still use pixmap panels, as it means I can use GIMP to add funky shaded bars and other l33tness which "transparent" can't do.

    5. Re:Transparent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't suppose it supports PNG for a background image with the alpha parts blending with the wallpaper? Then you could switch around wallpaper and effects independently.

  17. I need a clean desktop by io333 · · Score: 1

    Is there a way to remove the Trash and Home icons from the desktop yet? I've been able to do this in XP and KDE3 since they came out. If I can't have a totally clear desktop, I'll pass on this release.

    1. Re:I need a clean desktop by remou · · Score: 1

      didn't in old gnome versions simply telling nautilus
      not to draw the desktop (somewhere in the nautilus
      preferences) take care of that????

    2. Re:I need a clean desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Open a terminal, go to ~/.gnome-desktop and delete "Trash" and "users's Home", then hit control+R on the Nautilus desktop, they should be gone. I don't know if they stay that way (or come back), but it appears to work temporarily at least.

    3. Re:I need a clean desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL, nice one troll.

      Move it off the screen if your serious.

      ignoramus!

    4. Re:I need a clean desktop by cehf2 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Nautilus draws the desktop normally, and it seems as thugh they have removed the UI element to configure whether you can put icons on the desktop, however by digging through the gconf scehema, you can stop nautilus from drawing the desktop by running:
      $ gconftool-2 -t boolean -s /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false
      However this removes all icons from the desktop, not just the trash and home icons.

      Crispin

    5. Re:I need a clean desktop by Kaypro · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can turn off all desktop icons from the preferences dialog in Nautilus.

    6. Re:I need a clean desktop by archeopterix · · Score: 4, Funny
      Is there a way to remove the Trash and Home icons from the desktop yet? I've been able to do this in XP and KDE3 since they came out. If I can't have a totally clear desktop, I'll pass on this release.
      I just type 'X' (from the text-mode console) and admire the ultra-clean desktop.

      On rare occasions when I need something done I type 'export DISPLAY=:0 ; sleep 10 ; xterm' from another console before that.

      By the way, what is this Gnome thing?

    7. Re:I need a clean desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can just delete the files, though to get rid of trash your going to have to use the shell. cd ~/.gnome-desktop rm Trash

    8. Re:I need a clean desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you get the trashcan off of the desktop in XP then? I tried when I first set it up but there didn't seem to be a way.

    9. Re:I need a clean desktop by Phishfry · · Score: 1

      XP requires TweakUI(part of PowerToys for XP) to remove trash can from the desktop.

    10. Re:I need a clean desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      On rare occasions when I need something done I type 'export DISPLAY=:0 ; sleep 10 ; xterm' from another console before that.


      Another console? That's too much work. I just do '(export DISPLAY=:0 ; sleep 10 ; xterm) & X'.

    11. Re:I need a clean desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you don't want icons on the desktop, why use a desktop manager like gnome (or KDE for that matter)? Why not just run gnome-panel with a WM. I think gnome uses metacity. Remember that you can still run gnome apps even if you're not using gnome as your DM.

    12. Re:I need a clean desktop by Tuross · · Score: 1

      go into your ~/.gnome-desktop directory and remove them.

      --
      Matt
      1. Read Slashdot
      2. ???
      3. Profit
    13. Re:I need a clean desktop by io333 · · Score: 1

      I WANT icons. I just don't need the home and trash icons.

  18. GNOME armageddon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    this is the sixth text revision done on 04-11-2002.

    dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

    first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

    on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

    many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

    unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

    having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

    some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

    you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

    but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

    if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care for the complaining home user. it's more important for them to reach the customers with the cash. it seems that this has been told to them by the company leaders. everything about gnome has been decided already, a way back or direct communication isn't possible. don't get trapped by sentences like 'we listen to our users'. they listen to you - yes, to make funny silly jokes about you afterwards.

    i thought that everything was build up on friendship, build on programming for fun, build on understanding each other. but the reality looks like it's all for the big money. the cash is what matters everything else is a lie and a dream. time for people to wake up.

    not long ago they threw one of the most important long year core developer martin baulig out of team. a guy who worked really hard on getting gnome into the right direction. a nice friendly person who put all his time into gnome. but narrow minded gnome elites such as havoc pennington were responsible that he left the gnome project. the trouble and the pressure that was put on him was to much.

    with the new gnome desktop a lot of user interface changes happened such as button reordering. needless to say that this confuse people who are used to the 'right' button ordering for ages. even our fellow linux guru alan cox wasn't thrilled about this idea. but the gnome elites such as havoc pennington, seth nickell, calum benson and dave bordoley knew it better. why following the road of any other desktop that exists ? why not doing something that don't confuse their users and still stay usable ? well it seems to be too easy. gnome needs to be different than anything else so they changed the button order which was one of the reasons that users became unhappy. they said that there was a hard fight about this and the decision was made to change the buttons. but i belive they simply copied the behaviour of macos because most of the gnome developers use a macintosh as either laptop or desktop. sad that they forgot to keep in mind that users tend to mix applications and that this will lead into weird button searching and clicking.

    but as if this wasn't enough the same people decided that the new gnome human interface guides were the ultima non plus ultra in human interface guides. the announcement contained informations that the kde usability people got initiated into it. unfortunately the kde people heard about it the first time when seth nickell went to the kde mailinglist which happened after the announcement. you can imagine that they got highly pissed off about this attitude. you can read more on this link. to summarize it, the kde people clarified that gnome should care for their own business.

    the problem that came with the new interface guides was, that every little gnome hacker started to become an user interface expert over night. a lot of gnome programs that we like to use matured into a disaster over night. hackers that never programmed correctly for their life started to blindly follow the hype of simplification. for an example look what happened to galeon's interface (pay attention for the last paragraph). even philip langdale a long year galeon hacker got highly indignant by the target that gnome leads and wrote this email to the galeon mailinglist.

    here another reason why users became angry. the elite assumes, that the user knows nothing about their system. you find a couple of heavily insulting mails on their mailing lists containing sentences like the quoted ones.

    • "the user don't know what a window manager is"
    • "the user don't know what themes are"
    • "the user don't know what a homedir is"
    • "the user can't compile a kernel"
    • "the user don't want to customize their desktop"
    • "the user shouldn't see preferences which purpose they don't know"
    you may imagine that a lot of people are being offended by such lines because it's exactly these gnome users who are meant by these phrases. to read more such lines on the gnome mailinglists, simply click on this link and grep in their archives. be said that most of these sentences are coming from havoc pennington.

    such evil practices shouldn't be tolerated by the users and need to be fighted. u*nix users aren't stupid people. who actually gave havoc pennington the rights to decide what the user wants and what not ? various users told him that people who use a u*nix like system are well aware of their capabilities dealing with such a complex system. there's a reason why people are switching from alternative operating systems. they want to learn, they want to use the full power of the system, they want to change everything they like.

    to top all this, look at the future plans of nautilus. the current maintainers got the idea of changing the whole nautilus concepts into an object oriented user interface design. you may be highly interested in reading the exact words of alex larsson's vision for nautilus' future direction by clicking on this link.

    to summarize it, it's assumed that the user don't need to deal with his homedir or his whole filesystem because it may confuse him or because he don't understand it. the new concepts of nautilus should be that the user deal with symbols in the nautilus view. e.g. you get a cdrom symbol and by clicking on it you see the directory of your cdrom, you get a photo symbol and by clicking on it you get a list of all your pr0n pictures, you get a music symbol and by clicking on it you get a list of all your mp3's. you don't know where all these files are located because you don't deal with the bottom layer of your homedir or filesystem anymore as mentioned earlier.

    the question is why are people that know nothing about their users, that know nothing about correct user interface design destroying gnome ? the users don't deserve all this specially those that backed gnome for all the years. even sun threw a bunch of so called user interface experts together and have them work on gnome. don't forget that sun are the creators of the common desktop environment. we don't need another cde clone named gnome. even havoc pennington author of the good user interfaces text isn't able to get his own written software following his rules.

    not long ago there was an report about the 'two captains of nautilus' where the reporter (uraeus a gnome contributor himself) reported alexander larsson and david camp. you may imagine that such a report can't be taken serious because it's done by their own people. we here have a saying that sounds like this 'one crow doesn't hack the eye of another crow out'. now you can click on this link and read more. it may be interesting to read the replies from various users all over the globe of what they think about gnome and nautilus in general (please pay attention to the listed ip's there). another nice and informative reading can be found by clicking on this link.

    the fileselector problem was a long discussed issue in the gnome community. finally they came to an solution for this and have decided to go for this ugly fileselector instead going for this one which was developed by a free volunteer for a long time and in general looks and behaves better.

    most users have no problems with the idea of keeping things simple and clean. removing some not needed preferences was indeed a good idea but it doesn't stop. people started to remove everything from their apps. you're forced to use dubious programs like gconf-editor which basically works like the windows registry editor, to tweak uncommented preferences. i don't think that this is an advantage. even the possibility to tweak preferences with an editor was taken away with that ugly implementation of gconf. all your preferences are stored in a directory tree with an unknown amount of *.xml files. even if you delete programs their keys are still remaining orphaned in these trees and finding them is like playing trivia. at the end it's worth a discussion if a system driven by a single home user needs such a registry like system. we didn't need such a system for over 30 years but the gnome development team got the idea copying one of the most retarded systems from windows to u*nix. not to mention that the copy is more retarded than the original.

    it's a shame to see how such a nice desktop got thrown into the trash by such people. but there is a lot more behind the scenes that i don't know about. everything around gnome is a big marketing strategy. poor people are working the hell out of gnome for nothing and companies such as those mentioned above are getting the big cash. for sure you could say - go and fork gnome - but seriously how can you go and fork gnome ? such a big project which needs a bunch of people to keep the code alive and compatible. well you know it's all about open source the code is signed under the gnu/gpl or gnu/lgpl, you can't own it. even the companies are aware of this. but if you can't own the code - go and hire their developers. you can direct them like puppets in any direction that you - as company - like. exactly this is happening with gnome.

    well you could easily come up and tell me to simply not use gnome and let them do whatever they like. well, you are right with that but things are more complicated nowadays. gnome is influencing a lot of third party projects such as xfree86 which recently added a lot of gnome components into their cvs repository. please know that with the next coming xfree86 version you get a lot of gnome components without even knowing it. code like, gnome-xml, pkgconfig, fontconfig, xcursor and xft2 were mainly written by people who're heavily involved into gnome development. also the gimp is maturing more and more into getting the look and feel of a native gnome application. the cvs version of the gimp has a lot of gnome pixmaps inside and they are heavily working on integrate the gimp into gnome. if not today but the direction is sure and i fear the day this gonna happen.

    it's ok that these things exist and it's ok to see xfree86 and the gimp are beeing hacked on. but please think about the people that don't like or use gnome. what about them ? why force them to have gnome components installed on their systems ? why can't gnome go the same way that kde went e.g. doing their own stuff without infecting other projects like aids. seeing more and more libraries and applications that were in no way related to gnome jumping on the pkgconfig boat which's really not needed. look what will happen to solaris, the world famous operating system on u*nix used by big companies and long years experts. they really plan to replace cde with gnome. i know that cde wasn't the best invention of desktops but it rarely crashed and it fits far better into the philosophy of xfree86 with their configuration system than gnome. you know the good old way having your settings defined with .xdefaults and all nice default configurations are going into /etc/x11/app-defaults/ and so on. understandable that the good old way may be blocking the future of applications for multiusersystems - but why must it have to be a windows registry like system that replaces future configuration ?

    well to come to an end i personally don't like many of this stuff. i can't stand the button reordering, i don't like the gconf system and even more i don't like the commercial outsourcing of gnome and the bad influence that gnome has on other applications. the bad attitude of some gnome developers is another story since we are all different reacting humans. luckily there are people sharing some of my thoughts otherwise i wouldn't be able to proof my text with so many links. even amongst the gnome developers there are silent voices of people that hate many of these decisions and silently use something else. right now if you checkout the gnome cvs repository every day you find out that the whole gnome development seemed to came to an halt. the contributions to their cvs are poor. while projects such as kde are reaching easily 10-20k commits per month - gnome is getting around 1-2k per month on it's best times. it really looks like the situation of gnome is unclear so it would be better to have it not influence so much other programs or at the end we deal with an disaster.

    now i hope this text was informative for you. i hope that you start to think about the situation and the global direction. the situation of gnome is unclear, their target is groggy too since i can't belive that the users that they are targeting ever heard of u*nix or linux. they plan to get out of the 0.05% desktop niche but this will for sure not happen if they continue their current direction and their bad ugly

  19. "Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by XtAt · · Score: 1

    Haha.. GREAT codename.
    "Where we're going, we don't need roads..."

    That is such a poke at Gate's book: "The Road Ahead"

    --
    - about me
    1. Re:"Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by sweetooth · · Score: 1

      And here I thought it was a reference to the last line of the first Back to the Future movie.

    2. Re:"Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by TrekCycling · · Score: 1

      Not to mention a clever tip of the hat to Back to the Future.

    3. Re:"Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by luge · · Score: 1

      It is a BTF reference; that's been a constant thread throughout the 2.1/2.2 release process. It's a great signoff for this fun release process.

      --

      IAAL,BIANLY

    4. Re:"Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by The+Faywood+Assassin · · Score: 1

      Yes, wasn't the last Release Candidate codenamed "OUTATIME"? This was the liscense plate of the time machine.

      Beny

      --

      "I'm a humble person really,

      I'm actually much greater than I think I am"

    5. Re:"Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by sweetooth · · Score: 1

      I know, I was just making a poor attempt at sarcasm ;)

    6. Re:"Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, it is obviously influenced by "The Road Ahead" because of the use of the word "road".

      Wow, you are so right, except for the fact that you are wrong.

    7. Re:"Where we're going, we don't need roads..." by vbweenie · · Score: 1

      Put me disturbingly in mind of:

      You won't need eyes to see where we're going

      - gurgled by deranged Sam Neill scientist character in gothic-shockfest-in-space Event Horizon...

      --
      Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn no other.
  20. Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by Damek · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    GnuCash 1.8.0 was released February 3; haven't seen much mention of it anywhere, but since "a good finance program" is one of the things so many people say Linux is missing, I thought it would be worth mentioning. The new GnuCash features scheduled transactions, popular OFX and HBCI formats (think downloading from your bank), and other woundrous new stuff and fixes...

    1. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by slide-rule · · Score: 1

      I know what would be handy for me w.r.t. gnucash is a "MS Money User's Transition Guide" or some such. I've tried 1.4, 1.6, and the beta for 1.8, but I just cannot make a dent in doing much with gnucash. I invariably get frustrated and delete the whole thing. (Maybe I'm spoiled somewhat; I popped in MS Money on the windows box and was running multiple accounts, multiple banks, loans, credit cards -- the whole shebang -- in half an hour.) Can someone post anything notable that'd help user's of other finance programs to switch over?

    2. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Ok how abour a release of GnuCASH that someone other than the developers can compile? Oh wait let's download 90,000,000 libs.

      Until they release a STATICALLY LINKED binary I shy away everyone from it... It's too damned hard to get compiled by a seasoned Linux vetran let alone the 15 Linux newbies in my LUG.

      GnuCASH is early alpha software and will be reccomended by myself to everyone to be avoided until it is stable enough to compile on a standard distribution. Too many linux apps that have HUGE potential are crippled because of this. You want to use bleeding edge libs? Great! offer a static binary to download. It's not that hard.... Open office and mozilla do it.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by IMightB · · Score: 1

      When's the last time that you tried it? I sadly downloaded th 1.7.x beta on the 1/28/2003. With redhat 8 there were only two rpms that I had to install and they were both -devel ones to boot. After that, I just did a rpmbuild --rebuild gnucash.src.rpm and everything built just fine.

      No I'll have to go get the official release rather than the "beta" and do the same. I can see your comment being true maybe last year, or with ealier distros....

    4. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by FroMan · · Score: 1

      I haven't tried 1.8.0, but if it is as stable as 1.6.8(?) I'd rather not.

      Hmmm, menu option, oh, where'd gnucash go. Hmm, double click here, hmmm, where'd gnucash go? Well, maybe if I just go the the help menu, hmmm, where'd gnucash go?

      Very frustrating....

      --
      Norris/Palin 2012
      Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
    5. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by jmauro · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Really? Gnucash 1.8.0 required a clean install of Redhat to install a new version of g-wrap and a some perl module called perl(Finance::Quote). It's even the RPM marked redhat-8.0. I still think that they really aren't ready for prime time.

    6. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by Siniset · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure where all the issues of stability are coming from... I've been using it both on my FreeBSD laptop and Gentoo desktop computer. Perhaps you didn't compile all the required libraries? I find it to be really great, although I'll admit that 1.6.8 was a little weak on features. Granted though, I'm only 22 and don't have a lot of financial concerns just yet, so I basically only use it to track credit card charges and balance my check book. If you need something more robust than a spreadsheet to manage your personal finances, I'd recommend checking out GnuCash... -Siniset

    7. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by FroMan · · Score: 1

      Ditto on the gentoo, infact gnucash is why I tried gentoo as slack doesn't have a gnucash package and I've spent nearly a week trying to get gnucash working under slack. I didn't even go too wild with optimizations in gentoo, so its not like my compile options obliterated it...

      silver ~ % gnucash
      gtkhtml-ERROR **: gconf error: Failed to contact configuration server (a likely cause of this is that you have an existing configuration server (gconfd) running, but it isn't reachable from here - if you're logged in from two machines at once, you may need to enable TCP networking for ORBit)
      aborting...
      Abort

      That is my gnucash session and hitting the menu help->manual. If I can't get to even the help menu I'm hosed with gnucash. I've started work on a project for myself to do budgeting and finance with a servlet setup with jakarta and postgresql database. Atleast then I know what is happening. Going through and debugging gnucash and its near infinite different libraries is not my idea of a good time.

      --
      Norris/Palin 2012
      Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
    8. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by rudedog · · Score: 1

      apt-get install gnucash

      Or, if you insist on compiling it:

      apt-get -b source gnucash

      To say that gnucash is early alpha is laughable. I've been using it exclusively for over a year and have never lost a single datum. So has my wife, who barely realizes that she's running Linux.

    9. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by mobydobius · · Score: 1

      ...So you are saying they should change the name to GnuCrash?

      --

      "I like to wear big boy pants."
    10. Re:Also GnuCash 1.8.0... by damiam · · Score: 1

      apt-get install gnucash

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
  21. Re:Good for them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why do people insist on comparing version numbers as if they're absolute. WHY?

  22. I have RH8.0.. by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 1

    what do i do ? what do i do ?
    I hate this anxiety , how i upgrade my RH 8.0 to KDE3.1 ,GNOME 2.2. I am really loosing it now. I can't take this anymore, time to switch ....

    --
    for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
    1. Re:I have RH8.0.. by subk · · Score: 0, Troll

      its easy... rpm -e --nodeps glibc

      --
      Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
    2. Re:I have RH8.0.. by IMightB · · Score: 1

      Umm If you read the website, they have very easy steps for installation on redhat 7.1,7.2,7.3,8.0. Using apt-rpm......

    3. Re:I have RH8.0.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I tried that..cool , but i had to write my own versions of printf ,scanf for it to work.. why isn't those functions supported in gnome-2.2?..

    4. Re:I have RH8.0.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, no they don't smart ass elitest pig

    5. Re:I have RH8.0.. by subk · · Score: 1

      Heres the instructions: man rpm

      --
      Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
    6. Re:I have RH8.0.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fuck you and RTFR(elease)N(otes). The only option for RH at the moment are source packages.

    7. Re:I have RH8.0.. by redtuxxx · · Score: 0

      Nope - get phoebe2

    8. Re:I have RH8.0.. by subk · · Score: 1

      mark my words. i give it 3 days before there are widely available rpm's

      --
      Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
    9. Re:I have RH8.0.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Alright, so where on that page doews it talk about Red Hat installation? Why not post a ling for those of of us who cant see it?

  23. File Dialog by twener · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > And a month ahead of the originally planned six-month release cycle.

    They should have taken this month to implement a better file dialog.

    1. Re:File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GTK+ 2.4 will have a new file dialog (it's literally at the top of their "possible features" list with a note next to it: "we have to get this one").

      See the list here: http://gtk.org/plan/2.4/

    2. Re:File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or use something else, Windows got it right from 95 onwords, kde from 2.0. The kde 3.1 file dialog is very good, and not some hackjob like the gnome one, which STILL sucks, and don't tell me 2.4 will have it, because you suck and thats all there all is too it

      pre modded -1, flamebait and troll for your convienece.

    3. Re:File Dialog by Mr+Thinly+Sliced · · Score: 0

      About the only insightfull comment on this thread.

    4. Re:File Dialog by twener · · Score: 1

      I still remember too good "Gnome/Gtk 2.2 will have a new file dialog". No, thanks.

    5. Re:File Dialog by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Informative
      They should have taken this month to implement a better file dialog.

      Well, a new file dialog is planned for GTK2.4, and is developing in libegg CVS.

      Note a few things:

      1) GTK is a separate project from GNOME. That means, it's not simply something the gnome team have forgotten to get around to, it has to fit into the gtk feature cycle, it has to go through usability reviews, it has to be tested etc. New APIs will be needed probably. Then it has to be integrated with standardised mime typing and so on. There's a lot more work than you might think.

      2) For GNOME2.2, gtk2.2 was released in time, great, fab. That probably won't be the case for gtk2.4, for reasons I won't go into, but basically the release schedules just don't mesh. However, GTK2.4 is backwards compatable with 2.2, so when it does come out, you just drop it in - all the apps get the new dialog.

    6. Re:File Dialog by asobala · · Score: 2, Informative

      The file selector does suck, but it takes more than a month for us to implement a good one. When it comes, it will rock, but since it should have a stable API for a long time we want to get this done right. The file selector will be in Gtk 2.4, releasing in September. At this point you can drop the new Gtk library into place and all Gtk programs will have the new file selector.

    7. Re:File Dialog by ElGuapoGolf · · Score: 1

      Did the existing file dialog in GTK 2.x go through any usability reviews? If so...

      1) Can I hire those people to do usabililty reviews on the code I produce? I have a feeling my job would get 1000x easier.

      2) Do those people have any idea what they're doing.

      That file selector box makes me wanna vomit.

    8. Re:File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All that work done for gtk+ 2.x and gnome 2.x, and the file dialog looks the same - CRAPPY!

      Well, i have to give credit where credit is due - at least the filename DOES NOT DISAPEAR when chaning directories like it did in previous version!

      Oh yeah, Linux and GNOME is better than Windows? How? Where? Maybe in their wet dreams!

    9. Re:File Dialog by Mr+Thinly+Sliced · · Score: 0

      O whoop de bleedin doo. Will this file selector allow me as an application to have its own 'preferred last selected files/directories' or will this be the normal straight clone. Genuine question, sarcastically put.

    10. Re:File Dialog by yomegaman · · Score: 1

      How can it be a drop-in replacement if you're changing the API?

      --
      ...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
    11. Re:File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All of the RECOMPILED apps.

    12. Re:File Dialog by asobala · · Score: 1

      Well, the rumour on the devel lists was that it was going to be wrapped. Gtk 2 is API stable, so the old API will still be there anyway.

      But it turns out tbat the old API exposes too many internals to be wrappable, so I was wrong: it will not be a drop-in replacement.

  24. Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Blimey85 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    All of the discussions I have seen about the differences between Gnome and KDE end up being flame wars. Is there anything I can read that gives a non-biased look at the differences and similarities between the two?

    I have only tried Gnome once and that was only because KDE wasn't working at the time. I've used KDE since I started using Linux (and FreeBSD) and it has always worked pretty well for me. I've noticed however that Gnome seems to have a pretty good following and I'm wondering why.

    --
    How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    1. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Snorp · · Score: 2

      You can listen to all the opinions you want, but the only thing that matters is whether YOU like it or not. So just give both desktops a shot, and use the one you like.

    2. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gnome is the GNU desktop whereas trolltech is a commercial company. Politics don't enter into it for me it's personal preference, I don't like kde hence I use gnome; it doesn't really matter. If you use Vi or Emacs - that's what matters ;)

    3. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Telastyn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I asked this the other day. The main difference is that KDE's file manager is average, and gnome's is below average. (so people seem to agree)

      gnome seems to be more portable.

      I've not used KDE in ~3 years, and I've just started using gnome2 so I cannot say myself.

    4. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For the average user it's mostly a matter of taste. I find the "look" of Gnome to be far superiour to that of KDE but as I said it's a matter of personal taste. I also develop and use the Gtk+ toolkit so I prefer to run Gnome. YMMV.

    5. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Alan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In general, gnome2 is going for the "minimulistic, things just work" approach, while KDE is going the "ultra configurable, complete user control" approach.

      I'm not up on KDE that much, other than playing with (and quite enjoying so far) 3.1 in the last while, but gnome has been hacking off options and reducing the ability for the user to mess thing up, or reduce the amount of clutter the user has to deal with to get things done, depending on who you talk to :) There have been no end of flame wars within gnome itself about this (see the desktop-devel and galeon-devel list archives for lovely examples of these).

      Personally, well, like the other guy said, it really doesn't matter what I think, there are two different ways of getting things done, two different look and feels, and two different paths for you to try out and see if you like them :)

      (Of course there are more than 2, but that's not the issue here).

    6. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by falonaj · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Is there anything I can read that gives a non-biased look at the differences and similarities between the two?

      Whether to use KDE or Gnome depends very much on your personal taste. Every person needs different applications and uses other functions within these applications, so there simply cannot be a neutral perspective. Another problem for comparisions is that both projects have their own style that is liked by different people.

      KDE, for example, tends to have more configurality, which is loved by a lot of people, but others think it is just code bloat and confusing to have so many options.

      Some of the differences in style might have their reason in the fact that Gnome is backed by big companies like Sun. While companies aim for a desktop that doesn't confuse sysadmins with too many unneccessary options, hobby developers have more interest in adding new features and new options. But this is just my way of explaining differences, you will find all kinds of other opinions around as well.

      I've noticed however that Gnome seems to have a pretty good following and I'm wondering why.

      Well, I have an explanation for that, but being a KDE member, I will not give you my biased opinion on this.

      BTW, I think the flame wars are mainly a problem of the past. Cooperations with KDE and Gnome are flourishing, KDE and Gnome already share a number of libraries, and most members of both projects seem to believe that choice is good. After all, KDE apps run under Gnome and vice versa, so you can decide on a per app basis which software to use.

    7. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      > Gnome is the GNU desktop whereas trolltech is a commercial company.

      And more recently, Gnome has become more commercialized (sun, HP, Ximian, etc..), while KDE has made inroads into governments.

      > Politics don't enter into it for me it's personal preference

      exactly. use what you like.

    8. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From the user's perspective, the key difference is that GNOME tries to use good defaults instead of cluttering up the UI with rarely used options. These options are still available, but you have to use the registry-type GConf tool to enable it. GNOME is a lot more willing to embrace and integrate crossplatform projects like OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Abiword. GNOME themes tend to be more subdued and tend to use more earth tones.

      KDE, OTOH, tries to give the user all the options even if it causes clutter. KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser. KDE themes tend to be more bright and tend to use more neon colour.

      Other than that, there's not much difference. It's mostly a matter of taste. I definitely prefer GNOME, but I do like some KDE apps (e.g. Umbrello is great). Mixing desktops is not a sin, not matter what the purists say.

    9. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Arandir · · Score: 1

      gnome seems to be more portable.

      In what way? What platforms does Gnome run on that KDE does not?

      I haven't used Gnome much, but I do know that KDE runs on Linux (all varieties), FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, IRIX, Cygwin (sortof), and every other *NIX.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    10. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      From the user's perspective, the key difference is that GNOME tries to use good defaults instead of cluttering up the UI with rarely used options. These options are still available, but you have to use the registry-type GConf tool to enable it. GNOME is a lot more willing to embrace and integrate crossplatform projects like OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Abiword. GNOME themes tend to be more subdued and tend to use more earth tones.

      KDE, OTOH, tries to give the user all the options even if it causes clutter. KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser. KDE themes tend to be more bright and tend to use more neon colour.

      Other than that, there's not much difference. It's mostly a matter of taste. I definitely prefer GNOME, but I do like some KDE apps (e.g. Umbrello is great). Despite what the purists say, mixing desktops is not a sin.

    11. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Blimey85 · · Score: 1
      After all, KDE apps run under Gnome and vice versa, so you can decide on a per app basis which software to use.

      Now if only the Gnome apps would have the look and feel of KDE when I run them in KDE... but then they would be KDE apps and not Gnome apps...

      --
      How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    12. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Telastyn · · Score: 1

      Ah my apologies; you are right. I was under the impression that KDE was not packaged for BSD's (and took some fiddling to get working via src).

      Perception not holding to truth.

    13. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Fafnir_b · · Score: 1
      The main difference is that KDE's file manager is average, and gnome's is below average. (so people seem to agree)

      Well, that is a matter of taste, too. In general, I hate file managers, and konqueror (kde file manager) is a really ugly one (I think). Since gnome 2 has sped up Nautilus (the gnome thingy) by a couple of magnitudes, I have come to sort of like it (although I still don't really use it, because bash is just so much faster).

    14. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Telastyn · · Score: 1

      I concur (using a shell rather than a manager), though pretty/ugly are matters of preference. from what I've heard KDE's is 'better' functionally. This might be a perception holdover of when Nautilus was slow. I'm just passing along what I've heard.

    15. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fault0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Your post is right in a lot of things, and a bit off in others. I want to elaborate on it a bit.

      > From the user's perspective, the key difference is that GNOME tries to use good defaults instead of cluttering up the UI with rarely used options. These options are still available, but you have to use the registry-type GConf tool to enable it.

      Yep, this is a basic design goal of GNOME 2.x. However, I'm not sure if a registry-type tool is the best way to fix this problem. This is a case in which I think *both* KDE and GNOME are off. Configuration should be handled by the application that needs it (except for system and desktop settings.) A "basic" config dialog should be shown first, and the user should be able to access "advanced settings" as well. In MacOS 7.0, for example, in the General Control Panel, you click on a triangle to show advanced settings. This is intuative for new users who occaisionally want to see "power user" settings.

      > GNOME is a lot more willing to embrace and integrate crossplatform projects like OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Abiword. KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser.

      KHTML (and khtmlw) were started at a time when Mozilla and Gecko were just a pipedream (re: very, extremely, pre-alpha state). KOffice (and abiword) were started before StarOffice opened up.

      > KDE themes tend to be more bright and tend to use more neon colour.

      Uhm, almost all KDE widget styles and window decorations allow the user to set the colors. This has been a basic tenent of all styles included in kdebase/kdeartwork since KDE 2.0.

      > From the user's perspective, the key difference is that GNOME tries to use good defaults instead of cluttering up the UI with rarely used options. These options are still available, but you have to use the registry-type GConf tool to enable it. GNOME is a lot more willing to embrace and integrate crossplatform projects like OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Abiword. GNOME themes tend to be more subdued and tend to use more earth tones.

      KDE, OTOH, tries to give the user all the options even if it causes clutter. KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser. KDE themes tend to be more bright and tend to use more neon colour.

      > Other than that, there's not much difference. It's mostly a matter of taste. I definitely prefer GNOME, but I do like some KDE apps (e.g. Umbrello is great). Despite what the purists say, mixing desktops is not a sin.

      I totally agree.

    16. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Ah my apologies; you are right. I was under the impression that KDE was not packaged for BSD's (and took some fiddling to get working via src).

      Not only this, but I have less trouble getting KDE to work on Solaris than GNOME. The first set of GNOME 1.x packages from Sun were pretty broken. The second set also did not work for me (although it did for other people). I haven't tried the latest GNOME 2.0 release from Sun.. it might be good.

      KDE on the other hand, has worked pretty much out of the box on Solaris since 2.1.

    17. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Scarblac · · Score: 1

      I have only tried Gnome once and that was only because KDE wasn't working at the time. I've used KDE since I started using Linux (and FreeBSD) and it has always worked pretty well for me. I've noticed however that Gnome seems to have a pretty good following and I'm wondering why.

      I've used Gnome since I started using Linux (no, wait - I used Windowmaker on the P90. I use Gnome since I have a faster computer than that). And it has always worked pretty well for me. I've noticed however that KDE seems to have a pretty good following.

      And I'm not really wondering why. I just need a few things, Gnome does them, KDE probably does as well, it doesn't matter.

      --
      I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
    18. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by dotgod · · Score: 1

      Try here.

    19. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      its not like HP, Sun or Ximian actuall "Own" gnome, how ever trolltech "Own" QT.

    20. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      > I concur (using a shell rather than a manager), though pretty/ugly are matters of preference. from what I've heard KDE's is 'better' functionally. This might be a perception holdover of when Nautilus was slow. I'm just passing along what I've heard.

      I think for 90% of what normal users need or want, both Nautilus and Konqueror work fine.

      They both are pretty much the same speed.
      Both have similiar feature sets as file management goes.
      Konqueror can thumbnail and has a few more file protocols by default than Nautilus does.
      Nautilus has some features than Konq doesn't (such as emblems)
      Konq has some features that Nautilus doesn't (split views, tabbed file browsing)
      Nautilus can browse webpages, but Konq is a real web browser (gnome has galeon to do this).

    21. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      That isn't the point... trolltech doesn't "Own" KDE.

      KDE e.V. "Owns" KDE... just like the FSF "Owns" GNOME, and the Apache Free Software Foundation "Owns" Apache.

      KDE relies on Qt, which is owned by trolltech. However, it also relies on many things owned by the Free Software Foundation, such as libxml, glibc, etc, and things like XFree86 ("own3d" by the the XFree86 Project, Inc.)

    22. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fredrik70 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      mind you, QT is GPL'ed for GPL'ed apps to use. If Trolltech went down the drain or withdraw their licence you could always fork the latest GPL'ed QT and take over the development of it. From what I know Trolltech the KDE ppl work very closely when it comes to KDE. After all KDE is a proof and a very good showcase for Trolltech of what you can do with QT.

      --
      if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
    23. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by asobala · · Score: 1

      Galeon2 embeds into Nautilus - that makes it a real web browser IMHO (though still beta). Nautilus can thumbnail, and in GNOME 2.2 it thumbnails movies thanks to gstreamer.

    24. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nice post, but one mistake:

      "KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser."

      KDE, KOffice and Konqueror were started before GNOME, OpenOffice and Mozilla so it is not right to say they 'recreated'.

    25. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by khyron664 · · Score: 1

      The only reason I use Gnome is for corner panels. I started out use KDE 1, and some friends were running Gnome with corner panels I I figured I'd give that a try. Despite the fact that gmc was a graphical front-end to sigsegv at the time, I never went back. Corner panels with auto-hide is like tabbed browsing in my opinion. Once you try, you don't go back.

      I tried creating corner panels in KDE 2.2, but it just wasn't the same. It wasn't easy to setup and I never got farther than creating a single corner-type panel out of the main panel. KDE allows you to create more panels, but I couldn't figure out to make them act like the main panel (with auto-hide and what not).

      I submitted a bug report to the KDE team about adding corner panels, but they terminated it and said to resize the panel. Maybe I'm missing something about panel creation. I'll try messing with 3.x once Debian gets it into unstable. Even so, I doubt I'd switch from Gnome. The apps I like all look nicer in Gnome (Gaim, Gnucash, etc) since they use the same toolkit at Gnome, but their integration isn't as tight.

      Both desktops are great products but I just can't leave corner panels. I use apps from KDE every once in a while though.

      Khyron
    26. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No you're not going to get an honest comparison.

      From the end-user perspective, Gnome and KDE each have their own ways of doing things. Most things can be customized, some things can't. And the most important thing is: IT'S ALL SUBJECTIVE.

      I like KDE better, in general. If I was on a RedHat system, I'd probably prefer Gnome. But this is MY OPINION. It's a matter of taste (or lack thereof).

      From the developer perspective, some people get all loopy into the C (Gnome) vs. C++ (KDE) battle or the GTK+ (Gnome) vs. Qt (KDE) battle. Yawn. Yeah, I don't care either. The GPL-is-good (KDE) or GPL-is-kinda-good-but-not-always (Gnome) argument is interesting to some, I suppose. Frankly I just want a desktop that works.

      In short, try them both our yourself. That's the only fair review you'll ever see.

    27. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by damiam · · Score: 1
      The main difference is that KDE's file manager is average, and gnome's is below average.

      I've never heard anyone agree on that. Do you have any links or reasons?

      I'm not trying to be a gnome zealot, I'm just wondering. I personally prefer Nautilus to Konqueror, and I wonder what I'm missing.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    28. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by damiam · · Score: 1

      The look you can get, using Geramik or Bluecurve themes. The feel freedesktop.org is working on.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    29. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      >Nautilus can thumbnail, and in GNOME 2.2 it thumbnails movies thanks to gstreamer.

      Erm, I didn't phrase it clear enough. I meant, konqueror can thumbnail a few more file formats than Nautilus can.

    30. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      > If Trolltech went down the drain or withdraw their licence you could always fork the latest GPL'ed QT and take over the development of it.

      Actually, if that happened, then the last released version of Qt would automatically be released under a more liberal BSD license (KDE/Qt Free Software Foundation)

    31. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Oestergaard · · Score: 1

      I used GNOME since the 0.4 days up to and including Ximian GNOME. I've used KDE in between, ever since my homepage was about the only page on the internet that Konqueror could render without crashing.

      My first UNIX experience was with Solaris - at that time my home computer ran OS/2 2.1 and NT 3.51 (with me not being completely happy with either).

      What I felt was cool about Solaris was that nothing would crash. Nothing would hang. Applications were few (but I had a pretty specific job to do and a pretty specific set of applications for that job) - but they worked perfectly. On the PC scene, applications were many, and virtually everything would crash every now and then - perhaps on a daily basis, perhaps weekly, but applications and OSes would crash.

      Starting to run GNU/Linux on my box at home, I rediscovered the stability I had only seen on Solaris (and by then, HP-UX as well). The desktop was ugly compared to OS/2 - but it worked (my "desktop" must have been fvwm by then).

      With GNOME and later KDE, some of the coolness of a real desktop environment came to the stable "PC" operating system - wow, the best of two worlds, or?

      No. GNOME was looking good, but it crashed. Often. KDE was first unstable and ugly, and later on just ugly. Ugly on a CDE level :)

      Both improved rapidly - I switched between them every now and then. In the end I ran Ximian GNOME (because I liked the GNOME panel and didn't like the KDE one), using Konqueror as the browser (because even though it wasn't fast or could render every page - it was still miles ahead of Mozilla 0.X).

      Crashes are unacceptable. Even if it's just weekly crashes. I cannot work with a system I cannot count on. This, I think, is the major reason for my choice of desktop today.

      Today, I use fluxbox as the window manager. I use Konqueror as my browser. I use a few GNOME apps too. Basically, I have taken the few elements that I need from the two desktop environments, but without any of the two environments in their entirety.

      You may not want to do this. In fact, such a desktop may be horrible for you. In my job as a developer, emacs and rxvt take up about 90% of the screen real-estate on my eight 1600x1200 virtual desktops. I have no need for a fancy panel, all I need is hotkeys to switch between the virtual desktops and more free screen real-estate.

      And I do not log out. I don't need no fancy session manager - the uptime of my emacs will top most non-UNIX web servers out there. Common themes? Well, my emacs isn't themed anyway, so I don't care.

      My impression today of GNOME versus KDE, is that the KDE people have been very productive engineers (and have finally gathered some graphics artists to make the system look good too) - I think the GNOME team may be just as hard working, but I believe that their progress will be slower because of architecture (and programming language) inconveniences.

      I see GNOME as an philosophically idealist project, where compromises on the architecture and engineering "soundness" are more acceptable. KDE seems to be a fantastic piece of engineering, where in the beginning the philosophical or ethical concerns were ignored (using non-free QT). Clearly, KDE does not have it's problem anymore - and I do not see an easy way for the GNOME project to suddenly come up with a better (as in robust, documented, well-defined and "sound") infrastructure. It is my impression that the GNOME project are working towards better infrastructure though - and they definitely have both clever and productive people around, so I am sure that they will be moving towards a stable and well defined infrastructure.

      Infrastructure is key to gaining application support, and in the end to be able to deliver a stable and usable product.

      Today I don't hold my breath for any of the desktop projects. I pick the few applications I need, and fluxbox let's me move them around on my desktop. My desktop does not crash, and I can worry about the things that matter - the job I have to do.

    32. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Arandir · · Score: 1

      and took some fiddling to get working via src

      Doesn't take any fiddling at all. The ports files typically are there just to make sure you have the right dependencies installed and set the right configure arguments.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    33. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by dvdeug · · Score: 1

      The main difference is that KDE's file manager is average, and gnome's is below average. (so people seem to agree)

      I've used both - more of Nautilus - and I don't agree at all. Konqueror is strictly average; being a console jockey, I didn't find much use for it. Nautilus is much better at previews and other slow stuff; it was slow and painful, but I rearranged my graphics directory using it, because it beat trying to do so by the command line.

    34. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Isle · · Score: 1

      The actively support platforms are:
      Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX and Tru64.

      The actively support compilers are:
      All versions off gcc>2.95
      Solaris native compiler >7.0
      DEC/Compaq CXX (dont know what version)
      And most recently Intel ICC > 7.0 (requires patch for libtool)

      Sometimes I see people working on making KDE compile with GCC on HPUX, Cygwin and OpenBSD, but wont garantee that a new release will work, but most mature releases will. I havent heard about AIX, which means there are either no problems or noone is doing anything about them.

    35. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Theme != Look and Feel

      Try actually learning about usability, mmmkay?

    36. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      All of the discussions I have seen about the differences between Gnome and KDE end up being flame wars. Is there anything I can read that gives a non-biased look at the differences and similarities between the two? ...

      That's because they're really pretty much the same. In the past, at least KDE has gone with smaller Icons with more texture, and I've preferred their default background on the terminal panel. But the real differences are invisible. E.g., Gnome is based in C and KDE in C++. In Gnome the object model was designed to be used with the system, where in KDE it was included with the language (though there's still a lot of similarity). The differences increase as you head up the tree towards the API's, but I don't know the details. From the API's up the projects are working on converging again, so again they aren't very different, and are becoming less so.

      And, of course, KDE is based around QT, where Gnome is based around GTK.

      The rest is details, which changes from version to version.

      If I've left the impression that I think the projects should merge, then I'm sorry. I consider it very important that they both exist separately. This provides a margin of safety. I consider it important that they use techniques that differ in detail. I consider it important that they don't depend on the same libraries. Remember, these days on never knows when some lawyer will invent a brand new ancient patent that covers your well know technique. It would be unpleasant if a library that we really depended on were to be rendered unuseable. So it's quite important to remove the potential choke-points.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    37. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      My experiences with trying to get KDE to run with CygWin indicate that it doesn't really work on Win98 (freezes immediately), and that it doesn't even try with Win95. Possibly WinNT (some version) or one of the later versions work. I'll probably never know (as I'm certainly not going to agree to their licenses).

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    38. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by asobala · · Score: 1

      Although thumbnailing is:

      1. Extendable in nautilus, and
      2. A freedesktop.org spec, so in theory KDE should use the same spec soon so all apps can share thumbnails.

    39. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by fredrik70 · · Score: 1

      bloody hell, didn't know that. Even better, IMHO!!

      --
      if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
    40. Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE? by abischof · · Score: 1
      Corner panels with auto-hide is like tabbed browsing in my opinion. Once you try, you don't go back.
      For those of us that haven't used them before, could you explain what corner panels are and how they're used?
      --

      Alex Bischoff
      HTML/CSS coder for hire

  25. screenshots by jfeasel · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. Re:screenshots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://vhost.dulug.duke.edu/~louie/screenshots/2.2 /24.jpg looks JUST like gnome 2.0 on sun... (minus the debian/kde menu items :)

      -Ralph Bonnell

    2. Re:screenshots by spencerogden · · Score: 1

      What font is being used for the desktop icons? Anyone know?

  26. Re:Good for them! by shadwwulf · · Score: 1

    I tend to think that Sun Microsystems backing gnome is an indication that Gnome does have a nice share.

  27. RPMs? For RedHat/etc? Ximian Release? by Travoltus · · Score: 1

    I'm not trolling here... I am dead serious when I say I am not ~crazy~ enough to try and compile this.

    I do not care what anyone says, every time I have assembled the dependency libs and tried to compile this beast, it has been disastrous sixty ways to Sunday.

    Even a successful compile takes ~hours~ (see the Garnome stats).

    I'll wait until the RPMs come out...

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
    1. Re:RPMs? For RedHat/etc? Ximian Release? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's time to upgrade to gentoo my friend.

      Gnome 2.2 installation? Newest KDE 3 installation, as soon as it comes out?

      emerge gnome
      emerge kde

      Booyah! Compiled from source.

    2. Re:RPMs? For RedHat/etc? Ximian Release? by Travoltus · · Score: 1

      Okay, so I'm at their website..
      Where's the .iso?

      Or do I download the whole gentoo install CD one file at a time?

      --
      --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
    3. Re:RPMs? For RedHat/etc? Ximian Release? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay, so I'm at their website.. Where's the .iso?

      Trust me when I tell you that if you can't either follow the "Get Gentoo!" link at the top of the page or be bothered to check the install instructions also linked at the top of thet page, Gentoo is not for you.

  28. GNOME 2.2 is teh SUCK! by faceofsun · · Score: 1

    That Face of GNOME boy is a total ride ;)

  29. Oh no! You realise what this means....? by Spudley · · Score: 1

    Good grief. Software being released a month ahead of schedule!? This mustn't be allowed to happen! If my manager hears of this, he'll start thinking we should try it too.

    --
    (Spudley Strikes Again!)
  30. Timothy Rooted My Box! by Eros · · Score: 1

    What is your problem Timothy? Did you root my box or something and now think it is funny to post links on /. to things I'm 50% thru downloading?

    First the Animatrix thing and now this crap.

    One of these days I'm going to bump into you at a convention or something, and beat the shi^H^H^H cookies out of you. ;P

    1. Re:Timothy Rooted My Box! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This means you are now 100% accredited loser. When you find yourself having the same interest as Timmeh, there's no doubt about it anymore, you have no friends!

      Don't try to beat somebody, you could break your wirst. Particularly when you are afraid to say the word SHIT. You fairy!

  31. Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick at. by ACK!! · · Score: 1

    Good. I like the improved multimedia, theme support, cd-burning, panel improvements and the such.

    My question is what is the one thing that you wanted to see in Gnome 2.2 that did not get in?

    What is your Gnome 2.4 wishlist?

    BTW, yes everyone wants a better gtk fileselector and browsing of archive files. Lets get all out-of-the-box on this.

    --
    ACK /ak/ interj. 2. [from the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. i
  32. Weird Slogan by Gyan · · Score: 2, Funny

    Where we're going, we don't need roads ... in circles ?

  33. UI Review of GNOME 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Screenshots and Review are here.

  34. Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.2 by Amsterdam+Vallon · · Score: 0, Redundant

    5 -- Footprint logos are way cooler than green dragons

    4 -- Your KDE installation died

    3 -- 2.0 is the same version number as your Linux kernel installation

    2 -- If Stallman uses it, it's gotta be good

    1 -- You'd rather embrace Evolution than Jesus

    # Free tech news and blogging for life -- *nix.org

    --

    Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
    1. Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.2 by fault0 · · Score: 1

      Didn't stallman, although having used GNOME (I remember him bitching that he couldn't print a document from his desktop in gmc), say that he went back to a desktop without X at all?

    2. Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not sure. I heard on talk radio this morning that he died, so I guess it's a moot point anyway.

    3. Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.2 by drsquare · · Score: 1

      Wow, that gets funnier every time you say it!

      By Friday, I should be literally pissing my pants as I read!

    4. Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.2 by Sunnan · · Score: 1

      From what I hear he uses Emacs.

    5. Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      0 -- ...

      -1 -- PROFIT!!!

    6. Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > 1 -- You'd rather embrace Evolution than Jesus

      They're right, where you're going you don't need
      roads...

      Kent

  35. Somebody better let Sun know... by FroMan · · Score: 3, Funny
    --
    Norris/Palin 2012
    Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
    1. Re:Somebody better let Sun know... by elmegil · · Score: 1
      Sun knows.

      Sun's 2.0 is more like a 2.1 release anyway, and a lot of things they fixed from a "generic" GNOME 2.0 to release theirs are wrapped into this 2.2 release.

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
  36. dammit by unformed · · Score: 1

    the one really cool feature from gnome 1.0 which was removed is still not here:

    detachable menus, absolutely loved that in Galeon I could pull off a menu of bookmarks, when I was trying to hunt through a lot of them. Anyone know why it was removed, and/or when/if it's going to come back?

    1. Re:dammit by hatter3bdev · · Score: 1

      Open up gconf-editor (its like registry editor) and browse to /desktop/gnome/interface and check the box beside "menus have tearoff".

    2. Re:dammit by BlackBolt · · Score: 1

      Here's a little tutorial on art.gnome.org. Complete with a downloadable PDF for next time you need it.

      In case you need more instruction than the other guys gave you, or if you run into problems...

      BlackBolt

  37. Not any more! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The option has been removed. You can still do it but you have to edit the GConf registry to do it (use gconf-editor or gconftool-2)

  38. If linux, use LUFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you're using Linux, try LUFS and forget about application level filesystems. If not using Linux, you should "lobby" ;) so your OS gets something like LUFS. MacOSX is also going the same way, I think. FS should be a low level things (kernel, kernel + libs, server in microkernels...), so all apps get it.

  39. Screenshots by elliotj · · Score: 0, Redundant
  40. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2, Informative
    Well, there are some wishlists:

    Here, from Havoc

    Here, from jdub

    There is a list for GTK2.4 on the website, but unfortunately I think GTK2.4 won't be ready in time for GNOME2.4, so 2.4 will still be based on GTK2.2

  41. Gnome Logo by minkwe · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Isn't it time to change the GNOME Logo on Slashdot!


    http://www.gnome.org/start/2.0/foot.png

    --
    "Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
    1. Re:Gnome Logo by luge · · Score: 2, Funny

      Mod this baby up. :) We've been using the new foot for six months now, maybe in six months /. will catch up ;)

      --

      IAAL,BIANLY

    2. Re:Gnome Logo by mindriot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe this one is a little nicer.

    3. Re:Gnome Logo by BlackBolt · · Score: 1
      Yeah, but this is the logo that rocks my world...

      BlackBolt

    4. Re:Gnome Logo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hate the Gnome logo. It really reeks of "unprofessionalism". I will never use it as long as it keeps that logo. I am doubly pissed at Sun for replacing CDE with this.

    5. Re:Gnome Logo by jimmy_dean · · Score: 1

      This logo is amazing. I think slashdot should change the gnome one to this.

      --
      -> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
    6. Re:Gnome Logo by Ed+Avis · · Score: 1

      NASTY hobbitses!

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    7. Re:Gnome Logo by Mjlner · · Score: 1

      No!
      The new foot is ugly!

      --
      Lemon curry???
  42. Enlightenment vs. Metacity? by VoidEngineer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does anybody know what's going on between Gnome and Enlightenment? It seems like Gnome is developing it's own window-manager-which-pretends-its-not-a-window-man ager (Metacity); meanwhile, Enlightenment is developing it's own desktop shell... kind of like two ships passing each other in the dark...

    I'm going to hate the day when I'm forced to make a choice between Gnome and Enlightenment 0.17... I'll miss those footprints...

    1. Re:Enlightenment vs. Metacity? by RossyB · · Score: 1

      Dude, E and G split years ago.

      GNOME 1.4 officially used Sawfish instead of E, as E is, well, too damn huge to act solely as a window manager.

    2. Re:Enlightenment vs. Metacity? by asobala · · Score: 1

      Enlightenment is trying to be a desktop shell "Without the bloat" (so they call it) - this means there's a shell, but applications don't get a mime system and other libraries. Metacity is a window manager pretending to be a window manager, and just a window manager, nothing else. It just manages windows.

    3. Re:Enlightenment vs. Metacity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      footprint came because gnome-core was a bit bloated and could not interact with E lib too well. Then Migual pressured Raster to try and make it gnome specific which Raster felt it should not do. E 17 is about to change look at the rasterman website (www.rasterman.com) for all the goodies. I hope this time it does not take a year for Raster to rewrite everything....
      it will still be a desktop shell, but better managed one...with lots of cool stuff...

    4. Re:Enlightenment vs. Metacity? by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1

      When was the last time Gnome had anything to do with Enlightenment? I seem to remember them co-existing by default on RH5.2 and 6.x installs ('98? '99?), but I haven't heard much about Enlightenment for a while now.

    5. Re:Enlightenment vs. Metacity? by Tuross · · Score: 1

      I spoke with Raster at the inaugural CALU in 1999.
      There's lots I cannot say (especially considering my poor memory ;), but suffice to say they went their seperate ways.

      Enlightenment is now undergoing yet another rewrite for version 0.17 which has been in progress for a few years. I'm hoping they're getting somewhere as they certinaly have some great ideas (some are mine hehe ;) and I'd like to see them come to fruition.

      GNOME changes official window managers each release - I'm wondering what they'll use for 2.4... waimea? icewm? something new again?
      Must be frustrating for the end users. I'm a WM junkie so I don't care ;)

      As others have said, E is trying to be its own desktop environment now. No doubt there's a niche in the market for yet another one. Good luck to everyone.

      --
      Matt
      1. Read Slashdot
      2. ???
      3. Profit
  43. No new file selector until 2.6? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 1

    The release notes suggest that GNOME won't get a usable file selector dialog for a year; is that really correct?

    1. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, so what? The file selector is fine, I do not see the problem with it at all. It is better to wait for gtk2.4 and get a proper toolkit level file selector than hack have on hacked in.

      Btw, I think it will be gnome 3. I don't think there will be a 2.6 release.

    2. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      > The file selector is fine, I do not see the problem with it at all.

      Do you not realize that that is pretty much the #1 complaint with GNOME? Why wasn't it included in GNOME 2.0, or even 2.2? Why rely on gtk 2.4 for this? GNOME is using, and has used in the past, many of it's own widgets in gnome-ui.

    3. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only trolls complain about the file selector, all the users I know think it is great, minimal but functional. It is easily the best file selector I have ever used.

    4. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Only trolls complain about the file selector, all the users I know think it is great, minimal but functional.

      And "All the users" defined here as "you", "yourself", and "you"?

      Come on.. don't live in a delusional world. The gtk+/gnome file selector sucks ass. I actually didn't care much about it back in gtk 1.2+.. But it's a real shame it wasn't included in gtk 2.0.

    5. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The bad news is not only is the kde one better, due to kdes kio_slave system, you can do so much more to file selections.

      Saving directly (yes directly) to ftp is not just great, it should be concidered essensial.

    6. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      GNOME also has (and has had for a long time), gnome-vfs. It still does not explain why a new file selector dialog was not included with either GTK 2.0 or GNOME 2.0, when they had the chance to rewrite everything.

    7. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by bfree · · Score: 1

      How about this on Linux anyway, and I can't imagine it's any different on other Free OS's (now Windows might be more hassle). Is there any reason why an OS could not just use an automounter for ftp filesystems (when you access /ftp/user:pass@site it logs you in and mounts it)? Is there a reason why it needs to be at the level of the toolkit/window manager and therefore only partially available? Now please note that what I really mean is that we should implement these sorts of features lower down the chain, but if people higher up want to re-implement them because they think they can offer something else then that's ok to!

      --

      Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

    8. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been using kde for sometime now, so maybe I'm out of the loop on how to do this. If gnome-vfs is like kio_slaves, how do I save a file in say, gedit, to an ftp server?

    9. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by diamondc · · Score: 1

      the current gtk file selector sucks... its probably already possible if gedit links to libgnomevfs.

      --
      "I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
    10. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Sunnan · · Score: 1

      To be completely honest, I agree with the notion that the Gnome file selector is the best ever.

      I was annoyed to death with KDE's and OOo's windows-alike clickfest.

      I adore the keyboardability (great if you have a thousand files - just type the first few letters), the tab completion, and the split pane in the gnome file selector. (I think it's great that it separates files from folders - I have the files at a glance.)

      It's true that many people complain about this so maybe it does have to be improved even further. But I really hope they don't accidentally disimprove it while they're at it.

    11. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by damiam · · Score: 1

      Gtk 2.4 will have the new fileselector (it's not a GNOME thing). I believe it's scheduled for September.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    12. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by brunes69 · · Score: 1

      You do realize that in KDE youc an hit F12 to seperate directories, you don't even have to hit tab for auto completion as it is built into every single KDE text entry widget, and everything in kde always has keyboard shortcuts, and ones you can set yourself? Not to mention the customizable right panel hotlinks, the file preview inline in the dialog, like six views to choose from, and all these settings are saved for every file open/save dialog. Oh and this has been around since kde 2.2 ( like 2 years). Oh and it doesn't look like ass.

    13. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Sunnan · · Score: 1

      I don't have an "F12" on my keyboard, not anywhere near the home row anyway.

    14. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by brunes69 · · Score: 1

      You only have to hit the key once oin your life. I am sure you can raise your lazy wrists for 1/2 a second.

    15. Re:No new file selector until 2.6? by Sunnan · · Score: 1
  44. Re:Good for them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As in giving them a reach around?

  45. Use gconf-editor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Tearoff menus have alwasy been in gnome2 (I think) but you have to use gconf-editor set enable.


    The key is:
    /desktop/gnome/inferface/menus_have_tearoffs


    Note that this will only effect gnome2 apps (I think). If your gnome1 apps have tearoff turned off you have to use the old gnome-cc to enable. Also, don't be afraid of gconf-editor, a good number of the so called "missing features" are still there!

    1. Re:Use gconf-editor! by unformed · · Score: 1

      Christ, man, thanks, you made my fucking day! I've gone months being royally pissed off cause I "lost" so many features in Gnome2. Well, I'm gonna have to fiddle with gcong and see what else is cool that i don't know about... ;)

    2. Re:Use gconf-editor! by david@ecsd.com · · Score: 1
      Tearoff menus have alwasy been in gnome2 (I think) but you have to use gconf-editor set enable.

      The key is: /desktop/gnome/inferface/menus_have_tearoffs

      Note that this will only effect gnome2 apps (I think). If your gnome1 apps have tearoff turned off you have to use the old gnome-cc to enable. Also, don't be afraid of gconf-editor, a good number of the so called "missing features" are still there!


      But how inthe hell are people to know that these "missing features" are there?

      This is one reason that you'll never see GNOME on the desktop other than on Unix geeks' boxes. Come on, people, you don't hear Microsoft advising you to fire up the registry editor to get useful features of *their* software to work. I can see it now: "Sure, if you want Word to support styles, just open up registry editor and find the /desktop/microsoftgarbage/office/word/features/eso teric_fuction/styles to PI."

      Bullshit.

      I know that programmers are proud of their lazyness, but this is ridiculous. (And when I say ridiculous, I mean deserving of ridicule.) If you don't want to code a dialog for options, then take the damned option out all together and get rid of some bloat instead of trying to blow smoke up my ass by telling me that it's there, but it's not there. If they wanted to hide features from novices they could have implemented something similar to the way Sawfish does it with Novice, Intermediate and Advanced features which are exposed with a drop down menu. (Of course I'm not sure Sawfish *still* does this because fuck if I can tell how to change my window manager away from Metacity--whose development philosophy seems to be "If I don't need this feature, then *you* don't need it.")

      Had I known that GNOME 2.0 was going to be this much of a UI mess, I'd have just upgraded my kernel, rather than going with a virgin install. (Yes, UI mess. Consider that they rearranged the order of the buttons on some, but not all, of the dialogs, which in itself, is deserving of a FLOGGING.*) Maybe someone needs to tell them the obvious: When version numbers go up, the software is supposed to get BETTER and EASIER to use.

      What really cheeses me is that GNOME 1.2 worked. Nautilus was slow as hell, but there were ways to get around that. My mime-types which I'd customized worked. No longer. The only thing which keeps me from logging in to a KDE desktop is that I like the look of GTK and that most of the software I use is GTK/GNOME based. What

      And don't even get me going on how they fucked up the Panel...


      *Don't believe me? Go to the Open File from Galeon and at the bottom you see two buttons: [OK][Cancel] now go to Nautilus and try the delete file function (you'll have to turn it on) and the confirm dialog has two buttons at the bottom: [Cancel][Delete] THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE.

    3. Re:Use gconf-editor! by ike42 · · Score: 1
      But how inthe hell are people to know that these "missing features" are there?

      Yes, this is a problem and there are two answers. First the no brainer, more documentation. A better solution will be "tweaker" program under Preferences. In fact it was assumed early on that this would happen and it probably will but nobody has done it yet, AFAIK.


      Come on, people, you don't hear Microsoft advising you to fire up the registry editor

      Umm ... many, many directions in MS knowdlge base tell you to use regedit. I've even had MS tech support tell me to use it. But yes, average users should not have to use it, nor should they have to use gconf-editor. But gconf-editor is much easier to use then regedit and is ment for advanced users.


      This is one reason that you'll never see GNOME on the desktop other than on Unix geeks' boxes

      Well this is a differnce of opinion. GNOME developers feel that it is better not to expose all options to the average user. Rather they are taking a cue from Apple and focusing making it "just work". The developers don't want to make users wade through dialogs with too many preferences.


      I know that programmers are proud of their lazyness, but this is ridiculous.

      If there is one thing the GNOME developers are not it is lazy. You just see things differntly. If you don't like it, don't use GNOME. KDE is good too.


      instead of trying to blow smoke up my ass by telling me that it's there, but it's not there

      Well the functionality is there, I was just trying to point this guy in the right direction


      When version numbers go up, the software is supposed to get BETTER and EASIER to use.

      Again a differnce of opinion, I think that GNOME2 is far better and easier then GNOME1. Maybe
      you'd be happer with XFCE or KDE, it is your choice.


      I like the look of GTK and that most of the software I use is GTK/GNOME based.

      So do I. Luckily progress is being made on cross dektop theming. Someday soon SVG based themes may become the standard, at which time qt and gtk+ will be able to share.


      [Cancel][Delete] THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE.

      This being delt with under the Human Interface Design standard, but it is up to individual developers to follow the guidelines. The most recent development version of Galeon have been fixed, when the GNOME2 version comes out you should find it much more consistent.

      Disclamer: I am not a GNOME developer. These comments are based my own understanding and views
      on GNOME development.

    4. Re:Use gconf-editor! by damiam · · Score: 1
      Come on, people, you don't hear Microsoft advising you to fire up the registry editor to get useful features of *their* software to work

      Just because MS doesn't advertise it doesn't mean there aren't a lot of interesting registry tweaks possible.

      fuck if I can tell how to change my window manager away from Metacity

      apt-get remove metacity; apt-get install sawfish

      Go to the Open File from Galeon

      Galeon is a GNOME 1 app. The button order was changed in 2.0 for usability reasons. Galeon 2 has/will have the same button order as all other GNOME 2 apps.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    5. Re:Use gconf-editor! by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1
      But how inthe hell are people to know that these "missing features" are there?

      I agree. I've been a long-time fan of Gnome, but some of the "ease-of-use" and "it-just-works" specs have only dumbed-down the interface. I really hate that GConf-editor. Sure, it works, but I much preferred the old control-center.

      However, every time I get too pissed off with Gnome, I go on a round of trying out KDE, WindowMaker, BlackBox, Fluxbox et al, and I always end up back with Gnome.

  46. Commercialization potential? by jvmatthe · · Score: 1

    One of the things I've noticed about the default GNOME 2.x setup on my system (courtesy of Gentoo) is that it's very minimalist. Usually only one app per function and clean, simple menus with descriptive options. (In fairness, I do wish that a few more apps were included by default. Like an integrated mail handler and graphics editor.)

    It occurred to me recently, when I tried KDE 3.1, that the way it seems so overdone has always turned me off from KDE. The KDE panel along the bottom is usually crowded with icons. The KDE menus are overflowing with application after application. Perhaps some of this is unneeded crap included by the packager, but I'm willing to be there are fewer menu items and redundant apps in a stock compile of a GNOME desktop than a KDE desktop.

    Yes, I know I can clean up KDE until it's minimalist, but I shouldn't have to. I like starting with a clean sandbox and building my castle, thanks. I'd rather not have to tear someone else's castle down first.

    Anyway, it has occurred to me that this cleanliness could be awfully appealing to a commercial company looking for a basic environment upon which to build a branded, heavily customized one. Instead of feeling like you have to rip the guts out to find a clean starting place or having to go app-by-app and menu-by-menu and replace or refine what's already there, you can start with a skeleton and build up from there.

    Not that anyone's looking to do that, necessarily, but with Sun looking to use GNOME as their standard desktop, I'd like to know how easy it was to start from the baseline and build up.

    1. Re:Commercialization potential? by fault0 · · Score: 1

      > when I tried KDE 3.1, that the way it seems so overdone has always turned me off from KDE.

      Uhm, it depends on how much of KDE you install. If you just emerge kdebase, for example, you get an extremely clean desktop (I count four icons on kicker from a freshly emerge'd KDE)

      > Anyway, it has occurred to me that this cleanliness could be awfully appealing to a commercial company looking for a basic environment upon which to build a branded, heavily customized one.

      Guess that isn't so, with companies like Coral (the first to do this), Lindows, Xandros, and Lycoris essentially doing this to KDE. SuSE, RH (with 8.0), also customize KDE, but not to the level that Corel/Lindows/Xandros/Lycoris do. Mandrake also does it to some degree.

      Ximian also has done this in the past with GNOME. So has RH (depends on the version, a lot with 8.0) and Mandrake (to a lesser degree).

      So, basically, either one is, and can be customized pretty easily and branded, as many people have done in the past.

  47. Competition works by AirLace · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I really have to congratulate the GNOME team. I'm one of those desktop skeptics who has formerly been sorely unimpressed by the state of GNOME and KDE, but both have been forging ahead. As I've become more involved with GNOME development, I've come to recognise the relationship between the two projects: they do compete but the beautiful thing is that they cover two separate niches. Namely, KDE forges ahead with the latest features (Xft, KHTML) and has a nippier release schedule, while GNOME tends to integrate more external technologies and tends to adopt features when they're more mature.

    GNOME 2.2 has caught up not just visually, but also feature-wise with nifty features like the SSH and SMB backends, but has also been getting rid of visual artefacs leftover from the era of CDE and Motif -- sometimes, a flat look is more appropriate than 3D buttons, for example. I think the 2.2 release puts GNOME back in the game in a big way.

    1. Re:Competition works by elmegil · · Score: 0, Troll

      Has GNOME ceased being a resource pig?

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    2. Re:Competition works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny


      Has GNOME ceased being a resource pig?

      have you?

    3. Re:Competition works by Sunnan · · Score: 1

      Personally I think that we'd gotten a usable DE a lot earlier if the programmers, graphic artists, translaters, documenters and so on working on the two teams had collaborated instead of competed.

      There is enough competition from the non-free world already, with Apple joining the fray and Windows having what, 70-90% of the desktop market?

      It's not surprising that the two desktops have different styles - different people gravitate towards Gnome than gravitate towards KDE and that difference is escalating.

      I'd rather see two "releases" - different choice of defaults apps, colours, theme, but using the same toolkit, libraries, apps and HIG - than the current situation.

      I guess I just have this tic against duplication of effort...

    4. Re:Competition works by Quill_28 · · Score: 1

      Let it be known that if you asked:
      "Has Windoze ceased being a resource hog?"
      You would have been modded +3 insightful.
      You see with some stupid moderators, truth has no meaning only what they want the truth to be.

      Whoever modded this as a troll is a complete idiot. Gnome is slow and a resource hog so it is a legit question to ask if it has improved in these areas.

      And yes I will not post AC so go ahead and mod me down also. Maybe I just need coffee.

  48. They're in a DeLorean ... by zonix · · Score: 1

    Remember?

    z
    --
    What would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
  49. clarification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tearoff for gnome1 apps will have to be enabled from the old control center. You should still have gnomecc on your system, if not check out the support forums on gnomedesktop.org for help!

  50. the impportant question.. by Lumpy · · Score: 1

    how much faster is it?

    did they fix the really slow nautilus? what speed improvements were made?

    Gnome 1.X was much MUCH faster than the 2.0 series. and 2.0 is tolerable when you rip out nautilus.. have they finally fixed nautilus so that it's not the brick dragging the rest of gnome down?

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:the impportant question.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like you're mixing up the 1.x and 2.x series. Nautilus is actually USABLE in 2.x, whereas in 1.x it's too slow for my Athlon 1.4ghz :p

    2. Re:the impportant question.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nautilus is still buggy as ever. It crashes a lot.

    3. Re:the impportant question.. by BrokenHalo · · Score: 2, Informative
      Gnome 1.X was much MUCH faster than the 2.0 series. and 2.0 is tolerable when you rip out nautilus

      I think you must have a bad build or something. The general experience is that Gnome and the current Nautilus are much faster than the 1.x versions. They definitely are for me, anyway.

  51. Re:install instructions by /dev/trash · · Score: 1

    Why would you su to root to compile soemthing????

  52. Somebody better let Sun know... by TheJesusCandle · · Score: 1

    Gnome 2.0 Officially Available For Solaris

    'init' is the mother or all processes...

  53. Over Ximian by Monkey-Man2000 · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know how hard it would be to update to Gnome 2.2 from the current Ximian?

    --
    This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
  54. It's because... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They're trolling. You fucktard.

  55. What's Ximian Up To? by alkini · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems to me that I just read that a new Ximian Gnome is going to be based on Gnome 2.2, but I don't recall where I saw that. Is there any truth to that? Is there a published timeline for such a release? The current Ximian Gnome was great when it came out, but it's starting to feel a little stale, especially after looking at Gnome 2.2 screenshots.

    1. Re:What's Ximian Up To? by teal · · Score: 1

      Ximian seems to refuse to update to use newer OS releases or to go to gnome 2.0. They initially said 2.0 end of year, now they are saying spring. They seem to be too busy hawking Evoultion and their connector to spend any real time on their original core business. Probably because they are charging a fair chunk of changefor the connector. It too bad they were doing a great service be having a good desktop that you could easily keep up to date.

  56. Pronunciation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey is it gnome, silent g or G -nome, hard g. My friend is an idiot.

    1. Re:Pronunciation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's pronounced like GuhNome the hard G sound

    2. Re:Pronunciation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's pronounced like GuhNome the hard G sound

      Just pronounce it as a normal hard g followed by an n, for example as in "signet". The Guh thing is just for Americans who, as far as I can tell, have problems with the "gn" combination. I guess they say "si-guh-net", "ma-guh-num", ma-guh-net" etc.

  57. wait for it by terrymr · · Score: 1

    now all we need is 900 messages saying gnome sucks use KDE instead and about another 200 saying gui's suck and real men use bash for everything.

    1. Re:wait for it by Sam+Gibson · · Score: 1

      Real men use bourne, not bash you fucking youngun.

  58. And in other news .. by Strike · · Score: 1
    1. Re:And in other news .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eugenia sez:

      "However, no matter what, you have no right to talk to me like that. I am not your fucking bitch.
      If you find a mistake with the story, you email me and you talk to me through and we fix the problem. That's how people should work, especially when they are part of the project at hand."

      Damn right.. that's a good asswipping of jeff waugh right there. He had a good point, but he acted pretty rudely (not the first time he's done it.. read gnome-devel-list about a year and a half ago for some nice flamey jeff waugh threads)

    2. Re:And in other news .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually I must agree to this anonymous writer here.

      a) She's right GNOME 2.0 was first called a Desktop Environment, then later Desktop and finally Development Plattform.

      b) With that guy, she's right to he has always been rude to people.

    3. Re:And in other news .. by Strike · · Score: 1

      a) She's right GNOME 2.0 was first called a Desktop Environment, then later Desktop and finally Development Plattform.

      *bzzzzt* wrong

      Let me quote the GNOME 2.0 Release Announcement:

      The GNOME 2 Release Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop and Developer Platform!

      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.

      For more information, please visit our GNOME 2.0 Start page, which includes links to the release notes, press release, download locations for binaries, tarballs and build scripts, and last but not least, screenshots!

      http://www.gnome.org/start/2.0/

      With thanks to the many hackers, documentors, translators, testers, QA helpers and encouraging users who contributed to this release. Their gifts of time, skill and passion have made GNOME 2.0 an incredible step for the GNOME Project as a whole.

      Wow, I don't see anything about it being a development platform in there other than the title.

    4. Re:And in other news .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You gotta admit though, that 'I'm not your fu**ing bitch" line was classic.

    5. Re:And in other news .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > > a) She's right GNOME 2.0 was first called a
      > > Desktop Environment, then later Desktop and
      > > finally Development Plattform.

      > *bzzzzt* wrong

      *bzzzzzzt* wrong again. If you clearly followed the development proecess of GNOME 2.0 then you know that GNOME 2.0 was first labeled as:

      'GNOME Desktop Environment'

      But there used to be some problems because of lack of Software so the name got changed to:

      'GNOME Desktop'

      After some time to the end where everything and everyone was under high pressure they realized that they couldn't come up with a real Desktop or Environment so they named the final release:

      'GNOME Desktop and Developers Plattform'

      Not to say that this was a changed release announcement made some mins (or hours) later. Otherwise it was:

      'GNOME Developers Plattform'

  59. I agree ... by zonix · · Score: 1
    Perhaps some of this is unneeded crap included by the packager

    This is exactly the case! I think it would be best if the packagers just shipped a basic setup with the most common applications, and maybe some helper install tool to go along with it all, if you need more applications.

    I've always been irritated by the crowded program panels provided by your basic ditro's default setup - I even bet new users are easily overwhelmed by this problem! Sure, I know, maybe you can't expect the users to figure out how to install more applications if they need them? A trade-off perhaps?

    Anyway, I've seen clean setups provided by using the Ximian Installer which provides different package categories (including a VERY basic one). Also, I believe if you use Debian, you could skip the 'GNOME desktop' option during tasksel and instead apt-get some fundamental gnome package (dunno which one), which will resolve the rest of the dependencies nicely and leave you with a basic setup.

    z

    --
    What would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
  60. Is it just me or... by Kashif+Shaikh · · Score: 0, Troll

    Gnome PR Servent: "Boss boss! KDE released a new version...3.1!!! "

    Gnome PR Boss: "Whaaat??? That can't be true. Gnome is first and will always be kbetter kthan kthose kbitches! Here, send a press release announcing our strategic allliance with Sun is complete and the world will be ushering a new desktop with Gnome 2.2"

    Gnome PR Servert: "Ahh...you're jealous of KDE's spotlight..."

    1. Re:Is it just me or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just you. GNOME was a week late. KDE was three months late.

  61. Re:install instructions by posternutbaguk · · Score: 1

    In soviet russia, root compiles you!

  62. GVIM with GTK21 support? by knightwolf · · Score: 1

    I noticed on some screen shots that they've got GVIM with GTK2+ support, and anti-aliased fonts. Anyone know where to get a copy of the code/patch/whatever for that? Is this part of the gnome release? Is this a patch that has yet to be released to the world?

    1. Re:GVIM with GTK21 support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.opensky.ca/gnome-vim/todo.html

  63. that's hogwash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    everyone knows that real men don't need no stinkin shell. They write their commands in C as they go along.

  64. Garnome by ajs · · Score: 2, Informative

    Like the idea of 2.2, and want to know if it works?

    Don't want to have to compile a practically infinite number of packages from scratch by downloading each... and... every... one?

    Don't want to trash your system by overwriting tons of libraries?

    Don't trust your local package management system (or the packagers for that matter) to back out once you upgrade?

    Check out Garnome. It's easy to download and install, and best of all, it installs under your home directory by default! They have a good walk-through on the main page. I've found this to be very nice, and a far smoother testing mechansim than anything else out there!

    You just download a small BSD-style ports tree, and then kick off a compile (follow the README). It downloads, compiles and installs everything else!

    1. Re:Garnome by xjerky · · Score: 1

      Unforunately, the past 2 releases are broken. Somewhere down the road the compile fails. I'm still using 0.19.3 as a result. Maybe they finally fixed everything with 0.21.0.

      --
      A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
    2. Re:Garnome by ajs · · Score: 1

      I've used 0.20 with no problems under RH8.0.

      I'm now compiling 0.21 under 7.3... we shall see...

    3. Re:Garnome by xjerky · · Score: 1

      Hmmm....I'm still using RedHat 7.3 (I usually skip every few releases). I wonder if it's the version of GCC they're using....If you don't mind, please post your results.

      --
      A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
    4. Re:Garnome by ajs · · Score: 1

      Working well so far. The basic libs and such compiled cleanly. My laptop battery died last night, and as you can imagine, the download times are awful given the Slashdotting that the servers are taking.

      You're right to avoid 8.0. When 8.1 comes out, *if* it's based on Gnome 2.2, I may swap back, but by then Ximain will probably have come out with their 2.2 distribution, and I'll just install that over whatever RH ships. RH does an ok job with Gnome, but Ximian really puts the pollish on it.

    5. Re:Garnome by xjerky · · Score: 1

      Cool. Everything appears to compile fine here as well. Though Galeon now has "Erroneous Button" labeled for my Back button. If I can't fix that I might recompile an older GTK2 version I still have on my hard drive that was working fine. I hope Ximian does something with it soon, but since they haven't even comitted to 2.0 yet, I don't have my hopes up. I want Evolution using GTK2 dammit! That's basically the only app I use that needs upgrading (I'm now too spoiled on the slick smooth fonts). And while Ximian's file selector is still kinda piss-poor, it's still a lot better than the stock Gnome's (The home dir shortcut really helps).

      --
      A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
    6. Re:Garnome by ajs · · Score: 1

      Actually, I think Ximian has a preview release from Red Carpet (not sure) of 2.0, but from their Web site: "the new Ximian Desktop 2.0 [is] scheduled for this spring"

  65. mod down, troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you are flaming them because they finished early?!?! jesus, that's pathetic... you need to leave your bedroom more.

    1. Re:mod down, troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ..

      GNOME is like men.. they finish even before they start.

      > ! jesus, that's pathetic... you need to leave your bedroom more.

      I bet you've never been to a bedroom of the opposite sex. Get the fuck off nerd.

    2. Re:mod down, troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hey Kashif Shaikh, neat that you managed to find the "Post Anonymously" button this time so your pathetic attempts at trolling wouldnt be so embarassing.

  66. Objective non-flame answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    The main difference between those two desktop environments is: one sucks and the other rules.

    Hope this helps.

    1. Re:Objective non-flame answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > The main difference between those two desktop environments is: one sucks and the other rules.

      We need to hear from the opposition on this:

      * One rules and the other sucks!

      Now we've finally heard a balanced debate.

  67. Re:Comatose link by Bastian · · Score: 1

    Not a very good link. . . the links to the meat of that site are all dead (can't get to the page that actually comares the two, for example).

    Also, It was last updated in 1999. Gnome and KDE have both changed a LOT since 1999 - I'd say enough so to make a comparison of them from that era completely unapplicable to the current versions.

  68. Nautilus steams along by tjwhaynes · · Score: 1

    I concur (using a shell rather than a manager), though pretty/ugly are matters of preference. from what I've heard KDE's is 'better' functionally. This might be a perception holdover of when Nautilus was slow.

    I still remember the first time I loaded up Nautilus at it's first major release and watched in amazement as CPU usage went through the roof, the drive thrashed and a window outline slowly filled in on the screen. Things improved quite a bit during the Gnome 1.x lifetime but moving to Gnome 2 and the new Nautilus is a day and night change. Nautilus on Gnome 2.x is fast, has some really sweet integration features which are only just being exploited now (fontilus springs immediately to mind) and there are bound to be more coming as people get to grips with it.

    I still generally use the command line and a few perl scripts for most file manipulation. But just once or twice recently, I've been reaching for that Nautilus window to track stuff down, examine fonts and look for music.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  69. this one rocks, mod up please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this is such a cool logo.

  70. boooring. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    can't you find something new to troll about?

  71. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by sunbane · · Score: 1

    Now introducing gnome 2.2.1... fixes the thanks message on the about gnome banner... http://www.gnome.org/start/2.2

    "Thanks to our all users and contributors" ;)

  72. when will RPMs be available? by maryjanecapri · · Score: 1

    anyone have any idea when the RPMs will be out? and where to find them? will red-carpet include them?

    --
    nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
  73. mod up! by Alan · · Score: 1

    I posted in here already, so I can't, but this post (AC or not) is bang on the mark.

    Very similar to the "your favorite [band|os|whatever] sucks" shirts.

  74. Rawhide will have their hands full by wray · · Score: 1

    Between this and the new gcc, RedHat will have their hands full redoing all kinds of packages at rawhide...

    Don't you love it? :)

    --
    Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!
    1. Re:Rawhide will have their hands full by Compenguin · · Score: 1
      Between this and the new gcc, RedHat will have their hands full redoing all kinds of packages at rawhide...

      Actually most of this is already in rawhide

  75. They both rock... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that is the only honest answere.

  76. Gnome 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about Gnome for Windoze - so the masses
    could see what they're missing:^)

  77. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by msaavedra · · Score: 1
    My question is what is the one thing that you wanted to see in Gnome 2.2 that did not get in?

    Personally, I really wanted to see bug 73074 fixed.

    --
    "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
    --Henry David Thoreau
  78. yes yes yes!! by tewmten · · Score: 0

    this is sweet, just a shame that I'm on a 512 kbit connection, it takes forever to download the packages..
    well at least I can use dropline for this one, very good thingie wingie!

    Slackware ruuuuu!!!

  79. At least they did it yesterday by xixax · · Score: 1

    It would have looked even funnier if Sun announced 2.0 the day *after* 2.2 was released.

    OTOH, we still use Open Windows, so it's not like we've been racing to embrace this newfangled CDE stuff...

    Xix.

    --
    "Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
  80. Too right! by Capsaicin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All Gnome developers take note of what the AC has written.

    I'm just one of the many Gnome users who has been totally pissed off by Gnome 2. First I discover that gnome-terminal no longer works. You can't complete an X selection with a right click because this always brings up a silly menu. Which is a real problem when you are selecting pages of text. I go to bugzilla, note that this has already been reported, but that nothing is going to be done about it, because 'consistency' demands that right clicks bring up menus. I guess the latest version of gnome-terminal is so consistent that [Tab] moves between tabbed terminals, and bad luck if you want to use filename completion, consistency demands making the terminal unusable, so unusable it shall be! So I'm having to use rxvt again until (if ever) gnome developers start listening to their users and fix their terminal.

    Next thing they only allow one window list, and it doesn't have the option of 'close all' for stacked windows ... argh! Then I notice I cannot any longer put menus onto the panel, only useless (because I can't label them) drawers. So no I have to wait till the tool-tip shows till I know what particular action any launcher button will have, and they randomly change positions to boot.

    OK, at one level the idea Gnome has is good, cut out the cruft, keep it simple and elegant. Great! What is missing, however, is the option for users to mess it up again, and especially for users who are used to using Gnome in a certain way, to make Gnome work for them again. The insanity of the Gnome project is this: Ignore, no discourge, you existing users, and design your system for a set of users who don't now, and are unlikely ever to, use your system (ie the corporate desktop). There is an underlying assumption at work here, "if we make our system easy enough to use, easier than windows, then the corporate desktopers will come flocking to us." That is like saying "if our web site has content as good or better than msn.com, we will start to get more hits than them;" or "if we make a better VCR standard, people will stop using VHS ..."

    Simplicity, in the current Gnome way of thinking, means treat the user as an imbicile, and take away the users options. Eg, the user is never to be allowed to hear the words "window manager," much less be given a way (within the GUI system) to change them! This is a foolish approach. The newcomers to Gnome/Linux are not likely to be the corporate desktop users (though perhaps in eductional/academic and in the not-for-profit sectors some chance of adoption does exist), they are going to be skilled windows users, who want to learn about Linux, and who want more options to configure their desktops than windows gave them, not less!

    And what happens when users, real actual Gnome users, complain about the direction Gnome is taking. They get told that this feature they have been using is not something a "regular" user would want, or worse they get told, "I don't care if you don't use Gnome." Gnome guys, wake up, those are the 'regular' users.

    Despite my rant, I'm still resisting changing over to KDE, I guess I hope that some people will start listening and fix up the problems. But if all that is happening is that Gnome is working on features like transparent panels, while leaving the gnome-terminal in its present broken state, I'm a fool to hope, and to hold out.

    --
    Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    1. Re:Too right! by frantzdb · · Score: 1

      As for gnome-terminal, middle-click has always been X's paste. It works for me with a 2.x gnome-terminal.

      As for the window list thing, do file a bug report. They really do get looked at. Also, with 2.x I am able to have two task lists at the same time.

      Personally I disagree with you about simplicity. There is gconf-editor to tweek little things, but the result for me has been that the configuration stuff I look at 90% of the time is easy to find.

      Again, I really havn't seen anything broken with gnome-terminal.

      --Ben

    2. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      File a bug and let it wait like the other thousands of bugs that hasn't been fixed yet. GConf editor is a joke. If I'd like Windows Registry I would use Windows.

    3. Re:Too right! by Capsaicin · · Score: 1
      As for gnome-terminal, middle-click has always been X's paste. It works for me with a 2.x gnome-terminal.

      I'm not talking about the pasting with the middle click, but completing the selection with the right click. What you are supposed to be able to do is i) start selection with left button, ii) completel selection with right click, iii) paste with middle click. Try it in x-term, and then try doing that in a 2.x gnome-term.

      Sure for small selections you can simply drag with the left button. But when the selection is long you have to hold down the left key and mouse in such a way as to scroll through the selection for literally minutes. It should only be, left click at the top, scroll down, right click at the end, 10 secs.

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    4. Re:Too right! by frantzdb · · Score: 1

      Aah. You are right. Cool. With some playing with gnome-terminal, I found an equivalent behavior:
      Start your selection, selecting at least the first character you want selected, then go to where you want the selection to end, hold shift and left-click. Now it's all selected.

      --Ben

    5. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well he doesn't want to *play* until gnome-terminal does what he likes. He expects it to do it right out of the box. A slightly but big difference.

    6. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But click and the shift-click is the way I've always done it in Xterm .. so no diff for me

    7. Re:Too right! by Capsaicin · · Score: 1

      I'm in danger of sounding like a pedant if I insist that you should be able to complete selection with the right button, so I'll just acknowledge that this is a workable workaround. Nice one.

      The 1.x gnome-terminal had an, if not entirely elegant, at least a servicable way of having your cake and eating it too. It would try to 'guess' whether you were right clicking for a menu or to complete a selection. So if you started a selection a right click would mean end selection, until [enter] was pressed again (when you could get the menu again). Now I can understand why Havoc might regard this as a bit iffy. For myself I would have preferred to see it stay the way it was, until some bright spark conceived of a better way of doing it, rather than seeing it completely removed.

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    8. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not for you but for others.

    9. Re:Too right! by sydneyfong · · Score: 2, Informative

      There have been some complaints about gconf acting like the windows-registry system. I might as well address them here. Now I dislike the windows registry as much as you do, but please do not label gconf as "evil" before you check out what it really does and what it really can do. The registry-like system was not neccessarily evil by itself, but MS implemented it such that it was hell to use. Remember why you started hating it?

      1. A slight misconfiguration usually leads to unusable systems and needs a reinstallation
      2. Too many things (including system level configuration) are integrated with it
      3. Stored in a big binary chunk that no other application can read without using the windows API
      4. Little to no documentation for most keys
      5. Made by M$ ;-p

      Now gconf has none of these flaws:

      1. Any misconfiguration that (if even possible) renders the GUI unusable, and you can still use the CLI or a text editor to undo / fix your changes.
      2. no system critical processes depend on it
      3. stored in XML format
      4. most key names are self-explanatory, and there are places where comments about the keys can be written
      5. Completely open source ;-p

      In addition, gconf has the feature that appplications using it are informed of updates to the configuration immediately, so it won't require a restart of the application for things to take effect, while for the windows registry, the application has to poll the registry for changes if it wants to know whether things have been changed.

      The "traditional" convention for unix apps was that every app had its own configuration file format, located in anywhere that the developers pleased, and they wrote a config file parser only for their own app. This is a huge waste of time and resources, where developers could have spent their time better in improving their apps instead of worrying about config file formats and writing parsers. Now gconf solves these issues and in addition gives the application a bunch of other features. What more could you ask for?

      --
      Don't quote me on this.
    10. Re:Too right! by brank · · Score: 1

      Simplicity, in the current Gnome way of thinking, means treat the user as an imbicile, and take away the users options.

      Too wrong. I've been a Linux and gnome user for a long time, and that was my reaction at first, too. But I kept an open mind, and after a year of using Gnome 2 releases I've got to admit I was wrong.

      I find that the changes in the name of simplicity fall into two categories: things that haven't actually been removed, just moved so hapless mortals don't get confused (the fewer twiddles these people have to play with the better, in my experience), and a very few things actually removed that I am happier without, once I got used to it. As to the UI rules, these follow the Mac, and I've always been a big fan of the Mac. In fact, I wish they'd copy it a bit more and put the icons on the right side of the desktop where they belong. It's a pain to do it manually.

      The idea of simplifying things still scares me, but in practice it's only made gnome better. I still don't know if I'll be using Galeon or Epiphany, though....

      First I discover that gnome-terminal no longer works.

      Well, the old G-T w/zvt was even more broken, so at least it's gone. VTE is much better, even if you don't care about i18n. I don't have your problems with it. Tab completion WFM. Are you confusing it with CTRL-TAB?

      Then I notice I cannot any longer put menus onto the panel, only useless (because I can't label them) drawers.

      1.4 used drawers, too, and I use the same ones under 2.2 as I did under 1.2. I can put launchers outside of drawers but I don't want to.

      Next thing they only allow one window list, and it doesn't have the option of 'close all' for stacked windows

      I can have more than one window list on my gnome 2.2. "Close All" sounds like something the gnome people might add. They don't bite your head off if you're polite and don't act like gnome owes you custom-written software for free. If worst comes to worst, libwnck has a simple api, so you could write your own power-window-list if you wanted.

      --
      it's green.
    11. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You showed 5 bad behaviours of Windows Registry, and 5 Good behaviours of GConf. Now I'm able (but I'm tired to crawl out that shit over and over again) show you 20 behaviours of GConf that sucks bad ass.

    12. Re:Too right! by luther · · Score: 1

      Notice that nothing is stopping you to use an old plain Xterm as your terminal.

    13. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      one use of the kde saveas dialog and the fish (transparent ssh) kio protocol (to save your document on a remote machine) and you won't want to go back to gnome.

      I made the switch after gnome2.0, because i knew that however long it took to fix things after that release was just extra time for kde to get incrementally better.

    14. Re:Too right! by JanneM · · Score: 1

      Completing a selection with the right button rather than shift-left has a couple of problems.

      First, using shift-left mirrors the equivalent operation in other contexts (like using shift-left to select a range in a list).

      Second, you can get to the awkward state where you unwittingly have a bit selected above the visible screen area, and right-click to get the menu. Suddenly half your terminal contents are selected instead. This may not sound like a big problem for the terminal (and for most it isn't), but as the meachanism should be the same for equivalent operations as far as doable, this problem can have greater repercussions in other contexts where popping up a right-click menu is more common.

      --
      Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
    15. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot some.

      1. Is it gconf, or Gconf? Just so long as everybody knows where to find it.

      2. "gconf" sounds ugly. It clutters the thought process. At least "registry" is a word, and "config" has become one. Morphemes are there for a reason.

      3. gconf runs as its own process. bloat.

      4. More bloat. (I'm caching that one.)

      5. Dependency hell.

      6. Fix me.

      7. Not yet implemented (like fix me, but infinitely more aggravating).

      8. If its broken, your gnome apps are broken. Is anything more critical to the "non-technical" user than a web browser? Well then, make sure if bloody well works.

      9. Where is it? Why does it like to hide where only its creators can find it and why does it stick around after the package or all of gnome is removed?

      10. Schematicize this: A friend of mine has let me on a great real estate investment opportunity in Florida. You want in? (Simple, no?)

      11. How does one edit the thing? gconf-edit, gconf-editor, GConf-Edit, gconftool, gconftool2, new and improved gconfTool?

      12. xml is a good thing? Then doubling the size of config files must be a good thing too.

      13. xml is human readable? Configs could be much more plain. I know. I've seen it. Even JavaScript configs are more readable.

      14. KISS not KISFATSLT (Keep it simple stupid, not Keep it simple for all the stupid lusers.) Who you calling stupid? Yeah you, nerdboy. Who do you think?

      15. Open Source. If that's the best Free Software can do, I bow my head in shame. Please. It's an embarassment to open source. You sincerely believe that Ali guy is the only person to see you're arrogance and your vanity? Wake up. If you are defending and promoting gconf and the like over and against the wishes of MANY of your existing users, open source is hardly an apt description of your software development model. Then again, history records that Mussolini was democratically elected.

      8-O

      8-(

    16. Re:Too right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know this is a troll, but anyway

      1. does it matter?
      2. slashdot isn't a word either.
      3. having a process isn't neccessarily bloat. Having each application load their own config file parser is bloat.
      4. -
      5. Nobody told you to compile it yourself. Get it from your distribution
      6,7. Hey you gotta give time for the developers to write the code. Rome wasn't built in one day...
      8. How is this different from a buggy parser in an application, or a broken config file??
      9. .gconf - it's there, you just didn't want to take the effort of navigating in.
      10. ????
      11. how do we edit config files? ed? vi? emacs?
      12. xml is better than 10 million types of bizzare config file formats.
      13. that's why you have the gconf utilities
      14. troll
      15. huh? the developers are adapting the system, the users have a unified way of modifying settings if they want to tweak their system, and users who don't give a damn are not affected at all. Why are you rejecting this? Because you cannot show off to your peers that you know to hand edit config files?

  81. But this is Linux by kfg · · Score: 1

    Don't confuse me with choice.

    KFG

  82. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by JohnFluxx · · Score: 1

    Personally - better integration with kde.

    Merge of sound systems. The might have to wait until there is a clear winner. esd isn't as good as arts. But arts has features that overlap but alsa is trying to achieve, and also overlaps with the forwarding-X-sound-server thing we heard about a few days ago. Getting that mess all cleared up will be _very_ nice.

    Bridge between dcop and the gnome equiv. (Actually I'm not sure it has an equivalent. Bonobo is the equivalent to kpart I thing.. I get confused)

    Thats all I can think of..

  83. enlightenment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I miss the days when gnome was enlightenments default wm

  84. You appear to be confused. by jensend · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ?????

    If you substitute "1.2" for "1.x" and "1.4" for "2.0" in your post, it makes sense. Gnome 1.2 was much faster than 1.4, though 1.4 was tolerable if you used gmc instead of nautilus. You can't really use gmc instead of nautilus with 2.0. However, nautilus is much speedier and stabler in 2.0, and is very usable. The only reason to wish for gmc again when you're using Gnome 2.0 is for gmc's much nicer context menus and archive handling.

    Nautilus will, of course, be somewhat faster and more stable in 2.2, but compared to the leap in performance and stability from 1.4 to 2.0, this is definitely just incremental.

  85. Uhh... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1
    Yes, 'tis true. Transparent panels rock.

    They would, indeed, rock - if they were indeed transparent. I thought it was a bit sad that "they" cheated by just grabbing a section of the main window and shading it; i.e., it only looks transparent if you never hide the panel.

  86. Is there a better window manager yet? by leereyno · · Score: 1

    I'm sick of how Gnome wants to "shade" windows when I double click on their titlebar. That feature is useful on a Mac running MacOS 9 or below because windows on this OS lack proper maximize and minimize buttons. The only way to get a window out of the way is to shade it or drag it someplace. That feature is of dubious value on systems where it is not needed. Even so I realize that some people might like it and I'm certainly not going to tell them how to run their systems. However wouldn't it be nice to at least have that behavior be configurable?

    This points to a much larger issue for me when it comes to Gnome, the fact that both sawfish and metacity the ability to customize the window manager's behavior is severely lacking. Oh sure, you can put a different skin on the windows and all that, but other than that you can't do much of anything.

    I'm a command prompt jockey. I don't care one bit about the file managers in either KDE or Gnome because they're useless to me. If I want to manage files I fire up an xterm. I use KDE for the simple reason that with it you can customize the behavior of the window manager. If Gnome would add in similar functionality I'd be just as happy to use it instead. Also, is there a way to set it up so that nautilus doesn't fire up every time you log in? I've not looked for it very hard I'll admit, but it is annoying to have it fire up when I don't use it.

    Don't mind me, I'm just ranting.....

    Lee

    --
    Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
    1. Re:Is there a better window manager yet? by diamondc · · Score: 1

      um, you can change it thru the Desktop Preferences in the Applications menu. there's an icon that says "Windows" and you can change the double click titlebar action to maximize or keep it to shade. You can probably change it to minimize using gconf.

      --
      "I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
  87. oh, but I just saw.. by Sunnan · · Score: 1

    Ain't this the sweetest file selector ever?

    I hope they do go with this one!

    (As usual I reply to myself... sheesh, I need more friends that read /.)

    1. Re:oh, but I just saw.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, they go with the libegg one which looks like this one.

  88. metacity is crackrock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gnome 2.2 is interesting and I'll certainly grab a copy soon enough.

    But the release notes say that Metacity is the Official Gnome Window Manager and hint that any other window manager is somehow wrong.

    Metacity is wrong. Metacity is (to borrow a word from the metacity documentation - such as it is) crackrock.

    Reading the Metacity README is an excercise in hearing "I know best" from someone who has evidently decided that users are too stupid and irresponsible to use anything he doesn't like. Worse yet, all that is "crackrock".

    Sloppy focus is crackrock - and given the way both redhat and gnome are moving it will probably go away - after all, you are all too stupid to use it.

    Multiple workspaces, virtual windows. All crackrock.

    Then, if you have the grapical login set, try to change it - it aint easy. Changing window managers is evidently crackrock as well.

    Themes that do more than change colors and fonts. Crackrock.

    And finally, usuable documentation. Crackrock too. (Well, after all the GNU folks think man pages are obsolete - only those completely unnavigable info pages that seem to encourage documentation writers to verbosity - those are kewl.)

  89. GNOME = open source XP? by m_dob · · Score: 1

    Many of these new features have the effect of making Gnome appear to be more like M$ XP. My very humble opinion, having had gnome for a very short period of time, is that there are a wide range of features that have been available in commercial products like OSX and XP for some time that Gnome is now slowly adding. Yes, gnome has a lot of attractive features, and reaps the rewards of being open source, but are there any major benefits to a seasoned windows user like myself of using a system that seems only to replicate Windows, not surpass it. For example, the font smoothing technology microsoft calls cleartype has been around for over a decade. Why couldn't it have been included as an option in earlier versions of gnome? Until I see an OS that is truly worth the hassle of spending 2 hours installing, I don't see how Linux can succeed against a beast like Microsoft. A worthy battle, but I don't think linux can win.

    1. Re:GNOME = open source XP? by Erwos · · Score: 1

      Tabbed browsing has been around for years. Why couldn't Microsoft have included it with IE6? As a seasoned Mozilla and Opera user, I don't see how IE6 will ever compete with open source software.

      Yes, that is what you just wrote. In retrospect, it doesn't seem to make much sense, does it? What GNOME or KDE or Windows or TWM had years ago is irrelevant to choosing what to get right now. Linux was certainly not on the center stage ten years ago, and development speed will only get faster as time goes on.

      For what it's worth, I find GNOME+XFree86 to be, on the whole, a superior environment to Windows. It's not perfect, but I prefer it.

      -Erwos

      --
      Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
    2. Re:GNOME = open source XP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Demonstrate how it is a superior environmen to Windows.

    3. Re:GNOME = open source XP? by jimmy_dean · · Score: 1

      I completely agree with you. I find myself hindered when I use Windows XP at work. For me, Gnome on Linux is amazing. I've been using Linux for 4.5 years or so and it's never once completely frozen on me. For Windows...hmm...1, 2, 3, ... dangit...I lost count.

      --
      -> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
  90. What's the major diff between 1.4 & 2.x? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems to me that the applications in gnome 2.x are doing something funny in /tmp/username..

    bonobo-activation-register.lock linc-508e-0-10f58ec60e09 bonobo-activation-server-ior linc-5092-0-13ea70d14f94e linc-1baf-0-20055a31f7f4 linc-6097-0-5c1e80f1c429b linc-2db-0-488f870584093 linc-60d4-0-7153b5cf33ac0 linc-496-0-33c6b201a712d linc-60e0-0-37b484e78b2a linc-4cb-0-e1bffcda1d87 linc-60e4-0-37b484ea0c5a linc-4cd-0-7dfc9bb375af0 linc-60e8-0-5543f260b7e42 linc-4cf-0-160d34e34904 linc-628f-0-3352413a87e17 linc-4d1-0-44e2c8d1bbec2 linc-6c35-0-1123c89f5dca1 linc-4e2-0-cd686e4af195 linc-6c75-0-62d894ef14357 linc-4e4-0-301e85bb9ae5b linc-6c81-0-748d32fb3d6ca linc-4e6-0-cd686e461f71 linc-6c85-0-748d32fba17fe linc-4eb-0-1f8b7bd2b9f7d linc-6c89-0-6b049b6f11ee linc-4f4-0-5570b2eb8b972 oaf-register.lock linc-5041-0-1a0389885a7e3 orb-17059495711011080712 linc-507d-0-1a038988d566a reg.IDL:OAF_ActivationContext:1.0 linc-508a-0-6fdb2c8d524a reg.IDL:OAF_ActivationContext:1.0-local

    CAn someone tell me what all this OAF, bonobo stuff is? and what it's purpose is?

    I think I liked gnome 1.4 better

  91. gnome vs magnet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ac wrote:
    > Just pronounce it as a normal hard g followed by an n, for example as in "signet".
    > ... Americans who ... have problems with the "gn" ...
    > I guess they say "si-guh-net", "ma-guh-num", ma-guh-net" etc.

    by this logic, you could take words like "symbol", "sidney", "single", or "submit" as proof that you can pronounce words like "mbome, dnome, ngome, and bmone".

    Or how would you procounce "Dnome"? Either it sounds just like "Gnome" and "Nome" or you use a connecting vowel like "Duh-Nome", "Dih-Nome", "Dee-Nome", ...

    1. Re:gnome vs magnet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      by this logic, you could take words like "symbol", "sidney", "single", or "submit" as proof that you can pronounce words like "mbome, dnome, ngome, and bmone".

      Of course you can. Are you seriously claiming that you can pronounce "single" but that your mouth seizes up when you try to say just "ngle"? I'm not sure that's how I'd spell that sound if it was a word in its own right but just saying it is easy.

      NOT saying the "si" part is even easier than saying it, saying the "ngle" part remains the same either way.

      Perhaps you should try actually speaking your examples before claiming that you can't.

      Or how would you procounce "Dnome"?

      You just make a "D" sound immediately followed by a "n" sound. What's the problem?

    2. Re:gnome vs magnet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or how would you procounce "Dnome"?

      You just make a "D" sound immediately followed by a "n" sound. What's the problem?


      To follow up my own post and reiterate the point, you've already given the example of the word "Sidney". If you're capable of saying that then you've already got the pronunciation for "dn". Think Sydney but only actually speak the "dney" part. That's how you pronounce "dn". I don't see how it could be any simpler.

  92. Nah... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 2, Funny

    real men use zsh :-)

  93. Tons of choice by Havoc+Pennington · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Right now on UNIX/Linux you can choose:

    - advanced user environment A
    - advanced user environment B
    - advanced user environment C
    - advanced user environment D ...

    and guess what, all the choices eventually grow
    to be configurable so that they act like any of
    the other choices, or indeed like any hisotrical
    OS ever. So useful. What a good way to
    spend our time, writing multiple "design your own UI" construction kits.

    Maybe it's time for something different.
    If people want to work on developing it,
    who are you to tell them how to spend their time?

    You are free to work on developing your own
    "advanced user environment E" if you don't have
    enough options in that area yet. Or free to create add-ons or partial replacement apps for any
    existing environment. Isn't open source great?

    If you want to understand GNOME direction though,
    I'd suggest some good books, such as
    "User Interface Design for Programmers,"
    "The Inmates are Running the Asylum,"
    "Designing from Both Sides of the Screen,"
    etc.

    Technical users are so quick to assume that all software should be written for them, and that despite having zero expertise in interaction design they know exactly how a GUI should be (it should be exactly like the GUI I got used to in 1992, darnit! must... not... learn... new... things...)

    The historical situation of 1001 choices, as long as they are all confusing and hard to use, is a good way to keep free software
    limited to 0.5% of the users in the world.
    It's hypocrisy to brag about choice when
    all the choices are the same.

    It's not like there's any danger that there won't
    be enough hyper-configurable advanced user features and environments available. Somehow,
    I have faith that we're safe there. So why
    not let just *one* project try something different
    without whining about it endlessly.

    All that said, I don't even agree with the premise
    that geeks only like the hyper configurable environments; OS X is pretty
    popular with the geek crowd these days.
    As is GNOME 2, for that matter.

    In any case, I guess we'll see in a few years
    how it all turns out. My prediction is that
    there will be lots of environments and add-ons available,
    for different target audiences, and everyone
    will be happy.

    1. Re:Tons of choice by Capsaicin · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Maybe it's time for something different.

      Excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression that in terms of Desktop Managers the choice at present is realistically limited to Gnome or KDE. Moreover, my impression was that Gnome, by its association with GNU, GTK etc, had pretentions of being the 'standard' desktop in a GNU/Linux environment, not merely "something different."

      If people want to work on developing it, who are you to tell them how to spend their time?

      Who am I? I'm nobody, I'm only a regular user who couldn't develop it themselves. Yeah sure, I shouldn't tell someone how to spend their free time, but what are you saying? That any adverse user feedback is unwelcome? Is the policy of ignoring user feedback part of the official Gnome developement guidelines, or is it just a bad habit that you have slipped into lately?

      You are free to work on developing your own "advanced user environment E" if you don't have enough options in that area yet. Or free to create add-ons or partial replacement apps for any existing environment. Isn't open source great?

      Free sure, but maybe not technically skilled enough. Gimme a break, I'm just one of your 'regular' gumbo users, you know the one of the ones you are trying to protect from concepts such as 'Window Managers' and all that stuff. We are your target audience, we don't create add-ons, the only thing useful you'll get out of us is feedback! Besides which, didn't you just tell me developing E, when ABC and D can already look like E, was a waste of effort?

      I'd suggest some good books ...

      If these books are truely telling you to design exclusively for imaginary users, to tell real users what they need and what they don't need and to ignore, insult or chase them away, I suggest you throw those books away. Something you haven't learnt from those books is that you are writing for a specific set of users, not some generic imaginary user. Moreover the set of users of one type of app will differ from that using a different app. The 'regular' user of a word processor will need to have different needs to a 'regular' user of a terminal emulator. Sure, there is also a need for consistency, which adds another level of difficulty. But to resolve this difficulty by simply ignoring the needs of the user is not the way to go.

      "The Inmates are Running the Asylum,"

      Ignore user feedback, give the users only what the developers imagine, or have read, they want ... Maybe you should read that book again.

      Technical users are so quick to assume that all software should be written for them,

      Clearly not all software, but what about technical softwarer? Surely terminal users have the right to the expectation that the terminal is being written for them. Besides which, I'm not a 'technical' user, I'm a 'regular' user.

      it should be exactly like the GUI I got used to in 1992, darnit! must... not... learn... new... things...

      Especially not new things like the term 'Window Manager' :) Look the mistake Gnome2 made was not in making users learn new things. It was taking away features which users had grown accustomed to. Users expect 'more' features when upgrading, not to have many feature they rely on removed. As I said, cleaning out the cruft is nice, but not even giving the option to put useful stuff back in ... No wonder so many Gnome users are unhappy at the moment.

      It's not like there's any danger that there won't be enough hyper-configurable advanced user features and environments available.

      I've not actually seen anyone asking for "hyper-configurable advanced user features." What people seem to be asking for is the newer version of Gnome to be able to do at least what the older one could. For myself, being able to add menus to the panel, and being able to complete text selection in a terminal with my right mouse button is all I'm asking for. Look I'm sorry to sound completely negative, as though there is nothing about Gnome2 that is good or better than before. Tabbed terminal looks very cool, for example. But I can live without tabbed terminals, I can't without X cut and paste. Sad fact of human nature is that you are more likely to hear from people when they are unhappy with you than when they are satisfied.

      So why not let just *one* project try something different without whining about it endlessly.

      One project sure, just not Gnome :) And I haven't been whining endlessly (though with the number of dissatisfied users at the moment, it must seem endless). The previous was my first post on this subject. I didn't post to Bugzilla given that the same report had already be 'dealt with', I read, but didn't post the the Gnome discussion groups, because I saw how users were being dumped on by the developers. Maybe the endless whining should tell you something?

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    2. Re:Tons of choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Hey Capsaicin!

      Lets paraphrase your entire post in one small post, here it is.....

      "Dear Gnome Team,

      I'm a lazy SOB who is tired of putting up with all of your hard work because it does'nt fit my needs exactly as I want. I don't care about the rest of the world and I don't care what anyone else thinks, it's all about me, me, me, me DAMIT! I know all of your gnome programmers are really good and that pisses me off to no end because I'm to damn lazy to learn how to do it my self and you are all makeing me LOOK BAD! So I have no choice but to bitch and complain about everything in an effort to try and make myself look good or make you look bad, (they both work for me). I'm going to post these stupid ass messages with my endless rants and then when you tell me that I am posting stupid endless rants, I'm going to reply and tell you they were constructive rants. (I'm genius aint I)? And lastley, I'm going to try and pass myself off as a "regular" user, when in fact I am nothing of the sort. Regular users simply use the software and actually appreciate the hard work of the Gnome team. In reality, I am a DEPRESSED USER, I'm pissed at the world for not giving me what I rightly deserve, brains, ambition, a work ethic and manners. I hate the world for not bowing to my needs as I see fit. I'll keep posting these stupid rants as long as it takes until someone understands the most important thing about Gnome.....Without ME, ME, ME, Gnome is NOTHING!"

      End of post.

      See Capsaicin, it's easy, just come to grips with your own sorry ass situation, then you can actually start to critisize your OWN work, rather than others. Have a Nice day!

    3. Re:Tons of choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that Capsaicin is absolutely right with the writings. The reason why no one really trolled here was because everyone know how much GNOME slided away. Everyone was happily installing KDE some days ago and finally got over it. Capsaicin is not the only one who is totally pissed off and upset about GNOME right now. You can go to any place where you meet some developers and ask him or her. Rhythmbox stopped on development because the developer don't see any reason to proceed. Galeon development broke down and the developer started a new project. All this shows the public how much things are WRONG with GNOME. You need to understand that it doesn't make any sense for a little community with 100 remaining people fighting against an increasing community of around 5000-10000 KDE users. Not to mention about all the other people that uses anything else. How many people are still using GNOME 1.4 these days because they need to puke of what happened with GNOME.

      GNOME is wrong these days - totally wrong. So I'm one of those that totally back Capsaicin here.

    4. Re:Tons of choice by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 1
      Excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression that in terms of Desktop Managers the choice at present is realistically limited to Gnome or KDE.

      What does "realistically limited" mean? If you can type a URL you can locate any number of user environments that suit your needs - E, blackbox, etc.

      If you really are all about the highly-configurable do-dad like you say you are, you won't touch any of the luser distros so you needn't concern yourself with the choices they make for defaults.

    5. Re:Tons of choice by Capsaicin · · Score: 1

      Hey AC!

      You don't get it do you? Gnome isn't for people who can "learn how to do it [themselves]," its for lazy, nay stupid SOBs, like myself, who should never be upset by being exposed to difficult words like "Windows Manager."

      In point of fact my rant could be summarised even more succintly:

      "Dear Gnome Team,
      Please start listening to your users.
      Thank You."

      PS. Btw is wasn't a "stupid endless" rant, it was a constructive rant! ;P

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    6. Re:Tons of choice by sydneyfong · · Score: 1

      (disclaimer: I am a "normal" user of GNOME, and not affliated with any GNOME people or developement)

      Have you ever given yourself a chance to understand the new system? It sounds as if you came across this new system which has slightly different UI, does things slightly differently and you get totally pissed off.

      You think GNOME2 was dumbed down? No, everything that I had configured in GNOME1.4 could be done in GNOME2. When GNOME2 was first released, some features were inevitably missing. But that was NOT because the developers wanted to dumb down the system. They had other priorities, eg. improving the UI, fixing the more fundumental stuff before implementing the features. Now as I update my system (debian sid), the features that I missed are gradually making a come back, most even got better than what I expected. Of course there are some fancy features that were dropped, but they are mostly things that are largely useless to the majority of the user base. If you happen not to be in the minority, then sorry, the developers aren't making the system ONLY for you. However, you still have the option to choose to implement what you want, to choose another desktop, or to not upgrade. And yes, those features might be "fun" or "cool", but as far as productivity is concerned, I have never found myself losing any productivity (in fact, the converse holds) because some feature is dropped in return for other better functionality.

      Now for the system hiding away the technical terms... Why not? I mean, if you wanted to look deeper into the system you can always do so, by tweaking your system one way or the other, by RTFM or STFW. But why do you want to force other users who want things to "just work" to go through the same time consuming process as you did? Yes I've been through it too, I know what's a window manager and what not, and those other stuff. But really, I'm not really prepared to learn it through again just to upgrade.

      And for your complaints about the terminal not being able to use X style select and paste... I don't get it. Why would you need to right click? You only need to select the text, then focus on another app, then click the middle mouse button. I don't see how this is hard to use or different from the standard X select and paste method.

      --
      Don't quote me on this.
    7. Re:Tons of choice by Capsaicin · · Score: 1
      What does "realistically limited" mean?

      Good question.

      E, blackbox, etc

      Haven't blackbox, but E is a Window Manager, not a Desktop Manager.

      If you really are all about the highly-configurable do-dad like you say you are ... [Where do I say that?!] ... you needn't concern yourself with the choices they make for defaults.

      If we were merely talking about defaults there would be no problem at all. Gnome have decided to make Gnome 2 much more simple and elegant. Great! I agree with the approach, cut out the cruft, keep it simple, don't confuse the user -- absolutely. If the 'default' installation is ultra-simple, all the better. What I'm saying is that in taking away from existing users features they like, without in anyway allowing them the option of putting them back, the Gnome Team have made a bad mistake. Arguably Gnome2 is what Gnome1 should have been, clean, simple, straightfoward. But when you are designing an entirely new system, and when you are upgrading a system that already has an installed user base, different design principles come into play.

      People get pissed off at having stuff taken away from them, much more than the miss stuff they've never had.

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    8. Re:Tons of choice by Furry+Ice · · Score: 1

      The right click is handy when selecting large volumes of text (multiple screenfuls). This is actually very useful, but *very* unintuitive. I used xterm and rxvt for about five years before I learned how to do this. Frankly, I'm with the GNOME team in leaving it out. It's just such awkward behavior and so inconsistent that it doesn't belong. However, I also happen to like it, and for that reason I use xterm instead of gnome-terminal. I don't see why this guy keeps bitching about gnome-terminal instead of just using something else. Just because it's the "standard" doesn't mean you have to use it, as long as you know there's an alternative! The people who don't know that alternatives exist will probably appreciate the consistency of gnome-terminal.

    9. Re:Tons of choice by chefren · · Score: 1
      Ignore user feedback, give the users only what the developers imagine, or have read, they want ... Maybe you should read that book again.


      Did you read it? Did you read Cooper's About Face as well? Cooper advocates good defaults instead of grassroots configurability. The old Gnome 1.4 was cluttered with config options. Is it not an improvment to remove 50% of these for the benefit of 99% of the user base? In the Sawfish vs. Metacity discussion, Metacity got rid of a bunch of useless features and implemented simple, working defaults. The only thing I missed was the dragging across desktops- feature, until I found the "Move to Workspace"- command when right-clicking on the window title bar.

    10. Re:Tons of choice by Idaho · · Score: 1

      Crap, where are my modpoints when I need them.

      Mod this one up, he has a good point, and even if you may not agree with his point, it's well-written and deserves to be read IMO.

      --
      Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
    11. Re:Tons of choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      xfce is a desktop environment like GNOME, but more lightweight. Try it.

      fluxbox is "just" a window manager, but it ain't buttugly like some you might have seen

      IceWM looks okay. Neat panel.

      Sawfish you can run without GNOME, I believe.

      The bitch about GNOME is that it has the cool apps. You're either going to have to find replacements, use outdated stuff, or wait for things to get better in GNOME.

      KDE sure is looking good lately. These days it's faster than GNOME. Less bloated too.

    12. Re:Tons of choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't see why this guy keeps bitching about gnome-terminal instead of just using something else.

      The guy said he was using rxvt now.

  94. Making Nautilus not load on Gnome load by lordcorusa · · Score: 1

    You can tell Nautilus to not draw icons on the desktop. This *appears* to have the effect of making Nautilus not load when Gnome loads. At least, I don't see Nautilus in my process listing, and Gnome does appear to load faster. Now whether you can live w/o desktop icons, that's up to you. Personally, I cannot stand desktop icons so it's great for me.

    --
    The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
  95. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    did they bring back background pixmaps for panel launchers, I know I've missed them personally

  96. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everything moves twords X when KDE and GNOME share (x-dnd, XEmbed, etc) so I would assume that X-MAS will become the default sound server.

    CORBA is the equivilent to dcop. Problem is that dcop is very C++ and non standard oriented. They worked with CORBA at first but didn't like the performance (which is now very fast). I don't think DCOP/KParts and CORBA/Bonobo will ever have a bridge. XEmbed is used for this. It works well. Checkout GAIM from CVS and enable the tray icon plugin. It will show up in both GNOME and KDE's panel. Quite cool.

  97. Binaries for Mandrake 9.0 by Edward+Teach · · Score: 1

    Seems Mandrake is out of the loop on this one. And NO, I DO NOT WANT TO BUILD IT FROM THE SOURCE!

    --

    Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.

    1. Re:Binaries for Mandrake 9.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      well then you are a lazy bastard
      let the source be with you

  98. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I totaly agree, but integration between the two desktops are *hard*. I know that they are trying to work out a common mime type system. I can't speak for kde, but the GNOME system need a complete overhaul. A big bonus would be that apps like mozilla would also use this. Now this would be a great leap. Applictions aren't supposed to handle this, the DE/system is place to have this.

    But look how far they already come:
    * cut and paste
    * dnd
    * icon themes
    * .desktop files
    * common menu
    (from the top of my head)

    However I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for integration between kparts and bonobo that actually works (and works with acceptable performance) since the two are heavily tied to the DE:s. There has been some tries to get this to work, but I can't remember the name of the project. Something like Xparts or something like that.

    Regards,

    Jörgen

  99. Gnome 2.2 Menus by fidget · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes, but the important question is...
    Have they fixed the gnome2 menu customization issues yet?

  100. Suggestion for 2.3: Proof reading. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From the About Gnome Desktop screenshot: "Thanks to our all users and contributors!"

  101. No file open dialog by brunes69 · · Score: 1

    I notice that not a single screenshot shows a file open dialog. Most likely it is because they are still using the piece of crap dialog they havd in 2.0, which was basiclly the piece of crap dialog they had in 1.2 ported to GTK2. I mean seriously guys, Gnome has been around for how many years? And how many times per day to you open or save a file? Let's put some freaking effort into this thing.

    1. Re:No file open dialog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These screenshots are uncoordinated snapshots of user desktops. The users tried to show how "cool" their desktops looks by using non-default backgrounds, styles and colors. None emphasized on showing the new features.

  102. I wasn't certain if this was a troll or not... by Doktor+Memory · · Score: 1
    ...but then I got towards the end and read this:
    you know the good old way having your settings defined with .xdefaults and all nice default configurations are going into /etc/x11/app-defaults/ and so on.
    ...which quickly settled the question: the poster is either a troll or on copious amounts of illegal and dangerous pharmeceuticals. The the X Windows Disaster has a few redeeming qualities, but nobody in their right minds would pine for a return of the .xdefaults/app-defaults/xdrp clusterfuck.

    On the off chance that the poster was serious: nobody is stopping you from running MIT X11R6 and twm. Sounds like you'd be a lot happier that way.
    --

    News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.

    1. Re:I wasn't certain if this was a troll or not... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We all know timecops texts now STFU

    2. Re:I wasn't certain if this was a troll or not... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sucks to be you japfag :) *LwZ*

  103. Kudos to the Gnome development team by symbolic · · Score: 1


    Looks like a great release. I really like the philosophy difference between KDE and Gnome, because it's one way that the two can coexist peacefully, each catering to different kinds of users. It also lends real credence to the notion that competition is good - not just for its own sake, but because each option offers real value. Great work, people.

  104. Re:What's the major diff between 1.4 & 2.x? by bockman · · Score: 2, Informative
    Go read Gnome techical docs. Gnome apps communicate among them using Bonobo, which is a sort of DOM(if you are used to Microsoft stuff) build over CORBA, an industrial standard distributed object-oriented infrastructure (mostly used in Unixland, though you can get some of it also living in Windowsland). OAF IIRC is a sort of 'corba-specific domain name server' : it tells to the different 'clients' which 'server' has implemented the required 'object' and thush can provide the required 'service'.

    AFAIK, this was the case also for gnome 1.4 and maybe in gnome 1.2. The funny-looking file names maybe were placed in a different place: try looking in your ~/.gnome* directories.

    The main difference between 1.4 and 2.x is IMO the user target: 1.4 was a nice tool to hack a very customised desktop on your PC. With 2.x, they try to reach the standard computer users, hiding away most of the options and implementing the hints of some 'usability studies' they have done with Sun (of which the 'Action' menu is I think a result).

    --
    Ciao

    ----

    FB

  105. The Action menu is a Good Thing ... by bockman · · Score: 1
    ... especially for newbie and especially for LInux, where you usually have a lot of choice to do the same thing.

    They could even go further and remove altogether the indipended Application menu, structuring the main menu in a way like this:
    I want to/write a document/with abiword
    I want to/write a document/with openoffice
    I want to/write a document/with openoffice
    I want to/ listen to music/with xmms
    I want to/listen to music/with whatever

    Each application sould register itsel on the proper I want to. And of course there should be a easy way to make a default for each (las used, maybe?).

    --
    Ciao

    ----

    FB

    1. Re:The Action menu is a Good Thing ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that would be great!
      so simple and usefull just like a new open file dialog =]

  106. It's OK ! (Re:hrm....) by The+J+Kid · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    You can laugh at this joke!
    Here's why:

    It's Thursday, so we like video games -> we like Blizzard. But it's February, so this is not funny. And the day of the week is even, so we're supposed to not bash Sony and Blizzard. But it was posted AFTER dark, so it's ok to laugh.

    Easy enough when u get you're head around it.

    --
    Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
  107. build order by fuckeverything · · Score: 1

    does anyone have the build order for all the sorce files? i never quite figuered that one out and the one on the gnome page seems to be badly out of date.

  108. Slackware users. by 13Echo · · Score: 1

    Slackware users: Todd, of http://www.dropline.net announced on the message boards that this would be available this weekend.

    If you use Slackware 8.1, and haven't tried Dropline, then I suggest that you give it a shot. It's a simple, ncurses-based installation, that uses wget to download precompiled Slackware Gnome 2.x packages from Sourceforge. I use it at home, and work. And a friend (that used to run Windows) is hooked on it too. It's very well done.

  109. a hreffed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  110. Nautilus still buggy??? by xjerky · · Score: 1


    I just compiled the Garnome distribution of 2.2 and I see that Nautilus STILL fails to auto-update its contents. In Konqueror when I run 'touch blah' in a terminal, 'blah' immediately appears. Not so with Nautilus. If it's already open, you need to hit the "Reload" button. Is there a fix for this?

    --
    A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
    1. Re:Nautilus still buggy??? by Snorp · · Score: 1

      You need the FAM development packages installed when you compile gnome-vfs, otherwise there is no monitoring support.

  111. You need to have libfam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You need to be running Fam, the filesystem monitor, and have the fam development libraries installed when you compile nautilus.

  112. Re:Woohoo! More Gnome than you can shake a stick a by Roberto · · Score: 1

    Uh, dude, you can use dcop from freaking shell scripts. And I am not joking. That is not C++ specific at all.

  113. Last Post! by alpg · · Score: 0

    The Commandments of the EE:

    (9) Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
    commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
    frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages.
    (10) Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
    written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
    and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
    thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician.
    (11) When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
    unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket. Better
    that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
    experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
    innocent-seeming device.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...