Posted by
michael
on from the world-outside-KDE dept.
JanneM writes "Gnome 2.4 is arriving early september. Sayamindu Dasgupta has installed the 2.3.5 development release to see what's in store, and has written a very nice overview of the upcoming release."Update: 08/14 16:06 GMT by M: The author has provided a mirror.
401 comments
The SCO shark
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0, Funny
A new OSS/etc product or update? The SCO shark smells blood in the water, and swims in for the kill once again....
The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
heironymouscoward
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· Score: 5, Funny
Is the "typing break". I can sit back in my chair, hands on my head, and when the PHB asks why I'm not working, I just say "Gnome Typing Break" and he says "Uh-hu" and goes away. Totally excellent.
--
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Re:The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
dspfreak
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· Score: 1
Hell, if I work for a long enough continuous stretch to actually get Gnome to tell me to take a typing break, it's nap time!
-- "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." -- G. K. Chesterton
Re:The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What's a Gnome Typing Break?
Re:The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
Paul+d'Aoust
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· Score: 1
funky little program that tries to prevent RMI by reminding you to take breaks at different intervals. I think it's part of the GNOME system as opposed to an add-on.
I could only find this link: http://www.gnome.org/learn/users-guide/2.4/user-gu ide.html#goscustdesk-86
-- Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Re:The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
hey
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· Score: 3, Funny
I don't think its trying to prevent RMI (Remote Method Invocation)... Maybe RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) ???
Re:The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0, Funny
WHo needs "Gnome Typing Break"? Christ, with the speed of GNOME/Linux on an Intel compared to a real computer like a G5, you'll just have to point to the high CPU load as you try to type into your word processor and your boss will nod knowingly. Fricken amateur programmers.
Re:The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The "M" is for "motion".
Re:The best function in Gnome 2.4...
by
krappie
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
heh.. i like that reference to a 'real computer' like a G5.
Lets take a look at what pricewatch has to say.
Hmm.. the cheapest G5 I can find is the low low price of $1900!
Now, lets see what kind of PC processor power I can buy with $1900.
Oh look.. $1057 Opteron 246 with cpu, fan
And for only a little more, I can get a dual motherboard, and another cpu at: $799 - Opteron 246
Yeah... I know how slow gnome goes on the highest end dual opteron processors!!!
not flamebait
Does it fix any of those annoying problems in the current versions like:
Nautilus takes an ungodly amount of memory to run
It can't seem to associate file type with applications consistently
It has that annoying "feature" where any time I insert removable media, it opens a window of the media automatically. (I was going to bitch about it mounting automatically, as well, but I suspect that's RH's doing, there: god, sometimes I want to dd, you know)
You close it and it still takes up the same ungodly amount of memory. If I want that kind of behavior, I'll look for it in Windows, thank you.
* It does take up less, I believe (not having done any formal comparison).
* I have never seen that problem; maybe time for a bug report?
* That is Redhat, and can be turned off. Go to "Preferences" -> "CD properties".
* It won't really release all memory until you _really_ close it - as long as you want it to handle your desktop it is still running. Oh, and just like all other Linux apps, releasing memory doesn't actually release the memory as such; the pages are kept around as long as nothing else needs it, and they are still mapped to the app as long as the app is running. Looking at RSS gives you a sort-of reasonable estimate on the memory use, but it too (if I am correct) will overestimate memory use.
-- Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Re:Nautilus?
by
BladeMelbourne
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I use RedHat 9 and GNOME - and I find that the used RAM slowly creeps up whilst using Nautilus. Now that I have 576 MB it takes a while, but it is still annoying. It would be great if this was resolved in GNOME 2.4.
Used RAM also increases (at a reduced rate) when I use a lighter file manager. The only way to reclaim that memory is to restart X. Maybe XFree86 4.3.0 has a memory leek in RedHat 9 too?
FYI the amount of RAM doesn't increase like that in my Windows 98, which is also immune to the Blaster Worm.
Well, it does a lot of stuff... you might not use it all, but it's there.
It can't seem to associate file type with applications consistently
This is somewhat confusing, but I found in RH9 and Ximian's XD2, a lot of things are associated correctly from the get-go.
It has that annoying "feature" where any time I insert removable media, it opens a window of the media automatically. (I was going to bitch about it mounting automatically, as well, but I suspect that's RH's doing, there: god, sometimes I want to dd, you know)
RTFM? Try "gnome-cd-properties". This isn't nautilus' fault in the first place.
You close it and it still takes up the same ungodly amount of memory. If I want that kind of behavior, I'll look for it in Windows, thank you.
Then you haven't really closed it now, have you? What do you think is managing your desktop? If you don't like it, there's always KDE, or TWM if you'd prefer...
If I had to posit a reason for Nautilus using so much RAM, folder caching would probably be the reason. Nautilus devs can correct me on that one, but it seems like folders I've opened before open much more quickly than new ones. Fixing your memory "problem" would probably knock down the speed of Nautilus tremendously. Buy some more RAM and get on with life.
No idea what the problem with file association is. I've just never had an issue with it (and rather like the way Nautilus gives you a menu of programs to try with a right-click). If you're setting new associations, read the choices carefully, as some similar sounding ones do different things.
You do realize that the _desktop_ is controlled by Nautilus, and thus you really can't close it without killing it, right?
-Erwos
-- Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Re:Nautilus?
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 4, Insightful
1) Not sure about memory usage, but it has never bothered me. I never look at the memory usage. If it feels fast enough, then that's good enough for me. Besides, no tool reports the right memory usage.
2) The current MIME system is severely broken in many ways. This is more of a gnome-vfs problem. They are currently still working with KDE on a new shared MIME system that's better than the current GNOME and KDE ones.
3) That's a RedHat thing. It doesn't happen on my GNOME desktop. But anyway... but complain about automatic mounting? Everybody else complains about *not* automatic mounting and want drives to work like Windows. Heck, people even call mounting and unmounting a "broken concept".
4) Don't look at the output of top, it's not reliable. And this is a kernel issue, not a Nautilus issue.
Well, it does a lot of stuff... you might not use it all, but it's there.
That's why I went to the less able ROX-filer RTFM? Try "gnome-cd-properties". This isn't nautilus' fault in the first place.
Since I'm not using it in Gnome, I didn't think to read the Gnome pages, but I did read the info on Nautilus Then you haven't really closed it now, have you? What do you think is managing your desktop? If you don't like it, there's always KDE, or TWM if you'd prefer...
Well, I had thought that I was using icewm, and that if I wanted to browse some files, I could use nautilus, but I was wrong. Nautilus takes over the whole desktop, placing icons. Again, the reason I went to ROX, so I didn't have to deal with having some monstrous program taking over my desktop just to browse the filesystem and launch files. Finally:
You haven't really answered my questions, now have you, nor did the article. I am honestly curious. I would like to see a Gnome that is less heavy on resources. Is that happening?
Unfortunately, looking at latest development versions, probably not. I'm a big fan of Gnome, but some apps have not really shown much of an improvement from a user's point of view. Dunno about RedHat, though; I use Dropline Gnome on Slackware.
dude, the solution I came up with is to not run nautilus at all, just the panel in the top. works awesome and makes GNOME2 pretty lightweight.
who the hell wants desktop icons anyway? thats so windoze-ish. panel drawers are your friend.
just do "mv/usr/bin/nautilus/usr/bin/nautilus.inactive" and get rid of the bloat.
ah, and if you need a filemanager, there are ligher ones aroud (gmc from gnome1 does all I need when it comes to filemanagers)
cheers.
--
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
Re:Nautilus?
by
FrostedWheat
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Another thing I find annoying about Nautilus is its lack of feedback when double-clicking on icons.
Sometimes windows can take upto 10 seconds to open on my machine (2Ghz Athlon, go figure), and I find myself clicking on it a few times to make sure I got it, or right clicking and selecting 'Open' - then have three windows appear at once. Very annoying.
Agree completely (although you can run Nautilus without the desktop with "nautilus --no-desktop"). My preferred bloat-free file manager would be XFTree.
Linux caches any amount of free memory. You will recognize the same behaviour with every other Linux app. Thats just normal behaviour. Just dont worry about your gkrellm settings...ignore it;-)
There is an option to turn off nautilus handling of the background. Can't recall it from here, but its there and it makes nautilus MUCH more usable IMO.
And generally killing it doesn't work either, because most gnome configs have nautilus set to respawn!:)
Re:Nautilus?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I don't have any of those problems. Nautilus used to be husge, but now, it's fast and pretty slim. File associations have always worked great for me as well.
The Gnome system monitor does not give an accurate indication of how much RAM is truly in use. Gnome shares memory between apps. If an application requires the memory, later, it will be released. You're most likely just looking at cached memory that hasn't been released.
It's not a problem, technically. People are just paranoid about their memory usage and don't understand how Gnome really makes use of it.
Re:Nautilus?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
nautilus --no-desktop.
try this: nautilus --help [it's very enlightenting!]
I've got a really good filemanager. It does everything I want it to and more, and it only takes up a few KB of memory. It's not entirely intuitive, but once you understand it its a dream to use. It's called ls, along with its friends cp, rm, mv, chmod, chown and a few others.
Honestly, folks, isn't this why we moved to Linux in the first place? To get away from bloat in the name of userfriendliness? What happened to K.I.S.S.? What happened to having one program do one thing? What happened to the Unix Philosophy? Nowadays we have all these Explorer wannabe programs that purport to do everything you want and more all in one program -- and I've tried them all -- and I've never found them to be anything but clumsy, compared to the elegant tools of the old school.
A GUI browser, I can understand completely. Ditto word processor, spreadsheets, etc. But for a filemanager? If you're going to insist on a GUI for that, please don't complain about bloat.
-- Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
Instead of moving the binary, you can just remove Nautilus from your Gnome session by going to Desktop Preferences -> Advanced -> Sessions. Then remove Nautilus from the current session and hit apply. Make sure to save your session when you logout.
Re:Nautilus?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Buy some more RAM and get on with life.
what the hell kind of attitude is that? shouldn't it be a develoment goal to minimize memory footprint? if it's caching, cache size should be configurable, or whatever its doing needs to be optimized such that it doesn't rely on a large cache. why must its data structures be so large as to create such a huge footprint?
i'd expect that kind of attitude from microsoft, but not from *nix developers.
A GUI browser, I can understand completely. Ditto word processor, spreadsheets, etc. But for a filemanager? If you're going to insist on a GUI for that, please don't complain about bloat.
There's nothing inherently wrong with managing files graphically. The ROX-Filer does an excellent job of combining shell-like globbing with click-and-drag ease and is particularly handy for managing images. ROX-Filer is small, doesn't eat up gobs of memory, runs fast and does one job (file managing) well. Nautilus might be prettier, but it needs a lot of improvement in both bloat and actual file managing before I'd use it full-time.
Of course, for any serious heavy-duty data management (e.g. take all the PNGs in directory A, shrink them by 50%, despeckle, convert to JPEGs and move to directory B) a shell will always beat a graphical pointy clicky tool. But I see no reason not to use both and do so on a regular basis.
Its probably in gconf. I couldn't find it the last time I looked for it.
I prefer to have a GNOME/Metacity desktop running KDE on top of it as the icons, backgrounds and extras. What else are my poor 2 Ghz systems going to spend their extra CPU cycles on? I just can't write enough email to justify the power of this system, so I'll put lots of eye candy on the screen and pretend I need it.:)
The ROX-Filer does an excellent job of combining shell-like globbing with click-and-drag ease and is particularly handy for managing images. ROX-Filer is small, doesn't eat up gobs of memory, runs fast and does one job (file managing) well. Nautilus might be prettier, but it needs a lot of improvement in both bloat and actual file managing before I'd use it full-time.
>>What happened to the Unix Philosophy? Nowadays we have all these Explorer wannabe programs that purport to do everything you want and more all in one program
Well, in the real world, where nerds are not the prodominant species, people don't care about phylosophical architectural styles. They care about getting work done, and fast. The computer industry is slowing down because we haven't made the real world any more efficient for a few years at least.
Now, why you should care about file managers:
- Consumer firendly software makes consumers more likely to buy into Linux (duh)
- With consumers, brings money into Linux providers, like distributors, program developers, support, etc..
- With this added revenue in the "Linux Sector", the more likely someone will want more market penetration and continue to make Linux a better place. Now, much of that may be in the brain dead GUI's, but then again, there has too be some trickle down effect into the programs that you use on a daily bases, and I think a few oft posts are ok once and a while for better Linux, don't you?
I'm sure it was said out of frustration but keep in mind that those are the same principles we've loathed in every new OS released by Microsoft?
One of Linux's selling points is its ability to run on older hardware. Suggesting a more lightweight alternative may have been a better approach if you're going for advocacy.
but complain about automatic mounting? Everybody else complains about *not* automatic mounting and want drives to work like Windows. Heck, people even call mounting and unmounting a "broken concept".
Windows has had the concept of "mount" and "umount" since the first day it support CDROMs. But no one ever knew it because the hid the automounting from you. But it was there.
Then came along USB storage devices. Suddenly Microsoft had to bite the bullet and introduce the concept to the user. Plug in a USB disk and it automounts, no problem. Pull it out and you've got problems. Twenty minutes and ten miles later, you realize that your memory stick doesn't have all of the data on it that you copied over. You forgot to umount the device! Which is why Microsoft puts a little icon on the tray and tells you that you have to explicitly unmount it.
And don't even get me started on automatically executing applications on the CDROM! Automatically playing audio CD's is annoying enough, but automatically running software off of foreign media is a security nightmare.
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:Nautilus?
by
TheRaven64
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Here's another one:
Lack of a rootless mode
I run a gnome desktop on a remote machine, posted back to a rootless X server. I would like nautilus to not use the root window, since then it does not have to be displayed. I can killall nautilus, and then it will go away, however whenever I run the nautilus again it respawns in the root window.
Well, he could have said "use blackbox or twm" instead. I expect that there are good reasons why nautilus uses so much ram. (Previews of files would be my guess.) But it would be nice to be able to tell to to "go on a diet". When you first start KDE there's an option to adjust the usage of features based on how fast your CPU is, perhaps something similar based on how sparing you want it to be with RAM should be added. (Yes, this is Gnome, but I don't remember Gnome's first time startup options.)
--
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Amazing. On a P3-650 *laptop*, with 192MB ram, Nautilus opens a folder with about 4,000 files in 4 seconds. Maybe it's time to run a 'ps -ax' and see what the hell you're _really_ doing. Look at 'vmstat', what's your swapped-out?
The Linux kernel allocates more memory for an app than it really needs to run, for efficiency reasons. A lot of memory are just caches and buffers, which are cleared if you run low on memory. Also, the reported memory usage (by any tool) includes shared memory. That's why memory usage *appears* to be high. Also note that high memory usage does not always equal slow. For example, if you're running a video player, and the kernel pre-reads the rest of the video from disk and loads them into memory (thus making memory usage higher), your video will run smoother because RAM is much faster than the harddisk. Linux allocates a lot memory on purpose to make things faster.
What happened to the Unix Philosophy? Nowadays we have all these Explorer wannabe programs that purport to do everything you want and more all in one program
Well, in the real world, where nerds are not the prodominant species, people don't care about phylosophical architectural styles. They care about getting work done, and fast.
Interestingly, in the recent KDE usability study the overintegration of Windows Explorer, especially integrating CD burning in it instead of having a separate UI for it in Windows XP, proved to be quite a problem. The "philosophical architectural style" of one tool for one job seems to match user expectations quite well usually.
Top (and ps and anything that uses the standard psacct method of getting process information) reports a program's memory usage as all the memory it has mapped. For one thing, in a heavily multithreaded app like nautilus, each thread looks like it has its own memory map. Too bad they all actually share every bit of memory. Second, some pieces of read only memory are mapped to multiple processes, most notably libraries. When a program loads a shared library it maps it as read only memory. But since read only memory isn't going to change, the next program that uses that library just has that same block of memory added to its memory map. And gnome has a ton of libraries. Most apps only use one or two, but nautilus makes heavy use of almost all. So its sharing a bit of memory with all the gnome apps on your system. Combine that with the fact that it probably speeds up its graphics by using alot of X11 shm pixmaps (blocks of memory shared between an app and the X server, to speed up communication) you've got even more memory showing up in two places (not so coincidentally, this is one of the main reasons everyone thinks X is bloated. It's actually sharing lots of memory with every app using it). Altogether, top just isn't all that accurate when it comes to memory usage.
One of Linux's selling points is its ability to run on older hardware. Suggesting a more lightweight alternative may have been a better approach if you're going for advocacy.
If the original poster wasn't bright enough to find an alternative and was instead bitching about Nautilus, I don't see the problem. Why must we keep coddling people? GNOME is not the beginning, end, and the entire world of desktop environments outside of Windows and MacOS. If one is going for Linux, FreeBSD (yes, there are other UNIXish systems other than Linux!:-P) or whatever and just wants to sit around bitching about filemanagers, they're 1.) not terribly bright and 2.) wasting both our and their own time.
-- Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
And mine is currently using 25MB and 25% CPU (on a dual Athlon 2200, no less), with no windows open, just the desktop.
-- It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Nautilus?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Are you easily amused? If so, try this:
- create a folder with lots of files. A couple thousand will usually do. They can be all in one folder, or in several, doesn't matter too much. - delete it (with shift-delete to bypass the trash can). - have fun:)
Used RAM also increases (at a reduced rate) when I use a lighter file manager
To which file manager are you referring? I can't say I've ever noticed any problems with ROX which is one of the lightest *usable* filemanagers I've seen... (not that I pay much attention to memory since I've never, ever run out of it with 512Mb - if you've got problems with 576Mb I hate to think what you're using it for!!)
FYI the amount of RAM doesn't increase like that in my Windows 98, which is also immune to the Blaster Worm.
Ah, yes, but Win98 doesn't need the Blaster Worm - it manages to crash routinely all by itself!:)
I would like to see a Gnome that is less heavy on resources. Is that happening?
Yeah, and it's called IceWM + ROX, as you've already found out:) Personally I consider that to be a far better combination as a desktop user interface than Gnome + Nautilus - especially since Gnome started using things like gconfd which is - AFAICS - little more than the hideous Microsoft Registry reborn into the OSS world:(
BTW - you can get ROX to manage your desktop icons as well, you know - use the -p=(pinboard) option.
Look, there's bloat, and then there's need. I'm not saying Nautilus has no bloat, but you can't ask for the latest and greatest to run like the wind on 3 year old hardware.
What's the point of having more RAM if you can't put it to use? The state of the art will never advance unless you can put that shiny new hardware to use.
And, let's not take this all out of context - we're talking about 25mb of RAM here, max. "Obscene" was a foolish way to describe that usage - Nautilus does quite a bit more than Win98's file manager ever did, and expecting it to use the same amount of memory is silly.
-Erwos
-- Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Re:Nautilus?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hey I like the command line too, but I have a great use for a gui file managers. When I look at my rather large collection of, uh, *pictures* it's nice to have lots of thumbnails. This is really nice feature, *especially* for lonely geeks for who the command line was a cool reason to switch to linux. The sad thing is, this post is absolutely factual. *sigh*. hmmm. I'm still trying to decide if self-deprecation qualifies for flamebait. oh well
But for a filemanager? If you're going to insist on a GUI for that, please don't complain about bloat.
When I'm working with a colleague behind my PC, I often fire up GNOME Commander (not Nautilus, because I found it to be lacking). This looks more like their Windows boxes and they can more easily follow what I'm doing.
Also, sometimes you want to eyeball a directory tree. You could use tree for this, but it's not as handy.
-- 8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Well I didn't move to Linux just to use a command line, but one of my biggest annoyances with Windows is the lack of a good command line by default. I remember becoming Windows unfriendly when Win95 crippled my DOS prompt. Yes I know it was still possible to do everything you could before (run 4dos etc.) I just didn't know how at the time.
Re:Nautilus?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
but complain about automatic mounting? Everybody else complains about *not* automatic mounting and want drives to work like Windows. Heck, people even call mounting and unmounting a "broken concept".
(the rambling rant continues.., bear with me. I hope all this is taken as constructive criticism)
I don't really care what those people call it or complain about. The concept isn't all bad -- Macs seem to deal with it ok without getting too in your face.
Again, power users and control freaks abound. They are your core constituency. Dont' piss them off. They all will walk away. Quickly. What's the fastest growning distro? Gentoo. 'nuff said.
Personally, I want to control my mounts & umounts. I want to control what my computer is doing. That's why I use linux for Bob's sake.
I don't like auto-eject as my Dell is designed poorly and the CD-tray opens and rides up over my keyboard.. which isn't good for it.
I don't like auto-mount & umount -- actually auto-mount is ok, just not the Nautilus assuming I want a big kludgy icon and window popping up in my face. Can't click the "x" fast enough. PITA.
Auto-umount freaks me out. Did it sync?? Too much time using Windows I guess to ever trust a window manager again, but from what I've read and seen, I think the new Gnome cares more about matching KDE candy for candy as priority one, stability a far second, and graceful consise power a distant third. And that just sucks.
I really don't want to have to use xsetroot & rxvt for everything, but it's heading that way at this pace.
I like the idea of one tool box (ie Nautilus) and multiple tools in that box (ie cd burner, web browser, image viewer, etc...) with components you still end up with one basic program that does everthing it just makes sure it flows easier. I just noticed yesterday that Galeon and Nautilus, ui wise, look almost exactly the same. Why doesn't Nautilus just have a galeon mode, from a component, that makes for one less primary window to create.
-- Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I have to admit, though, before launch feedback appeared in KDE, I got used to glancing at the HDD activity light to see if my app was launching. I still tend to do that rather than check the feedback icon in KasBar.
(Lack of an HDD activity light is one of my G4 Mac's bigger irritants....)
Yes it's there but 4dos which I mentioned had auto-complete, command history, better directory listings etc. I just could not figure out how to configure it at that time so I was stuck with the idiotic CLI without even command history. What annoued me was the "It's there but we don't want you to use it" mentality.
What [annoyed] me was the "It's there but we don't want you to use it" mentality.
That's MS's take on the command line, in a nutshell.
I'm interested in "4dos"--got a link?
slashdotted
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Informative
What's coming up in GNOME 2.4 - a look at GNOME 2.3:: What's Changed
Having nothing better to do (and wanting to do a bit of testing on the
localization stuff we are working on), I decided to download the latest beta of GNOME - GNOME 2.3.5 (Jebe) . Since the RC
release freeze is imminent, and the feature freeze is already in place, the
system that I am running currently will not be significantly different from GNOME 2.4, when it is released on September.
In this article, I would be briefly describing the new features and applications of GNOME 2.4. However, I would
concentrate mainly on the packages in the core GNOME system, and will not be going beyond those.
Installing the packages (WARNING: slightly hairy)
To GARNOME or not...
I had heard that installing the GNOME packages in the right order could be a tricky process, and I was looking at
GARNOME and other tools for an easy way out. However, after some poking
around, I decided to do the install by hand. This decision was largely prompted by
this document, and I am really grateful to its author.
The system
The usual convention before doing a description of any large scale installation process is to give a short summary of
the specs of the machine in question, and so, without much ado, here it is:
Processor: 700 Mhz Pentium III RAM: 192 MB Swap: 250 MB OS: Redhat Linux 9.0 (Shrike) Kernel: 2.6.0-test2
It is obvious that this is not a very modern machine, but such boxes are quite common in where I live (India).
The installation
Most of the files needed for compile and install are downloadable from the directory
ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/2.3/2.3.5/sources/.
There are also a few "extras" which are usually included in stock "development machine" installations, like the Docbook
4.1.2 DTDs, etc. If you don't have them, the./configure script will complain, and you will find them in your
distro CDs.
I did not download the gtk2, the glib2 and the pango packages. More or less up to date GTK2 and glib2 are already included in
RH 9.0 and I usually keep in sync with the Pango development process through CVS (I have to keep track of certain outstanding
bugs in Pango w.r.t bengali rendering). If you follow these steps, please ensure that you have the devel packages installed
as well.
To avoid a mess, I had decided to install the new GNOME packages under/opt. That meant that the new
libraries and the header files would be installed in/opt/lib and/opt/include. So, I had to
set the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH to/opt/lib/pkg-config (by issuing
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/lib/pkg-config) so the pkg-config utility searched/opt/lib/pkg-config before the usual/usr/lib/pkg-config. I had also added the line/opt/lib
to the file/etc/ld.so.conf. Moreover, the usual./configure was replaced by./configure --prefix=/opt so the installation folder was/opt.
I followed the following sequence while installing packages. It works for me, and it may or may not work for you.
I've always wondered something. When you choose to use/opt how do you recommend the filesystem be partitioned? Some people like to make a small / filesystem and keep/var and/usr separate. Do you also recommend having a/opt. Or should the / filesystem be increased in size to support the extra apps? Or should there be a symbolic link from/opt to/usr/opt? Or should we just have one large filesystem like windows?
Re:slashdotted
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Actually, he was right... Kinda. KeithP pulled some of the depth switching code from the extension, since they felt that the need for it wasn't there. Most graphics cards of today have the available onboard memory to do pseudo-color changing on the fly, therefore negating the need to have a physical switch.
The initial stuff is (was) in the code, but it didn't make the cut to the official, final release. If anyone "assumes" that RandR supports depth switching, it's because it did. However, it's a waste of resources to keep it in there.
It may be reimplemented in the future, or as simple hack could renable this part of the extension. Then again, it may not. It's not as useful as people think that it is.
Cookie for him.
Re:slashdotted
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Keith and Jim removed color switching right before the 1.0 release.
Well, it's been said by the developers that the spec does support bit-depth switching. If it is an issue later on, it's easy to put it back in (according to Keith Packard). When I said that color depth is supported, I merely meant that it was included in the specs.
The extension does support it (allegedly). It's just not implemented at the moment.
i really don't understand the point in having separate partitions when using a stable, journalled filesystem; unless those partitions are on multiple physical disks.
if you keep/home on a separate partition, you redo the OS (/,/var) and apps (/usr or/usr/local/ and/opt) without having to backup/restore/home afterwards. Also, it's nice to be able to dedicate a certain fraction of the drive to a specific function . If you have it all on one partition, you may not have enought space for/var or/tmp because you installed too many applications. For a personal system, or a single user desktop, there's really not much point. But on a multi-user server, it can be extremely handy to dedicate portions of the disk to certain logical functions.
What's with the gum-drops on the right hand side of the title bar? Is this like OS X for left-handed people?
Re:Backwards land....
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Yeah, there are a lot of Aqua-like themes running around. Here's how to move the gumdrops to the left: Run gconf-editor and go to/apps/metacity/general and change "button_layout" from "menu:minimize,maximize,close" to "close,minimize,maximize:menu"
(Back on topic: Will Gnome 2.4 provide a nicer user interface for changing this? Maybe Metacity themes will be able to include a specification?)
Some of the themes map the order of the colors to the order of Gnome's typical layout (minimize=green maximize=yellow close=red). Others map the function of the colors based on OS X (minimize=yellow maximize=green close=red). You want one that does the latter.
> Run gconf-editor and go to/apps/metacity/general and change "button_layout" from "menu:minimize,maximize,close" to "close,minimize,maximize:menu"
THANK YOU!
One of my all time dislikes with Metacity has been the absolutely braindead window gadget placement (the almighty "close" to the right and near other gadgets, yeah, great thinking Bubba, if Windows does it it must be good...), and that there seemingly was no way to change this.
<sarcasm> Aren't we lucky that, in the name of user friendlyness, this has been made so easy as to open a bloody registry editor and edit keys? </sarcasm>
I know this has been done to death, but there is no comparison between the hell that is windows registry and gconf.
In gconf-editor, everything is nicely laid out by app and is self documenting (especially this example)
The typing break
by
OfficerNoGun
·
· Score: 2, Funny
...sounds like an amazing idea, not just for my hands but for my sanity. If I didn't spend 10 minutes an hour meandering arround the office I would probably go insane.
Re:The typing break
by
govtcheez
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· Score: 0, Troll
That's why every 15 minutes or so, I retreat to the bathroom to spray my manchowder all over the walls. The pressure really gets to you.
Re:The typing break
by
Anders
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If I didn't spend 10 minutes an hour meandering arround the office I would probably go insane.
I am not sure why this is funny. It really is a good idea with typing breaks, and of course you can do other work while not typing.
The tool Xwrits may be of use for people interested in this item but not prepared for the entire GNOME upgrade shebang. It must be cool, JWZ uses it (and so do I).
The tool Xwrits may be of use for people interested in this item
Let me second that; Xwrits is a great tool! I use it like this: xwrits typetime=15 breaktime=1 ready-picture=$HOME/bin/xwrits/continue.gif warning-picture=$HOME/bin/xwrits/pause.gif rest-picture=$HOME/bin/xwrits/pause.gif +top +mouse after=2 &
Typetime and breaktime speak for itself; it pops up after every 15 mins of work (subtracting time you're not mousing or typing) and then displays the warning picture for 1 minute. For continue and pause pictures, I have a plain red and green GIF, because I think the original gifs look funny.
-- 8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Workrave is also a good alternative. For some reason xwrits doesn't really work with my chosen window manager, Ion -- it doesn't force breaks properly. So I tried workrave, and have not looked back since.
-- HAND.
On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
CowsAnonymous
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From the article:
> The most significant addition to the Control Center > is a utility for changing the screen resolution and > refresh rate on the fly.
This will probably be my fav. It's tough to look "kewl" with Linux when I need to exit the GUI just to change the resolution. Then again, going into that console screen does impress chicks...:0)
You must not know many real chicks, if console impresses them.
You fool!
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
One thing I don't understand is why everybody wants to change resolution on-the-fly. Do you change your resolution every hour or something? Everybody I know just set their resolution *once* and never look back again.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
myspys
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· Score: 2, Insightful
i'm guessing quite a few webdevelopers change from their normal resolution to 800x600 once in a while to make sure that their newly created webpage/site works in 800x600
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
bmj
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Often, if I have to switch hats from programmer to designer (part of the job description when you work at a small shop) that I'll crank up the resolution to fit more stuff on the screen. Once I'm finished and get back to coding, I'll reduce the resolution again so I don't go blind. So, it'd be nice if I didn't have to restart X to do that.
-- Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
mrd_yaddayadda
·
· Score: 2
If you are ever developing for the web you should really be testing your site in multiple browsers/OSes and multiple screen resolutions. That is one off the top of the head actual 'techie' reason for it.
The other more important one for me is because it's convenient! It's been one of the most glaringly horrible things about Linux GUIs for me. I'm glad someone is finally addressing it.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
LordDartan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It also comes in handy when you and your significant other use the same computer but like different resolutions. My wife likes 800x600 and I like 1280x1024. This is one of the main reasons my wife hates using linux.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
danme
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· Score: 1
Slightly off-topic, but the previous post reminds me of the following. (The following has been posted by someone on/. before, don't remember who).
Subject: "It's not the size of the CRT that matters...it's the resolution of the image!"
Tell that to some of the people in my company.
User is still using one of the older monitors (15" Trinitron tubes) and made a requisition, complaining for a better monitor. Well, they clamored enough for a while we were told to give her a 19". I set it up during her lunch, and set it to 1024x768.
I thought I was being very conservative with that resolution, because everyone seems to complain about their eyesight.
Next day I walked by it and she apparently set it to 640x480 with large icon and large fonts. She wears glasses too...
(She sure needed the tool for changing resolution.../danme)
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
No, we just have handy bookmarklets that resize our browsers to be 800x600.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
stefanvt
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· Score: 1
Wouldn't it be much much simpler just resizing the browser window to 800x600? That's the way I do it...
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
CommandNotFound
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· Score: 1
Often, if I have to switch hats from programmer to designer
Why not set up a separate user on your system for this, with different desktop settings, resolutions, etc. Even different video drivers. I do this at home to play games. I have a "gamer" user that launches XFree86 like this:
startx -- --xf86config XF86Config.gamer
The XF86Config.gamer file is in/etc/X11. I used this so I could use the fast-but-less-stable NVidia video drivers for games, but still use the stable stock drivers for "business" use. The NVidia drivers are now stable enough for both uses, but I still use the separate user because it has no bloated desktop system to steal memory away from games. You can even launch X into another virtual desktop and switch between screens with Alt-F7/F8. Keep in mind though that the second user to log in will not have rights to the audio device and other console devices.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 1
I just resize my browser window. Nothing to it.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
MirthScout
·
· Score: 1
For most people you would be right. But not everyone sits in front of the machine to use its graphics.
I have several systems that are used to draw displays for simulators. They are set up to autologin to a restricted account and start a program (as session manager) that waits for the simulator software to connect and tell it which display to draw. The video from these systems goes through switches so it can be displayed on different devices (in different cockpits).
Being able to change the resolution without restarting X is fantastic for this situation.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
3h
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· Score: 2, Informative
ctrl+alt+grey + ctrl+alt+grey - anyone? Faster, easier and X has it for looong time.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
_xeno_
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· Score: 1
I change my resolution rather frequently on my work laptop - when it's docked, it's connected to a 1280x1024 LCD screen, but when using its display the resolution needs to be 1600x1200.
Windows XP used to handle this automatically, but it keeps on getting more and more angry at the dock - I can no longer boot into the dock and now I have to explicitly change the resolution when docking. It's quite annoying. I'd imagine other people have similar scenarios when the resolution needs to be changed. (Another less frequent example is when connecting to an LCD projector, which frequently have yet another resolution requirement.)
The bottom line is that it's a good feature to have, because there are scenarios where changing the resolution is needed and there's no good reason why it should require restarting X or manually editting a configuration file. (And ALT +/- don't always cut it if you also need to change the refresh rate, like when going from a 75Hz CRT monitor to a 60Hz LCD projector.)
-- You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
JanneM
·
· Score: 1
Heh. I run on a hi-res laptop (1400x1050), so changing resolutions is not really a solution (tends to blur the image, as it needs to interpolate). Just upping the default text size works fine for me, though.
-- Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Erik+Hensema
·
· Score: 2
You probably never have your parents over for a visit. Well, I do. And my parents can't read fonts at 1600x1200, so I switch back to 1280x1024.
On a very simple, very basic, single user setup you never have to change the resolution. But Linux is multiuser. And multiple users have multiple preferences.
--
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
coolfrood
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· Score: 1
Though it certainly hasn't been this cool, there has always been an option to switch resolutions on the fly with Ctrl-Alt-+ and Ctrl-Alt--. It used to be quite a well known thing, but I guess it faded into obscurity. The only thing that you need to get this feature is to make sure you configure multiple resolutions while setting up X. While you cannot see the resolution you are running on (xdpyinfo will do that?), visually you can easily switch to the resolution you are comfortable with by cycling through the available modes.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
sholden
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Have you thought of using bigger fonts?
You know, like everyone else does who uses high resolutions.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
LWATCDR
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· Score: 1
"Once I'm finished and get back to coding, I'll reduce the resolution again so I don't go blind. " Why don't you just use a bigger font when programing. The text will be cleaner and you will not have to switch. The one thing that could be an issue is if you can not get a high enough refresh rate at high resolution.
-- See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
wyndigo
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
umm. ctrl-alt-(+|-) are your friend. Unless you secretly like leaving X to change resolutions.
--wyn
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
larien
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· Score: 3, Insightful
In my case, I sometimes change resolution for streaming videos. The image is usually small (especially for some movie trailers) and even at double size, it's quite small in terms of screen real-estate under 1280x1024. Decreasing resolution to 800x600 usually lets it fill the screen much better.
No, "full screen" mode is not an option in most cases as the scaling usually makes the image look, well, wrong. Also, not all players provide such an option, especially embedded players in browsers (some don't even allow double size).
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Cat_Byte
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· Score: 1
Not every hour but every time I want to watch a DVD in fullscreen I do. Also when I"m showing someone something and they're squinting at my 1280x1024 resolution I just CTRL-ALT-minus when I'm in KDE to change resolutions on the fly. It's really quite handy for some people.
-- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Mr_Icon
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
One thing I don't understand is why everybody wants to change resolution on-the-fly. Do you change your resolution every hour or something? Everybody I know just set their resolution *once* and never look back again.
If you have over a 100 gnome desktops in your department, you don't want to field "can you please change my resolution" requests from your users, trust me.
-- If you open yourself to the foo,
You and foo become one.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Is your wife retarded or something? NOBODY uses 800x600 anymore other than the AOL Windows XP tards.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
13Echo
·
· Score: 1
You can set up seperate.bashrc files in each users' directory to start X at a specific resolution.
Here's an example, but you can do it different ways as well.
http://lists.q-linux.com/pipermail/plug/2003-Jan ua ry/024345.html
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Nicolay77
·
· Score: 1
Its not that, is that you can test some resolution and fallback to the working one if the tested doesnt work, and doing it in just a matter of seconds, like in windows. Not backing up your config, change params in the config file, fire up xfree which takes ages, rinse and repeat which takes even longer and is boring to have to worry about all that little details if a much better alternative exists.
-- We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
mr_nba
·
· Score: 1
i'm guessing quite a few webdevelopers change from their normal resolution to 800x600 once in a while to make sure that their newly created webpage/site works in 800x600
Why don't they just resize their browser window?
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
ibintegra
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· Score: 1
It's more about the ability rather than frequency.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Is your wife blind?
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
znaps
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· Score: 1
Why don't said web developers just resize their browser windows to said dimensions?
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
GrenDel+Fuego
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· Score: 1
I support linux desktops for a rather large group of people. The machines are shared, and often are often used by multiple people from day to day.
Currently, I have to limit the resolution to 1280x1024 on those machines. Anything higher than that, and a portion of the people have trouble reading the screen.
I personally run at 1600x1200 so I can fit more on the screen. Some people like lower resolutions. Now I can setup a single desktop machine that can do any resolution, and will in fact automatically save the users preferences.
And yes, I realize that X supported changing the resolutions previously, but I don't know many people who like dealing with a virtual desktop larger than the actual resolution of the screen. Being able to automatically resize the desktop with the resolution is something I've been waiting for for a long time.
Look at it this way, it's one less trivial, commonplace GUI feature that every other graphical operating system had that Linux didn't.
I often switch from 32-bit to 16-bit and back again in Windows, for various reasons. Now doing so in Linux won't be a hassle.
-- "Sufferin' succotash."
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
thimo
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Just type "javascript:resizeTo(800,600)" in the URL bar.
Thimo
-- Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
LordDartan
·
· Score: 1
That does look like a good way to handle that. Is there a way to do that if you're using gdm? (another pet peeve my wife has is having to type startx after logging in, hence the gdm, guess I should consider myself lucky she's willing to even log in!)
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
miguel
·
· Score: 1
Projectors are usually a source of pain in Linux. I typically run my laptop at 1400x1280, some projectors are able to deal with 1024x768, but some others can only cope with 800x600.
Although my IBM laptop is better than the other laptops I had in the past when it comes to having various options on the output, it still falls short sometimes, and the output is chopped on the projectors.
What I do today is I keep 2 XFree config files, and I run a second X server at low-res during presentations, but I would definitely like to avoid this.
Miguel.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Carewolf
·
· Score: 1
I know that is what you ought to do, but frankly I think it looks ugly when the fonts are disproportional large compared to the widgets, and would rather use a smaller resolution than a higher font size.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Contrary to popular belief... It does work in some odd and tricky ways... of course I wont work if you make them come to watch you change resolutions killing X, and restarting it, but when the girls happend to be around and see it they'll think you're really smart and girls like smart men (although not geeky guys)... but be wary if you try this twice or more on the same chick as she'll get so bored, she will diss you on the fly.
This is so offtopic, I'd better post anonymously.
You can mod me down now (haha this usually works and gets you modded up, lets see)
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
sholden
·
· Score: 1
Why would there be anything but text on the screen when you are coding?
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
13Echo
·
· Score: 1
I thought about this one for a minute, and then came up with a solution. It's actually pretty simple. I just tested this on my machine and it worked great.
You need to have a version of XFree86 that supports RandR, of course. I'm using 4.3 right now. If you have 4.3, then you're good to go. This was tested with GDM.
Test this first, by opening a console (while in X). Type "xrandr -s 800x600". If it works, then you're in luck. You can change it back to your standard resolution.
Next, open up your Gnome Control Center. You may be able to quickly do this by typing "preferences:///" in the Nautilus bar. On standard Gnome installs, there is an "Advanced" button. Click that, then select the "Sessions" button. If, for some reason, you can't access it this way (I don't know if other distros change it, but they probably don't), you can just type "gnome-session-properties" from a console and it will do the same thing.
In the sessions box, click on the "startup programs" tab. Hit the "add" button to add the xrandr command.
I used "xrandr -s 800x600" to mine. Now, log out of X. Every time you log back in, it should automatically resize the desktop for the user with this setting. It won't apply it to abyone else. If you ever want to remove this, all you have to do is remove that startup command.
Let me know if it works.;) The results here worked very well.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Hatta
·
· Score: 1
Why not run two instances of X? You can run them on two virtual consoles and switch between them with CTRL-ALT-F#. Start the second server with `startx --:1` It will be bound to the next F# key, F8 for me. Now you don't just get different resolutions, but entirely different desktops and workspaces that can be switched between as needed, and you won't have to worry about messing up her stuff, or vice versa.
-- Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
spinkham
·
· Score: 1
Not true... "You're the biggest nerd in the world." is indeed an impression... Perhaps not the one you wanted to make, but...
-- Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Next day I walked by it and she apparently set it to 640x480 with large icon and large fonts. She wears glasses too...
Dude, that is way fucked up. If these people are running Windows, tell them about the magnifier using Window Key-U.
If using X, tell them about CTRL-ALT-PLUS/MINUS.
No one should have a desktop space limited to 640x480. I occasionally use the X change resolution feature I just mentioned, it works for my purposes.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
Otterley
·
· Score: 1
It's almost a necessity when one is working with laptops and docking stations. The display on a typical laptop has a lower maximum resolution than that of a typical monitor connected to a docking station.
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change
by
nadaou
·
· Score: 1
Usually you can do Ctrl-Alt-Numpad+ and Ctrl-Alt-Numpad- to switch the screen size in X for the last few years. It isn't much good for working, but good for switching to 800x600 for temporary magnification.
in/etc/X11/XF86Config-4, look for the following.
It cycles through the resolutions in the order listed there.
7 comments and already slashdotted. They must be running some new Gnome 2.4 based version of Apache...
"To compete better against Microsoft IIS, we've decided to make a version of Apache, which is completely GUI-based and requires at least Gnome 2.4 to run"
-- “Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
GNOME armageddon
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Troll
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 fo
Re:GNOME armageddon
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Cram-it, weenier-dude. You and your dweebish pals really don't count any more. STOMP - SPLAT -
Re:GNOME armageddon
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Very good text! And lots of informations. Thank you for writing this. I really had no idea where the things were going to.. when I saw gnome2 for the first time I found some things cool (improved over v1.x) but unfortunatelly I also found more things which really made me quit using it (ie. buttons!) I just hoped they'd fix it in the next release... as I understood now they woudn't and even never planned to..
To trolls: you must be f**ing stupid to describe such text - with so many facts as a troll..
GNOME development is slightly disappointing. It's lagging really far behind KDE in terms of eye candy. Although, I must say that gnome seems to be much more consistent than KDE and much easier to use.
Is that a joke? Disappointing because it lags in eye candy even though it is much more consistent and easier to use?
Re:GNOME vs KDE
by
ElGuapoGolf
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I personally don't care about eye candy, but I do think the development is lagging behind.
Example: File Dialog. The Gnome file dialog is the most hideous and counter-intuitive piece of software I've ever seen. With the KDE file dialog, not only can I navigate easier, it's tied to their IO slaves, so I can save to FTP sites, SMB shares, etc. Pretty much anything.
With the GTK/Gnome dialog, I'm usually cursing and grumbling as I clumsily navigate around. And the programs that constantly reset the dialog to your home directory, even after you've called the dialog and navigated a few levels in, are way annoying.
Re:GNOME vs KDE
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I really thought everyone knew by now that the GTK file selection dialog will be replaced in GTK 2.4 (gnome 2.6).
Really people. These bitching about a problem that is known to be solved soon is pretty tiresome.
Re:GNOME vs KDE
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Visual attractiveness is extremely important IMO. It is part of the reason why people enjoy working with, for example, Mac OS X. Is the genie effect useful? Only to show it off to your friends. Remember Enlightenment? Why is it so popular? Because it has the most visual stunning themes, because it is loaded with beautifully animated gauges that monitor your system. Not because it is user friendly. Why on earth would something like gDesklets be headline news on Slashdot? Because it is one of the reasons people switch to Linux.
Re:GNOME vs KDE
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Really? Last I checked there was no easy way to alter the program menus in Gnome, whereas in KDE I just click on the "start" menu, click menu editor, and off I go. I also love the fact that I have to manually scale the icons that (automatically) pop up on my desktop so that they're all the same size. It's so consistent and easy to use.
Re:GNOME vs KDE
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
You know what's really cool about all this grumbling and discussion? As a relatively Linux noob, I LOVE having all these choices, all of these differences to compare. Is KDE or Gnome better, and for what purposes? Oh look, here's a new window manager I wasn't aware of before. Hey! You can take care of that problem by tweaking this conf file! etc. etc.
This is so much fun. Really, my post != sarcasm. For me, Linux has brought fun alive again in my computers. Linux is like getting birthday presents inside of birthday presents every single day. Keep the Open/Free/Libre model alive, everyone. There were many factors which made me want to switch away from Windows, but the most unexpected one which I didn't truly discover until I started using Linux all the time is that all this choice is intoxicating, is so much pleasure.
A year ago, in a computer users group I belong to people were discussing Linux and someone said, "I don't know why anyone would want to use Linux, it's so much work". No one really disagreed with him. A year later, now that I have my Linux sea legs, during a similar discussion I was able to say, "If you like computers...if you like tweaking...if you're an explorer and you like new things...Linux isn't "hard work". Not at all - this is *play*, people! This stuff is FUN"
So go at it with your Gnome vs. KDE, or your "I used to be able to do this with Gnome 2.2, but not with 2.4. To some of us out here, this plethora of choices is what makes this all so enjoyable. I LOVE LINUX!
Re:GNOME vs KDE
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
And both of them are lagging badly behind the GOLD STANDARD operating system interface: Mac OS X. Of course, that is partially the fault of the crappy Linux OS underneath them. For truly hard core computer users, Mac OS X on a G5 is the shiznit. The rest are pretty much just fodder for the ignorant masses.
Eye candy isn't always helpful (witness Windows XP) but sometimes it can be really useful. For example, I've found that the genie effect really does help you keep track of what your windows are doing. Not consciously, but then that's not the point--you shouldn't even have to think about it. "Oh, my window went into the Dock." Same thing with drawers and dialog boxes sliding out everywhere. It's pretty, but you gotta remember there is a reason for it other than aesthetics (which is pretty important by itself).
What's coming up in GNOME 2.4 - a look at GNOME 2.3:: What's New
GNOME 2.4 is going to have a number of cool, new applications. In this section, I am going to describe them. The Browser: Epiphany
One of the most controversial changes in GNOME 2.4 is the dumping of Galeon in favour of Epiphany as the default browser. Epiphany is based on Mozilla, but is much more light and bloat free and features a much, much, much cleaner interface. I have not used Galeon very extensively, but Epiphany has already become my default browser. Startup is much faster than Mozilla, the interface is much more intuitive and clutter free and it merges nicely with the look and feel of the rest of the GNOME environment. The latest versions (0.8.2 and above) also have a extra experimental plugin which allows mouse gestures.
Fig 12. Epiphany - The Brand New GNOME Browser. (Click for a larger view)
It supports popup blocking, tabbed browsing, customizable toolbars, automatic image resizing and all of these, with an extremely simple and clean UI. However, I would like to see the download manager to be a little more advanced (resume support maybe??). The PDF Viewer: GPDF
GPDF has a UI which is similar to GGV (The GNOME Postscript Viewer), and handled PDF files quite well in my system. It is based on xpdf (actually, the "NEWS" file says that it is a port of xpdf to GNOME 2).
Fig 13. GPDF - The GNOME PDF Viewer. (Click for a larger view)
As with most other GNOME applications, I found the interface to be nice an clean, but it seemed to have some issues with regard to embedded fonts. The Character Picker: GUCharmap
This new GNOME Character map is quite a fancy tool - a bit too fancy, IMHO. It has support for all the Unicode Characters, and it seems to have detailed information on each and every character.
Fig 14. GUCharMap Showing Some of the Characters. (Click for a larger view) Fig 15. GUCharMap Showing Details. (Click for a larger view)
The Calculator
The new calculator of GNOME is also quite improved. There is a handy list of commonly used mathematical constants (pi, e, various conversion factors, etc). It has three modes - basic, financial and scientific.
Fig 16. GCalcTool - The GNOME Calculator. (Click for a larger view) GNOME System Tools
In my opinion this is one of the best additions to the GNOME software map in a long time. As the README file says, these tools are designed to make (Unix) system configuration easy for desktop users. They aim for what the README calls "unified system configuration", meaning that the same toolset can be used in different flavours of Unix. This is achieved by splitting each tool into two distinct parts - a frontend written in C/Python and a backend written in Perl. Currently available tools include a Runlevel Admin, a Network Admin (which lets you specify your hostname, samba hostname and workgroup, DNS servers, search domains, hosts, network interfaces, ppp, ethernet, slip and in a limited way, wavelan). Also included are a Time Admin, a User Admin and a Boot Admin. I really liked the interface of each tool, especially the artwork. I think it is a great approach towards making a user friendly set of system configuration tools for the desktop user. Tools provided by the various distros are also great, but since each one has a different interface of its own (and a different set of problems), it becomes difficult for both users and tech support people to handle them.
Fig 17. GNOME System Tools - Boot Admin (Click for a larger view) Fig 18. GNOME System Tools - Network Admin (Click for a larger view)
More information on GNOME System Tools is available at http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/. The Media Player: Totem
Yes - GNOME now has a media player of its own (though of recent, it has suddenly disappeared from the module listing withou any warning). It is called Totem, and currently it is based on a Xine backend. However, from the README, I gathered
I don't care about any new visuals that they've added or performace enhancements. I just want it to be as easy in Gnome to make shortcuts and use the quick launch bar (Gnomes version of it) and manage display settings as it is in KDE 3 and Windows insert any version greater then Windows NT 4 here.
I am not a Gnome basher, frankly I find it humurous that people would bicker over desktops. But, I am forced to use it from time to time, so I would it to be at least as good as KDE.
I don't care about any new visuals that they've added or performace enhancements. I just want it to be as easy in Gnome to make shortcuts and use the quick launch bar (Gnomes version of it) and manage display settings as it is in KDE 3 and Windows insert any version greater then Windows NT 4 here.
So flame me as being stoopid, but how does one add a quick launcher that runs as root? KDE has a nice little option in the launcher's preferences, but alas, I don't see anything like that in Gnome.
-- Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
No doubt I'll get flamed for getting the command slightly wrong, but I'm going to give it a try anyway (I'm at work right now, and my Linux box is at home).
I completely agree. I prefer KDE for the eye candy and the better usability, but Gnome for the performance. But it would be a huge improvement for Gnome to just improve usability. I think that should be first priority. After all, that's what desktops are all about.
For the few posts I've read, there sure is a lot of complaints along the lines of 'Gnome isn't KDE' and 'Gnome isn't Windows'. Considering Gnome is completely free (both, as of no charge and you can give it to your friends without the hassle of a EULA) the legitimate leeway for such complaints is very small.
If you want to see changes happen, I think first you need to contribute www.gnome.org . You don't have to be a super C programmer; just running the development release and reporting what bugs you find is a great start. If you don't like something you see, report it, with a suggestion of HOW to change it; I guarantee your report will be pushed much higher in the queue of to-do changes than a complaint you can't do anything about. As good as KDE? How? Why? What part of KDE?
I know that they are working on fixing it, but to me when the menu editor is broken, the entire desktop is broken, because I never want the default setup. (I don't change that many things...but the ones I change are important to me.)
This was the issue the cause me to switch back to KDE the last time I tried Gnome. It's silly. I can be using a bunch of Gnome utilities and tools, but I can't use the Gnome desktop because of this minor problem. (Well, I suppose I could figure out how to edit it by hand...probably. But it isn't worth the effort when KDE is so good.) In most ways I find KDE and Gnome to be roughly equivalent in quality. But there are a few things about Gnome that really bother me, and the top one of these is the lack of a decent menu editor. (They used to have one, but it disappeared awhile back.) The other thing was the size of the icons on the desktop. I really prefer relatively small icons (about the twice the size of small on the toolsbar) on the desktop. This may have been fixed. (Well, the menu editor may have been fixed, too, but he didn't mention it.)
OTOH, one can't tell about the size of the desktop icons, because he was using RedHat 9, and that was specially altered in several ways to cause Gnome and KDE to be more similar.
--
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
GNOME 2 does have a menu editor - it's called nautilus. Under Go->Start Here in nautilus there's a directory called 'Applications', which contains a representation of the menu hierarchy. Just drag and drop launchers here to change the menu.
I understand this is disabled in RH9, though, so maybe that's your problem.
I don't quite agree that it's an essential feature of a desktop enviroment, seeing as neither Windows nor OSX has a menu editor, but GNOME 2.4 will have one. As for desktop icons, Nautilus will allow you to resize any icon to your liking (I think there's also a default size preference somewhere, but I've never felt the urge to use it).
-- It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I don't know about OS X, but the Mac used to have a very simple menu editor...if you put something into folder (??which one??), it would show up in the menu. MSWindows (at least 95, which is the one I used) has the same thing. If you put something in the start menu, it shows up in the menu. If you remove it, it's removed.
At all events, I was comparing Gnome against KDE, since that's what I choose between (unless AfterStep is REALLY improved in this latest release).
How some ever: I didn't claim it was essential, merely that it was essential if I were to consider it as a viable desktop choice.
--
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The same thing works in GNOME. If you put something in a folder (somewhere under/usr/share/gnome..., also accessible by applications:// in Nautilus IIRC), it shows up in the menu.
-- It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Somewhere under/usr/share/gnome ?? Ok. I can probably find it then. (They really *ought* to mention this somewhere findable.)
--
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
A fair comparison
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
Last week, I decided to review the new GNOME Linux desktop solution with its competitor and arch rival - Orc Software.
As we all are aware from our years playing AD&D, Gnomes and Orcs are bitter enemies. So, an objective feature-to-feature smackdown of these blood rivals seemed like a good idea.
There's no place like GNOME
First, GNOME. GNOME is a small, diminuitive Linux desktop solution. It has a large, pointy applications menu, is smaller in stature to its OSX and Win2K counterparts in Middle Computing, and has a tendency to wear bright, shiny desktop graphics to contrast against the solemn darkness of the cave-like bedrooms (mainly those of its master, the race of teh l337 g33k) that it is normally found dwelling in. Little known to the races which utilize OSX and Win2K (the race of teh lu53r), GNOME strives to deliver applications hewn from the C-laden rockbed which surrounds it in Linuxia. While these Gnomish applications can seem unweildy to the lu53r races, and lack the physical beauty of their counterparts, GNOME is very proud of its handywork, and is widely celebrated by teh l337 g33k by which it is governed.
Stick a ORC in it
Next, the ORC. Largely unknown to the race of teh l337 g33k is Orc Software. Known for their prowess with gold pieces, Orc inhabits an area in Middle Computing known as Teh W877 Str33t, where it allows its masters to wield a treasure horde like that of a dragon's. ORC, while inhabiting an area of Win2K which is (thankfully) almost completely separated from Linuxia, do on occassion clash across the great superhighway known as teh n3tw0rk. The ORC is prized by its masters of teh w877 str33t for their skill with rare metals. The ORC despise the GNOME - their lack of interest in gold, their subservience to masters other than their own in Win2K... raids are often launched, with bitter, bloody results.
teh Conclusion
Without divulging my own whereabouts and loyalties, I must admit I am faithful to KDE, a rival race to the GNOME. However, as I have more in common with my Gnomish rivals than I do with the ORC, I impart my favor to the GNOME over the ORC. Long live Linuxia! Long live Linuxia!
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
colinleroy
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· Score: 2, Informative
What you describe is needed for an upgrade, not an install. Installing gnome 2 with RH9, for example, is quite as simple as you describe:
Insert Redhat CD, boot, let installation and plug & play take over. It is this easy.
-- blah
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
mao+che+minh
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· Score: 1
That's the price of you pay when you have a community of developers that consists of various groups of like-minded people that all have ther own creative desires and functional wants. Then you add business into the mix, and you get competition.
I wish that there was just one unified desktop project, one window manager, and more emphasis placed on advancing XFree86. We could get a lot farther a lot faster. Just look at Windows. With Windows 95 Microsoft scored a hit. It has only gotten better since than. Gnome and KDE have been at it for years and are barely better then Win95, and still far behind WinXP.
Three major development groups like Red Hat, IBM, and now Novell (with their purchase of Ximian) should get together and form a single, solid desktop group and pour some money into it. Linux would have second place in the desktop war in about a year, instead of three or four (if ever).
Here is Google Cache
by
jvj1
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· Score: 1, Informative
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
sunn
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· Score: 1
The "superior" (I'll leave it to others to decide) media library can be found here, not here.
Re:KDE is WAY ahead!
by
BladeMelbourne
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Version numbers rarely have anything to do with software development progress with respect to competitors software.
If that was the case, is Windows 3.1 more advanced software that a Linux box with kernel 2.6.0-test3?
It is a well known trend that competing software vendors may increase their version increments to appear current with their competitors.
For example, Netscape 6 (as opposed to Netscape 5) was released because MSIE was already at version 6. RedHat 9 came out after RedHat 8 (there was no 8.1) presumably to keep abreast with Mandrake 9.
GNOME is a mature desktop environment. Their software is good enough - their is no need to resort to such version jumping. It suits some people, but not others. My (Red) Hat goes off to them for not needing to keep their versions in sync with KDE.
Mike
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
tomcio.s
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· Score: 1
Yes, but for most systems installing those 60+ packages is a simple one-fell-swoop task.
for rpm systems: rpm-get install gnome, or wait till its part of the install (then you match/better the WinXP install!)
for source: here you are on your own. this will take time, but it will be very satisfying.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
vidarh
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· Score: 1
What makes you think that a regular user will download individual packages instead of just popping a Redhat, Suse, Mandrake or similar CD in their machine, let the installer take ower, and be done with it?
Mainstream users will no more be building their own packages than Windows users will format their drives and copy in individual files manually from their Windows install CD.
This wasn't a review or tutorial for end users, as should be obvious from the outset of the article.
I use GDM and KDM on my work and home computers respectively. KDM is more asthetically pleasing, and has that familiar feel of unix. GDM is more configurable, although I have yet to see sufficient documentation on doing so. Creating your own login screen relies on reverse-engineering other themes. It's not that hard, pretty much all XML, but you think that they could write a primer or a spec sheet for it.
GDM doesn't kill processes from logged out users correctly, which KDM does. KDM also allows a per workstation auto-login.
These are the two major reasons that LTSP folks ditch it almost immediately. I don't want all the KDE libs loaded all the time, so I use XDM. Minimal, for sure.
Read my post again. I said pre-workstation autologins. That means that my clients all share the same gdm server, and I would like workstation01 to autologin as user user01, while workstation02 logs in as user02. This can't be done with GDM. Trust me on this.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
Xpilot
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· Score: 1
With Windows 95 Microsoft scored a hit. It has only gotten better since than. Gnome and KDE have been at it for years and are barely better then Win95, and still far behind WinXP.
How exactly is GNOME and KDE "behind" WinXP? I've used XP, and coming from Win98 I always go "where the $#@! has option X gone?" only to have is moved elsewhere because Microsoft thought it would be better there. They are *always* moving things around with each incarnation of Windows, and it's damn annoying. And people complain about GNOME being "inconsistent". Bah. It's all just a matter of opinion.
-- "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
What is it with the icons on dialog box buttons? They give me nightmarish flashbacks of Borland C++ under Windows with its ugly green check marks and red crosses!
Hm? I kinda like those icons. If you don't like them, just change your icon theme.
Re:Icons on buttons?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I agree. the GTK icons are BUTT UGLY they make me sick to look at
Slow.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Both GNOME and KDE are completely bloated. How on earth can GNOME (on RedHat 9) and KDE (on SuSE 8.2) running on an admittedly old Pentium 300 be so slow. I mean, seriously! My 8 Mhz Atari ST was faster at basic desktop functions.
I moved to Vector Linux last week, which has neither KDE or GNOME, and my machine now takes under a minute from turning the power on to the desktop finishing loading, and under 10 seconds to shut down.
Window List
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Does anyone know if Window List is going to regain the 'Show Minimized Windows' only feature that actually made it useful?:)
However, I do have a couple of questions which is kinda off-topic-ish:
1) Is there a "roadmap" setout in regards to GTK 2.4/2.6 etc terms of functionality one should expect in up coming releases.
2) I've heard rumbles that gtk2 is still being ported to Quartz, could someone confirm it. I know there is an X11 version, however, it would be nice to have one that does require it, not because of anything political, I just don't want to download that massive 40+ MB XFree86 package from Apple;-)
3) Is there going to be a move by GNOME to support MAS as a replacement for esound? having used MAS and seen it action, it would be a really great addition if it was made available.
4) When running GNOME on FreeBSD I notice that when I select text in a terminal window there is a stall and the whole computer freezes then suddenly comes alright. I haven't experience that with KDE.
Having run GNOME 2.2 on Linux quite nicely it clearly isn't an issue with GNOME but with the FreeBSD port. Could someone confirm that this is being addressed?
--
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
1) Is there a "roadmap" setout in regards to GTK 2.4/2.6 etc terms of functionality one should expect in up coming releases.
Gnome doesn't have feature-based releases. They are all time-based. So the "roadmap" is that it will be in 6 months:-)
For feature sorts of questions, you pretty much have to look at the mailing list archives of the various modules. Occasionally, there will be discussion on the desktop-devel list about desktop-wide initiatives, but they are mostly very technical bits like new versions of automake etc
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 4, Informative
1) File dialog.
The current GTK+ file dialog *cannot* be changed without breaking compatibility. A new file dialog is under development for GTK+ 2.4, for quite a while now. But GTK+ 2.4 will not make it before the GNOME 2.4 release. If you want a slightly better file dialog (with Back button, Home button, Bookmarks, etc.) but is still compatible with all the current apps, take a look at this patch: http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=363 5
2) Galeon. Galeon never was a part of GNOME 2. At one point they had to choose a browser so they chose Epiphany because it's goals are like GNOME's. There's nothing stopping you from installing Galeon yourself. I'm typing this in Galeon right now.
3) Extract Here I agree with you on this. Email the File Roller author, not Slashdot.
4) Panel size Why click 20 times? Just focus the spinbox and type in whatever number you want using your keyboard. As for the goat logo, how's that a usability issue? Users don't care what logo they see in the about box (if they look at all).
5) Media player GStreamer doesn't "suck", it's just not finished yet. Xine is not "superior", it's different. GStreamer is a very ambitious project, and is like Windows's DirectShow. It's not just for playing files, it's an entire multimedia framework, which includes things like recording and encoding. I don't see Xine doing something like that. What's stopping you from installing MPlayer (not Windows Media Player!) or Xine or whatever? I installed MPlayer, setup some associations and everything works perfectly.
Anyway, I don't know why you say 2.4 isn't as good as 2.2. Except for Extract Here, none of the features in 2.2 are removed, some features just didn't make it to 2.4.
Re:Improved calculator?
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BrokenHalo
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· Score: 2, Informative
Try visiting hpcalc.org. There's a sweet GTK-based HP48 emulator there - or there was last time I looked. Since I got rid of my HP48G+, I haven't really kept in touch with developments there.
Re:Improved calculator?
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BrokenHalo
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· Score: 1
Damn. I apologise for the solecism of replying to myself, but the HP48 emulator is not (IIRC) based on GTK, it uses its own widget set. However, there is a GTK version called (I think) grpn or something like that. Google should find it.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
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JanneM
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· Score: 1
It's because 2.3.5 is a _development_ release. It is not intended for end-users, but for developers (which, presumably, aren't too fazed with the task). This is a preview of the 2.4 release which will happen in a few weeks.
-- Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What's with all you people complaining that Galeon is not the default Gnome browser? How hard is it to install Galeon and use it instead?
Epiphany follows the HIG better and fits more nicely into Gnome.
If you don't want to use, then don't. It's as simple as that.
n.b. I too still prefer Galeon, and uses it most of the time.
Instead of just complaining, help out.
The most important question is...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Is it possible to switch the button order back to normal?
Oh, I see. Back to KDE until Gnome 2.6 then. Keep up the good work, guys.
Re:The most important question is...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Oh, I see. Back to KDE until Gnome 2.6 then. Keep up the good work, guys.
AFAIK, it won't be changed in 2.6 neither. Why do you care, is another issue. It's like saying you won't use Mac OS X because they don't use the same button order as Windows.
MOD THIS DOWN
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
GNOME 2.4 does not have a new file selector; the features being listed in the parent post are made up bullshit. I checked his website and there are no screenshots or even mention of GNOME.
By and large I agree, but wasn't NS5 actually in development then scrapped with the decision to push Mozilla so it made sense to jump the version since a product of that versioning had been started...?
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
InfiniteWisdom
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· Score: 1
They also removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot! Maybe because of people like you that kept missing the point! Why would they have a goat? Thats a gnu
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 2, Informative
Urgh, forgot to reply to some things.
1) CMYK support Do you have any idea how hard it is to implement properly CMYK support in the current Gimp codebase? It's *not* trivial! Remember that most Gimp developers are just volunteers, not commercial developers working full-time!
2) Weather applet The old one was removed due to legal reasons. Or do you want the GNOME project to be sued by weather.com?
3) Wanda And how's this even relevant?
4) Menu editor You never had to restart the panel. Well, not on my box anyway.
5) Hidden preferences Which preferences? Hhow many of those preferences do you change daily? How many of those preferences do normal users care about? Think about that first.
Maybe it isn't a memory leak
by
r6144
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· Score: 5, Informative
As for "used memory" keeping increasing... You just have way too much memory. On most machines "used memory" is almost equal to "total memory" while the system runs fine, because the memory not used by processes can be used for caching (and not just the "Cached" shown by top/free, either). In short, it is hard to know whether or not the kernel or a user process leaks or not just by looking at the memory statistics, even if there actually IS one.
If you suspect a leak in some process, look at its VM size. If there is a leak, the process will end up much larger after repeating some operation, such as opening a new window, N times (clean up after each time) than doing that once.
Another way is to look at the swap usage. It usually keeps increasing, but should mostly be stable after e.g. 2 hours of usage, unless you start some other very large applications.
Re:Maybe it isn't a memory leak
by
LearnToSpell
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· Score: 1
As for "used memory" keeping increasing... You just have way too much memory.
IIRC, Netscape 6 came out because Netscape 5 was abandoned. It was supposed to be a reworking to some degree of Netscape 4, but that was such a hideous ugly mess that it was eventualy abandoned. They started from scratch and did a complete rewrite. Since it had little in common with what was Netscape 5, the version number was (not unfairly) incremented. I think that on the whole, one can blame Netscape for an awful lot, but not this one. Now, Netscape 7 on the other hand seemed to be released when Netscape 6 moved out of beta. That hardly warrented a whole new number.
On that note, I think that Slackware underwent a massive version-number-increment about a year or so ago, to keep up with the likes of RedHat, Mandrake and Suse. It could be worse. Microsoft suddenly went from NT4 to (effectively) NT2000, massively passing all the Linux distributions in version number. Just think, if they decided to keep up, then by next year, we'll be on Windows 3204973247 and RedHat 324097230984.1 Telling people what OS you're running would become a major pain.
OK, so now this has gone slightly off-topic. Mod me down if you will.
that changes the resolutoion but not the size of the workspace. do that and then move the mouse around the screen edges. see how the screen slips around?
Re:CTRL ALT +/- anyone ?
by
Sunda666
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· Score: 2, Insightful
you know, this is a bit misleading.
Unless I'm missing something, this shortcuts just change the resolution of the viewport, not the size of the desktop (eg, I have this configured at home to switch between 1280x1024,1024x768,800x600). It works fine, but the desktop is always 1280x1024, and scrolls around when I use other resolutions). Still pretty neat, since I use this to use movies/activate the tv-out in the geforce4.
But changing the desktop size on-the-fly would be cool, at least for windoz users, which are used to it.
Dunno if it changed in XFree 4.3, since I have it installed only in the laptop, and this fscking TFT does not allow me to change the resolution (vsync goes haywire).
cheers.
--
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
Re:CTRL ALT +/- anyone ?
by
rubberducky
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· Score: 1
As others have pointed out this only changes the resoluton of the monitor, not the size of the desktop. If you have X 4.3 or later you can use the xrandr utility to change the size of the desktop.
Save me! I always shudder when I see gtk's version go up a bump.
Without looking at the changelog, what do I expect from it?
Apps that use gtk get even slower still.
A simple checkbox and a piece of text need even more space still.
1024 x 768 is about enough room to run a clock and terminal in
And many other features we've been crying out for, like translucent everythings, shadows and lens flare on our pointer. Opaque moves and resizes you can't choose to turn off.
And people ask me why I do as much as I can in an xterm... I think we need a linux dist that makes a point of avoiding gnome and gtk.
Gnome - up with XP for eye candy, down with 3.11 for a productive, even comfortable desktop.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
(startx)
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· Score: 1
agreed, they have continually made things harder and harder to use since 1.4. Hiding options, changing menu's, etc. And don't even get me started on nautilus, the POS that just won't die....
-ex gnome zealeot, new fluxbox zealeot
Enlightenment save us!
by
ItWasThem
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· Score: 2, Funny
While I struggle to cope with my KDE and my Gnome day in and day out I hold out hope that maybe today will be the day that I see E17 released un to the world...
Speaking about a new file dialog
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 1
You may want to check out this patch for the current file dialog: [url=http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewt opic.php? t=3635]http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.ph p?t=3635[/url]
Re:Speaking about a new file dialog
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 1
My Personal Diatribe
by
SQLz
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Are they updating it to be usable?
Re: My Personal Diatribe
by
Black+Parrot
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· Score: 1
> Are they updating it to be usable?
I wish people wouldn't modify this kind of stuff as flamebait. Some of us - maybe lots of us, given the other posts I'm seeing here - think the GNOME leadership has taken it down a seriously wrong path as far as usability goes, and IMO it would be best to mod the complaints up in hopes of calling more attention to the problem, rather than modding them down so the Potemkin Village can retain its facade of progress a little longer.
-- Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re: My Personal Diatribe
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
and IMO it would be best to mod the complaints up in hopes of calling more attention to the problem
Hello? What problem? Gnome is already being developed towards usability. *True* usability, as in non power users can use it without being scared of horrible UIs full of cruft and unnecessary options.
That's right the part you slashdot flamers don't get.
Re: My Personal Diatribe
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Exactly.
For example, I keep 2x2 screen workspaces. Used to be I could flip between them by just driving the cursor off the edge of the screen, any old place. Then Red Hat "simplified" things, so now I have to pull up my nodding taskbar, and click accurately in a small applet. That may be simpler to understand, but it's slower to do, and I do it a lot of times a day. Count me NOT IMPRESSED.
And as a side effect of their brainwave, now I can't scroll images that are bigger than my screen. I have to shrink them to fit the screen if I want to see the bottom half. In short, it's brain dead compared to earlier releases of Gnome.
Re: My Personal Diatribe
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Quick note of agreement. Once I was high on Gnome1.x and could not imagine leaving. Now but a distant memory, I found a safe harbor in KDE.
"A new Gnome Release? What features are left to remove?" you ask...
Gnome is an embarassment to any OS that can run it. What are you thinking Sun? I mean, CDE sucked, you know it, we know it. But Gnome? Nautilus?
Even unrelated programs lose features as they become gnome compliant. One that used to be my favourite was Pan. Now it's useless for me.
"But it's nicely integrated with the rest of the desktop"
Well, yes, it runs as slow as the rest of Gnome does now. My system takes 20 seconds just to pop up a requester asking me for the root password.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
BJH
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· Score: 1
Yeah, cause those Windows developers don't have to actually develop anything - they just pop the Magic Install(TM) CD in the drive, and there you go! Entirely new desktop!...
In case you hadn't noticed, this was a review of a pre-release. When it's ready, distributions will package it so that it's just as easy to install as Windows.
Hello? Moderators?!!!!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
There are NO screenshots or anything in that page. It's just some clown trying to get some hits.
Mod it down, please. Show that you think before modding up some post.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
Capt_Troy
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· Score: 1
I think it's all about what you are used too. I use KDE almost exclusivly on my development box. I found it very very difficult to do the things i wanted to in Win XP when I tried it a few weeks ago in a pinch. I use the heck out of the multiple desktop features, and I use Konsole with tabs all the time. I can find no decent alternatives in Windows.
That's not to say Windows is a bad development environment. People use it all the time for that, but it's not what I am used to and prefer.
So what I'm trying to say is that it is all about what desktop works for you. Some people use Windows, some use KDE, some use Gnome, and I know a lot that still use fvwm and windowmaker. I don't see having multiple desktop alternatives as a bad thing at all, but I rather prefer the ability to choose.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
advocate_one
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· Score: 1
So you would be quite happy for user choice to be taken out of the equation for you??? If that's what you want, then stick with MS or Mac...
I like the multitude of choice available. If there were no choice then I'd have so much trouble running a Linux GUI on a low spec machine if the Distro of my choice (SuSE) had dumped all the other desktop managers and had gone with one inflexible choice...
I love being able to completely change the character of this machine just by selecting which desktop I want at login... mostly I stay in KDE, but I really enjoy going into Blackbox and XFCe etc. as _I_ want... sheer freedom which I'm certain I wouldn't be enjpoying if you got your way.
-- Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The last time I checked (RH 9 installation), metacity was gnome's default window-whatchamacallit, which had the annoying animated minimization, lacked some of the fine-tuning sawfish has/had, and was not-so-actively maintained. Any other up-and-coming, actively maintained, gnome2-ready/complaiant, non-fluxbox/blackbox-type, worthy replacement for metacity.
TIA
Re: Metacity alternative...
by
Black+Parrot
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· Score: 1
> The last time I checked (RH 9 installation), metacity was gnome's default window-whatchamacallit, which had the annoying animated minimization, lacked some of the fine-tuning sawfish has/had, and was not-so-actively maintained. Any other up-and-coming, actively maintained, gnome2-ready/complaiant, non-fluxbox/blackbox-type, worthy replacement for metacity.
With sufficient patience you can rip Metacity out and run the most recent version of Sawfish. I'm doing that on RH 9, albeit with GARNOME rather than the RH 9 GNOME stuff.
-- Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Metacity alternative...
by
Arandir
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· Score: 1
What the fsck is the "gnome2-compliant" crap I'm hearing about? Hasn't GNOME heard of wm-spec?
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:Metacity alternative...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Gnome is an active freedesktop.org participant. So, what's your point again?
Yup, the GNOME project has used the wm-spec since 2.0, but people on slashdot still seem to think there is some funky GNOME-only WM hint system out there.
One problem is that neither KDE nor GNOME nor all window managers authors seem to have gotten a 100% perfect implementation of the wm-spec hints. Try running Metacity with KDE or kwin in GNOME and see it break in many things. The most close, I think, is kwin's "kwin-iii" branch, which will be in kde 3.2.
Re:Metacity alternative...
by
Arandir
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· Score: 1
So, what's your point again?
The point is, if GNOME is following the wm-spec, why is Metacity the only WM that works correctly with GNOME?
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Thank you for the link, however...
by
CooCooCaChoo
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· Score: 1
It seems strange that GNOME, according to their roadmap, are willing to simply ignore gtk 2.4. Wouldn't it be best for GNOME to hold back, wait till GTK 2.4 is released, set aside one month for testing GTK 2.4 against GNOME 2.4 and then release it?
--
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
Re:Thank you for the link, however...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It was discussed many times in the mailing lists. I won't search for a link, but I can tell you that they decided to release gnome in 6 month release cycles.
Waiting for GTK 2.4 would make it a longer wait. Plus if something goes wrong in GTK development it will drag gnome with it (like what happened with 2.0).
Re:Thank you for the link, however...
by
JanneM
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· Score: 1
As the other poster here said, there is a six-month development cycle implemented - which really has increased speed of development.
Consider that first waiting for GTK 2.4 (a month or so), another possible month for GTK 2.4.1 (if there are any ooops:es in the 2,4 release), and another month to make sure gnome is stabilized wrt GTK. You are just a month from the next release freeze by then. And with such a long wait, you would inevitably break code freeze, or have a lot of frustrated developers on your hands.
With the current schedule, GNOME will have four months to get properly integrated with GTK 2.4, rather than hurrying it up over a month or so to get a release out the door.
-- Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
He lies, nothing of interest on his site, certainly nothing to do with GNOME, no screenshots
Sure, choice is great
by
mao+che+minh
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· Score: 1
Choice is great when it comes to operating systems, middleware, and office suites. I think that I would rather have one Linux GUI that is as functional and intuitive as Mac OS X's, instead of three or four that are greatly inferior.
so you are saying that operating systems , office suites , etc , that are meant to be used for working , should have a lot of choice and not really functional BUT
desktops guis that are purelly based on taste , should only be one ?! that makes sense !
> I think that I would rather have one Linux GUI that is as functional and intuitive as Mac OS X's, instead of three or four that are greatly inferior.
I dunno about that. After using KDE on my Linux boxen, and switching to my Mac running Panther, I always miss many things from KDE.
Both KDE/GNOME can learn things from XP/OSX, while XP/OSX can also learn a few things from KDE/GNOME.
Any Metacity Fixes/Updates?
by
mauriatm
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· Score: 3, Interesting
One of the most troubling things to me is still Metacity WM. Maybe this has changed but last I recall you could not change the animation settings (that annoying minimize/maximize ani) and the redraw settings (dragging/resizing would show contents). To make it worse, Gnome in general made it difficult to change your WM. And what bothers me more still is that Sawmill(fish whatever) reduced its settings/options to be minimal like Metacity, although deep config settings could restore most settings back to the 1.4 days. I remember hearing some explanation that Metacity was the only Gnome2 compliant WM, so others were looked down upon.... Am I misinformed or has this changed?
Re:Any Metacity Fixes/Updates?
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You're mostly correct. They've added some new features to Metacity though. Like a Stay On Top menu item.
Re:Any Metacity Fixes/Updates?
by
Arandir
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· Score: 0, Troll
I smell a conspiracy here. "GNOME is WM agnostic" I hear everyone say, yet why do they keep exanding their WM requirements? What's to stop them from deciding which WM will be the secret official WM, and extending the reqs so only it can meet it at release time?
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:Any Metacity Fixes/Updates?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
gnome 1.x was WM agnostic..
gnome 2.x is as WM agnostic as KDE always has been -- it comes with Metacity, but you can use your own (which I do, Metacity is a HORRRRRRRRRRRRID WM.. sawfish4life)
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The moral of the story: GNOME sucks. Use KDE.
Nautilus literally has no clue?
by
fnj
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· Score: 1, Troll
I thought I was the only one bothered by this. On my machine, I sometimes have to wait up to 30 seconds after double clicking a shortcut - with no feedback whatsoever that anything is going on! Sheesh!
Maybe we're both missing some configuration item where you can enable an hourglass type feedback (note the question mark in the subject line), but assuming we're not (and I have looked pretty hard)...
<rant> This is an INSANE behavior. It causes me to doubt that the designers take the most elementary fundamentals of GUI design seriously. </rant>
A close second to the annoyance factor of this missing feature is:
Why force us to double click the shortcuts in the first place? Why can't we configure for single click launching? Requiring a double click where there is no necessity to demand it is my pet peeve. Double click technique is difficult to explain, and non-trivial to master, especially for users who are not very dexterous. In Windows and KDE, I can set it up so I don't have to double click.
I would like to be shown the clueless user, by somewhat showing how to fix these nuisances. But even if it is possible to fix them, I must ask why fixing them is not the default.
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue?
by
FooBarWidget
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· Score: 2, Informative
Startup notification is implemented in the new Nautilus. There's no configuration option, it's always on.
You *can* configure for single click. In Nautilus: Edit->Preferences->Behavior->Single click to activate items.
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue?
by
Issue9mm
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· Score: 2, Informative
Check the Nautilus preferences. Single-clicking to launch files is a rather easy thing to set up.
-9mm-
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue?
by
mrroach
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· Score: 3, Informative
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue?
by
Ponder
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· Score: 1
As has been noted here Nautilus does have single click activation as a configurable option. What annoys me is that this behaviour is not globally set in Ximian gnome. It is annoying to have single click enabled in nautilus and then go to the control-center and have to double click on itmes to launch.
-- --
Back to the shadows again...
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue?
by
FrostedWheat
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· Score: 1
You *can* configure for single click
I find single click annoying;) Keep clicking the wrong things....
Great news that there's some feedback on icon clicking now! That and the 'program startup' notification will make things much nicer!
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
notetoi
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· Score: 1
While I agree with you regarding the simplicity of installing gnome (especially for desktop use), I think RH9's gui package management approach is bad due to lack of granuality which leads to bloat - apt/synaptic, ximian's package manager, and even previous gui versions of RH package manager, are better alternatives to RH's current gui package management
Re:KDE is WAY ahead!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
you, my friend, are an idiot.
kwrite
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I use KDE only cos kwrite is such a nice app. There is no GNOME equivalent i know of
I hate gnome anyway. KDE rules, and don't worry about that morons comments, he probably can bearly use a text editor or word processor.
why are they bothering
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Gnome's gone downhill since 1.4 in the area of user customizations. The ability to customize behavior is almost non existant compared to what we had in 1.4. I could tweak and adjust 1.4 to create a very cool environment for myself. With the 2.x series, almost all of the capability is gone. It's now just a mindless environment for dummies. Gnome's stated that they're aiming low and catering for the dumber computer users. There was soo much potential for it to develop into a really powerful environment and then those silly studies were conducted and the rest is history..... Oh well.
Re: why are they bothering
by
Black+Parrot
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> Gnome's gone downhill since 1.4 in the area of user customizations. The ability to customize behavior is almost non existant compared to what we had in 1.4. I could tweak and adjust 1.4 to create a very cool environment for myself. With the 2.x series, almost all of the capability is gone. It's now just a mindless environment for dummies. Gnome's stated that they're aiming low and catering for the dumber computer users. There was soo much potential for it to develop into a really powerful environment and then those silly studies were conducted and the rest is history..... Oh well.
My feelings exactly. After a lot of work I finally got a GARNOME-based GNOME 2.something working mostly to my liking, but I had to use not-latest-releases for some components because they're still taking features out.
I've been a GNOMER since 0.4, but I expect to have to drop them if they don't start putting some features back in. Sure wish I had the time to fork off a power-users' desktop. (Hmmm, "PUD". I guess priority #1 would be to find a better acronym.)
Another option might be to start a movement to vote certain doctrinaire individuals off the board next time they have elections.
-- Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re: why are they bothering
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Another option might be to start a movement to vote certain doctrinaire individuals off the board next time they have elections.
Please do so. You'll be surprised to find there's a lot of people that like gnome being a desktop for "dumb users". What kind of users do you think are the best suited to get Linux in the enterprise workstations?
Re:why are they bothering
by
dash2
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
People just want a computer that works, they don't spend hours masturbating over how many settings they can change. But apparently, to you, that makes them dummies. I suppose you think you're Einstein because you can use a gradient in your wallpaper or something.
Re: why are they bothering
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
My recommendation is to try xfce4. It's pretty and fast, and isn't BLOATED like gnome has become and kde pretty much always has been.
It actually reminds of early gnome2 versions, before it became "Havoc's desktop"..
Re:why are they bothering
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
That's _exactly_ how I feel about it. I've been a gnome user for quite a while, but at the rate they are dumbing it down, I expect to have to give it up before too long:-(
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
There has been so much fuzz about missing preferences in GNOME. If you count the preferences that were removed from gnome by the introduction of GNOME 2.0
What is the fraction of preferences that have been reintroduced in the control center?
What is the fraction of preferences that have been moved to gconf?
What is the fraction of preferences that are still absent?
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Cat_Byte
·
· Score: 1
I can't get the info pulled up on bug fixes. Did they just add new features or did they fix some stability issues as well? If it's more stable I'll definitely try it out.
-- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 1
I disagree. Windows XP still doesn't have these features by default: - Virtual desktops. - Magnetic window snapping. - Multiple panels with applets. - A usable commandline (yes I do use the commandline in Windows for certain things!).
They *are* better than Win95.
And saying that "everybody needs to get together and create one great whatever" is fundamentally flawed. You assume that every human being has the same ideas, the same design philosophies, the same aestetic preferences. One size cannot fit all! Heck, GNOME and KDE have different target groups! GNOME target the simple user who wants simplicity, while KDE targets the advanced user who wants power and configurability. They are both very different target groups.
The solution is not to make one single whatever for everybody, it's to make all implementations compatible. In other words: standardize on interfaces, not implementation. That's what the Freedesktop.org guys are doing.
Re:Who needs Gnome Anyway
by
scorp1us
·
· Score: 1
You can change KDE just as much as you can change GNOME to be some interface that you only see in movies.
Just because yuo don't like the default is no reason to say it sucks. Many users like the fact that the default is so much like windows.
If you were as 3733+ as you thought you were, you'd know that.
-- Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Instead of asking "how many preferences can I still change now?", ask yourself this first: How many of all those preferences actually make sense?
For example, the preferences in the Pager applet that lets you tweak for a certain window manager make no sense. They're the "unbreak me" type of preferences. Things like that should be handled automatically. Another one is startup notification. Why would anyone not want it? Why should it be disable-able? And there's the Nautilus desktop preferences. A lot of users got confused by the sudden disappearence of their desktop and don't know how to get them back. Besides, this is a preference that only power users with old hardward would want to use, and is only set once.
And most people who complain about the lack of preferences are geeks and power users who are used to lots of preferences. Well sorry to say this to you, but you are not GNOME's target group anymore. GNOME is now targeting normal users that want simplicity and don't want to be flooded with config options.
I too agree with the parent poster in spirit, but he chose all the wrong examples to back up his statements.
You're dead on about the Netscape debacle, but I'm proud to announce that I'm now using Gentoo-MAXINT. So there! Wait, they just released Redhat-MAXINT+1.
It is a difficult question to answer wether we ever will switch to MAS or not. I mean while we clearly want to get away from ESD, it has also become clear to us that we don't want to ditch ESD for another solution which in its own way is just as flawed.
So could MAS be the 'flawless' version we have been looking for? Maybe...problem now is that it seems development stopped and it has yet to have a release that made it somewhat usefull to us. For instance we tried making a MAS plugin for GStreamer right after their first public release, but that effort grinded to a halt when we discovered that there was missing pieces. We where told that these pieces would be in place in the next release of MAS, but that release has never happened.
Of course this being free software it could be that we eventually come around to picking up MAS and continue it, but for the time being the current developers already have our hands full of other stuff like maturing GStreamer. New hands onboard to tackle the sound server issue if of course always welcome
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
slasher999
·
· Score: 1
''The Galeon web browser. They chose January6 [mozdev.org] instead. Not that its a bad browser, it just feels ike netscape 2 and that the name is a bad choice''
God, that DOES look like mid-90's era Netscape. Ugh. Guess that's why I'm a KDE user.;) (ducking)
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
mhesseltine
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Warning: small rant follows
The current GTK+ file dialog *cannot* be changed without breaking compatibility.
This double standard about compatibility really gets to me. On one hand, you have projects like Gnome which use the same convention as a previous version to insure backward compatability. Then, when a company like Microsoft keeps DOS in its Win95,98,ME line, everyone bitches about the relic, and how they should remove it. Either we want projects to maintain backward compatability, or we don't. Which is it?
How is it that I get a Microsoft ad when reading about the new Gnome desktop?
Re:KDE is WAY ahead!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Your friends are all idiots.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ah, but you're talking about Slashdotters bitching. Those people are just that: Slashdot flamers. They're not the developers behind GNOME and GTK+. The GNOME and GTK+ projects follow a very strict set of rules in not breaking compatibility.
browser issue, RedHat vs Gnome
by
Roadkills-R-Us
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't see why they are wasting time on a browser. Why not just use firebird? Is there a compelling reason for *another* browser? Sems that time could be better spent elsewhere.
And I was underwhelmed with some of the tools. The best example I've seen so far (/.ing has delivery of all pages with all pics) is the screen resolution selector. I think RedHat's version is much nicer. Again - why reinvent the wheel? If they can't use RH's (did they ask?), do something similar. Or better. But IMO the Gnome version is a step down from RH's.
Re:browser issue, RedHat vs Gnome
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 1
Because FireBird is part of the Mozilla project, and does not integrate properly with GNOME. And FireBird cannot link to the GNOME libraries because people will scream "bloat! bloat!" or "omg more dependancies!!"
Re:browser issue, RedHat vs Gnome
by
Doktor+Memory
·
· Score: 1
The goal of GNOME is to have a completely integrated desktop. You can't do that with Mozilla or Firebird: it has its own custom widget set, its own UI specification, its own customization method, its own RPC implementation...on and on and on.
Plus, Firebird is slow. SLOW SLOW SLOW. People are so impressed with the fact that it's 2-3 times faster than Mozilla that they've basically forgotten that 3X as fast as Mozilla is still SLOWER THAN DOGSHIT BURIED MILES UNDERNEATH THE ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF.
Gnome has become more polished, and looks more like a mature desktop offering. The HIG had a really good impact on Gnome. Every close button is where it belongs, you don't even have to think about where it is. The only thing I miss are animations/eyecandy, they could improve the usability alot. 2.4 will be a nice improvement over 2.2.
Gnome 2.6 will probably be the same as 2.2/2.4: more polishing. I hope they will improve the gnome main menu (its just a win95 rip off). Better integration with the internet would also be nice. Just imagine, that you search for an amazon book with the search for files tool (should be called just 'Search' then;)).
Anyway, I wish the Gnome development team lots of luck with the further development of the gnome desktop!
Re:Gnome 2.3/2.4
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Eyecandy: Look at gdesklets Internet Integration: Look at Dashboard (integrate everything!)
> Gnome has become more polished, and looks more like a mature desktop offering. The HIG had a really good impact on Gnome. Every close button is where it belongs, you don't even have to think about where it is.
Actually they're all on the wrong frikkin' side, which is very annoying if you run traditional applications as well as GNOME2 applications, or even for your GNOME applications when you first upgrade. IMO that gratuitous change was a very poor HIG decision.
Also things can be very unintuitive, because for lots of dialogs you have to click "close" when you expect to click "OK" to tell it you want to go with the selected changes.
I agree.. untll you can put the buttons the right way around (it isn't even a config option!) then gnome is staying off my desktop. I even had to stop using Pan when they went Gnome-2 compliant because I ended up junking more messsages than I actually sent...
Perhaps a recommendation for the next HIG version? I do agree that the close button can be confusing, at least for a windows user point of few. The first thing that came to my mind, when seeing the close button was: will it save my changes.
But still, I'm quite impressed in how the applications look. Probably not perfect yet. But they are trying to do their best:).
Re: Gnome 2.3/2.4
by
fault0
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
> Actually they're all on the wrong frikkin' side, which is very annoying if you run traditional applications as well as GNOME2 applications, or even for your GNOME applications when you first upgrade. IMO that gratuitous change was a very poor HIG decision.
Completely agreed. I wish there was a way to put them into the normal side.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
for source: Gentoo
You already mentioned it, so what's the problem?
Nautilus Useable?
by
xjerky
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sorry, but even the latest Nautilus is noticably slower then Konqueror. I have a directory with a few thousand files and Nautilus popped up a message saying something like "There are too many files for Nautilus to display. Exiting" WTF?????? Its the primary job of the friggin app and it won't do it??? Very unprofessional.
-- A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board:
"You know what? You're right."
Due to a b0rk3d automount config on Solaris, when I once hit the "up" button in Konqi while in my home directory, Solaris started automounting every user's home directory in an extremely large multinational corporation. These directories were scattered over several dozen file servers. A half of an hour later, Konqueror finally showed directory icons for 1200 accounts.
But that's a low number in an unusual situation. I've had Konqueror quickly open up a directory with 9200 small files. No problems. If Nautilus can't do that, then something's wrong.
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I dont remember the exact number, but it was definitely less than 9200 files. What gets me is that the programmers obviously acknowledged a flaw in their program if they wrote the error message in the first place.
-- A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board:
"You know what? You're right."
Re:Nautilus Useable?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
If Nautilus can't do that, then something's wrong.
Actually, I remember seeing a gconf setting in Nautilus which puts a limit on the number of files which it would handle. Forgot where it is though:-(
Re:Nautilus Useable?
by
xjerky
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Ahhh, gconf....since everyone loves the Windows registry, lets give Unix one too.......
-- A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board:
"You know what? You're right."
Re:Nautilus Useable?
by
JabXVI
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Maybe/apps/nautilus/preferences/directory_limit is it. Looks like the default is 4000 and setting it to -1 would make it unlimited. I just found this by looking at the nautilus-2.3.7 source for a minute, though, so I don't really know if this works.
This has already been fixed. The change was made in 2.3.2. You'll see this in 2.4, then.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
As for the goat logo, how's that a usability issue? Users don't care what logo they see in the about box (if they look at all).
Yeah, but they do care about that god-awful foot icon on the menu button. I'm not the only person I know who avoids Gnome because of THE FOOT. Ick.
Your problems are laughable
by
ledestin
·
· Score: 1
I'm sorry, but I can't help but laugh at the problems you're facing. You give up power to configure and do things as you would like/as it suits you to someone else and then bitch about it. One size doesn't fit all.
They made file extration harder, because thay don't want to waste space on the context menu.
Thanks $deity, it's kinda hard to get tar -xzf away.
They have made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but they rearranged the key bidnings
Use xterm, really. It is well documented (unlike both gterm and konsole) and you can bend it as you like.
I have a CPU applet on the top panel, and I can see with it how Mozilla or Opera starts up (I don't run anything that big besides them).
Why not just use Ximian's for now?
by
xjerky
·
· Score: 1
I don't understand why the GNOME crew never implemented the superior Ximian file selector over their bare-bones one. After traversing partitions it really is handy to have a "Home" button, and though it is a step back version-wise, that is why I am using XD2 instead of playing with the garnome releases.
-- A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board:
"You know what? You're right."
Re:Why not just use Ximian's for now?
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 1
My patch also has a Bookmarks button. You can navigate to any directory easily instead of just a few hardcoded directories.
GLOBAL Always On Top functionality?
by
NoahsMyBro
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I haven't seen this in any version of Windows, nor on KDE 3.1.2 or Gnome 2.2.
It seems to me a sensible feature of a desktop would be to have a standard feature on every single visible window that would allow the user to set that window as 'always on top'. Remove the responsibility for the functionality from the app developer, and let it be part of the desktop's job. This would allow the user to set 'Always On Top' for any window he/she wants.
As a user, not a developer, I have been unable to figure out why this could be problematic. I only assume it may pose some sort of difficulty because I haven't yet seen this implemented, and it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Re:GLOBAL Always On Top functionality?
by
leviramsey
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Uh... sawfish (which was part of GNOME from the early days until Havoc Pennington hijacked GNOME and made metacity the default wm), which should still be usable with GNOME (I used it for a while with GNOME 2.2 until I had a RAM module fail and GNOME got dog-slow) allows you to adjust the stacking of windows to achieve always on top.
This is far from a new feature (though it may be new to metacity, the shittiest excuse for a window manager since twm).
BRING BACK SAWFISH! BRING BACK SAWFISH!
Re:GLOBAL Always On Top functionality?
by
dash2
·
· Score: 1
You haven't been looking very hard. Rightclick the windowbar in KDE (from about version 2) and choose, er, "Always on top".
Re:GLOBAL Always On Top functionality?
by
shibashaba
·
· Score: 1
Some window managers do that like enlightenment. Waimea does it too, it's mostly Gnome2 compliant but it's still a little buggy.
-- ----------
Open Source is capitalism applied to IP.
One of the most controversial changes in GNOME 2.4 is the dumping of Galeon in favour of Epiphany as the default browser
For those of you who do not know, Epiphany is a new project from the creator of Galeon. It's aimed at staying small and light-weight while Galeon continues to be a sort of "Mozilla - XUL - mailer - chat + Gnome".
Epiphany is based on Mozilla, but is much more light and bloat free and features a much, much, much cleaner interface. I have not used Galeon very extensively, but Epiphany has already become my default browser. Startup is much faster than Mozilla, the interface is much more intuitive and clutter free and it merges nicely with the look and feel of the rest of the GNOME environment.
Also for those who do not know, all of the above is true of Galeon as well. The choice to go with Epiphany is probably mostly based on a) it's newness and thus percieved coolness b) the ultra-lightweight nature of it lends to component-model desktop integration more easily. The Galeon or Epiphany bits are almost certainly not the major contributors to user-precieved performance, so I don't think you'll see as big a difference between Galeon and Epiphany as you did between, say, Mozilla and Galeon... there simply isn't that much in terms of the UI left to rip out when rendering a page compared to the overhead of parsing and rendering HTML/JavaScript/CSS/who-knows-what.
The thing that worries me is that Galeon used to be hands-down the best browser for a Gnome desktop, but now it has been ripped apart in terms of its code base and in terms of the developers. The Gnome 2.0 revision of Galeon was a major step backward in terms of user experience. Things changed like menus (e.g. "View Source" moving out of the "View" menu and into the "File" menu) becoming much less usable; major functionality present in the JavaScript configs no longer available in the preferences; and much more.
At the same time, the developers left to go work on a new toy while users of the now live version of the browser suffered.
I'm actually on the edge of going back to Mozilla, which while large and often cumbersome, still has some of the best maintentance-mode support going (we'll see if that lasts post-Netscape).
Re:KDE is WAY ahead! (mod parent up)
by
Carewolf
·
· Score: 1
This finally proves it!!
GNOMEs have no sense of humor...
It got both moderated "flamebait" and a serious answer that got moderated "insightful", dispite the fact that the replier had been trolled and is thus an idiot.
Jesus, it's a bad joke. Not a conspirecy.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
mhesseltine
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Ah, but you're talking about Slashdotters bitching. Those people are just that: Slashdot flamers. They're not the developers behind GNOME and GTK+.
You are correct, and I didn't make that point very clearly. I'm not criticizing the GNOME developers for not breaking backward compatability. I'm criticizing the/. community for having a double standard as it pertains to projects like this. Sorry for the confusion.
Re:Text of the offical announcement.
by
lurgyman
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· Score: 1
The new file dialog
Yeah, we're all bitter about that. (I'm not sure it's fair to give Havoc credit for this, since I'm fairly certain gtk+ is a completely separate project...)
The Galeon web browser
Obviously you haven't tried this before trolling on it. It supports tabs, popup-blocking, and the other most important features from mozilla. I continue to prefer Galeon, but one of ephiphany's biggest goals (which accomplishes does well) is GNOME integration, which was presumably what made it so attractive to the GNOME developers.
We will make file extraction harder...
I must've missed the part of the File Roller install where it deleted/bin/tar...
We will STILL not be including a media player
Seems pretty obvious here
that there is one. (I'm going to ignore the rest of this one because it's unsubstantiated trolling.)
blah blah blah GIMP blah blah blah
I suppose you have a better image editor in KDE? (besides, you're giving Havoc undue credit again; the GIMP is a completely independent project, never part of GNOME in the first place). And you should know better than to whine about bugs in development versions of apps... if you don't like the shape 1.3's in, go back to the stable one and let them fix it!
blah blah gnome-terminal blah blah emacs blah blah czech blah blah obscure keybindings
Well, the keybindings are exactly the same in gnome-terminal as in any other... it's your own fault for using emacs.
etc.
I'm not going to give that much trolling so much thought...
Seriously, if you don't like GNOME, then that's perfectly OK, since it's not for everyone. But coming here and spouting unsubstantiated trolling is just counterproductive and does nothing to help anyone.
As far as this article being moderated Funny, well... I stopped laughing at the trolling on/. a long time ago, encouraging this sort of thing is going a long way towards making the discussions completely unreadable.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
mopslik
·
· Score: 1
On one hand, you have projects like Gnome which use the same convention as a previous version to insure backward compatability. Then, when a company like Microsoft keeps DOS in its Win95,98,ME line, everyone bitches about the relic, and how they should remove it. Either we want projects to maintain backward compatability, or we don't. Which is it?
Ahhh, Slashdot. Naturally, we want Linux to maintain backwards compatability, and Microsoft to abandon it!
still no
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
real file selection dialog. I may as well be on a blind terminal @#&^@#()
Make those damn buttons SMALLER!
by
melted
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· Score: 1
Why the heck should GNOME button (and any other UI element) onccupy 2 times more screen real estate than Windows one? I'd rather have this space used to display the actual data I'm working with.
Re:Make those damn buttons SMALLER!
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Because big buttons are easier to click on. Fitt's Law remember? And those big buttons are only used in dialogs, that don't contain much data anyway. In main windows, the only large buttons are toolbar buttons with labels. But that makes sense since it will be immediately obvious what those buttons are for; you don't have to mouseover them and look at the tooltips. And this can be changed: Applications->Desktop Preferences->Menus and Toolbars->Text Besides Icons
It makes a lot of sense to make normal buttons bigger.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Thanks for your reply. I did not try to make a rant, nor to question the goals of the gnome project.
I was just interested to know the the fraction of preferences that were removed.
actually you are the moron, and probably to stupid to use either one. KDE is progressing faster than gnome and easier to use.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I do agree that Slashdotters have a double standard. This goes for pro/anti-MSness too. Have you noticed that most of the post that say "Slashdot always mods anti-MS comments down and pro-Linux comments up! I will get moderated down for saying this!" always get modded *up*? Slashdot isn't even an anti-MS pro-Linux site anymore.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
classic66coupe
·
· Score: 0
I don't like it because you can't uninstall stuff easily. I miss the old kpackage application.
still has the same crappy file selector
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Shame gnome still does not have a more up to date file selector, the current implementation is just crap. I know this is really the fault of gtk, but there was no reason gnome could not have a module for the FSD as there seems to be little motivation to change the current incarnation from the gtk camp.
With sufficient patience you can rip Metacity out and run the most recent version of Sawfish. I'm doing that on RH 9, albeit with GARNOME rather than the RH 9 GNOME stuff.
Sufficient patience? You install Sawfish, librep, rep-gtk and any other missing dependencies and then the final blow:
Okay, so there is no nice clicky GUI thing. But hard it ain't.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
-- Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
pete0t2
·
· Score: 1
Startup notification in GNOME tends to screw up. That's why I like turning it off. 'Normal' users never change preferences anyways. Hell, 'Normal' users don't use Linux.(except maybe at work). I think the preference removals are retarded and I agree with the posters that say that GNOME is getting worse, not better.
GNOME seems to be getting slower. Nautilus is a bit piece of crap. Windows XP is pulling away from Linux in just about all categories except for security. I've been using Linux for a long time and almost always used GNOME. The only thing part of Linux from my point of view that has improved drastically since 1999 is Mozilla and it runs better on Windows! Back then, Windows sucked ass and Linux's superior stability and networking features really impresed me. Windows XP has completely caught up and even surpassed Linux in those areas. What advantages does Linux have left besides being 'free'?
(GST) System Config Tools should read config files
by
TornSheetMetal
·
· Score: 1
What I don't like about many system config tools, including Gnome System Tools (GST) is that they read their information from their own set of files. The config tools should read the config files for the particular application they're trying to config, not just write to the config files. Their method causes any previous changes I made to be lost such as adding a more obscure option they don't control by using a text editor or by using a different config tool not part of their suite.
For example, Netscape 6 (as opposed to Netscape 5) was released because MSIE was already at version 6.
Wrong. There was was a 5.x version of Netscape, based on the 4.x codebase. Early in the dev cycle, it was abandoned in favor of Gecko, which is the core of NS6, Mozilla, etc.
Mighty Small screenshot
by
WebMasterJoe
·
· Score: 1
Ever since I switched to 1280x1024 I haven't noticed much difference in screen space, but I was shocked when I saw that screenshot at 1024x768. Holy crap, I can't believe I used to use 640x480!
And I thought it was a rule that if you take a desktop screenshot, you have to use a really high resolution (1600x1200 at least) so as to impress others with your obviously expensive display hardware. Even if it's just the desktop size, not the resolution.
-- I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Galeon got what it deserved.
by
Doktor+Memory
·
· Score: 1
Dude, have you tried to use Galeon recently? The "stable" 1.2 series has gotten less stable with each succeeding release, and the gnome-2 version of galeon is still missing features that were present two years ago in the gnome-1 version.
The Galeon team have NO ONE to blame but themselves for Epiphany's selection as the default GNOME browser.
It's sad, because when it first came out, Galeon was not just hands-down the best browser for Linux, but for any operating system. Now it's mostly just an embarrassment, and a painful lesson of what can happen to an OSS project when nobody has their hand on the rudder.
Re:Galeon got what it deserved.
by
rendler
·
· Score: 1
I'm using 1.2.10 right now with Moz 1.4, and it's been left up for 2 weeks straight and has not crashed and burned ONCE. As for the 2.x that I'll give you, I wont be touching that with a 10 mile pole until it is EXCACLY like the 1.2 branch in terms of features/usability.
--
*shrug*
Re:Galeon got what it deserved.
by
juhaz
·
· Score: 1
The Galeon team have NO ONE to blame but themselves
Stop blaming wrong people. The current Galeon team is not the one who raped it and removed all the features. The ex-"Galeon team" that did that is now the Epiphany team!
People who did this sacrilege to Galeon went on to fork Epiphany because some of the Galeon developers had had enough, and those some developers left are now the current Galeon team (very few left though, give them a hand, they deserve it for not abandoning their goals), and they are working very hard to restore best parts of 1.2 series into gtk2 version now that the "eeek, a feature -remove it, quick!" folks are gone.
a painful lesson of what can happen to an OSS project when nobody has their hand on the rudder.
Quite the opposite, there was a very strong hand on the rudder, only that hand wanted to steer the project into direction that alienated all of the users and lot of the developers.
Mount/Umount
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
but complain about automatic mounting? Everybody
else complains about *not* automatic mounting and want drives to work like Windows. Heck, people even call mounting and unmounting a
"broken concept".
Funny, $BIG_CORP where I work is in the process of spending a lot of time, money and effort so that we non admins can't use our floppy and CD drives and inadvertantly load any virii. Seems like maybe the Unix world had it right to begin with.
So typing zenity --question --text "Delete Windows?" gives you a dialog that asks "Delete Windows?" and presents two buttons, one that says "Cancel" and the other that says "Yes".
<rant>
What the hell kind of user interface is that? It should either say "No" and "Yes", or it should say "Cancel" and "Ok". Mixing the two paradigms just looks confusing.
It's consistency problems like this that start giving Linux and other open source projects a bad name.
</rant>
(Not to say that commercial apps are immune - they certainly have their own fair share of usability issues.)
Actually Yes, No, Cancel is a valid dialog choice. As in it asks a question which may be answered with either Yes or No, or you can cancel which takes back whatever you did to get there.
But I agree, Yes, Cancel is not good, this dialog should probably be OK, Cancel by default.
-Spyky
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
FooBarWidget
·
· Score: 1
"Startup notification in GNOME tends to screw up. That's why I like turning it off."
You mean startup notification in GNOME 1. Startup notification in GNOME 2 is different. Let me remind you of GNOME's design philosophy: don't add "unbreak me" preferences. They know that if you would want to disable startup notification, then there's something wrong with that feature. So instead, they've worked hard to make startup notification work correctly. And indeed it does.
"Hell, 'Normal' users don't use Linux."
Yet. Or are you suggesting that we should not design for normal users because we don't have much of them yet? If we do that we can be sure that they will never come.
"GNOME seems to be getting slower. Nautilus is a bit piece of crap."
Are you kidding? GNOME has become a lot *faster* since 1.x, not slower. Especially Nautilus, which has become significantly faster. Nautilus is getting better and better with each release, not worse.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
HiThere
·
· Score: 1
The only thing that I have ever objected to about having a DOS window in MSWindows was either 1) its absence (e.g. NT, etc.) or 2) missing features. I want a screen that I can go back and forth on like I can on a shell window.
Howsomever, I suppose that somebody may have objected to that. More likely you're remembering complaints about the way MSWind uses 16 bit pointers in ways that cause massive crashes if any 16 bit application crashes. And that *is* worthy of complaint.
Howsomever, I'll soon be free of dealing with that nearly entirely. (I'll only have one MSWind machine that I'll continue to support. [Well, plus one in storage for "just in case".])
--
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
KDE Users - Install kcmrandr
by
brunes69
·
· Score: 1
Users using the debian CVS KDE packages can just apt-get install kcmrandr. Others may need to wait until it is included in the default distro.
Adds support for res change, freq change, and screen orientation (if display supports it), all on the fly from the system tray, or from KControl.
Q. garnome or "partial local portage"?
by
4of12
·
· Score: 1
Phew... That took the whole night. Maybe I should have used GARNOME after all.
Yeah, when it gets going, garnome is pretty impressive to watch wget-ing packages,./configure-ing, make-ing, and make install-ing.
Lately, though, I've become intrigued by Gentoo's portage system for building packages. SO I have a question for the knowledgeable:
Is it possible to set up a local portage and ebuild system, on non-Gentoo systems, for packages like Gnome-2.4 without having to build an entire Linux system from scratch?
-- "Provided by the management for your protection."
Re:Q. garnome or "partial local portage"?
by
__past__
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Is it possible to set up a local portage and ebuild system, on non-Gentoo systems, for packages like Gnome-2.4 without having to build an entire Linux system from scratch?
Dunno about ebuild, but if it's the mechanism and not so much the actually available packages, NetBSDs pkgsrc collection (called "ports" on other BSDs) is actually cross-platform.
This and more fixed in current.
by
Inoshiro
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I installed Gnome 2.2 recently and have been tracking various bugs via thock.com. I haven't gotten around to filing bugs for absolutely everything, but most of the big stuff is explained there.
-- -- Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ?
by
siddhartha03
·
· Score: 1
FreeBSD: pkg_add gnome2
=)
-- Sock puppets stole my sig.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Glyndwr
·
· Score: 1
This isn't a double standard. The current file dialog has the problem that it is effective a big morass of publically callable functions and data that $RANDOM_APP hooks into in unpredicable ways. Change even one function, and dozens of $RANDOM_APPs are going to instantly break, and that's very bad. There are a lot of GTK1.X programs kicking around and pretty much every one calls the file dialog at one point or another.
The only way around this is to design a new one and write it into a new GTK verion then depricate the old file dialog; hopefully the new one would have a sensible API to allow incremental improvements through time, this time.
ObDisclaimer: I'm not a Gnome developer, but I read up on this some time ago.
-- You win again, gravity!
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
by
Glyndwr
·
· Score: 1
Erm, I got distracted by something shiny there and forgot to finish my argument. I was going to go on to say, support DOS stuff under WinXP really is a relic, whereas supporting GTK1.X apps is all-too-current and important, like supporting 32bit apps on a 64bit processor. So I would suggest that some backwards compatibility is good but it must be taken in moderation.
I recently (about two months ago) decided to switch from kde to gnome, and i absolutely love it. Now I could just be ignorant of it, but the one thing that I really wish it had is an "always on top" menu item for windows. Anyone know more about this?
Exposing the Nautilus CD Burner
by
Walles
·
· Score: 1
But I was disappointed with the nautilus cd burner. It is a really great feature, but somehow, it is not at all visible. But I was disappointed with the nautilus cd burner. It is a really great feature, but somehow, it is not at all visible.
Someone said that what MacOS X does is to automatically open the CD-burning software when a writable CDROM is inserted. Sounds like a great idea to me.
Try browsing some network shares
by
bogie
·
· Score: 1
Then you'll feel real pain. While the devs continue to add gee-wiz stuff, basic things like its speed continue to take a back seat. Other file managers can display files on a smb mounted share 3 to 5 times faster. Sorry but on a 100MBit network it simply shouldn't take so long.
This is without things like thumbnail preview and file counting on.
-- If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I agree with your assessment of Metacity. For example, I cannot minimize file transfer dialogs spawned from Mozilla. I am given no choice to do so. So I either have to stare at them or drag them away so I can see the browser window. I also wish Mozilla would integrate better. Every time I log into my machines, I have a terminal on each of two workspaces, Evolution on the fourth workspace, and Mozilla opens on whatever workspace I'm on when it starts instead of workspace three. Perhaps some bug reports would get the ball rolling on these...
"I prefer KDE for the eye candy and better usability."
The situation hardly breaks down as: KDE: eye candy, usability GNOME: performance
I can't believe that you are serious. What do you consider usable? I don't understand.
How exactly is KDE more usable than GNOME 2.2 or 2.3? Yes, GNOME 2.2 currently lacks sufficiently mature programs for some functionality (cd burning, integrated smb network share manipulation), but the desktop itself, even as it stands now, is many, many times more usable than what I have seen of KDE.
If by "usable" you mean, "Forces me to fiddle with settings, settings that no non obsessive-compulsive person should ever want to change, just to use the environment in a comfortable manner", then no, GNOME 2.2+ is not "usable". Fortunately, this is hardly the definition of "usable".
I consider myself to be a very technical person, but being a technical person has nothing whatsoever to do with having the desire to obsessively fiddle with settings, or to fill my desktop with obscene amounts of clutter that does not contribute to usability. If Mac OS X were fully Free Software, I would run Mac OS X, because from what I have seen of it, it "just works". My X desktop should "just work". GNOME 2.2+ "just works" for most of what I do, and it is getting better and it will continue to get better.
If by "usable" you mean, "By default conveys a circus-like atmosphere of unlabelled icons, bright and shiny colors, and menus filled with more options and entries than a kernel compille," then no, GNOME 2.2+ is not "usable". Fortunately, this is hardly the definition of "usable".
"But it would be a huge improvement for Gnome to just improve usability."
This I absolutely do not understand. Have you used GNOME 2.2+? Do you realize that GNOME 2.x+ is about, perhaps foremost: usability?
Yes, Nautilus needs to mature, but how can you look at the visual assault of colors, the cluster-fsck of iitty-bitty icons and buttons and overflowing menus that is the default configuration of the Konqueror file-manager and tell me that KDE is more usable than GNOME 2.2+?
I just don't understand.
No, KDE is not for me. Maybe it is for you, but if so, then either you or your needs are so differnet from me and my own that I simply can not understand you.
I've found that I can simply get work done in KDE (> 2.0), while I can't get much done in GNOME (> 2.0). It's not a difference in usability, but rather in intuitiveness.
I consistently look around in GNOME 2.x to find how to do things, and often, I can't figure it out. With KDE, at least, there might be lots of interface fuzz to deal with, but I can usually figure it out.
I also find WinXP to be _much_ more intuitive than OSX. I don't think I'm alone either... I see people avoiding OSX boxes at my local library because they just can't figure out how to do basic things with it.
I could agree that KDE is more technical than GNOME, and maybe that is what some people find to be most intuitive and usable.
I'm not saying that you don't find KDE to be more usable; you obviously do, and that I suppose is a perspective that I do not see things from.
I know that some people, consider GNOME 2.x to in many ways be a step backwards from GNOME 1.x, and I suspect that this might be for similar reasons.
My desktop, for example, is pretty much the default configuration, except that I use only a single panel -- which is on the top -- and 10 virtual desktops to navigate rather than using a taskbar; maybe that is something that others would consider to be very unusable and counter-intuitive; I don't know.
I suppose this might sound silly to some people, but in a desktop environment, I prefer the large buttons with text labels beneath them. I prefer the simple and usually sparse menus. I prefer not having an abundance of ways to do the same thing, especially when it is something new. I like what is being done with Epiphany, Totem, and Rhythmbox. I don't recall yet having a need to change any advanced preferences through gconf-editor.
Most of my work is done in Epiphany (recently, but Mozilla Firebird is nice too), an XTerm (gnome-terminal is too slow and seems to have a minor memory leak), and/or in EMACS, so maybe I use my desktop differently than others, too.
To be clear though, I'm not one of those people who say that developing two desktop environments is a "waste of time", either. Obviously -- and as I can see here -- some people have very different needs and intuitions than myself, and of course those people have every bit as much right to pursue satisfying those needs and expectations.
Then consider the following about Gnome: - Theme, color, and window management choices are totally separate and confusing - Nautilus has none of the nice features of Konqueror such as proper handling of all MIME types, browser tree beyond just file system, drag-and-drop of CD tracks to rip to MP3 or OGG, and seamless integrated browsing of compressed files - Theme engines in KDE handle much fancier features, such as control of menu transparency (maybe it exists for Gnome somewhere, but I haven't found it) - Menu arrangements between applications seem more consistent and logical in KDE than Gnome, but that's purely my opinion
I use Gnome 2.2 almost exclusively because KDE's relatively heavy use of system resources bothers me. For look and feel KDE is arranged better, so the themes are able to be more consistant among menu features, windows, etc. By making the environment more comfortable it has better usability. You can get your job done in both, but KDE is arranged better and has more features.
I can install Windows. Even Windows 2000. And I can have a GUI file-manager that does damn near everything.
And get this. I can do it all on less that 100MB of RAM. Unlike nautilus, which, according to my system, requires 180 - 220 MB RAM at all times. This sucks, because I'm on an old box with 256 Physical. That means that I am constantly swapping. a lot.
and yes, the idea is to remove bloat in the name of userfriendliness. Not eliminate userfriendlyness. There is a way to have friendly apps that dont take a gig of RAM to run.
-- Stop sending me HTML mail. telnet is my POP client and I am not an HTML/4.0-compatible rendering engine
Re:gui == bloat?
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Anonymous Coward
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yeah, but when the entire operating system can't stay up for more than a week thanks to bloat and memory leaks, i dont suppose there is much reason worrying about the filemanager. of course, we could put memory leaks all over the linux kernel too, then i guess nautilus would look pretty stable, huh.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If you want a slightly better file dialog (with Back button, Home button, Bookmarks, etc.) but is still compatible with all the current apps, take a look at this patch:
Why the hell does everything have to follow the fsckin MS Windows model all the dogdamn time?! Why do you think I'm using Linux and not Windows?! Gnome and not KDE?! Let KDE be XP-like, and let Gnome have some balls and be the best damn window manager it wants to be, not copying other people's crappy ideas just because it is what people are used to.
argh drives me nuts. because I really like gnome.
Another reason to use ROX more. http://rox.sourceforge.net
Has anyone got any experience of the accessibility options. Is the screenreader usuable?
Phil
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
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Anonymous Coward
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Another one is startup notification. Why would anyone not want it? Why should it be disable-able?
I DON'T WANT IT. I don't don't want it because I dont like it. That's enough. It's cute but pointless. Slows me down. Why the hell do I have to edit the source code to get rid of it?? Is it that much trouble?
And there's the Nautilus desktop preferences. A lot of users got confused by the sudden disappearence of their desktop and don't know how to get them back.
Hell, I can't figure out how to get rid of the bastards. Good ridance. Again, they clutter up my screen for no reason. Bye bye.
And most people who complain about the lack of preferences are geeks and power users who are used to lots of preferences. Well sorry to say this to you, but you are not GNOME's target group anymore. GNOME is now targeting normal users that want simplicity and don't want to be flooded with config options.
I am really really sorry to hear this. I like gnome. I like GTK. But what's the point?! Why the hell shouldn't I just use KDE which has the dumbing down bit down already? Why on Earth would I want to use a KDE -but not as good- clone?? dumb. dumb. dumb. dumb.
Linux on the desktop is for power users and control freaks. Will be so for the next 5 years. We need a desktop. Let KDE have the candy & gnome have the big ass power I say. Fluxbox & co are a bit too spartan and unpolished for my main box.
Fuck.
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta)
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I on the other hand am in full rant mode.
I do appreciate the work people throw in, but I'm really unhappy with the direction gnome is heading in. I was really quite happy with Gnome 1.4 & Sawfish. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, and was fast and stable. Things have gone downhill since. It's to the point I don't apt-get upgrade my desktop stuff anymore as it just seems to get more candy like and less functional with each release.
"I rant because I really like gnome. I rant because I care"
Disagreement with your gripes + gripes of my own.
by
TheOrquithVagrant
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· Score: 1
> Nautilus takes an ungodly amount of memory to run
Takes a little over 8 megs on my machine normally. I managed to force it up to 14 by opening multiple folders, some with photo collections with thumbnailing on. Hardly an "ungodly amount", considering the circumstances.
> It can't seem to associate file type with applications consistently
Never seen that problem.
> It has that annoying "feature" where any time I insert removable media, it opens a window of the media automatically.
Not even a nautilus setting. Turn it off in Preferences->CD Properties
> You close it and it still takes up the same ungodly amount of memory
I would assume this is because it keeps information about the folders in memory, to make re-opening them fast and snappy. As stated, i don't agree with your definition of "ungodly amount", but it might be a good idea to make folder caching behavior tunable. Good luck trying to get that idea past Havoc Pennington and his Anit-Option Jihad, though...:(
I have my own gripes with Nautilus in its current state, mainly:
1. Still too damn slow when opening new folders.
2. Needs a fast, light and compact list view, not the "for $file in *;do stat $file;file $file;du $file;thumbnail $file;if [ -d $file];then ls $file|wc -l;fi;done" circus that seems to be going on in the current list view.
3. Inconsistent behavior between side pane tree-view and main view (no context menu on folders in the side pane, for example).
There are few developers left who didn't go on to work on that stupid fork, and they're working hard to make Galeon back to what it was. Best. Browser. Ever.
New 1.3.x versions are already lot better than the first gtk2 releases, I bet they could use some help though...
Then use two (virtual) terminals. You can launch multiple X-window servers in parallel, and switch with alt-F7, alt-F8 (or on whatever virtual terminal your X-servers run).
Multiple screens is also possible.
That way you can run your coding apps on the lower res screen, and the design apps on the higher.
Switching resolution isn't nice anyway, since many apps adapt themselves at startup to the (then) current resolution. They might behave strange if resolution is changed afterwards (in windows as well).
Changing colordepths is something else, and often has even stranger effects on applications.
Slashdot Mirror
A new OSS/etc product or update? The SCO shark smells blood in the water, and swims in for the kill once again....
Is the "typing break". I can sit back in my chair, hands on my head, and when the PHB asks why I'm not working, I just say "Gnome Typing Break" and he says "Uh-hu" and goes away. Totally excellent.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Does it fix any of those annoying problems in the current versions like:
Put identity in the browser.
Having nothing better to do (and wanting to do a bit of testing on the localization stuff we are working on), I decided to download the latest beta of GNOME - GNOME 2.3.5 (Jebe) . Since the RC release freeze is imminent, and the feature freeze is already in place, the system that I am running currently will not be significantly different from GNOME 2.4, when it is released on September. In this article, I would be briefly describing the new features and applications of GNOME 2.4. However, I would concentrate mainly on the packages in the core GNOME system, and will not be going beyond those.
Installing the packages (WARNING: slightly hairy) To GARNOME or not...
I had heard that installing the GNOME packages in the right order could be a tricky process, and I was looking at GARNOME and other tools for an easy way out. However, after some poking around, I decided to do the install by hand. This decision was largely prompted by this document, and I am really grateful to its author.
The system
The usual convention before doing a description of any large scale installation process is to give a short summary of the specs of the machine in question, and so, without much ado, here it is:
Processor: 700 Mhz Pentium III
RAM: 192 MB
Swap: 250 MB
OS: Redhat Linux 9.0 (Shrike)
Kernel: 2.6.0-test2
It is obvious that this is not a very modern machine, but such boxes are quite common in where I live (India).
The installation
Most of the files needed for compile and install are downloadable from the directory ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/2.3/2.3.5/sources/. There are also a few "extras" which are usually included in stock "development machine" installations, like the Docbook 4.1.2 DTDs, etc. If you don't have them, the ./configure script will complain, and you will find them in your
distro CDs.
/opt. That meant that the new
libraries and the header files would be installed in /opt/lib and /opt/include. So, I had to
set the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /opt/lib/pkg-config (by issuing
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/lib/pkg-config) so the pkg-config utility searched /opt/lib/pkg-config before the usual /usr/lib/pkg-config. I had also added the line /opt/lib
to the file /etc/ld.so.conf. Moreover, the usual ./configure was replaced by ./configure --prefix=/opt so the installation folder was /opt.
I did not download the gtk2, the glib2 and the pango packages. More or less up to date GTK2 and glib2 are already included in RH 9.0 and I usually keep in sync with the Pango development process through CVS (I have to keep track of certain outstanding bugs in Pango w.r.t bengali rendering). If you follow these steps, please ensure that you have the devel packages installed as well.
To avoid a mess, I had decided to install the new GNOME packages under
I followed the following sequence while installing packages. It works for me, and it may or may not work for you.
What's with the gum-drops on the right hand side of the title bar? Is this like OS X for left-handed people?
...sounds like an amazing idea, not just for my hands but for my sanity. If I didn't spend 10 minutes an hour meandering arround the office I would probably go insane.
From the article: > The most significant addition to the Control Center > is a utility for changing the screen resolution and > refresh rate on the fly. This will probably be my fav. It's tough to look "kewl" with Linux when I need to exit the GUI just to change the resolution. Then again, going into that console screen does impress chicks... :0)
CowsAnonymous: We're here to help moo.
7 comments and already slashdotted. They must be running some new Gnome 2.4 based version of Apache...
"To compete better against Microsoft IIS, we've decided to make a version of Apache, which is completely GUI-based and requires at least Gnome 2.4 to run"
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
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 fo
GNOME development is slightly disappointing. It's lagging really far behind KDE in terms of eye candy. Although, I must say that gnome seems to be much more consistent than KDE and much easier to use.
What's coming up in GNOME 2.4 - a look at GNOME 2.3 :: What's New
GNOME 2.4 is going to have a number of cool, new applications. In this section, I am going to describe them.
The Browser: Epiphany
One of the most controversial changes in GNOME 2.4 is the dumping of Galeon in favour of Epiphany as the default browser. Epiphany is based on Mozilla, but is much more light and bloat free and features a much, much, much cleaner interface. I have not used Galeon very extensively, but Epiphany has already become my default browser. Startup is much faster than Mozilla, the interface is much more intuitive and clutter free and it merges nicely with the look and feel of the rest of the GNOME environment. The latest versions (0.8.2 and above) also have a extra experimental plugin which allows mouse gestures.
Fig 12. Epiphany - The Brand New GNOME Browser. (Click for a larger view)
It supports popup blocking, tabbed browsing, customizable toolbars, automatic image resizing and all of these, with an extremely simple and clean UI. However, I would like to see the download manager to be a little more advanced (resume support maybe??).
The PDF Viewer: GPDF
GPDF has a UI which is similar to GGV (The GNOME Postscript Viewer), and handled PDF files quite well in my system. It is based on xpdf (actually, the "NEWS" file says that it is a port of xpdf to GNOME 2).
Fig 13. GPDF - The GNOME PDF Viewer. (Click for a larger view)
As with most other GNOME applications, I found the interface to be nice an clean, but it seemed to have some issues with regard to embedded fonts.
The Character Picker: GUCharmap
This new GNOME Character map is quite a fancy tool - a bit too fancy, IMHO. It has support for all the Unicode Characters, and it seems to have detailed information on each and every character.
Fig 14. GUCharMap Showing Some of the Characters. (Click for a larger view)
Fig 15. GUCharMap Showing Details. (Click for a larger view)
The Calculator
The new calculator of GNOME is also quite improved. There is a handy list of commonly used mathematical constants (pi, e, various conversion factors, etc). It has three modes - basic, financial and scientific.
Fig 16. GCalcTool - The GNOME Calculator. (Click for a larger view)
GNOME System Tools
In my opinion this is one of the best additions to the GNOME software map in a long time. As the README file says, these tools are designed to make (Unix) system configuration easy for desktop users. They aim for what the README calls "unified system configuration", meaning that the same toolset can be used in different flavours of Unix. This is achieved by splitting each tool into two distinct parts - a frontend written in C/Python and a backend written in Perl.
Currently available tools include a Runlevel Admin, a Network Admin (which lets you specify your hostname, samba hostname and workgroup, DNS servers, search domains, hosts, network interfaces, ppp, ethernet, slip and in a limited way, wavelan). Also included are a Time Admin, a User Admin and a Boot Admin.
I really liked the interface of each tool, especially the artwork. I think it is a great approach towards making a user friendly set of system configuration tools for the desktop user. Tools provided by the various distros are also great, but since each one has a different interface of its own (and a different set of problems), it becomes difficult for both users and tech support people to handle them.
Fig 17. GNOME System Tools - Boot Admin (Click for a larger view)
Fig 18. GNOME System Tools - Network Admin (Click for a larger view)
More information on GNOME System Tools is available at http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/.
The Media Player: Totem
Yes - GNOME now has a media player of its own (though of recent, it has suddenly disappeared from the module listing withou any warning). It is called Totem, and currently it is based on a Xine backend. However, from the README, I gathered
People implementing LTSP are having serious problems with GDM. Most of them just change to another one.
Let's hope that they'll fix it.
Oh yeah, the website is being slashdotted to death right now. Can't check it right now.
I am not a Gnome basher, frankly I find it humurous that people would bicker over desktops. But, I am forced to use it from time to time, so I would it to be at least as good as KDE.
Last week, I decided to review the new GNOME Linux desktop solution with its competitor and arch rival - Orc Software.
... raids are often launched, with bitter, bloody results.
As we all are aware from our years playing AD&D, Gnomes and Orcs are bitter enemies. So, an objective feature-to-feature smackdown of these blood rivals seemed like a good idea.
There's no place like GNOME
First, GNOME. GNOME is a small, diminuitive Linux desktop solution. It has a large, pointy applications menu, is smaller in stature to its OSX and Win2K counterparts in Middle Computing, and has a tendency to wear bright, shiny desktop graphics to contrast against the solemn darkness of the cave-like bedrooms (mainly those of its master, the race of teh l337 g33k) that it is normally found dwelling in. Little known to the races which utilize OSX and Win2K (the race of teh lu53r), GNOME strives to deliver applications hewn from the C-laden rockbed which surrounds it in Linuxia. While these Gnomish applications can seem unweildy to the lu53r races, and lack the physical beauty of their counterparts, GNOME is very proud of its handywork, and is widely celebrated by teh l337 g33k by which it is governed.
Stick a ORC in it
Next, the ORC. Largely unknown to the race of teh l337 g33k is Orc Software. Known for their prowess with gold pieces, Orc inhabits an area in Middle Computing known as Teh W877 Str33t, where it allows its masters to wield a treasure horde like that of a dragon's. ORC, while inhabiting an area of Win2K which is (thankfully) almost completely separated from Linuxia, do on occassion clash across the great superhighway known as teh n3tw0rk. The ORC is prized by its masters of teh w877 str33t for their skill with rare metals. The ORC despise the GNOME - their lack of interest in gold, their subservience to masters other than their own in Win2K
teh Conclusion
Without divulging my own whereabouts and loyalties, I must admit I am faithful to KDE, a rival race to the GNOME. However, as I have more in common with my Gnomish rivals than I do with the ORC, I impart my favor to the GNOME over the ORC. Long live Linuxia! Long live Linuxia!
What you describe is needed for an upgrade, not an install. Installing gnome 2 with RH9, for example, is quite as simple as you describe:
Insert Redhat CD, boot, let installation and plug & play take over. It is this easy.
blah
I wish that there was just one unified desktop project, one window manager, and more emphasis placed on advancing XFree86. We could get a lot farther a lot faster. Just look at Windows. With Windows 95 Microsoft scored a hit. It has only gotten better since than. Gnome and KDE have been at it for years and are barely better then Win95, and still far behind WinXP.
Three major development groups like Red Hat, IBM, and now Novell (with their purchase of Ximian) should get together and form a single, solid desktop group and pour some money into it. Linux would have second place in the desktop war in about a year, instead of three or four (if ever).
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:2Z_65SXcG0QJ: www.ilug-cal.org/%3Fq%3Dnode%26from%3D80+Sayamindu +Dasgupta+Gnome+2.4&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
The "superior" (I'll leave it to others to decide) media library can be found here, not here.
Version numbers rarely have anything to do with software development progress with respect to competitors software.
If that was the case, is Windows 3.1 more advanced software that a Linux box with kernel 2.6.0-test3?
It is a well known trend that competing software vendors may increase their version increments to appear current with their competitors.
For example, Netscape 6 (as opposed to Netscape 5) was released because MSIE was already at version 6. RedHat 9 came out after RedHat 8 (there was no 8.1) presumably to keep abreast with Mandrake 9.
GNOME is a mature desktop environment. Their software is good enough - their is no need to resort to such version jumping. It suits some people, but not others. My (Red) Hat goes off to them for not needing to keep their versions in sync with KDE.
Mike
Yes, but for most systems installing those 60+ packages is a simple one-fell-swoop task.
debian:
apt-get install gnome
gentoo:
emerge gnome
for rpm systems:
rpm-get install gnome, or wait till its part of the install (then you match/better the WinXP install!)
for source:
here you are on your own. this will take time, but it will be very satisfying.
Mainstream users will no more be building their own packages than Windows users will format their drives and copy in individual files manually from their Windows install CD.
This wasn't a review or tutorial for end users, as should be obvious from the outset of the article.
I use GDM and KDM on my work and home computers respectively. KDM is more asthetically pleasing, and has that familiar feel of unix.
GDM is more configurable, although I have yet to see sufficient documentation on doing so. Creating your own login screen relies on reverse-engineering other themes. It's not that hard, pretty much all XML, but you think that they could write a primer or a spec sheet for it.
With Windows 95 Microsoft scored a hit. It has only gotten better since than. Gnome and KDE have been at it for years and are barely better then Win95, and still far behind WinXP.
How exactly is GNOME and KDE "behind" WinXP? I've used XP, and coming from Win98 I always go "where the $#@! has option X gone?" only to have is moved elsewhere because Microsoft thought it would be better there. They are *always* moving things around with each incarnation of Windows, and it's damn annoying. And people complain about GNOME being "inconsistent". Bah. It's all just a matter of opinion.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
What is it with the icons on dialog box buttons? They give me nightmarish flashbacks of Borland C++ under Windows with its ugly green check marks and red crosses!
Both GNOME and KDE are completely bloated. How on earth can GNOME (on RedHat 9) and KDE (on SuSE 8.2) running on an admittedly old Pentium 300 be so slow. I mean, seriously! My 8 Mhz Atari ST was faster at basic desktop functions.
I moved to Vector Linux last week, which has neither KDE or GNOME, and my machine now takes under a minute from turning the power on to the desktop finishing loading, and under 10 seconds to shut down.
Does anyone know if Window List is going to regain the 'Show Minimized Windows' only feature that actually made it useful? :)
Eric
However, I do have a couple of questions which is kinda off-topic-ish:
;-)
1) Is there a "roadmap" setout in regards to GTK 2.4/2.6 etc terms of functionality one should expect in up coming releases.
2) I've heard rumbles that gtk2 is still being ported to Quartz, could someone confirm it. I know there is an X11 version, however, it would be nice to have one that does require it, not because of anything political, I just don't want to download that massive 40+ MB XFree86 package from Apple
3) Is there going to be a move by GNOME to support MAS as a replacement for esound? having used MAS and seen it action, it would be a really great addition if it was made available.
4) When running GNOME on FreeBSD I notice that when I select text in a terminal window there is a stall and the whole computer freezes then suddenly comes alright. I haven't experience that with KDE.
Having run GNOME 2.2 on Linux quite nicely it clearly isn't an issue with GNOME but with the FreeBSD port. Could someone confirm that this is being addressed?
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
1) File dialog.
3 5
The current GTK+ file dialog *cannot* be changed without breaking compatibility. A new file dialog is under development for GTK+ 2.4, for quite a while now. But GTK+ 2.4 will not make it before the GNOME 2.4 release.
If you want a slightly better file dialog (with Back button, Home button, Bookmarks, etc.) but is still compatible with all the current apps, take a look at this patch:
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36
2) Galeon.
Galeon never was a part of GNOME 2. At one point they had to choose a browser so they chose Epiphany because it's goals are like GNOME's. There's nothing stopping you from installing Galeon yourself. I'm typing this in Galeon right now.
3) Extract Here
I agree with you on this. Email the File Roller author, not Slashdot.
4) Panel size
Why click 20 times? Just focus the spinbox and type in whatever number you want using your keyboard. As for the goat logo, how's that a usability issue? Users don't care what logo they see in the about box (if they look at all).
5) Media player
GStreamer doesn't "suck", it's just not finished yet. Xine is not "superior", it's different. GStreamer is a very ambitious project, and is like Windows's DirectShow. It's not just for playing files, it's an entire multimedia framework, which includes things like recording and encoding. I don't see Xine doing something like that.
What's stopping you from installing MPlayer (not Windows Media Player!) or Xine or whatever? I installed MPlayer, setup some associations and everything works perfectly.
Anyway, I don't know why you say 2.4 isn't as good as 2.2. Except for Extract Here, none of the features in 2.2 are removed, some features just didn't make it to 2.4.
I am only asking for a RPN calculator! Is this too much to ask????
It's because 2.3.5 is a _development_ release. It is not intended for end-users, but for developers (which, presumably, aren't too fazed with the task). This is a preview of the 2.4 release which will happen in a few weeks.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
What's with all you people complaining that Galeon is not the default Gnome browser? How hard is it to install Galeon and use it instead?
Epiphany follows the HIG better and fits more nicely into Gnome.
If you don't want to use, then don't. It's as simple as that.
n.b. I too still prefer Galeon, and uses it most of the time.
Instead of just complaining, help out.
Is it possible to switch the button order back to normal?
Oh, I see. Back to KDE until Gnome 2.6 then. Keep up the good work, guys.
GNOME 2.4 does not have a new file selector; the features being listed in the parent post are made up bullshit. I checked his website and there are no screenshots or even mention of GNOME.
By and large I agree, but wasn't NS5 actually in development then scrapped with the decision to push Mozilla so it made sense to jump the version since a product of that versioning had been started...?
They also removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
Maybe because of people like you that kept missing the point! Why would they have a goat? Thats a gnu
Urgh, forgot to reply to some things.
1) CMYK support
Do you have any idea how hard it is to implement properly CMYK support in the current Gimp codebase? It's *not* trivial! Remember that most Gimp developers are just volunteers, not commercial developers working full-time!
2) Weather applet
The old one was removed due to legal reasons. Or do you want the GNOME project to be sued by weather.com?
3) Wanda
And how's this even relevant?
4) Menu editor
You never had to restart the panel. Well, not on my box anyway.
5) Hidden preferences
Which preferences? Hhow many of those preferences do you change daily? How many of those preferences do normal users care about?
Think about that first.
If you suspect a leak in some process, look at its VM size. If there is a leak, the process will end up much larger after repeating some operation, such as opening a new window, N times (clean up after each time) than doing that once.
Another way is to look at the swap usage. It usually keeps increasing, but should mostly be stable after e.g. 2 hours of usage, unless you start some other very large applications.
IIRC, Netscape 6 came out because Netscape 5 was abandoned. It was supposed to be a reworking to some degree of Netscape 4, but that was such a hideous ugly mess that it was eventualy abandoned. They started from scratch and did a complete rewrite. Since it had little in common with what was Netscape 5, the version number was (not unfairly) incremented. I think that on the whole, one can blame Netscape for an awful lot, but not this one. Now, Netscape 7 on the other hand seemed to be released when Netscape 6 moved out of beta. That hardly warrented a whole new number.
On that note, I think that Slackware underwent a massive version-number-increment about a year or so ago, to keep up with the likes of RedHat, Mandrake and Suse. It could be worse. Microsoft suddenly went from NT4 to (effectively) NT2000, massively passing all the Linux distributions in version number. Just think, if they decided to keep up, then by next year, we'll be on Windows 3204973247 and RedHat 324097230984.1 Telling people what OS you're running would become a major pain.
OK, so now this has gone slightly off-topic. Mod me down if you will.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
nt
This shortcut is probably even faster, and is supported directly by X11. Why not use it ?
theefer
GTK+ 2.4 Plan
agreed, they have continually made things harder and harder to use since 1.4. Hiding options, changing menu's, etc. And don't even get me started on nautilus, the POS that just won't die....
-ex gnome zealeot, new fluxbox zealeot
While I struggle to cope with my KDE and my Gnome day in and day out I hold out hope that maybe today will be the day that I see E17 released un to the world...
You may want to check out this patch for the current file dialog:t opic.php? t=3635]http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.ph p?t=3635[/url]
[url=http://gnomesupport.org/forums/view
Are they updating it to be usable?
Yeah, cause those Windows developers don't have to actually develop anything - they just pop the Magic Install(TM) CD in the drive, and there you go! Entirely new desktop! ...
In case you hadn't noticed, this was a review of a pre-release. When it's ready, distributions will package it so that it's just as easy to install as Windows.
There are NO screenshots or anything in that page. It's just some clown trying to get some hits.
Mod it down, please. Show that you think before modding up some post.
I think it's all about what you are used too. I use KDE almost exclusivly on my development box. I found it very very difficult to do the things i wanted to in Win XP when I tried it a few weeks ago in a pinch. I use the heck out of the multiple desktop features, and I use Konsole with tabs all the time. I can find no decent alternatives in Windows.
That's not to say Windows is a bad development environment. People use it all the time for that, but it's not what I am used to and prefer.
So what I'm trying to say is that it is all about what desktop works for you. Some people use Windows, some use KDE, some use Gnome, and I know a lot that still use fvwm and windowmaker. I don't see having multiple desktop alternatives as a bad thing at all, but I rather prefer the ability to choose.
I like the multitude of choice available. If there were no choice then I'd have so much trouble running a Linux GUI on a low spec machine if the Distro of my choice (SuSE) had dumped all the other desktop managers and had gone with one inflexible choice...
I love being able to completely change the character of this machine just by selecting which desktop I want at login... mostly I stay in KDE, but I really enjoy going into Blackbox and XFCe etc. as _I_ want... sheer freedom which I'm certain I wouldn't be enjpoying if you got your way.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Try http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/garnome/download/hackin g-0.26.0.tar.bz2.
Nautilus crashes way before it has a chance to annoy me in the ways you listed. Shame too, as I prefer Gnome to KDE.
Looks like I'm stuck with Windowmaker until they get their shit together. I have my fingers crossed, but am not expecting miracles.
The last time I checked (RH 9 installation), metacity was gnome's default window-whatchamacallit, which had the annoying animated minimization, lacked some of the fine-tuning sawfish has/had, and was not-so-actively maintained. Any other up-and-coming, actively maintained, gnome2-ready/complaiant, non-fluxbox/blackbox-type, worthy replacement for metacity. TIA
It seems strange that GNOME, according to their roadmap, are willing to simply ignore gtk 2.4. Wouldn't it be best for GNOME to hold back, wait till GTK 2.4 is released, set aside one month for testing GTK 2.4 against GNOME 2.4 and then release it?
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
He lies, nothing of interest on his site, certainly nothing to do with GNOME, no screenshots
Call me practical, I guess.
One of the most troubling things to me is still Metacity WM. Maybe this has changed but last I recall you could not change the animation settings (that annoying minimize/maximize ani) and the redraw settings (dragging/resizing would show contents). To make it worse, Gnome in general made it difficult to change your WM. And what bothers me more still is that Sawmill(fish whatever) reduced its settings/options to be minimal like Metacity, although deep config settings could restore most settings back to the 1.4 days. I remember hearing some explanation that Metacity was the only Gnome2 compliant WM, so others were looked down upon. ... Am I misinformed or has this changed?
Linux Resources
The moral of the story: GNOME sucks. Use KDE.
I thought I was the only one bothered by this. On my machine, I sometimes have to wait up to 30 seconds after double clicking a shortcut - with no feedback whatsoever that anything is going on! Sheesh!
...
Maybe we're both missing some configuration item where you can enable an hourglass type feedback (note the question mark in the subject line), but assuming we're not (and I have looked pretty hard)
<rant>
This is an INSANE behavior. It causes me to doubt that the designers take the most elementary fundamentals of GUI design seriously.
</rant>
A close second to the annoyance factor of this missing feature is:
Why force us to double click the shortcuts in the first place? Why can't we configure for single click launching? Requiring a double click where there is no necessity to demand it is my pet peeve. Double click technique is difficult to explain, and non-trivial to master, especially for users who are not very dexterous. In Windows and KDE, I can set it up so I don't have to double click.
I would like to be shown the clueless user, by somewhat showing how to fix these nuisances. But even if it is possible to fix them, I must ask why fixing them is not the default.
While I agree with you regarding the simplicity of installing gnome (especially for desktop use), I think RH9's gui package management approach is bad due to lack of granuality which leads to bloat - apt/synaptic, ximian's package manager, and even previous gui versions of RH package manager, are better alternatives to RH's current gui package management
you, my friend, are an idiot.
I use KDE only cos kwrite is such a nice app. There is no GNOME equivalent i know of
Gnome's gone downhill since 1.4 in the area of user customizations. The ability to customize behavior is almost non existant compared to what we had in 1.4. I could tweak and adjust 1.4 to create a very cool environment for myself. With the 2.x series, almost all of the capability is gone. It's now just a mindless environment for dummies. Gnome's stated that they're aiming low and catering for the dumber computer users. There was soo much potential for it to develop into a really powerful environment and then those silly studies were conducted and the rest is history..... Oh well.
What is the fraction of preferences that have been reintroduced in the control center?
What is the fraction of preferences that have been moved to gconf?
What is the fraction of preferences that are still absent?
I can't get the info pulled up on bug fixes. Did they just add new features or did they fix some stability issues as well? If it's more stable I'll definitely try it out.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I disagree. Windows XP still doesn't have these features by default:
- Virtual desktops.
- Magnetic window snapping.
- Multiple panels with applets.
- A usable commandline (yes I do use the commandline in Windows for certain things!).
They *are* better than Win95.
And saying that "everybody needs to get together and create one great whatever" is fundamentally flawed. You assume that every human being has the same ideas, the same design philosophies, the same aestetic preferences. One size cannot fit all!
Heck, GNOME and KDE have different target groups! GNOME target the simple user who wants simplicity, while KDE targets the advanced user who wants power and configurability. They are both very different target groups.
The solution is not to make one single whatever for everybody, it's to make all implementations compatible. In other words: standardize on interfaces, not implementation. That's what the Freedesktop.org guys are doing.
You can change KDE just as much as you can change GNOME to be some interface that you only see in movies.
Just because yuo don't like the default is no reason to say it sucks. Many users like the fact that the default is so much like windows.
If you were as 3733+ as you thought you were, you'd know that.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Instead of asking "how many preferences can I still change now?", ask yourself this first:
How many of all those preferences actually make sense?
For example, the preferences in the Pager applet that lets you tweak for a certain window manager make no sense. They're the "unbreak me" type of preferences. Things like that should be handled automatically.
Another one is startup notification. Why would anyone not want it? Why should it be disable-able?
And there's the Nautilus desktop preferences. A lot of users got confused by the sudden disappearence of their desktop and don't know how to get them back. Besides, this is a preference that only power users with old hardward would want to use, and is only set once.
And most people who complain about the lack of preferences are geeks and power users who are used to lots of preferences. Well sorry to say this to you, but you are not GNOME's target group anymore. GNOME is now targeting normal users that want simplicity and don't want to be flooded with config options.
I too agree with the parent poster in spirit, but he chose all the wrong examples to back up his statements.
You're dead on about the Netscape debacle, but I'm proud to announce that I'm now using Gentoo-MAXINT. So there! Wait, they just released Redhat-MAXINT+1.
Arrrggghhh....
So could MAS be the 'flawless' version we have been looking for? Maybe...problem now is that it seems development stopped and it has yet to have a release that made it somewhat usefull to us. For instance we tried making a MAS plugin for GStreamer right after their first public release, but that effort grinded to a halt when we discovered that there was missing pieces. We where told that these pieces would be in place in the next release of MAS, but that release has never happened.
Of course this being free software it could be that we eventually come around to picking up MAS and continue it, but for the time being the current developers already have our hands full of other stuff like maturing GStreamer. New hands onboard to tackle the sound server issue if of course always welcome
''The Galeon web browser. They chose January6 [mozdev.org] instead. Not that its a bad browser, it just feels ike netscape 2 and that the name is a bad choice''
;) (ducking)
God, that DOES look like mid-90's era Netscape. Ugh. Guess that's why I'm a KDE user.
Warning: small rant follows
This double standard about compatibility really gets to me. On one hand, you have projects like Gnome which use the same convention as a previous version to insure backward compatability. Then, when a company like Microsoft keeps DOS in its Win95,98,ME line, everyone bitches about the relic, and how they should remove it. Either we want projects to maintain backward compatability, or we don't. Which is it?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
How is it that I get a Microsoft ad when reading about the new Gnome desktop?
Your friends are all idiots.
Ah, but you're talking about Slashdotters bitching. Those people are just that: Slashdot flamers. They're not the developers behind GNOME and GTK+.
The GNOME and GTK+ projects follow a very strict set of rules in not breaking compatibility.
I don't see why they are wasting time on a browser. Why not just use firebird? Is there a compelling reason for *another* browser? Sems that time could be better spent elsewhere.
And I was underwhelmed with some of the tools. The best example I've seen so far (/.ing has delivery of all pages with all pics) is the screen resolution selector. I think RedHat's version is much nicer. Again - why reinvent the wheel? If they can't use RH's (did they ask?), do something similar. Or better. But IMO the Gnome version is a step down from RH's.
Gnome has become more polished, and looks more like a mature desktop offering. The HIG had a really good impact on Gnome. Every close button is where it belongs, you don't even have to think about where it is. The only thing I miss are animations/eyecandy, they could improve the usability alot. 2.4 will be a nice improvement over 2.2.
Gnome 2.6 will probably be the same as 2.2/2.4: more polishing. I hope they will improve the gnome main menu (its just a win95 rip off). Better integration with the internet would also be nice. Just imagine, that you search for an amazon book with the search for files tool (should be called just 'Search' then ;)).
Anyway, I wish the Gnome development team lots of luck with the further development of the gnome desktop!
for source: Gentoo
You already mentioned it, so what's the problem?
Sorry, but even the latest Nautilus is noticably slower then Konqueror.
I have a directory with a few thousand files and Nautilus popped up a message saying something like "There are too many files for Nautilus to display. Exiting" WTF?????? Its the primary job of the friggin app and it won't do it??? Very unprofessional.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
As for the goat logo, how's that a usability issue? Users don't care what logo they see in the about box (if they look at all).
Yeah, but they do care about that god-awful foot icon on the menu button. I'm not the only person I know who avoids Gnome because of THE FOOT. Ick.
They made file extration harder, because thay don't want to waste space on the context menu.
Thanks $deity, it's kinda hard to get tar -xzf away.
They have made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but they rearranged the key bidnings
Use xterm, really. It is well documented (unlike both gterm and konsole) and you can bend it as you like.
...Microsoft suddenly went from NT4 to (effectively) NT2000...
Wrong. According to winver, Windows 2000 is Windows NT 5.0
"Slashdot - the one place on the internet where guys brag about how small it is." - that IT girl
Can someone mod this up please?
I have a CPU applet on the top panel, and I can see with it how Mozilla or Opera starts up (I don't run anything that big besides them).
I don't understand why the GNOME crew never implemented the superior Ximian file selector over their bare-bones one. After traversing partitions it really is handy to have a "Home" button, and though it is a step back version-wise, that is why I am using XD2 instead of playing with the garnome releases.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
I haven't seen this in any version of Windows, nor on KDE 3.1.2 or Gnome 2.2.
It seems to me a sensible feature of a desktop would be to have a standard feature on every single visible window that would allow the user to set that window as 'always on top'. Remove the responsibility for the functionality from the app developer, and let it be part of the desktop's job. This would allow the user to set 'Always On Top' for any window he/she wants.
As a user, not a developer, I have been unable to figure out why this could be problematic. I only assume it may pose some sort of difficulty because I haven't yet seen this implemented, and it seems like a no-brainer to me.
One of the most controversial changes in GNOME 2.4 is the dumping of Galeon in favour of Epiphany as the default browser
For those of you who do not know, Epiphany is a new project from the creator of Galeon. It's aimed at staying small and light-weight while Galeon continues to be a sort of "Mozilla - XUL - mailer - chat + Gnome".
Epiphany is based on Mozilla, but is much more light and bloat free and features a much, much, much cleaner interface. I have not used Galeon very extensively, but Epiphany has already become my default browser. Startup is much faster than Mozilla, the interface is much more intuitive and clutter free and it merges nicely with the look and feel of the rest of the GNOME environment.
Also for those who do not know, all of the above is true of Galeon as well. The choice to go with Epiphany is probably mostly based on a) it's newness and thus percieved coolness b) the ultra-lightweight nature of it lends to component-model desktop integration more easily. The Galeon or Epiphany bits are almost certainly not the major contributors to user-precieved performance, so I don't think you'll see as big a difference between Galeon and Epiphany as you did between, say, Mozilla and Galeon... there simply isn't that much in terms of the UI left to rip out when rendering a page compared to the overhead of parsing and rendering HTML/JavaScript/CSS/who-knows-what.
The thing that worries me is that Galeon used to be hands-down the best browser for a Gnome desktop, but now it has been ripped apart in terms of its code base and in terms of the developers. The Gnome 2.0 revision of Galeon was a major step backward in terms of user experience. Things changed like menus (e.g. "View Source" moving out of the "View" menu and into the "File" menu) becoming much less usable; major functionality present in the JavaScript configs no longer available in the preferences; and much more.
At the same time, the developers left to go work on a new toy while users of the now live version of the browser suffered.
I'm actually on the edge of going back to Mozilla, which while large and often cumbersome, still has some of the best maintentance-mode support going (we'll see if that lasts post-Netscape).
This finally proves it!!
GNOMEs have no sense of humor...
It got both moderated "flamebait" and a serious answer that got moderated "insightful", dispite the fact that the replier had been trolled and is thus an idiot.
Jesus, it's a bad joke. Not a conspirecy.
You are correct, and I didn't make that point very clearly. I'm not criticizing the GNOME developers for not breaking backward compatability. I'm criticizing the /. community for having a double standard as it pertains to projects like this. Sorry for the confusion.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
The new file dialog
/bin/tar...
/. a long time ago, encouraging this sort of thing is going a long way towards making the discussions completely unreadable.
Yeah, we're all bitter about that. (I'm not sure it's fair to give Havoc credit for this, since I'm fairly certain gtk+ is a completely separate project...)
The Galeon web browser
Obviously you haven't tried this before trolling on it. It supports tabs, popup-blocking, and the other most important features from mozilla. I continue to prefer Galeon, but one of ephiphany's biggest goals (which accomplishes does well) is GNOME integration, which was presumably what made it so attractive to the GNOME developers.
We will make file extraction harder...
I must've missed the part of the File Roller install where it deleted
We will STILL not be including a media player
Seems pretty obvious here that there is one. (I'm going to ignore the rest of this one because it's unsubstantiated trolling.)
blah blah blah GIMP blah blah blah
I suppose you have a better image editor in KDE? (besides, you're giving Havoc undue credit again; the GIMP is a completely independent project, never part of GNOME in the first place). And you should know better than to whine about bugs in development versions of apps... if you don't like the shape 1.3's in, go back to the stable one and let them fix it!
blah blah gnome-terminal blah blah emacs blah blah czech blah blah obscure keybindings
Well, the keybindings are exactly the same in gnome-terminal as in any other... it's your own fault for using emacs.
etc.
I'm not going to give that much trolling so much thought...
Seriously, if you don't like GNOME, then that's perfectly OK, since it's not for everyone. But coming here and spouting unsubstantiated trolling is just counterproductive and does nothing to help anyone.
As far as this article being moderated Funny, well... I stopped laughing at the trolling on
On one hand, you have projects like Gnome which use the same convention as a previous version to insure backward compatability. Then, when a company like Microsoft keeps DOS in its Win95,98,ME line, everyone bitches about the relic, and how they should remove it. Either we want projects to maintain backward compatability, or we don't. Which is it?
Ahhh, Slashdot. Naturally, we want Linux to maintain backwards compatability, and Microsoft to abandon it!
real file selection dialog. I may as well be on a blind terminal @#&^@#()
Why the heck should GNOME button (and any other UI element) onccupy 2 times more screen real estate than Windows one? I'd rather have this space used to display the actual data I'm working with.
I was just interested to know the the fraction of preferences that were removed.
actually you are the moron, and probably to stupid to use either one. KDE is progressing faster than gnome and easier to use.
I do agree that Slashdotters have a double standard. This goes for pro/anti-MSness too. Have you noticed that most of the post that say "Slashdot always mods anti-MS comments down and pro-Linux comments up! I will get moderated down for saying this!" always get modded *up*? Slashdot isn't even an anti-MS pro-Linux site anymore.
I don't like it because you can't uninstall stuff easily. I miss the old kpackage application.
Shame gnome still does not have a more up to date file selector, the current implementation is just crap. I know this is really the fault of gtk, but there was no reason gnome could not have a module for the FSD as there seems to be little motivation to change the current incarnation from the gtk camp.
With sufficient patience you can rip Metacity out and run the most recent version of Sawfish. I'm doing that on RH 9, albeit with GARNOME rather than the RH 9 GNOME stuff.
Sufficient patience? You install Sawfish, librep, rep-gtk and any other missing dependencies and then the final blow:
killall metacity; sleep 5; sawfish; gnome-session-save
All done.
Okay, so there is no nice clicky GUI thing. But hard it ain't.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Startup notification in GNOME tends to screw up. That's why I like turning it off. 'Normal' users never change preferences anyways. Hell, 'Normal' users don't use Linux.(except maybe at work). I think the preference removals are retarded and I agree with the posters that say that GNOME is getting worse, not better.
GNOME seems to be getting slower. Nautilus is a bit piece of crap. Windows XP is pulling away from Linux in just about all categories except for security. I've been using Linux for a long time and almost always used GNOME. The only thing part of Linux from my point of view that has improved drastically since 1999 is Mozilla and it runs better on Windows! Back then, Windows sucked ass and Linux's superior stability and networking features really impresed me. Windows XP has completely caught up and even surpassed Linux in those areas. What advantages does Linux have left besides being 'free'?
All your OS are belong to Mac. ;)
What I don't like about many system config tools, including Gnome System Tools (GST) is that they read their information from their own set of files. The config tools should read the config files for the particular application they're trying to config, not just write to the config files. Their method causes any previous changes I made to be lost such as adding a more obscure option they don't control by using a text editor or by using a different config tool not part of their suite.
Wrong. There was was a 5.x version of Netscape, based on the 4.x codebase. Early in the dev cycle, it was abandoned in favor of Gecko, which is the core of NS6, Mozilla, etc.
Ever since I switched to 1280x1024 I haven't noticed much difference in screen space, but I was shocked when I saw that screenshot at 1024x768. Holy crap, I can't believe I used to use 640x480!
And I thought it was a rule that if you take a desktop screenshot, you have to use a really high resolution (1600x1200 at least) so as to impress others with your obviously expensive display hardware. Even if it's just the desktop size, not the resolution.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Dude, have you tried to use Galeon recently? The "stable" 1.2 series has gotten less stable with each succeeding release, and the gnome-2 version of galeon is still missing features that were present two years ago in the gnome-1 version.
The Galeon team have NO ONE to blame but themselves for Epiphany's selection as the default GNOME browser.
It's sad, because when it first came out, Galeon was not just hands-down the best browser for Linux, but for any operating system. Now it's mostly just an embarrassment, and a painful lesson of what can happen to an OSS project when nobody has their hand on the rudder.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Funny, $BIG_CORP where I work is in the process of spending a lot of time, money and effort so that we non admins can't use our floppy and CD drives and inadvertantly load any virii. Seems like maybe the Unix world had it right to begin with.
So typing zenity --question --text "Delete Windows?" gives you a dialog that asks "Delete Windows?" and presents two buttons, one that says "Cancel" and the other that says "Yes".
<rant>
What the hell kind of user interface is that? It should either say "No" and "Yes", or it should say "Cancel" and "Ok". Mixing the two paradigms just looks confusing.
It's consistency problems like this that start giving Linux and other open source projects a bad name.
</rant>
(Not to say that commercial apps are immune - they certainly have their own fair share of usability issues.)
"Startup notification in GNOME tends to screw up. That's why I like turning it off."
You mean startup notification in GNOME 1. Startup notification in GNOME 2 is different.
Let me remind you of GNOME's design philosophy: don't add "unbreak me" preferences. They know that if you would want to disable startup notification, then there's something wrong with that feature. So instead, they've worked hard to make startup notification work correctly. And indeed it does.
"Hell, 'Normal' users don't use Linux."
Yet. Or are you suggesting that we should not design for normal users because we don't have much of them yet? If we do that we can be sure that they will never come.
"GNOME seems to be getting slower. Nautilus is a bit piece of crap."
Are you kidding? GNOME has become a lot *faster* since 1.x, not slower. Especially Nautilus, which has become significantly faster. Nautilus is getting better and better with each release, not worse.
The only thing that I have ever objected to about having a DOS window in MSWindows was either 1) its absence (e.g. NT, etc.) or 2) missing features. I want a screen that I can go back and forth on like I can on a shell window.
Howsomever, I suppose that somebody may have objected to that. More likely you're remembering complaints about the way MSWind uses 16 bit pointers in ways that cause massive crashes if any 16 bit application crashes. And that *is* worthy of complaint.
Howsomever, I'll soon be free of dealing with that nearly entirely. (I'll only have one MSWind machine that I'll continue to support. [Well, plus one in storage for "just in case".])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Users using the debian CVS KDE packages can just apt-get install kcmrandr. Others may need to wait until it is included in the default distro. Adds support for res change, freq change, and screen orientation (if display supports it), all on the fly from the system tray, or from KControl.
Phew... That took the whole night. Maybe I should have used GARNOME after all.
Yeah, when it gets going, garnome is pretty impressive to watch wget-ing packages, ./configure-ing, make-ing, and make install-ing.
Lately, though, I've become intrigued by Gentoo's portage system for building packages. SO I have a question for the knowledgeable:
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I installed Gnome 2.2 recently and have been tracking various bugs via thock.com. I haven't gotten around to filing bugs for absolutely everything, but most of the big stuff is explained there.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
FreeBSD: pkg_add gnome2 =)
Sock puppets stole my sig.
This isn't a double standard. The current file dialog has the problem that it is effective a big morass of publically callable functions and data that $RANDOM_APP hooks into in unpredicable ways. Change even one function, and dozens of $RANDOM_APPs are going to instantly break, and that's very bad. There are a lot of GTK1.X programs kicking around and pretty much every one calls the file dialog at one point or another.
The only way around this is to design a new one and write it into a new GTK verion then depricate the old file dialog; hopefully the new one would have a sensible API to allow incremental improvements through time, this time.
ObDisclaimer: I'm not a Gnome developer, but I read up on this some time ago.
You win again, gravity!
Erm, I got distracted by something shiny there and forgot to finish my argument. I was going to go on to say, support DOS stuff under WinXP really is a relic, whereas supporting GTK1.X apps is all-too-current and important, like supporting 32bit apps on a 64bit processor. So I would suggest that some backwards compatibility is good but it must be taken in moderation.
You win again, gravity!
I recently (about two months ago) decided to switch from kde to gnome, and i absolutely love it. Now I could just be ignorant of it, but the one thing that I really wish it had is an "always on top" menu item for windows. Anyone know more about this?
Robin Williams on GWB Search this page for the word "kitty". Your post reminded me of this bit.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Someone said that what MacOS X does is to automatically open the CD-burning software when a writable CDROM is inserted. Sounds like a great idea to me.
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
Then you'll feel real pain. While the devs continue to add gee-wiz stuff, basic things like its speed continue to take a back seat. Other file managers can display files on a smb mounted share 3 to 5 times faster. Sorry but on a 100MBit network it simply shouldn't take so long.
This is without things like thumbnail preview and file counting on.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
The REAL question is whether or not they fixed the bug in libgnomecanvas that makes TEG crash.
I've had to use TEG 10.x (for Gnome 1) ever since upgrading the Gnome 2.0 libs to the Gnome 2.2 libs.
GNOME 1.4 was a great desktop. It was fast, pretty
GNOME 2.x is horrible. It seems like the bad bastard child of win3.1 and macos 8.0. It is slow, bloated, and downright fugly.
KDE 3.1 is alright, but runs too slow on my computer (pII 300). It's a vast improvement over KDE 2.x, which sucked.
But the best evironment for X currently is XFCE 4. It's fast, non-bloated, and pretty-- none of which GNOME 2.x has.
I agree with your assessment of Metacity. For example, I cannot minimize file transfer dialogs spawned from Mozilla. I am given no choice to do so. So I either have to stare at them or drag them away so I can see the browser window. I also wish Mozilla would integrate better. Every time I log into my machines, I have a terminal on each of two workspaces, Evolution on the fourth workspace, and Mozilla opens on whatever workspace I'm on when it starts instead of workspace three. Perhaps some bug reports would get the ball rolling on these...
"I prefer KDE for the eye candy and better usability."
The situation hardly breaks down as:
KDE: eye candy, usability
GNOME: performance
I can't believe that you are serious. What do you consider usable? I don't understand.
How exactly is KDE more usable than GNOME 2.2 or 2.3? Yes, GNOME 2.2 currently lacks sufficiently mature programs for some functionality (cd burning, integrated smb network share manipulation), but the desktop itself, even as it stands now, is many, many times more usable than what I have seen of KDE.
If by "usable" you mean, "Forces me to fiddle with settings, settings that no non obsessive-compulsive person should ever want to change, just to use the environment in a comfortable manner", then no, GNOME 2.2+ is not "usable". Fortunately, this is hardly the definition of "usable".
I consider myself to be a very technical person, but being a technical person has nothing whatsoever to do with having the desire to obsessively fiddle with settings, or to fill my desktop with obscene amounts of clutter that does not contribute to usability. If Mac OS X were fully Free Software, I would run Mac OS X, because from what I have seen of it, it "just works". My X desktop should "just work". GNOME 2.2+ "just works" for most of what I do, and it is getting better and it will continue to get better.
If by "usable" you mean, "By default conveys a circus-like atmosphere of unlabelled icons, bright and shiny colors, and menus filled with more options and entries than a kernel compille," then no, GNOME 2.2+ is not "usable". Fortunately, this is hardly the definition of "usable".
"But it would be a huge improvement for Gnome to just improve usability."
This I absolutely do not understand. Have you used GNOME 2.2+? Do you realize that GNOME 2.x+ is about, perhaps foremost: usability?
Yes, Nautilus needs to mature, but how can you look at the visual assault of colors, the cluster-fsck of iitty-bitty icons and buttons and overflowing menus that is the default configuration of the Konqueror file-manager and tell me that KDE is more usable than GNOME 2.2+?
I just don't understand.
No, KDE is not for me. Maybe it is for you, but if so, then either you or your needs are so differnet from me and my own that I simply can not understand you.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
I get the error "The folder "dev" contains more files than Nautilus can handle. Some files will not be displayed." Nice-
I can install Windows. Even Windows 2000. And I can have a GUI file-manager that does damn near everything.
And get this. I can do it all on less that 100MB of RAM. Unlike nautilus, which, according to my system, requires 180 - 220 MB RAM at all times. This sucks, because I'm on an old box with 256 Physical. That means that I am constantly swapping. a lot.
and yes, the idea is to remove bloat in the name of userfriendliness. Not eliminate userfriendlyness. There is a way to have friendly apps that dont take a gig of RAM to run.
-- Stop sending me HTML mail. telnet is my POP client and I am not an HTML/4.0-compatible rendering engine
Why the hell does everything have to follow the fsckin MS Windows model all the dogdamn time?! Why do you think I'm using Linux and not Windows?! Gnome and not KDE?! Let KDE be XP-like, and let Gnome have some balls and be the best damn window manager it wants to be, not copying other people's crappy ideas just because it is what people are used to.
argh drives me nuts. because I really like gnome.
Another reason to use ROX more.
http://rox.sourceforge.net
Has anyone got any experience of the accessibility options. Is the screenreader usuable?
Phil
I DON'T WANT IT. I don't don't want it because I dont like it. That's enough. It's cute but pointless. Slows me down. Why the hell do I have to edit the source code to get rid of it?? Is it that much trouble?
Hell, I can't figure out how to get rid of the bastards. Good ridance. Again, they clutter up my screen for no reason. Bye bye.
I am really really sorry to hear this. I like gnome. I like GTK. But what's the point?! Why the hell shouldn't I just use KDE which has the dumbing down bit down already? Why on Earth would I want to use a KDE -but not as good- clone?? dumb. dumb. dumb. dumb.
Linux on the desktop is for power users and control freaks. Will be so for the next 5 years. We need a desktop. Let KDE have the candy & gnome have the big ass power I say. Fluxbox & co are a bit too spartan and unpolished for my main box.
Fuck.
I on the other hand am in full rant mode.
I do appreciate the work people throw in, but I'm really unhappy with the direction gnome is heading in. I was really quite happy with Gnome 1.4 & Sawfish. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, and was fast and stable. Things have gone downhill since. It's to the point I don't apt-get upgrade my desktop stuff anymore as it just seems to get more candy like and less functional with each release.
"I rant because I really like gnome. I rant because I care"
> Nautilus takes an ungodly amount of memory to run
:(
Takes a little over 8 megs on my machine normally. I managed to force it up to 14 by opening multiple folders, some with photo collections with thumbnailing on. Hardly an "ungodly amount", considering the circumstances.
> It can't seem to associate file type with applications consistently
Never seen that problem.
> It has that annoying "feature" where any time I insert removable media, it opens a window of the media automatically.
Not even a nautilus setting. Turn it off in Preferences->CD Properties
> You close it and it still takes up the same ungodly amount of memory
I would assume this is because it keeps information about the folders in memory, to make re-opening them fast and snappy. As stated, i don't agree with your definition of "ungodly amount", but it might be a good idea to make folder caching behavior tunable. Good luck trying to get that idea past Havoc Pennington and his Anit-Option Jihad, though...
I have my own gripes with Nautilus in its current state, mainly:
1. Still too damn slow when opening new folders.
2. Needs a fast, light and compact list view, not the "for $file in *;do stat $file;file $file;du $file;thumbnail $file;if [ -d $file];then ls $file|wc -l;fi;done" circus that seems to be going on in the current list view.
3. Inconsistent behavior between side pane tree-view and main view (no context menu on folders in the side pane, for example).
There are few developers left who didn't go on to work on that stupid fork, and they're working hard to make Galeon back to what it was. Best. Browser. Ever.
New 1.3.x versions are already lot better than the first gtk2 releases, I bet they could use some help though...
Yeah, I should help out. Problem is I have a full time job and two major hobbies... sigh.
What do GTK1.x programs and their backward compability to do with lousy file dialog in GTK2 which is totally incompatible with any gtk1 stuff anyway?
Then use two (virtual) terminals. You can launch multiple X-window servers in parallel, and switch with alt-F7, alt-F8 (or on whatever virtual terminal your X-servers run).
Multiple screens is also possible.
That way you can run your coding apps on the lower res screen, and the design apps on the higher.
Switching resolution isn't nice anyway, since many apps adapt themselves at startup to the (then) current resolution. They might behave strange if resolution is changed afterwards (in windows as well).
Changing colordepths is something else, and often has even stranger effects on applications.