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Gnome 2.4 Release (d)
chendo writes "Gnome 2.4 will be released today. Here is the link to the article on Ars Technica. GNOME 2.4 is the result of quite a bit of work toward complying with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which mainly focus on user interface consistency and predictability. This release has also undergone some general polish, and it can finally be said that the GNOME 2 platform has achieved maturity with this release. The Epiphany web browser, a major new component of GNOME, also makes its debut with this release. (From Footnotes)"
Are we going to have to wait until Mandrake 9.2 to get our hands on Gnome (outside of going through the installer, something I'd probably f'up)?
The Political Programmer
Does anyone know if this version of GNOME has good accessibility-related GUI stuff? One of the big concessions that I've heard about Windows is that it has a lot of accessibility features that weren't present in other previous GUIs.
stuff |
All KDE and Gnome Zealots please board this thread, forsaking all other threads within this topic.
;)
To make this new guideline more comfortable for the really and truly devoted:
- KDE had all of the new features three releases ago. Please get Gnome development out of the way of The One Real GUI(tm)
- KDE whiners: eat our dust! (Gnome, The True Gui for Real People)
A Console/Lynx user... (Yeah, right...
Karma? What's that again?
What is the point of all these different integrated browsers now appearing in X window managers?
Sure an integrated browser is handy, but wouldnt it be worth putting the same effort into an existing browser like Mozilla Firebird instead?
all i see is "COMING SOON!" Has it really been released?
1) Main menu doesn't respond to alphabet keybindings ala IceWM, KDE and Windows 95!
:)
2) Taskbar doesn't reflect order that programs were started in. It inserts new buttons at random positions.
GNOME rules, but these two things (among the Metacity wireframe and animation niggles) are real problems. For all the UI work, it's a shame they can't get such elementary stuff right.
Still, I'll be downloading it tonight
When is _is_ out, you'll have all sorts of release notes and screenshots to look at. Slashdot is announcing non-existant releases again :)
Learn how to use the GnomeVFS library to extend GNOME, enabling drag-and-drop and other features across multiple protocols and file systems. This article gives you what you'll need to extend GNOME and develop your own extensions to the virtual file system.
Now all we need is a Gnome that is absolutely and utterly foolproof and we can slap Linux onto every PC ever.
If you really want to lure all the trolls into the on true thread, you should use a subject like this. ;-)
Murple
That could be taken as a sign of maturity.
Draw what conclusions you like from that....
I lay awake last night wondering where the sun had gone, then it dawned on me.
Linux-2.6.0-test6
Samba 3.0
Apache 2.0.48
This is not Freshmeat.ne guys, it's Freshmeat.psychic.
No way to edge-flip to another desktop.
Thus no d'n'd windows across desktops. Pager sucks for this at 16x12.
Gnome-panel regularly poops out at shutdown.
Metacity? Feh. Bring back sawfish (and I mean updated!). The introduction of predictability has led to a sharp decrease in customisability.
I have on average 20 terminals open. If one dies (e.g. because it's a shell window on a machine not available from my current location at start-up), down go the others. This is wholly unacceptable. Because of this, I almost switched to KDE - but it only supports 16 desktops which is Fucking Lame. Excuse me.
Other than those few issues, Gnome (2.x) is very stable, reliable, and well-featured. Keep up the good work (and please attend to that terminal problem).
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
KDE IMO is pretty stable and Gnome for that matter is also. But I use KDE becuase there appears to be more apps being developed for it.
Maybe if the WM's would design some sort of common application interface so things would look right on all the WM's that confirmed to the standard then we'd see a lot more x-compatibility in those applications.
And why does each WM have a seperate browser/file explorer? Just keep the explorer seperate from web browsing (Besides it's a MicroSoft idiocy) and we can all use Mozilla/Opera or whatever else.
You know, this logo is the really old one. Any chance of slashdot changing it?
The GNOME section icon is out of date: GNOME changed their logo about a year ago. I've done a new topic icon with the new logo if one of the slashdot editors is interested in putting it in.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Unlike some other browsers, in Epiphany you will not find half a dozen ways to use tabs and manage cookies and bookmarks, as Epiphany is targeted towards the average user.
And IMHO that's the wrong approach. *Especially* for the less technically inclined it would be better to have as many different ways as possible to do something. If you look at usability studies they always say how the test persons all tried different things to do the required task and how half of them got stuck on the way and didn't know what to do. One thing Windows gets right is that there is always more than one way to reach your goal. (e.g. you can adjust the time by double clicking on the clock, by using the context menu of the clock, by using the control panel etc.)
Having one elegant solution is nice and appeals to the mathematician in us all but if you look at speech there are many different ways to express a thought, perhaps one is more elegant than the others but all may be correct and logical. (to go back to the clock example: user A thinks "I want to change the time, that should be possible by doing something with the clock thingy" but in user B's opinion it's "I want to change a setting, it should be in the control panel")
IMHO, GUIs should try to enable users to do things their way and therefore it's better to have as many approaches as possible for a task
jm2c
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Many of these integrated browsers were started long before Mozilla got useful or Mozilla Firebird was coneived. Yes, GNOME and KDE are that old. Some people have short memories.
Stick Men
It's all about the "Quality", not the "Quantity"
I'm kinda surprised that Slashdot haven't updated the GNOME category logo, considering that it's been 18 months and three major releases since the logo change. :-)
Must...not...respond....to....troll...but can't help it
I lurk on the kde dev mailing lists and the number of changes upcoming in 3.2 is pretty impressive: A lot of new PIM features, the Safari changes to KHTML, speed improvements. KDE is at the stage where new releases are really adding polish rather than making major changes, but there are still a lot of good new things going in.
I assume it is just a matter of time that the company E.pihany will challenge the name for the Gnome browser claiming a trademark infringement.
The Gnome-panel bug is a new one for me; filing a bug report would likely be very appreciated by the devels.
Sawfish: Just run it. There are some people hacking on it, I believe, so it should be maintained. And tell the sawfish devels if there is something you miss.
The terminal: They are all the same application with multiple windows; cuts down on resource use. Of course, if it dies, so do they all - that's the downside. You can, however, start a new terminal, explicitly stating that it should not be another instance in an existing gnome-terminal application:
gnome-terminal --disable-factory
That will give you an independent terminal instance that will not be affected. Of course, you pay by a bit higher total resource use, but that is probably worth it for you.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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 [gnome.org] 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 [redhat.com], ximian [ximian.com] and sun [sun.com] 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 [gnome.org], 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 [osnews.com] 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 [gnome.org], more [gnome.org] and more [gnome.org] 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 [gnome.org] 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 [gnome.org] isn't appreciated.
if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are dir
It's true, I've done this by mistake many times. You hear a beep when it is turned on and off. It took me a while to figure out what it does, but it lets you control the mouse cursor with the keyboard. I forget which buttons simulate clicks though. Either Ins, Del, Enter, + or -.
They dumbed down nautilus. What Nautilus needs is tabbing and splitting like konqueror has.
There still is no common compound document model between kde and gnome.
Besides that, Gnome has become excellent. Congratulations to the developers.
I dunno about middle and right buttons, but a standard left click seems to be linked to the numberpad "5" key ;)
... and accidentally hit "5." ;)
I had nearly forgotten about this, but your comment reminded me to play with it, and I just posted this comment after jumping around the page with my number pad
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I hope it's better than 2.2
For all practical purposes, KDE3 won the war. I liked some of the stuff of Gnome, but the fact that it's filled with scads of unsupported apps from the Gnome 1.x days, and these apps DO NOT respond to the Gnome Config tool, makes the desktop inconsistent and ugly. KDE wins hands down, even the older apps are 'well-behaved' when it comes to configurations
Printing? I hope Gnome fixed that. Printing from Konqueror is a snap, from Galeon, gads, I hope you can figure it out.
Gnome 2.2 left me totally in the cold, and the complaints over KDE being slow were fixed massively in 3.1.1. Half the Gnome 2 apps seem to totally ignore Gnome Config settings.
Sorry folks, but I'm almost a KDE believer now. Gnome needs a lot of fixing.
( And while they aren't Gnome apps, can anyone tell me how to ENLARGE the UI font sizes in the gimp? 10pt doesn't cut it when running at 1280x1024! And PLEASE put a button in Mozilla to configure the UI font, or set it up to listen to KDE/Gnome config, so I don't have to look around for an obscure webpage on setting up userconfig.css to modify it! It's been out for 3+ years now! Fix it! )
I had some bad experiences with 2.3.5, which caused me to just go and reformat and reinstall again (had too much junk on drives too).
/.! w00t!
One major problem I noticed was that Sawfish wasn't working properly with the pager. Every time I tried to change workspaces, the windows go flying all over the place. And with metacity, I can't seem to position my shaded XMMS window above the empty space in the top panel.
And does anyone know if somebody's doing/done the ebuild for 2.4?
And on another note: My first article on
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
Thanks for the tip. You're a bit late though, lieutenant. My original post is already modded -1 Troll. *grin*
Karma? What's that again?
You gotta love Ars. The first few paragraphs describe in layman's terms why Windows and the Mac have consistent GUIs and why Linux does not. I hope the main drivers of Linux desktop adoption (the Gnomes, KDEs & Red Hats of the world) pay very close attention to the implications of this message. It's been said many times, but warrants repeating again: Linux desktop adoption is suffering from a lack of consistency across applications.
Thanks for the info.
I've tried running sawfish as the wm and for some reason gnome doesn't seem to like it. Can't explain more than that since it's been a while since I tried it (on gnome 2 w/ latest (at the time) sawfish), but basically gnome would forget that sawfish was supposed to be running.
I'll try the disable factory trick, that looks quite useful, thanks.
Also I'd like to be able to change the stupid little foot icon on the 'start' menu. That was easy enough in gnome 1.4, but seems to have been disabled (without hacking the installed gnome base) in 2.x
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
That does make it a lot clearer why we are talking of the 2.4 release before gnome.org
While I'm at it... I welcome our new Second Foundation overlords!
The geek shall inherit the Earth.
Exit KDE
....
....
edit ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals
change:
[Desktops]
Number=4
into
[Desktops]
Number=32
restart KDE, voila.
Is there any alternative which fits in nicely with my desktop and has similar functionality to nedit?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
KDE isnt doing much to their interface lately, although we can blame Xfree86 for not finishing up the SVG stuff, KDE is getting left in Gnomes dust right now.
I would love to hear your rationale for saying that. How has Gnome surpassed KDE? How has KDE's interface grown stagnant? I agree with the SVG comment part, but that's not KDE's "fault" (not that it's anyones "fault", but...). I can be 100% honest when I say: There is nothing major not offered in KDE that makes me even think of it as growing stagnant, and certainly not with the 3.2 release in the works.
(I'm not trying to start a war, there's good things about Gnome as well, I just prefer KDE and would like to hear why you feel that it's getting "left in Gnomes dust right now")
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
dropline will supply users with 2.4 soon!!
Maybe Nautilus will provide a little competition for Konqueror. Hopefully something has been done to speed up its start-up time and web browsing. I tried Gnome a couple of months ago and its speed and simplicity surprised me but Nautilus needs some work compared to Konqueror.
This guy is way out there
is the .hidden config file for konq views. Actually it really only applies to my desktop view as I use my home directory as my desktop.
.evolution for its datastore, I have to live with it. Being able to right click a folder on the desktop and select some like "Hide from desktop view" is enough to make me wet myself.
You'll be surprised how much cleaner your home dir stays if it's your desktop!
Right now I have three folders on my desktop that I don't want to see: evolution, mail and News. Short of recompiling evolution to use
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
A valid criticism of the Open Source Community used to be that it just copied, and never innovated. Well I think the copying stage (or as I like to think of it, the "catching up" stage) is now almost over. Now we are innovating.
I have Windows XP, and quite a few of the things in the latest Gnome are better than Windows XP. For instance, the fantastic way Pango deals with multilingual issues. And scalable desktop icons are a great addition. Some of the desktop accessability stuff is great too.
I bet that Microsoft keeps a close eye on the OSS community, and I'm sure it is starting to be the case that - internally within Microsoft - they're actually starting to have to catch up with stuff that is coming out of the OSS community. The next stage in the process - Microsoft realise that OSS solutions are actually moving faster than they can keep up with.
Will this finally end the argument that Gnome doesn't have any usability issues. There are always tons of complaints when anyone says Gnome needs to improve usability. Yet here they are with a release focusing on interface guidelines. So please, please, end the arguments that Gnome shouldn't work on improving usability.
Developers: We can use your help.
No way to edge-flip to another desktop.
You can run any window manager that supports the EMWH (aka NetWM) spec. Metacity is a decent default for most users, but if it's not good enough for you, feel free to choose something else. Sawfish, fluxbox, openbox, kwm, waimea, even the venerable fvwm. Lots of choice.Thus no d'n'd windows across desktops. Pager sucks for this at 16x12.
Metacity? Feh. Bring back sawfish (and I mean updated!). The introduction of predictability has led to a sharp decrease in customisability.
Because of this, I almost switched to KDE - but it only supports 16 desktops which is Fucking Lame.
What is the point of more than 16 desktops (really). I've used various linux and unix distros over the years and I've found that if I have more than 6, I just end up using the first few anyway...
No way to edge-flip to another desktop.Thus no d'n'd windows across desktops.
I do agree with you on this point - being able to do this it pretty useful (I'm a big fan of enlightenment because of these sort of things...)
~D
KDE isnt doing much to their interface lately
Presumably that means it mature enough to meet most of it's user's needs. Or do you advocate change for change's sake?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
And then watch as precompiled apps that depend on those directories remake them to annoy you but have none of the past state. His post stated he could hide them, but applications would break.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's a bit early in the morning here in CA, bear w/ me :)
This guy is way out there
This doesn't work for me (SunRay terminal with a German keyboard layout), must be something specific to XFree86.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
To have it remember sawfish, you need to save your session once on logout.
I believe the foot icon is easy enough to change using gconf-editor.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Isn't this kind of a Microsoft-ish approach...bundling a desktop environment with lame add-on dependencies that I don't want to use?
Well two things really:
/home/username not /home/username/Desktop
/home/username ) as my desktop directory, there's alot of cruft there that I don't really want to see.
.desktop formats. Therefore if I load gnome, the links on the side (root, tubby, fatboy and my two fish:// links) are displayed wrong and do nothing. Now fish:// is a kde-specific thing but if I wanted to, I could move them into a folder called "Network Filesystems" or somesuch and then I wouldn't have to see them in gnome but for now since I'm spending my time in KDE, I'll leave em.
1) my desktop is
Which leads to point number two
2) The directories will just be recreated when I rerun the application (i.e. evolution) that created them.
If I were using a Desktop directory none of this would be a problem but because I'm using my home directory (i.e.
here's my current desktop:
Be warned, it's 1280x1024
The stuff circled in red is what I don't want to see. Eventually I'll move the text documents into another folder but I need them right now.
The other downside is that KDE and Gnome don't share
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Gnome 2.4 supports .hidden files, just like MacOS X and KDE.
Use enlightenment.
There's still 8x8 virtual desktops, and 32 layers. Customizable out the ass... and there's a project to bring the DR16 release up to recent gnome compatibility. look for 0.16.6-pre7
The Gui is gone to change window managers, but you can cheat and run "killall metacity && enlightenment &" at the prompt, then just save your session when you next exit X.
It doesn't work 100% with the newest gnome features, but I still find it much nicer than the box metacity builds around you.
For that matter, I suggest galeon over Epiphany. Since the split up of the galeon developers, and the start of Epiphany a lot of the features from galeon 1.2 are making there way back into 1.3.
The newer gnome releases seem to be great for average joe - but there are still options for those of us that like power over default EVERYTHING.
Aaron
AaronCameron.net
Hopefully this version has undergone some serious memory and speed enhancements, as currently, with my system running debian, X, and GNOME 2.2, with 256mb RAM.. nothing else running to speak of.. I have 0 normal RAM free, and the system has cut about 20-30MB into the swap file.
Any comments on RAM usage? I have to use fvwm because KDE and GNOME are so damn HUGE these days..
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
You *have* to be kidding me. My jaw has permanently cemented itself to the floor...another fucking browser????
I'm sorry, but this is part of the force that is killing desktop acceptance in the open-source community. Everyone, their dog, and their 2-bit Saturday whore thinks they need to develop another web browser to share with the community. Suddenly we now have, what, 40ish browsers to choose from?
I mean, I have great faith that there are just *shitloads* of developers out there that just have bleeding gums of excitement thinking about developing on yet another browser, but really....isn't enough enough?
Personally, I think Gnome has dick-envy over KDE's Konq, but that's no good reason to go out and develop another application to suck up the resources of the community in useless flogging of a concept already cemented.
Folks: I. think. we. have. the. web. browser. figured. out. Unlike the myriad of good web browsers, don't you think there are other places to spend your time contributing to the community, such as printing, sound, interoperability, and a million other more worthy things? Anyone got a spare lens, because we need a little focus around here.
Blog,Twitter
KDE supports this? I haven't been able to find any information on this searching google.
What's the syntax of the file?
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I agree, it's not perfect and it renders pages with more errors than the Moz family.
But crucially for me it starts faster than Firebird and the GUI is KDE style, which when running KDE is important.
If I was running Gnome I might use Galleon.
I've always preferred Gnome to KDE. Not only that it's truly free and truly GNU, but it's also cooler and better looking, IMO. Minimalist in design, clean, and not so geeky. It looks different enough from windows and doesn't try to be an XP clone. Using Gnome truly feels like using a respectable OS with personality and style. KDE unfortunately feels so 1980s, and not in a good way, at all. When i use KDE it feels like it's gonna fall apart.
I'm glad that the industry has adopted gnome. Sun, HP and others. PyGTK is also sweet, and GTK runtime environment on windows for the GIMP also looks neat.
The only thing i don't like that much in Gnome are the default icons of bars in nautilus and epiphany, but i guess that's easily fixed with a change of themes.
I used GNOME 2.2, but I cannot glean from the article whether the one quirk was fixed or not in 2.4.
The one thing keeping me from using GNOME (and for which I now use a more minimalistic window manager/desktop environment) is the fact that it is difficult to move one window into a different virtual desktop. You have to make it visible on all panels first then go to the desktop you want it to appear on and click show on just this desktop. Is there a way around this? Has GNOME 2.4 fixed this?
Besides that, it's good to see this project improve. Hope it gets faster and easier to use.
This person left GNOME. Read his reasons! How comes more and more people leave the sinking ship?
Sure, we are all working on these 386 computers nowadays, and there is only that much they can handle at any given time...
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Believe me, I've tried them all - the ones you list plus about a thousand others (warning: statement may contain hyperbole). For one reason or another all were unacceptable in some way. Yes, I do want perfection ;)
If I could actually get gnome to realise that when I tell it I want to use window manager 'foo', that I actually *do* want to use it, that would be half the battle.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
The first one's easy, but where did the positive moderations (other than Funny) come from.....
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The Ars Technica article specifically mentions hiding folders from Nautilus (which is what draws the background on the desktop if I remember correctly).
The article specifically mentioned the file dialog. It is still using the old one but is slated to be addressed.
If I could actually get gnome to realise that when I tell it I want to use window manager 'foo', that I actually *do* want to use it, that would be half the battle.
Hmm, I've never had problems with that. In theory, you just have to stop the running window manager and start the new one. Usually that translates to 'killall metacity; openbox&'.
If a window manager has broken session support (openbox, I look at you), you'll also have to add it to the startup programs list, in the "Sessions" control applet. That's a rather hidden away, but normally you only need it for broken software, so it doesn't bother me too much.
An additional problem. When running Gnome on my old laptop, which can only support 800x600 (Trident Cyberblade), some menus go off the screen and there is no way to ALT-Move it past the panel at the top!) (Running helix, but its the same code, right?)
Its very annoying! (And no I can't force my screen to render 1024x768 - X won't run in that mode)
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
Yup, GNOME seems to have a much faster release period than KDE these days. But I think this was mainly because of the immaturity of GNOME 2.0 and 2.2. For me, 2.0 felt like alpha and 2.2 felt like beta software. Hopefully 2.4 feels like final, but I haven't tried it yet.
Jan. 28th - KDE 3.1 released
Feb. 5th - GNOME 2.2 Released
Sept. 10th - GNOME 2.4 released
Nov-Dec, 2003 - KDE 3.2 released?
KDE is at the stage where new releases are really adding polish rather than making major changes
(Disclaimer: I use KDE myself quite a lot, and like it in many respects.) KDE is at the stage where new releases really ought to be about adding a hell of a lot of speed, rather than major changes. It takes almost as long for KDE to start once I've logged in than the entire rest of the boot sequence took, which is very unacceptable.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Startup is bad, and it does use way too much memory. It used to be bad enough that I used WindowMaker instead, but 3.0 was good enough to convince me to come back. The KDE people have a whole mailing list dedicated to optimisation and areas for speedup are being identified and fixed.
It's just chic. The problem is that everybody (being Gnome and KDE) won't be satisfied with a good operating environment. No, they have to do an entire user experience. In other words, they each want to be responsible for 95% of the graphical software used by any linux user. And that's just not rational. Case in point: KOffice, KDE's abominable attempt at an Office suite. As you say, why spend so much time making something that sucks so bad?
For what it's worth, never let it be said that open source developers are above reinventing the wheel. When profit is not a consideration, there's no boss to point you toward making things that have a market. We definitely need a greater degree of specialization.
I want to get the KDE and Gnome devs in two separate rooms, and lock them there until they swear never to make another browser, office suite, or useless widget again until they have the basic environment rock-solid.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
KDE is on version 3.x, while Gnome is still on 2.x just trying to catch up. [/equally point-less definition of "development"]
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
My laptop is a PIII-650 and has only 192MB of RAM (and no possibility of upgrading). I am currently running GNOME 2.2, and look forward to 2.4 partly because it's supposed to use even less memory than 2.2 does.
Currently my uptime is just over 5 days (it's a laptop, remember!), and I generally leave several gnome-terminal windows, rhythmbox, Evolution 1.4, Mozilla Firebird, emacs, a DVI viewer and GnomeGV running all the time. With these apps open (plus all the normal GNOME stuff such as the panel and Nautilus) I write, build and test code and work on my thesis. Obviously this runs into swap, but it doesn't make the computer particularly unresponsive.
Remember that Linux typically uses all the available RAM up and uses it for mystical kernel things like disk caching, so just because top says that all the memory is in use it isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Yes, please read the original post by parent. He already mentioned this.
Actually, it's kind of funny that you stated it the other way around. This is a well-disquised troll, but a troll regardless.
The developers of Konq were the ones "to suck up the resources of the community in useless flogging of a concept already cemented." Just take a look at the facts. It's a recreation of the concept of Gecko, a rendering engine that already had the goal of full W3C standard compliance.
I do agree with one thing though, the concept of the web browser has been figured out, but it isn't Konqerer.
It's not compulsary. Depending on your distribution there should be ways to leave out parts of Gnome you don't want. Consult your package manager documentation...
;)
Also unlike Windows, it's pretty easy to uninstall
While you are at it, try the Multi Gnome Terminal. If all you have on those virtual desktops are shells, you could probably save 19 of them. :-)
:), and the ability to split the the terminal window horisontally and vertically.
MGT's main features are "tabbed shelling." (Nice phrase, btw
If you are using Debian, just do a
$ apt-get install multi-gnome-terminal
and start the program with
$ multi-gnome-terminal
Check out the screenshots
(Yes, I agree the backgrounds used in the terminal windows could suggest the developers are into mind-expanding substances, but the program works great.)
Why did they remove the option to change mouse
focus policy in Gnome?
I've been using Sun's since the late '80s and Linux
from the late '90's and the focus policy has always been focus follows mouse.
Click to focus is totally unusable if you are used to focus follows mouse.
...with the next Duke Nukem and Doom 4.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
OK, fair enough; I've been a long-time Gnome zea^H^H^Hfan, and in most respects it is a damn good interface. But I still use kprint as a gui printer interface instead of piping print requests directly to lpr, because I often need to print 4 pages to a sheet of paper and I haven't found a native Gnomeish way to do that yet.
There is nothing stopping anybody from building their own Mozilla without the mail/news/composer/chatzilla/kitchensink.
I recently ditched Mozilla's mail client in favour of Evolution, and I played with Firebird for about a week before I gave up on it as being too riddled with bugs (OK, I am aware it's only at version 0.61). My point is that a stripped-down Mozilla performs just as well.
Well, I thought so. Then came along the humorless mod-squad that thinks it's merely karma whoring. Anyway, to further the 'argument': Gnome wins! (It has 5 letters in its real name whereas KDE is merely an acronym, of just 3 letters no less! :D)
p.s.
Hmmm, it seems that this is partly redundant. More moderators that see it 'our' way have come along and fixed the situation.
Karma? What's that again?
uh, gnome-terminal already has tabbed support, has for a while. shift+ctrl+t for a new tab. ctrl+pgup/pgdown to cycle. Or right-click in a terminal window and select New Tab. It's in the file menu too, if you leave the menubar enabled.
Re: metacity vs sawfish
I used to think the same way as you did, hated the lack of features, bitched on the lists, etc. But at some point I forgot to switch from Metacity to sawfish and grudgingly used it, and after a while, found I didn't miss the features I fought so hard to have. Pageflip is nice, but do I use it? Nope. Maybe it's just me as a user adapting to the lack of features, or maybe it's the fact that as a user I didn't really use that feature enough.
Try this: Make a list of all the things that MC is missing vs sawfish (or The Ultimate Window Manager) and then work as you do normally and tick the times you miss each feature. I'd be willing to bet that in an honest test you'll find that you don't use them nearly as often as you think you do.
I'm no fan of the HIG and the cutting and slashing of features in the latest GNOME, but I'm also finding that a lot of it's not all that bad, because a lot of times It Just Works.
> Second, one would think those talented people could be used elsewhere on the KDE project.
Have you stopped to consider that most open source developers who are working on their own time want to work on whatever they want to work on? You can't force them to work on something else to suit tech gurus (like yourself, most likely), who have a different agenda to push "Linux to the masses."
I'm sure many KDE developers would love to see that happen, but I think most of them are working on whatever for fun. Not to destory microsoft or whatever many Linux zealots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers want to do.
Short of recompiling evolution to use .evolution for its datastore, I have to live with it.
That is ridiculous. And I see it all the time in Linux apps. Things that should be simple configuration options, mere checkboxes, are instead compile-time parameters! So much for usability when you have to recompile the entire program every time you need to change a simple option like a filename...
"Sufferin' succotash."
And make it wide enough to read the titles of the applications and documents.
Then realise the horror of all the twits who insist their web page is best viewed at a width of 1024.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
On most UNIX systems, killall is somewhat less selective. Typing 'killall metacity' on a Solaris system, for example, will send a kill signal to every process on the system. If you're not root, you "only" commit suicide on your own processes. If you're root, say goodnight. On OpenBSD, killall doesn't exist.
A better alternative is to use pkill. Check the man page for your system.
-30-
I've got a crisp $50 that says you're looking at the "memory usage" from top or gkrellm or something like that.
That includes the system cache and disk buffers, so it's not an accurate measure of how much RAM is actually being used by programs.
Try "free" at a shell prompt...
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
Sure I have. Free country (world), certainly. I just can't see why one wouldn't rather put all that work into something people will actually use.
Also, I'm actually not in IT - I'm a chemist - so this rant isn't because crappy KDE is hurting me in the wallet. It's just frustrating from the standpoint of knowing that those little unpolished aspects of it *could* be much better. I'd work on it myself if I had the skills.
I'm sure many KDE developers would love to see that happen, but I think most of them are working on whatever for fun.
That's true, but the KDE organization does have structure. And I think the leadership is actually pushing the suite, hence its prominent placement in the default toolbar. That's why I think they could benefit from having some focus. I think it would ultimately be a better product. And I think these people *do* take pride in their work. That's why I don't understand the decision-making process.
Not to destory microsoft or whatever many Linux zealots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers want to do.
There is that component of the linux crowd, unfortunately. I could actually care less if software is "open" or "closed" if it works. Personally, for me, it's more that I'm a bit frustrated with all the linux desktop choices. I hate windows because it crashes all the time. But the common linux window managers are almost as buggy as windows at times. Naturally, they doesn't take down the whole box with a crash, but it's still frustrating. I don't think it's wrong to want linux on the desktop to approach the quality of the command line. Again, I think it's a matter of focus and priorities.
zealots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers
You're writing on a terminal, aren't you? I don't think those ^H's got turned into backspaces. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Microsoft has something called 'tweakui' which gives you an interface for changing the behaviour of their UI. One of the options allows you to specify the superior focus-follows-mouse behaviour. I consider tweakui a mandatory element of any Windows box.
-- $SIGNATURE
Argh. Well, looks like it's time for another Obligatory Reference to the Amazing Gentoo-Linux-Zealot Translate-o-matic!
The Free desktop that Just Works
After seeing what kind of a library dependency hell GNOME is in during my last attempt to upgrade, I think I'll pass.
.... (think 10+ deep nested ./configure's).
Unless you're using a "do-it-for-me" distro with an automatic package utility, installing GNOME is an easy way to lose some hair. I use Slackware (not an up-to-date release, but don't blame the distro, I compile and use everything else just fine -- plus, if I installed the new distro release everytime one came out how would that be different than using windows?) and my last attempt was a day-long coffee-binge of punching walls. Everytime I had to compile a package it required another, which required another,
Fuck that, no thanks.
-bm
...a flashlight and optical Ethernet card, I assume? Or don't tell me you're one of those losers who need a computer ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Call me an (l)user, but I use the Cups web interface. Oops! There goes security! ;) In all fairness, I only use network-printers, no local printers.
Karma? What's that again?
Why is it when someone posts an article on GNOME, nobody complains about all the applications starting with G, whereas when someone posts an article on KDE *all* they can take about is the K prefix? Why is it KDE articles always get the same "fake" trolls about how it doesn't care about usability, when it was the first project to have UI guidelines and an integrated framework to help enforce those guidelines?
Why is it when someone posts an article on GNOME, people helpfully point out GNOME technologies, many of which KDE has had for a long time and been doing better?
Why aren't technology stuff like KIOSlaves, DCOP, KHTML, Konqueror Plugins, KControl plugins, KParts, XMLGUI, designer, KJSEmbed (wow!), qtpython, qtc, qtjava, qtobjc, KDE internationalization ever appreciated for the bloody brilliant integrated platform technologies that they are?
The KDE project needs to learn from the GNOME project and start promoting itself, otherwise people will remain unaware of its benefits of the KDE Development Platform.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Specifically, the fact that there doesn't seem to be any way to mount/unmount/eject devices when I'm not using Nautilus to draw destop. I needed to either make Nautilus scripts, or (like I do now) use WMMount or some other thing.
GMC had this annoyance, Nautilus seemed to inherit it (though, I can't remember, it seemed that this could be knifed together in Nautilus 1 somehow, can't remember why...)
So, can I get the Disks context submenu to the application menu?
By the way, I'm happy there's WebDAV support, that really rules...
Oops! There goes security!
All your printers are belong to us!
This isn't any ordinary darkness. It's advanced darkness.
Oh, rubbish. :)
There is a very simple approach here, folks:
1) 10 ways to do anything
Give the user as many pathways of doing something as possible. An experimenting user will try different approaches, and if the developer doesn't limit the pathways to what he thinks is logical, the user is likely to accomplish their task in a way that makes sense to them. This means they like the software more and have a better chance at remembering how to accomplish a given task.
Most folks complain about using/learning new software just because things don't make sense to them. They have to either memorize how things are done (most users), or they have to learn "computer logic" and learn how GUIs generally function.
2) Options, options, options!
The power-users, control freaks and tweakers out there (I'm one of them) love to play with stuff. Why limit an application to a newbie? You don't have to...
3) Good defaults
A newbie won't go looking to change the way his tabs work. This is the major flaw of "keep it simple" arguments. Keeping the options dialog simple is one thing, but not having a "Advanced User" option that enables more options is restricting the program's userbase unnecessarily.
You can have half a dozen ways for tabs to function, but as long as the default one makes sense to most folks and is consistent with the way the rest of the program works, newbies will be fine.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
GNOME doesn't have its own file selection dialog box for file open and file save. Instead, it just uses the standard one in GTK. GTK is developing a new release, GTK 2.4, and that will have a much improved file selection dialog box.
I don't think it makes sense for two big projects (GNOME and GTK) to try to release updates in lockstep. GNOME is ready to release now, and GTK isn't, so that's that.
Also, I'm glad that GNOME doesn't paste a layer over GTK for things like the file selection dialog box. Re-implementing basic features of GTK would just lead to bloat.
If you only get updates all at once, you might have to wait for GNOME 2.6 to get the improved file selection dialog box, but those of us who run Debian unstable or some other incrementally-updated distro will get the new dialog when GTK 2.4 is released.
Meanwhile, Debian unstable already has an improved file selection dialog box, but it isn't the same one that will ship with GTK 2.4. It's a bit nicer than the default GNOME one but I'm still waiting for the new one in GTK 2.4.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
How the hell did I get modded -1 redundant when I was the second post? What is that?
Because millions of people had already said nothing before you. The only difference is they weren't as vocal as you...
Eh? According to http://www.gnome.org/press/ the logo that slashdot uses is the official Gnome logo. At the end of the day, it's not what logo you want but which logo the Gnome Foundation wants that officially represents Gnome, I'm afraid :-)
The app that has improved my usability on Mac OSX has been LaunchBar by far. If I want an app, web page or whatever, I whack CMD+SPACE and start typing the name of what I want. It does command completion. So, for example, to get Slashdot, I hit CMD+SPACE, S, Enter. On the Mac, it won't launch an app more than once, so if I want an app that is already open, I can use LaunchBar to switch to it. Eg: Mail: if it is already open but hidden, minimized or on a different desktop, CMD+SPACE, MAI, Enter will bring it up. This is incredibly intuitive and fast for someone who can type. It beats the pants off any taskbar or GUI solution. I'm amazed it hasn't been ported to Linux (or maybe it has?).
Egad! That's informative. I had no idea. Thanks.
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
I liked this troll better when it was called "BSD is dying."
Moderators: this is auto-posted crap that gets appended to EVERY gnome article. Search and destroy.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"Epiphany" refers to either a flash of insight, or the day of the year in which the three magi are alleged to have visited the Christ child.
Of course, an even more accurate term for "Epiphany" would be "January 6".
And the most accurate term for "Epiphany" is "my birthday".
Hey mods. How was this redundant? It was a first reply to a post!
This guy is way out there
Do you use gaim? I only get that Gnome-Panel Crash when I'm running Gaim. Although it's been a while since I've had to shutdown X
CSS layout control works, but all the colours are ignored. It also appears that Epiphany lacks session management: if I exit Epiphany, whatever I had in each tab is forever lost. Honest end-user complaint: Galeon already took forever to get to the point where it had session management. In the same amount of time, it became a huge bloated piece of garbage. Meanwhile, Opera offers the right defaults, it is FAST and fully keyboard navigatable; its only flaw is that that it's proprietary, non-free technology. Given this, I can hadly see how Epiphany will get anywhere close anytime soon and therefore cannot do otherwise but support the original poster's "yet another browser" rant.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
What?! What do you think this post is?
In Mozilla, typing a search query in a form for e.g. Google, if you use quotation marks (when looking for web pages containing an exact match for a string, for instance) results in a search querry that cannot be edited, because the cursor forgot the notion of where the sentence ends and, even worse, reverses the functions of the Delete and Backspace keys completely. In Gaim, typing a gramatically correct sentence that ends with a punctuation mark results in that punctuation being put at the start of the sentence, once you press Return and the sentence is shown in the conversation window. etc. etc.
It looks like a really tiny typo about detecting where sentences end and start, resulting in misplaced punctuation marks, but still... Pango could have been more thoroughly tested with actual native speakers of said right-left languages, before it was released.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Actually the reason for that is due to Fitt's Law. The menu bar (and the Dock) are at the very edges of the screen so that the user has to do less work pin-pointing the cursor on a target.
Granted the Apple menu is always in the same place, then the menu item following which represents the application's name menu is too. After that however, different menus may be in different location from app to app.
Your point does play a role, but the menu's at the top mostly to reduce time to target.
Join Tor today!
But then the GNOME pager only supports "Workspaces" rather than "Virtual Desktops", so you can't use the GNOME pager.
The difference between Workspaces and Virtual Desktops is that you can't have windows spanning multiple workspaces, and you have to emulate 2D behaviour if you use Workspaces.
This is just one buried comment compared to say 20 similar comments in a recent KDE article, about 15 of which modded to +5.
The GNOME trolls seem to be working overtime against KDE I would say.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
If there's a common design philosophy between MacOS and GNOME developers, it seems to be minimalism. In other words: "the user will be confused if we add too many features, options, and ways to do things, so we'll just implement the absolute basics" More specifically, this philosophy gives way to very flat, low-context, over-simplified interfaces. I personally disagree with this philosophy wholeheartedly. If there's one thing that frustrates users, casual and techies alike, it's the inability to see exactly what they're working with. Users love context, rich details, and clearly displayed hierarchy. More advanced users want a high degree of configurability on top of that.
Take file managers as example. In the minimalist camp, we have MacOS's Finder, Gnome's Nautilus, and WinXP's default Explorer configuration which tries to hide details. In the full-featured camp, we have KDE's Konqueror and WinXP Explorer with more traditional tree + icons file details view. Among my non-tech-oriented friends, nearly every one of them hates the WinXP file manager (and typically they don't know how to reconfigure it otherwise). I hear them say things like "I just want to see my whole hard drive with all the folders so I know what I'm dealing with" or "I liked the Win2k/Win9x interface much better.. it gets right to the point and I can just drag and drop stuff around" I've heard similar complaints from those not familiar with MacOS. On the Free Software side, my non-tech friends greatly prefer KDE to GNOME. That's not opinion, that's just observation. It's all about what they're used to.
Having one elegant solution is nice and appeals to the mathematician in us all but if you look at speech there are many different ways to express a thought, perhaps one is more elegant than the others but all may be correct and logical. (to go back to the clock example: user A thinks "I want to change the time, that should be possible by doing something with the clock thingy" but in user B's opinion it's "I want to change a setting, it should be in the control panel")
IMHO, GUIs should try to enable users to do things their way and therefore it's better to have as many approaches as possible for a task
I definitely agree with this concept. Part of the advantage to a contextually rich, object oriented UI is that users can find their own ways to do things in whatever method is most comfortable to them. GNOME and MacOS are simply not designed in this fashion. The fact that default Mac mice have one button is in itself indicative of flat, low-context design!
If Free Software is to succeed on the desktop, it must be designed to the wishes of typical users, not elderly and technophobes in HIG studies. Typical users prefer richer interfaces and always have. Rich interfaces require object oriented design, which Qt excels at and Gtk2 struggles. Why, really, do we need two seperate GUI projects? It's a waste of valuable and limited development resources and it only makes for annoying inconsistancies. As a developer, Qt is far more polished as well.
My prediction, take it or leave it: GNOME development will be an insignificant niche or else merged into the KDE project within 5-10 years. Linux distros that try to hide the differences between the two projects are the harbingers of this change. Ultimately, the users will decide.
If you have a Nvidia graphics card, their drivers have an "nview" extension you can enable for multiple desktops.
I use FreeBSD 90% of the time so right now I can only tell you from memory its somewhere in Desktop Settings->Video adapter/driver->advanced options
Some of the settings are pretty nifty. Like transparent windows when moving, etc.
Heres my experiance. I have two machines that I use often. A laptop with Redhat Severn, which has gnome 2.2.x, and Mandrake Cooker on my main box that now runs 2.4. I have found the Gnome 2.4 desktop to be harder to use. Before Gnome 2.2 came out I used to use KDE for workgroups edition on both my machines. Here are the problems. I *did* report bugs, I *did* complain, but nobody listened to me, and when they did I got flamed by the feature police. And I will now tell you why I will be going back to KDE 3.2 when it comes out!
.tar/zip file you get the option to "Extract here" (which is what 95% of users want) or "Extract to somewhere else" (which the power users want). How ever, the File roller development team screwed the majoirty of users by removing extract here. There were several bugs about this reported, and they were rudley marked "wontfix" because they wanted to make users do more clicks.
I won't be stating the obvious, I will be stating more deep and serious issues.
1) File-roller is harder to use.
In gnome 2.2, when you right-click a
2) Gnome Panel is now harder to use.
Although the simplified panel structure is easier to use, the configuartion dialog isn't. They have removed the Dropbox which has the sizes from X-small to XX-large (which is very intuitve, as it creates a metafor for sizes) with more confusing spinbox with the confusing "pixels" size (newbies don't know that their monitor is made of little dots, and may not get what a "pixel" is. The visual positioning box was removed by a more confusing drop box! The Foot icon (which is a violation of the HIG, Section 9.10, which says NOT to use body parts as icons (the picture is a G shaped monkey foot). They should allow easy configuation of the menu icon (as it used to in 1.4, and use a non offensive icon by default). The workspace switcher now has a limit of just 36 workspaces, compared to the 100 in gnome 2 and the infinty of gnome 2.0! You may argue people don't need that many, but when users are doing advanced work, and need to think in GRIDs and heirachies, very essential when working on large graphics and admistering multiple machines. I know some developers that use around 50-500(!) desktops when doing some SERIOUS work. I only use around 8-12, so this dosen't effect me, but others will.
3) Gnome harder to configure
More features, which EVEN NORMAL USERS USE, have misteriously dissappered. Either forcing them to use the atrious gconf-editor or flee to other CONFIGUREABLE desktops like Windows and KDE. Not to mention that "auto apply" is very dangerous, I've been burnt by it too many times already!
4) Epiphany is not ready for primetime.
The ability to add subtopics in bookmarks have been removed (not even AOL users are this dumb), its still VERY unreliable, and its not the mozilla engine's fault, its epiphanies. The documentation is only half written, and the download dialog needs a lot of usabillity work. Idealy, this should of been 0.9.4, but it seems obviously rushed.
I have other problems, but other people have already complained about that. The gnome team really need to have another usabilty test, and ask ALL types of users, from newbies, experts, designers, developers, architects, secitaries, managers and children to get the best of all worlds, not some Hypothetical "Joe Aol" (and aols got more features than epiphany anyway).
I have a lot of experiance in designing GUIS, with experiance in Visual Basic, Curses and Qt, but I'm only new to GTK, and the developers still have a lot to learn about good gui design.
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
On my very first linux install, I installed both gnome and KDE and most of their apps. I did this so I could get a feel of both interfaces. Upon opening a gnome app while running kde, my kde desktop disappeared and was replaced with the gnome desktop and interface. I was very familier with the terminal but had no idea how to get back to the default KDE. I felt that gnome was trying to take over my system. This left a very bad taste in my mouth and I have not used it since. This may not be 100% accurate to what I experienced as it has been several years. It was something along these lines though.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Matter of taste I suppose, but even if this were the goal, I don't see why one has to develop a *completely* new browser, guts and all. If they're going to do a new one, alternatively, it could be actually *better* integrated into the environment so it's seamless. To me, it just acts like a web browser regardless of what I want it to do, and it seems a bit "jack of all trades, master of none" to me. It seems like the worst of all worlds - a kludgely file manager, web browser, viewer, etc.
p.s. KOffice is not a part of the KDE desktop. It's a separate project.
This is true, but one wouldn't know it from the way that KDE comes default with KOffice fairly integrated. There are better options, but KDE seems rather stuck on KOffice, for some reason.
p.p.s. The KDE environment is rock solid.
First, I beg to differ. I get KDE crashes, if not frequently, at least too often. Previously, every time I shut down VMWare, KDE had a DCOM crash and the toolbar disappeared. KDE's good, but it's not "rock solid" by any reasonable estimation, and it's certainly not as polished as it could be.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I must say that I agree that it would make far more sense for ~ to be your desktop rather than ~/Desktop.
The only reason systems don't do this is that historically Unix has cluttered up ~ with all kinds of junk. But in recent years it has become standard to start that junk with a period (this was certainly K&R's original intention but it got broken when programs started needing more than one configuration file, but has been fixed as those programs started putting those files into a directory named with a dot instead).
I would very much like to see it use the home directory as the desktop if ~/Desktop does not exist, and them to modify the few remaining non-dot configuration things to have dots (just search for both names and complain if both exist, for back compatability).
Sorry, but what I have read in the article has not impressed me at all as a KDE user. It looks like the two major desktop environments Gnome and KDE have begun (or continue) to diversify in terms of their approach. It seems to me that Gnome is going for a clean and simple experience. KDE, on the other hand, adds features like crazy. Personally, I like KDE's approach as I am capable of "personalizing" my desktop environment. Actually, I don't think that offering many choices kills usability as long as choices are well organized (in a control center) and easily accessible (by a mouse click).
Gnome's approach of being clean, simple, and usable, deserves kudos from one point of view. But it is actually not consistent with the current situation linux is in. In order to install linux, you already have to go out of your way, and spend some effort. Unfortunately, I don't think this will change in the next 3-5 years. After all this effort to install linux (limited hw-sw support, hdd partitioning, driver problems) I personally do not want a limited choice on my desktop environment. Furthermore, if I wanted something really clean, there are already some good minimalistic window managers/desktop environements.
IMHO, this direction will not bring much to Gnome. I am afraid some big companies are shaping the development according to their taste (mad hatter?). It makes sense from the business point of view for sure. But how will it affect the real user base (who are linux geeks after all who like choice) in the long term, I don't know!
I hope I am wrong and congratulations to all Gnome developers. Critisizing is easy, actually doing/contributing is hard!
ta_relax
...while they continue to use white text on a black background.
Hey, why not make this be a seperate application?
Run "$FILECHOOSER --prompt "File to open" olddir/oldfilename" and wait for it to exit. If it exits with 0, then stdout had the chosen filename printed on it. If it exits with non-zero then the user hit cancel.
If $FILECHOOSER does not exist then just pop up an input field and force the user to type a filename, as a failsafe fallback.
This would allow a huge amount of innovation in filechoosers, since they can be replaced. One big problem with current Linux solutions is that they do not allow efficient caching of information between multiple invocations.
PS: I would also like to see stand-along programs to pop up an alert message, pop up and ask a yes/no question, and pop up and let the user type in one or more text fields and hit ok or cancel.
This would go a LONG way toward making applications faster, smaller, and more consistent.
And what's wrong with this? It's physically easier for the human eye to focus on light text on a dark backgroundm as opposed to dark text on a light background - especially if that light background is PRODUCING light (your pupils have to close to protect your eyes from the light, but open to let you pick out the text).
I spend 10-12 hours daily in front of a computer screen, and have very little eye strain specifically because as much of my interface as possible is set to near-white text on a near-black background.
Besides, I doubt that the reviewer has any control over the look of the website.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
I confirm: sawfish and gconf (as in gnome-2) were always incompatible on my computer whenever I've tried them to work togenther. I wonder, what's happened to gnome? I remember sawfish worked flawlessly in gnome-1 !
Less is more !
You've got to be kidding. The majority of the trolls are definitely anti-GNOME trolls. Open your eyes. This is the Slashdot of 2003:
1. Anti-GNOME (and possibly pro-KDE) trolls far outnumbers anti-KDE trolls.
2. Slashdot is not a pro-Linux anti-MS site anymore. It's a pro-OS X site, which means anti-Linux *and* anti-MS.
3. The majority still says open source software are unusable no matter what people do.
In the forground I have a small window viewing another source file so that I can see a particular function.
I am typing in the large background window - that I can mostly see, except for the small window that I am reading from.
I can't do this in Windows with out tweaks. In Windows I have to divide the screen, even if the smaller window doesn't need that much space. So the Windows way is wasteful and inhibitive for my needs.
Whereas in X (depending on how you have your settings configured) unless the popup came directly under your mouse you can ignore it for a second to finish typing a sentence or two and then take care of it.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
What about GDI+?
DCMonkey
I'm still using WindowMaker (not solely for speed, I love the way I have my dockapps set up now), but the way the focus flickers badly with gtk2 apps really bites. It looks like it's been fixed in CVS though, so here's hoping Alfredo and Dan have time to get another release out soon!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Oh yes. BMG can really produce wonders. Like producing bugs for software that doesn't exist.
I didn't do this, now did I?
Because KDE users can sit back with that knowing grin on their face, secure in the fact that their desktop is superior... ;-)
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
Check out the first bullet point in this image.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Fluxbox has crummy taskswitching, afaik. That was a major turnoff.
I use gnome on both my desktop and my laptop. Most of the time I like it. It looks really good to my eye and is fairly fast.
My laptop is older and has an LED screen that does a max of 800x600. With older versions of Gnome I used to be able to set my virtual screens up vertically and then make my windows taller then the screen. I could then see the top part of the window or the bottom by just moving the mouse off the top or bottom of the screen instead of having to scroll. I would really like to be able to do that it the newest gnome.
Anyone know how to do that?
Don't just tell me to buy a newer laptop. Even through Windows98 runs really slow on it RedHat9 runs just fine. Besides I have a whole lot of other things to spend my money on, like kids and a mortgage, before I can even think about new toys.
Also editing the menus in gnome really sucks (at least in the RedHat version). I am not a programer and shouldn't have to learn xml and edit several files in order to just add a game to the flippin games menu! I don't mind editing a simple text file like icewm has but the menus in gnome look like they were designed by some pointy head who was trying to show off how clever he was instead of trying to make something usable. Either simplfy them or provide editing tools in the disto.
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
if anyone's listening..
Port old (and great) viewport capabilities to workspaces if you insist on us using them:
* Dragging windows -vertically- between workspaces as well as wrapping around west-east.
* Key bindings for shift workspace up/down & left/right(with wrap)
People have been begging for the same functionality as viewports provided for almost a year.. I'm just about ready to give up on sawfish.. gnome seems almost as deaf to the screams of horror when functionality is removed in the name of simplicity. Even if it isn't in the main setup window, for Bob's sake let power users edit a
thank you.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
...all the time, rather than when using Gnome GUI applications.
GnomeVFS and KIOSlaves do what the OS can already (if that OS is Linux).
* The desktop is now located in the directory Desktop, instead of .gnome-desktop.
.gnome-desktop is just the place. I don't get it.
...
WTF?!?! I've got enough crap in my home directory as it is, without MS-Windowsfying it. UNIX tradition is generally a good, well thought out thing (going way out on a limb, maybe).
putting rc data in "Desktop" is just wrong, and
What if I want to run another desktop system too? Where does it go?
That growing noise is the sound of 1000's * apt-get install some-other-desktop
(it's the attitude, not the individual changes. Ok it's the [dumbing down] changes too)
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
try editing your /etc/X11/XF86Config file to something like
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600" "1024x768" "640x480"
EndSubSection
X will resise the desktop to the largest of the modes listed, but at the first resolution listed. Switch between with Ctrl-Alt-Keypad+ and Ctrl-Alt-Keypad-. Maybe make that second one "800x900" for a vertical only scroll off.
Ctrl-Alt-Keypad+ should give a similar result already without changing your setup.
good luck. Not sure if it will actually work.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
A fully integrated VNC Server and viewer would be nice. The standard vncviewer feels clunky. KDE is ahead of this.
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I have two that's on the list. The first is that there's only resistance against moving a window of the top of the screen, not the edges. Being able to position a window at the edge of the screen is something I do all the time.
The other is the ability to maximize a window in one direction only. I often find that I want to make my Mozilla window as wide as I want it to, and maximize the height. I don't do the maximize the width as often though, so that could go.
Now, granted I run a default RedHat 9.0 install these days, and I haven't looked around to see if these customisations lurk somewhere, but I did do some searching around. If they do exist somewhere I'd appreciate a pointer.
Stefan Axelsson
"The Gnome-panel bug is a new one for me; filing a bug report would likely be very appreciated by the devels."
I have this happen as well. I've also had specific applets crash (notably the pager area one) on exit. There's no way to get cores or tracebacks for it, since Gnome will not abort shutdown if it detects an error like this.
Essentially, we all know it's there, but are unable to reproduce it without shutting down, or get more information during the shut down process.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Not sure about the first (it pisses me off as well btw), but I think there are keybindings for the second. I seem to remember being able to bind a key combo for maximize vertically after I saw how well the 'zoom' behaviour worked in os/x. Search around in the control panel and you should be able to find it.
I'll do that. Thanks.
Stefan Axelsson
I recently switched from GNOME to Enlightenment just because it doesn't get in my way. It seemed to me that GNOME was very good at giving me half-baked features, I don't like the panel at the top of the screen (if it worked like a Mac, maybe), and I love the idea of clicking on the desktop to get a customized menu. I still follow GNOME devel, though, because it may eventually be my desktop again, but from 1.4->2.2, too much was culled. I may actually never go back, though. I like using E to only manage windows, manage desktops, and give me a cool desktop menu. I like the simplicity.
But if I had my way, everything would be an object , windows would only render the objects (like documents, images, movies, etc), manipulation of the objects would NOT be done by menus and buttons in the window, and DnD would work so I could embed my objects anywhere. But I am not that good at programming, so I will just have to wait.