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)"

Comments

To keep this topic readable...

[geschild]

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... ;)

Re:To keep this topic readable...

[iapetus]

While we're on the topic of religious software wars, you might want to try Links instead of Lynx.

Re:To keep this topic readable...

[geschild]

Thank you for the tip, but I'd rather just telnet in and parse the HTML myself, thank you.

(That damn w3c is making life ever harder for us hard-core wankers though. Every new revision of the standards I have to 'update' my parser through a long and painfull flashing process called learning.)

Re:To keep this topic readable...

[johnnyb]

Loser. I speak Ethernet directly.

Re:To keep this topic readable...

[suwain_2]

And you think that's an accomplishment? I just put the Ethernet cable to my tongue, and can feel the charges.

(Took me a while to figure out how to see the images, though. Give it a while and you'll eventually pick up the skill.)

Browsers...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Browsers...

[Jellybob]

It's an integration thing... Firebird/Mozilla/whatever else has it's own way of doing windowing, unlike Epiphany, which is GTK2 based, and integrated with the Gnome config options.

Re:Browsers...

[Deusy]

Firstly, Gnome is not an X Window Manager.

Secondly, only two 'desktops' have their own 'integrated' browser; Gnome (Epiphany) and KDE (Konqueror).

The purpose of the integrated web browser is to provide a default for users, and to provide extra functionality through tight integration with the desktop. Think Internet Explorer in Windows.

- Imagine if you installed your new Gnome and tried to browse the web, only to find no browser available
- Epiphany views can be embedded in Nautilus
- Epiphany strictly follows the HIG and other Gnome2 standards (GConf etc)

In a decent desktop, every basic task should be accomplishable through a default suite of applications; playing media, writing documents, browsing the web, checking your email. And each of these components should be substitutable so those requiring extra functionality (or with a simple preference) can drop-in their preferred application. This is part the Utopia the Gnome project is working towards.

Re:Browsers...

[fault0]

> Most imortantly it doesn't have a javascript console, if a javascript error occurs you have no idea what, where or when it went wrong, it just doesn't work.

It's there in CVS..

> And secondly, while close it doesn't support a few important CSS things, like overflow:scroll for one.

I beleive this was implemented a few weeks ago with one of the safari merges.

Re:Browsers...

[reynaert]

Hmmmm... maybe this is why Microsoft does exactly the same thing with Windows..... Nah. It must be because they are "evil".

Because you can't get rid of Internet Explorer in Windows. If you don't like Epiphany, you can delete it and use Firebird or Konqueror or whatever instead, and Gnome will keep working.

Try to install XP without IE.

Still major usability issues...

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :)

Re:Still major usability issues...

[mccalli]

2) Taskbar doesn't reflect order that programs were started in. It inserts new buttons at random positions.

Disclaimer: Haven't used pure Gnome in quite a while, perhaps some of the points below have been handled by now.

I hate the fact that the Windows taskbar reflects the order in which the apps are launched and then cannot be changed. If you're going to have a taskbar interface, then fair enough chronological order seems a sensible default. However once launched, I really want to be able to drag that indication to whatever position I want in the taskbar.

For example, at work on my NT4 box I have a standard set of apps open most times. They are Notes (ugh), two Firebird windows, Putty and a Remote desktop connection. Apps after that can come and go, but I want those apps always in the same place so I don't have to hunt for them later.

I'm also an OS X user, and although I'm aware of criticism of the dock there's certainly one thing to be said for it - your most frequenctly used applications always appear in the same place, both for launching and for bringing to the front.

As a quick aside - anyone else remember the Apple Human Interface Guidlines circa System 7-era, incorporating the Principle of Muscular Remembrance? The idea is that important stuff is always in the same place, every time, so that the user doesn't even have to conciously think about where to find things. It's the reason Macs have a single menu bar, at the top of the screen. It seems to me to also be a key thought behind the dock.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Still major usability issues...

[cbiltcliffe]

2) Taskbar doesn't reflect order that programs were started in. It inserts new buttons at random positions.

It doesn't insert them at random. It inserts them beside similar buttons. At least, Debian testing's Gnome (version 2.2) does.

If you open a Galeon window, then a terminal window, then a FreeCell window, then open a second Galeon window, the button for the second Galeon window will appear in the taskbar beside the first Galeon button. That way, you don't have to go searching through 14 buttons to find the similar ones.

Windows XP does this, too, if I remember rightly. Of course, every time I see a default Windows XP install, I want to gouge my eyes out in horror.....

Re:Still major usability issues...

[nutshell42]

Actually I think that's stupid (let the flame wars begin =)

I normally have a great number of windows open. As most start their entry in the taskbar with the application name and then the content of the application I normally can't read which specific instance of an application that button means (the entry would look something like this: "Galeo...") Therefore I think it's better for instances of the same program to be as far apart as possible because that way it's easier to remember which one you wanted. (actually I solved the problem by having the taskbar on the side and rather wide but I know a lot of people who don't want their taskbar hidden by other windows and therefore can't do it this way)

jm2c

Re:Still major usability issues...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

I normally have a great number of windows open. As most start their entry in the taskbar with the application name and then the content of the application I normally can't read which specific instance of an application that button means

This is the great thing about multiple desktops. It took me a little while to get used to, but I can't stand going to a Win* machine and having only one desktop now after using "Linux" for 5 or 6 years.

I usually use 4 desktops. 1 and 2 are my "working" desktops (work, web browsing, games, etc.). Desktop 3 I leave my mail app open (kmail). Desktop 4 I usually have Pan open or minimized, and also keep a few network monitoring apps open (etherape, ethereal, tailing /var/log/messages, things like that). This way it keeps my taskbar clutter to a minimum, but keeps everything just a click (or a CTRL+TAB) away at the same time. VERY handy!

Re:Still major usability issues...

[Surreal_Streaker]

I can't stand going to a Win* machine and having only one desktop now after using "Linux" for 5 or 6 years.

I've had great luck with multiDesk on the windows machines at work.

Re:Still major usability issues...

[nonmaskable]

KDE 3.2 has improved their "mac-style" menubar in CVS. You can now have a top panel with a menubar applet, allowing you to mix the application menubar in with system components (workspace pager, window list, etc.) so that you can get pretty close to the Mac interface.

It's not out yet.

[asobala]

When is _is_ out, you'll have all sorts of release notes and screenshots to look at. Slashdot is announcing non-existant releases again :)

Write GnomeVFS modules:

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:That's great! Accessibility?

[egrinake]

Well, GNOME has already won awards for its accessibility work, and it has a mature framework for dealing with this (disclaimer: I've never tried it, just heard people praising it).

The article itself points this out in two places.

Re:That's great! Accessibility?

[KarmaPolice]

From the (f*******) article:
Gnome 2.4 ships with GOK, an award-winning dynamic onscreen keyboard. It supports Direct Selection, Dwell Selection, Automatic Scanning and Inverse Scanning, and includes word completion. A detailed overview can be found on the GOK website.

Gnopernicus, the second accessibility application to ship with GNOME, provides a number of assistive technologies for people suffering from visual impairment. Most notably, it includes a screen reader, a screen magnifier and a Braille writer.

KDE had all of the new features three releases ago

[murple]

If you really want to lure all the trolls into the on true thread, you should use a subject like this. ;-)

Murple

Re:That's great! Accessibility?

[bahamat]

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.

That's actually not true. The X-Windowing-System has come with xmag virtually for ever. High contrast themes are not hard to create. You can make icons and fonts whatever size you want. We've even got sticky keys. The only thing X is missing as far as accessibility is keyboard control of the mouse cursor. Then again, you can always run ratpoison and be rid of the rodent forever.

You've been lied to my friend.

Re:That's great! Accessibility?

[Timesprout]

Gnopernicus, the second accessibility application

How can you provide accessibility functionality thru an unpronouncable application ?

Re:Gnome development outpacing KDE?

[apdt]

That could be taken as a sign of maturity.

Draw what conclusions you like from that....

current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening?).

[Si]

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).

Not Really

[Bruha]

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.

Wrong logo

[asobala]

You know, this logo is the really old one. Any chance of slashdot changing it?

GNOME section icon

[sfraggle]

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.

Re:GNOME section icon

[pmz]

The GNOME section icon is out of date: GNOME changed their logo about a year ago.

Still the foot motif. If the goal of a "lickable" interface is ever to be attained, does this mean also having to lick the foot of a gnome who probably stepped in bear poop while out hunting?

GNOME 2

[nutshell42]

From the article:

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

Re:GNOME 2

[Boing]

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.

That may be applicable to your example of setting the system time, but the behavior of fundamental interface elements should be consistent across installations. The problem with flexibility and customization on that level is that everybody who uses that installation for the first time has to climb a new learning curve... and everyone who gets used to that installation has to reclimb the learning curve any time they go to a different setup.

For a long time, I preferred the "X" method of window activation: move the mouse over it, it's active. But since I had to use Windows professionally, I grew more comfortable with the click-to-activate method. My instinctive predictions of the computer's behavior have only so much real estate for conflicting behavior, so the less common one (X) became less comfortable. Eventually, I changed the FVWM setting so that they were no longer in conflict.

So yes, TIMTOWTDI (there is more than one way to do it) is a good philosophy for high-level functionality, but ideally, all of the different ways to do it need to be independent of the user's settings.

Re:GNOME 2

[Deusy]

You have both valid and invalid points.

One thing Windows gets right is that there is always more than one way to reach your goal.

Is 'tabbed browsing' a goal or a method? I'd suggest it's the latter. And methods should always be logical and consistent. By offering various unecessary preferences on how your tabs behave, you provide the user with a means to confuse themselves. However, if the most logical default method is used, then there is no confusion available to occur and the user finds it intuitive. If the method is not intuitive, then a different setting should be used.

As for multiple paths to reach all goals; it depends on the goal. The clock example is a good example of multiple logical paths to the one goal. Double clicking to activate, right clicking to bring up the contextual menu, and an appropriate entry in the control panel. These are all routes that a user might try to take to configure the time on their computer.

All logical routes should be available to any goal, but sometimes there is only one logical route. For instance, you would not want multiple ways to disable popups in Epiphany, just a simple entry in the preferences for Epiphany.

Do not confuse methods with goals, nor assume all goals have multiple intuitive pathways.

Gnome 2.4 Review

[the_pooh_experience]

So ARS Technica has a fairly in depth review of 2.4. Among other things, it includes:

• Linux Desktop Basics
• Human Interface Consistency (including default Gnome Desktop)
• Gnome uses SVG plus web browser and file manager
• Desktop accessabiity and developer GConf stuff & streaming ability
• Pango Text Rendering
• Final Thoughts

Re:Gnome development outpacing KDE?

[p0rnking]

It's all about the "Quality", not the "Quantity"

Slashdot's GNOME Logo

[jdub!]

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. :-)

Re:Slashdot's GNOME Logo

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds an awful lot like work... I think you should try and formulate your request a bit differently to get it accepted by the slashdot editors. Say, make a funny animation of the new logo and the old logo battling it out on the slashdot homepage (the new one should obviously win), and then submit that.

Re:That's great! Accessibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Shift-Numlock, it worked for me for ages

Re:Gnome development outpacing KDE?

[BenjyD]

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.

Re:current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening?

[JanneM]

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.

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

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 -.

Worst problems of Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Mandrake

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

better yet,

su
emerge sync
emerge world/gnome

And you get gnome, all nicely compiled for your system, not a fucking 386 from nineteendicketytwo.


Although I love Gentoo (I got my 1.4 CDs yesterday!!), You are so wrong about MDK. MDK is compiled for pentiums and up. You're thinking of Red Hat. It's compiled for a 386.

Please think before you post.

P.S.
Yes, I'm aware there's a 486 release of MDK (or at least used to be, anyway), but the "default" MDK distro is compiled for the 586.

We want sawfish back!

[chendo]

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).

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 /.! w00t!

Re:...because they predate Firebird...

[__past__]

Both Galeon and Epiphany use Gecko, the Mozilla rendering engine. It's unlikely that they are much older than Mozilla itself.

Re:KDE had all of the new features three releases

[geschild]

Thanks for the tip. You're a bit late though, lieutenant. My original post is already modded -1 Troll. *grin*

Great discussion of GUIs

[elliotj]

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.

Re:Great discussion of GUIs

[ShadeARG]

Consistency between applications on Linux is a pipe dream, unfortunately for the near future. I'll explain why.

Different applications make use of different interface toolkits like GTK+, Qt, Tk, Swing, AWT, Xaw, Fltk, etc. Unless a container toolkit of some kind is developed (that supports GTK+ and Qt at the very least), this is going to be a major roadblock.

A better solution that would be amazingly helpful to Linux on the desktop is if KDE and Gnome could come together and tackle this as a team.

Re:Great discussion of GUIs

[vondo]

While I agree that consistency is very important, Windows is not very consistent either. Last time I looked, Windows Media Player (a MS product) has a very different interface (look and feel) than windows or IE. Plus there are all the 3rd party apps like WinAmp that are TOTALLY different. The monitoring/overclocking control for my motherboard tries to look like an console game pad.

Mac may be better. I haven't really used one in years.

Re:Great discussion of GUIs

[hattig]

I'm quite happy for KDE and Gnome to stay apart.

To be honest, what the end user sees as the OS is the interface. They shouldn't care that they are running Linux or FreeBSD, only that they are running KDE or Gnome.

So at home I run Linux/KDE and FreeBSD/KDE. I'll give Gnome another try when the file dialog is brought into the 90's.

Re:Great discussion of GUIs

[La Temperanza]

User interface consistency between different DEs is not a huge concern of mine. Programming interface consistency is; with so many similar features, it should be far easier to make software *both* GNOME-enhanced and KDE-enhanced. Unfortunately, it's likely just as far-off a goal, due to the fact and ideological consequences of KDE being in C++ and GNOME in C.

Yeah, that's iffy, but the last time I claimed outright that GNOME was not object-oriented, I got burninated.

Re:Great discussion of GUIs

[Brandybuck]

If you repeat a lie long enough, people will believe you. Apparently even Ars believes the lie that the Windows desktop is consistant across applications.

Take off your blinders and actually LOOK at Windows. Does Quicktime look like Media Player? Does they have even the remotely similarity in UI? Of course not! This isn't just non-MS applications. .NET applications have a different look and feel than MFC/Win32 applications.

Then take a look at the Macintosh. Funny how Apple can't make up their minds whether they want an Aquafresh toothpaste look or a scratched brassplate look. But I don't see people bailing on the platform because of it.

from the seldon-plan dept.

[Matias D'Ambrosio]

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!

Re:simulating clicks

[ThogScully]

5 is a button click and and you change what button it is by clicking / for left, * for both, and - for right. + is a double-click. 0 is button hold, . is release.
-N

You want more desktops, you got it

[Johan Veenstra]

Exit KDE

edit ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals

change:

[Desktops] ....
Number=4

into

[Desktops] ....
Number=32

restart KDE, voila.

Re:You want more desktops, you got it

[vivek7006]

U dont even have to do all that crap. Just right click on the kde desktop, go to properties and specify 'n' number of desktops.

Done.....

Re:Mandrake

[salimma]

You're thinking of Red Hat. It's compiled for a 386

Actually, Mandrake is compiled for i686 but only using the i586 instruction set, while Red Hat is compiled for i686 utilising the i486 instruction set for compatibility. Why it's still called 'i386' is anyone's guess.

Re:Gnome development outpacing KDE?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

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")

Re:hopefully

[Lispy]

dropline will supply users with 2.4 soon!!

Re:That's great! Accessibility?

[hephro]

Regarding speech recognition: Unfortunately, Gnome doesn't have anything that comes close to products such as Dragon Dictate and ViaVoice. The ViaVoice version for Linux was discontinued at some point... and free software such as Sphinx doesn't come close to the commercial products.

Maybe this one of the areas where free software really has a hard time catching up: small market, highly sophisticated software, small "coolness" factor, and very smooth desktop-integration a requirement...

One thing I'd love to see in KDE that was added...

[tweek]

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.

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 .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.

Now we're innovating..!

[pubjames]

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.

Re:Mandrake

[fuzzix]

If the mirrors are updated it should be as simple as issuing

urpmi gnome

from a root shell. Update your sources with http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/

Re:Mandrake

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

As much as I like gentoo, it doesn't release packages immideatelly after they are released.

nano -w /etc/make.conf

Advanced Masking
# ================
#
# Gentoo is using a new masking system to allow for easier stability testing
# on packages. KEYWORDS are used in ebuilds to mask and unmask packages based
# on the platform they are set for. A special form has been added that
# indicates packages and revisions that are expected to work, but have not yet
# been approved for the stable set. '~arch' is a superset of 'arch' which
# includes the unstable, in testing, packages. Users of the 'x86' architecture
# would add '~x86' to ACCEPT_KEYWORDS to enable unstable/testing packages.
# '~ppc', '~sparc', '~sparc64' are the unstable KEYWORDS for their respective
# platforms. DO NOT PUT ANYTHING BUT YOUR SPECIFIC ~ARCHITECTURE IN THE LIST.
# IF YOU ARE UNSURE OF YOUR ARCH, OR THE IMPLICATIONS, DO NOT MODIFY THIS.
#
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"

You'll get stuff a LOT faster. I've been using that "unstable branch" (if you will) for a year and a half or so with zero show-stopper problems on 5 or so machines. OK, OK, there's a bad realease from some developer from time to time, but Portage will down-grade it next emerge -u world if there's something really bonked with a package or ebuild.

Re:Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

go to Breakmygentoo.net

You get ebuilds on the bleeding edge. I'm running the latest gnome as of yesterday thanks to the wonderful efforts of Matt and Lovechild and the rest of the BMG team.

Download BMG ebuild
emerge ebuild
enjoy latest bleeding edge

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Epiphany?

[Nuclear Elephant]

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?

my one quirk with GNOME

[nsuttitinagul]

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.

Re:Another freaking browser?

[leonardop]

Your message shows how very badly informed you are about the reasons why new browsers get developed, and Epiphany in particular. Moreover, your highly-flammable words takes away any bit of credibility and respect I would have given to your post. The reasons why this has been mod'ed up as Insightful are beyond me.

Any way, long story short: Epiphany's raison d'etre could be resumed as follows:

• Some people don't want the "gigantic" Mozilla binary running for most web-browsing needs.
• Some people wants their graphical applications as consistent as possible.
• Some people care about their applications being usable.
• Some people realize that sitting down and coding an application that is going to be used at the very least by its developer is a lot more useful and fun than ranting about pointless drivel such as "why another web browser?" and "I think [insert project name here] has dick-envy over [insert different project name here]"

Re:hmmm

[Zeut]

I have a Athlon XP with 1Gig of Ram, and how much if free? 0. Why? Because linux is designed to use all its RAM for file caching and buffering. Free ram is a waste of resources. The best indicator you can get on Linux is to use the free command and look at the numbers that filter out buffering and caching.

Re:current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening?

[L-Wave]

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)

Re:Hmmm

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"For all practical purposes, KDE3 won the war."

WHAT WAR? There never was a war. This isn't commercial software we're talking about, it's open-source.

KDE is going in the WRONG direction for non-technical users. GNOME is going in the right direction.

KDE gets more complicated, more feature laden, and harder to use with every release. Yes, it does *everything*, but at a price. My mom has no trouble with GNOME and Epiphany. KDE, on the other hand, makes her head spin.

"Printing? I hope Gnome fixed that. Printing from Konqueror is a snap, from Galeon, gads, I hope you can figure it out."

I have no trouble printing from Epiphany or GTK2-based-Galeon. I have no idea about GTK1-based Galeon.

"Half the Gnome 2 apps seem to totally ignore Gnome Config settings."

Not in my experience.

If you have specific complaints about anything being "broken", POST A BUG REPORT! Complaining about how "bad" GNOME is on Slashdot helps no one.

Re:Another freaking browser?

[Telex4]

You obviously didn't bother to read why Epiphany started, and why it is being included in GNOME.

Mozilla, Firebird and Galleon are all good browsers, but none of them currently conform with GNOME's HIG, and none want to.

To be a usable desktop environment, GNOME needs a browser that will integrate well with it, and so Epiphany fills this gap.

Honestly, does the user care if there are five different Mozilla derivatives, each for a different desktop environment, when they have the one they want installed? It won't confuse anyone, and it will provide choice to those who might want it.

Go back to your troll cave.

Got that right

[siskbc]

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?

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.

Re:GNOME: Armageddon

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I hate to break it to you, but *you* are *not* the target audience for GNOME. GNOME2 was *never* intended for "linux geeks". You complain that GNOME is too "dumbed down", that you need to "see the filesystem".

I have news to you: 99% of computer users *don't* care about the filesystem, they don't want to customize their desktop, they don't know what a kernel is.

GNOME is changing what Linux is. Yes, you may not like it. You're not supposed to. You may complain that GNOME is "polluting" other projects. That's a necessity. There is no interoperability without cooperation.

GNOME is simpler. It has less options. It has less features. It's built around the idea that "less is more". If you're the type of person that needs to tweak everything, then by all means, use KDE! But most users don't care about tweaking. For them, computers should be "transparent". They don't care how their word processor works, how their desktop looks (so long as it's not super-ugly), or how many virtual desktops there are. They don't care about kernels or Xfree or window managers.

So you see, your complaints miss the entire point. GNOME was not designed for "linux geeks", it was designed for normal people.

GNOME is simple because that is what it needs to be. It has a consistant set of standards. GNOME is making Linux into a platform that works "out of the box". People don't care what their desktop looks like or how configurable it is: they simply want to get their work done with as little interruption as possible. That is the goal of the GNOME project: to replace every Windows desktop with a GNOME desktop. And the're a lot more likely to succeed than KDE.

Re:Hmmm

[Vexalith]

What are you talking about? I don't have a single GTK 1 application on my desktop...

All the core Gnome applications have GTK2 ports that are now released or very near release. Firebird, Epiphany, Galeon, X-Chat, Abiword, Gnumeric, Eclipse, GStreamer, Gimp 1.3... We even have Nautilus CD burner now so don't need to use Toaster.

What more do you want? I don't use a single GTK 1 or QT app at the moment.

Re:hmmm

[BenjyD]

256mb of RAM should be fine. The difference in memory usage between a bare windowmaker desktop and a KDE one is about 60meg (~34meg -> ~90meg). That's worth about what, $20? Considering the vast amount of functionality that gives me, I think that's a worthwhile trade off.
Back in the day, I was a major lightweight system zealot. I used Ratpoison or Ion at work (if you though fvwm was lightweight, you ain't seen nothing yet). Then I realised that saving 0.5 seconds on launching a terminal window didn't make me any more productive, but having excellent integrated apps like kmail and konqueror did.

Re:That's great! Accessibility?

[jonadab]

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with the regular cursor
movement keys, only with the keypad, but I find it necessary to
remap the keypad to emulate the regular cursor keys, on the grounds
that otherwise most X apps don't support the keypad properly for
cursor movement (which is *way* more important to me than mouse
movement). (Just using the non-pad cursor keys is unacceptable
because they're arranged bady.)

I suppose I could map things so that the regular arrows emulate
the pad arrows... I never had a reason before (having no use
for the non-cursor functionality of the pad), but this might be
a good enough reason.

Do the pad home/end/pgup/pgdn keys do anything meaningful with
the shift+numlock keyboard-mouse mode turned on?

Gnome unusable for many Unix users

[mkeightley]

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.

Re:Gnome unusable for many Unix users

[riggwelter]

Applications -> Desktop Preferences -> Windows -> Select windows when mouse moves over them

Re:current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening?

[pyros]

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:current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening?

[Alan]

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.

Re:Mandrake

[ResidentLinuxLunatic]

For the [obviously] non-technical person who wrote this comment .... it's still called 'i386' because that is the platform name. It really should be called 'ix86' as, yes, the 386 went the way of the dodo bird a long time ago, but most people know what they're talking about when an i386 is mentioned -- an Intel 32-bit x86 architecture chip. Even [gasp] Windows users know this -- have you recently looked at a Win NT/2000/XP/2003 setup CD-R ... there are two folders to note in the root of the CD: "ia64" and "i386". These hold the setup files for the 64-bit Intel architecture chip and the 32-bit Intel architecture chip, respectively. Just because you think it strange to use the old platform id doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to the rest of the computer world.

Re:Mandrake

[Goalie_Ca]

Don't forget to add Breakmygentoo. They've got lots of great ebuilds and i've been using the gnome 2.4 beta ebuilds all the way through. They're very quick at releasing them too.

Re:Development tool in Gnome

[TheRaven64]

gVim. The latest version (6.2) has gtk2 support, so it matches your gnome2 theme. Take a look at the huge repository of scripts on vim.org, while you're there. They have tree-view code browsers which make gvim much more useful for code editing. I currently use a LaTeX plugin, which contains a number of shortcuts for editing LaTeX files, and vimspell, which pipes text through aspell and red underlines errors as I type. I haven't needed to use a wordprocessor since I installed those two.

Re:updated file dialog box?

[steveha]

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

Gnome 2.4 has some *serious* usabillity problems

[anonymous coword]

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!

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 .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.

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.