Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GNOME in the Year of the Monkey

Posted by michael on from the timmah! dept.

An anonymous reader writes "GNOME Foundation's Tim Ney describes some of the project's efforts marking the Lunar New Year of the Monkey with a tip, "Never sit with your back to a lobbyist for proprietary software." GNOME is rapidly becoming popular in developing countries and you can donate to help."

14 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Developing countries? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How is GNOME becoming popular in developing countries when it's geared towards newer machines? I mean, you need at least 128M of RAM to run GNOME smoothly, and many systems in developing countries have 16, 32 and (just possibly) 64M of RAM. I would've thought they'd use IceWM or perhaps XFce.

    This is the only problem I see for GNOME and KDE. Powerful and flexible as they are, they're so bulky and huge that they don't feel much faster than Windows XP. If we want to give people an incentive to switch, we want them to FEEL that their machines are faster under Linux. Instead, you can see on message boards around the Net first-timers stating that Linux is "slow" and "bloated" because of this.

    I hope at some point KDE and GNOME developers really make headway into the bloat and performance, because otherwise it's not only unusable for any machine built earlier than 2001, but also doesn't give a good impression. Linux was always known as the speedy, svelte and lighweight OS - this image is being eroded.

    1. Re:Developing countries? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

      The big deal is that some people use GNU/linux because they can get it for $0.

      We don't want Little Johnny to have to ask his parents to upgrade before he can give GNU/linux a whirl.

    2. Re:Developing countries? by Homology · · Score: 3, Insightful
      As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

      Read the parent post again, and note what he writes about developing countries and older PCs.

      Memory is not cheap when you are poor, so, it's indeed a big deal.

      For those of us that are priviliged, and still want to use older machines, we may have trouble getting more memory. For instance, I've got a Dell Dimension L466cx that can only use PC100 memory. Now, the online stores in my country only sells PC133 memory, so more memory may be hard to get.

    3. Re:Developing countries? by arvindn · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Linux was always known as the speedy, svelte and lighweight OS

      You mean on the server. Which it still is. The *nix DEs never had much of a reputation for speed (except maybe wmaker and other niche WMs). Please don't confuse the two. I remember KDE 1.x being very slow on the hardware of the day. Today's KDE and GNOME are certainly way faster on today's hardware.

    4. Re:Developing countries? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Actually, lots of kids are in possession of "hand-me-down" computers, usually from aunts and uncles and suchlike.

    5. Re:Developing countries? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
      As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?
      It is attitudes like that that cause poverty in the first place. That's the big deal.

      You can see nothing wrong with needing 262mb of ram to boot up? Were you even alive when we had computers with 1mb of ram?
  2. Re:Gnome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I've never had to use gconf-editor for anything. All the config options I need are available through the GUI.

  3. From my observations... by Xpilot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...I've always found slashdot to be rather GNOME-hostile, with many vocal critics always bashing it rather nastily (especially in comparison to the more "integrated" KDE). I use GNOME, and I don't get the hang-ups over "integration" and "consistency". I care more about applications (My favourites are Evolution, Gaim, Galeon, XChat...all of them GTK apps), so even though I don't require GNOME to use them, it seems all of my favourite stuff uses GTK, so using the GTK-based GNOME is only natural.

    --
    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
  4. Where's the news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Seriously, I can't find any. So gnome is developing and there will be some conferences and things. So? How can this be newsworthy?

    Oh, and thanks for pointing out that I can donate and somehow mixing it with developing countries, so that you get the impression you are not only helping gnome (wich of course is a good thing to do), but also developing countries. Maybe you could also ad a picture of a starving child next time around.

  5. Re:Gnome by imr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For many of us, the Windows interface is not ideal.
    and
    art.gnome.org hosts tons of widget
    And there you find that the most download theme is eXperience.
    http://art.gnome.org/themes/metacity/index.php?sor t_by=popularity&thumbnails_per_page=24
    gnome developpers need some monkey to shout to them "users! users! users!".
    Users are used to one interface and NEED to find it when they use their computer, before they switch the interface, if ever. Most USERS i know Dont want to switch interfaces, whether they are on windows or on one of the 2 desktop environment.
    For the same reason, they NEED the OK button to be on the place they are used to it, but no, some usability expert said since people read from left to right, we must change that, and then USERS switch to kde, because they find it more userfriendly because it respects their habits.
    Users are all habits, unless your target is users who doesnt know computers yet. DOnt respect that, and you're pissing against the wind.

  6. Re:Gnome by digitect · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Heh, the theme you linked to prove your point was only uploaded today. Downloads per day at art.gnome.org is calculated over a very recent period. (Like maybe even 24 hours.) So popularity is nowhere close to indicating the most number of downloads.

    GNOME users are not some homogeneous group. (Are the other desktop's users?) We come from Mac9, MacX, Win95, WinXP, KDE, Solaris, the command line, and others. So to define your "one interface" is perhaps not as simple as you seem to think it is.

    Half of the real question about the quality of a desktop environment is how well it works for someone who has never used a computer before. (The other half being for someone who has.)

    --
    There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
  7. Re:Fortune? by peragrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    proprietary software vendors will stab you in the back. Think of all the small vendors that microsoft, got close to, stole their ideas, and then destroyed them.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  8. Understanding the options dilemma by the-matt-mobile · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This I don't understand. I mean, one of the most common complaints about KDE is "it has too many options!". Well, how is GNOME better? It has less options, fine. But you could achieve that in KDE as well: just don't change the options!

    From a newbie perspective (which is what I am - honest) this actually is a problem for me. The "too many options" thing is difficult not because fewer options is necessarily better, but because it's extremely difficult to find the specific options I'm looking for with all the extra clutter! I actually switched from Knoppix to PCLinuxOS (Gnoppix is still beta and it shows) because I just like the lack of clutter that GNOME provides and I wanted that choice. I'm not saying that gearing a desktop towards a newbie is better. Actually, as potentially an eventual power user I want to have the... well, the power. But, there's nothing I despise more than clutter when I'm just trying to get things done. Each person will have their own preferences, and I'm not arguing that your preference for KDE is wrong - for me it was just things like Konq's vertical sidebar with zillions of unnecessary buttons and the control panel without an easily navigable organization that lead me to just like the simplicity and the look of GNOME better.

  9. Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Wow, and this got modded as interesting?

    This was the first time a Linux desktop passed winxp in point-and-drool usability.

    Point-and-drool != usability. If you want fancy graphics run a 3d desktop. If you want usability, develop interface guidelines and make sure every app included on the desktop accomplishes them (just an example).

    I'm waiting for Gnome 2.6, hoping it will be snappier (and less buggy) than 2.4.

    So gnome 2.4 is buggy? How? Care to explain which outstanding bugs refrain you from using 2.4 on a daily basis?

    but meanwhile, KDE continues to Work Better (tm) and I will continue using it on my home desktop.

    How does it work better for you? I too can say that gnome/xfce/twm works better, but that's still an empty statement. Is it faster? fancier? more efficient?