GNOME in the Year of the Monkey

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."

Comments

Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[MrRTFM]

Developers, Developers, Developers!!!!!

We all know where this is going to lead :(

Re:Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[arvindn]

It should instead be:

Components, Components, Components!! ("Universal coupling").

Seriously, GNOME needs more work going into bonobo. IMHO its the only area where it lags behind KDE. That's the reason why you hear Abiword and gnumeric a lot more than kword and kspread, but you hear of koffice but not of gnome-office.

Loose coupling is not necessarily a bad idea though. For example gnome apps start quickly when you're in KDE but not vice versa.

Gnome the way to go?

[armando_wall]

I'm a big fan of KDE, and a few years ago I found Gnome a little bit cumbersome to use on a daily basis (this is not troll... those days I didn't find KDE too special either).

However... recently, I've tried it once or twice, and man, how it has improved!

I always liked Gnome because of its GTK+ (C coding is great!).

I'm even considering switching to it, thanks to Dropline Gnome, a version especially crafted for Slackware. I'd like some opinions from its users (Dropline Gnome).... anyone around?

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[pcbob]

Dropline is great! If you have fast connection, then installation is painless - just start the instaler, select few options, go outside (gasp!) and when you are back you new gnome is waiting for you.

I've been using it for some time now, and I haven't found anything missing (besides win32 video codec drivers :) I use Serbian Cyrillic trnaslations, and I'm glad that they included everyting, and it works out of box.

Also they update packages fairly often (stuff like mozilla); they even provide an applet for panel that checks for updates.

Overall, strongly recomended for any slacker outhere!

year of the monkey

[Dreadlord]

GNOME Foundation's Tim Ney describes some of the project's efforts marking the Lunar New Year of the Monkey with a tip.

Huh? Year of The Monkey can only be good for Ximian Desktop.

GNOME's logo desn't look like a monkey's print anyway.

Re:year of the monkey

[kfg]

GNOME's logo desn't look like a monkey's print anyway.

It's just a pretty rare species is all. And not a monkey really, an ape. The Great Octal Ape. Found only in the deepest jungles of Cambridge, MA.

They do have a cousin though, the Lesser Bonoboctal Ape, found only in the misty, magical land known as Berserkly.

KFG

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

And vi? Who the hell uses vi these days. I installed emacs the other day and I haven't looked back - the cursor keys work, there's no stupid seperate "insert/edit/command" modes, it "just works".

I have NO idea why anyone would choose vi over EMACS. Perhaps it's time the supporters of VIM and BSD switched to supporting EMACS instead.

Also does anyone use Macs these days? I just got an Amiga and it is shhweeet. Decent pre-emptive multitasking and a real command line, not like a Mac where you have to install the Multifinder just to have more than one app running at once. Command line? Ha.

Anyway, I'm converted to Amigas and EMACS forever, I do hope the community gains control over its senses and switches to supporting just these two.

Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Developing countries?

[digitect]

[GNOME and KDE] don't feel much faster than Windows XP

Have to disagree with you there. I use GNOME on a P3-450Mhz at home, and it feels almost as fast as the WinXP I use on a P4-2600Mhz at work; nearly five times the machine!

As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

Re:Developing countries?

[arvindn]

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.

Re:Gnome

[wdnspoon]

I think that initially, Gnome did lag behind KDE in many areas. Qt had a lot of advantages over the old GTK. The big advantage that Gnome has is a much more open development model. Gnome is not only friendly to its users, but also its developers. This has encouraged Gnome to grow faster than KDE (and GTK faster than Qt). Right now, I'd place Gnome and KDE as being about equal to eachother. I switched completely to Gnome because I believe that Gnome will continue to surpass KDE.

Re:Gnome

[deminisma]

Yeah - I use GNOME. Why you ask?

1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines
2. Nicer interface layout. Better spacing, and I like the OS 9 style menu up the top, feels less like a windows clone, taking the best from both worlds. Also less flashly, more standard than KDE.
3. Options. Apart from Gconf, GNOME comes with far less options. KDE is nice, but trying to locate an option in the KDE Control Center is hell. GConf is a far better way to go.
4. Apps. GNOME/GTK2+ has all the apps I want. Gems like Rhythmbox and the GIMP when there is nothing that compares on KDE. Also the old standbys like Abiword, Bluefish and Gnumeric.
5. Lastly, the GNOME community! Sites like planet.gnome.org and gnomedesktop.org help GNOME rock just that much more.

Re:Gnome

[zsau]

1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines

This used to be a point in favor of KDE didn't it? :)

2. Nicer interface layout. Better spacing, and I like the OS 9 style menu up the top, feels less like a windows clone, taking the best from both worlds. Also less flashly, more standard than KDE.

The menubar isn't OS 9 style. KDE can do an OS9 style menubar up the top, GTK can't. OS9 style menubars are per-application, not for the desktop. The two are incomparible because they create a different user intereface style, one that focusses on the application more than the file.

(Disclaimer: I prefer Gnome-apps to KDE apps, but run ROX.)

Re:Gnome

[digitect]

Note that desktop environment usability should not be judged on its similarity to another. If you've only ever used Windows, and you like the Windows interface, and you judge everything against Windows, KDE may seem more appealing. But that doesn't mean KDE (or GNOME) is better.

For many of us, the Windows interface is not ideal. I might also question the quality of the SuSE GNOME environment, too, since they have long been a KDE based desktop (confession: I've never tried it). Try a GNOME-centric distribution (like Fedora) and try GNOME, you might find it more appealing.

Finally, GNOME's widgets can all be themed, did you only use the default? art.gnome.org hosts tons of widget, window and icon themes with which I could nearly convince you your environment was any number of other OSs.

Innovation

[arvindn]

The GNOME people have always been bold in trying out new strategies. After the gnome2 drive to simplify the UI and move away from featuritis it has come a long way. There are some exciting developments like dashboard, gstreamer and desktop integration bounty hunt. Watch out for 2.6!

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a KDE user for the first half of 2003 and then switched to Gnome to see what was up, and stayed with it until now. The main reason for me to switch was almost all of the apps I was using were using GTK+. Gnome 2.4 did everything KDE did, and it is faster and lighter. Nautilus was a bit weak before, but recent versions are pretty good. Gnome has a lot of nice things once you spend a little time learning it. It looks better than KDE. Try Gnome with Industrial window borders and Industrial controls (and any icon set). Its fast and nice looking. I could never get KDE to look good, and I've tried a lot of themes.

The ability to drag and drop just about anything is good. Try dragging and dropping a file from Nautilus into a Gnome file dialog. It switches to that file and its directory. That eliminates any complaints I have about the file dialog. Also, little things, like the theme configuration menu, you can drag and drop a theme onto it. You can drag and drop a file onto a program shortcut to execute the program with that file.

Gnome panels are pretty nice. All the little mini-apps you can add to them are cool (weather, mail checker, etc). The drawers are pretty nice, too.

And then there's the apps:
Gaim, Evolution, Rhythmbox, Totem, Gimp, etc.

KDE is great, but Gnome is great, too, and fits much better for me and has made my Linux experience much nicer.

BTW, I know I'm responding to a troll (the part about supporting a single GUI gave it away), but I'm sure someone is truthfully saying exactly what this guy is saying.

If you haven't, try the latest Gnome. And I'll try the next KDE release when it comes out of beta. I'm not committed to either, I'll use the one that works the best for me. Right now that one is Gnome.

Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[ultrabot]

Right now, I'd place Gnome and KDE as being about equal to eachother. I switched completely to Gnome because I believe that Gnome will continue to surpass KDE.

Have you tried KDE 3.2 beta or rc? I'm currently running on KDE 3.2 rc, and I'm not all that sure whether Gnome will continue (or even start) surpassing KDE. The 3.2 preversions still have some bugs, but boy, is it snappy and sweet! This was the first time a Linux desktop passed winxp in point-and-drool usability.

Gnome is doing alright, I guess, but it still doesn't approach KDE. I'm waiting for Gnome 2.6, hoping it will be snappier (and less buggy) than 2.4. There are no reasons why Gnome wouldn't "win" KDE in the "end", with all the corporate support (at least in spirit, if not developer hours) and superior licensing (LGPL vs. GPL-or-pay-up), but meanwhile, KDE continues to Work Better (tm) and I will continue using it on my home desktop. I give every new version of Gnome a chance, trying to keep using it for a few weeks or so, but I always go back to KDE.

For starters, Konqueror just kills Nautilus. Does Nautilus have a shortage of developers or what is wrong with them? If Konqueror could just be ported to use GTK...