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A Look at the Upcoming GNOME 2.6
unmadindu writes "GNOME 2.6 is just around the corner, and I figured out that many GNOME users would like to know what's in store. So I installed GNOME 2.5 (development version for 2.6) in my box, and came up with a list of the new stuff that are coming up. (and just in case, copies of the article are also available here and here)."
Part of the problem is that developers, being geeks, tend to have all the latest kit. So the GNOME hackers working on their 512M / 1G 3 GHz box won't be concerned about performance, but the millions of desktop users running lower-spec machines will.
Let's be clear about this: the vast, VAST majority of machines on the planet, in homes and in businesses, have 32M, 64M (and occasionally 128M) RAM. That's nowhere enough to run GNOME/KDE, OpenOffice.org and Mozill at a realistic and usable speed. When did we become just as bloated as Microsoft?
If the GNME developers don't step back, look at the problem and concentrate on efficiency and clean design (rather than flashy features and bloat), it'll lead to long term damage for Linux on the desktop. They're doing a great job bringing Linux to the masses, but the masses are going to be less enthusiastic about Linux when it keeps requiring hardware upgrades...
I've always thought that the reason having two (main) desktops (KDE and Gnome) is good is not necessarily because of the competition, but because there is a need to interoperate between the two, so sensible 'generic' programming interfaces need to be created. This should create more modular code, and modular code makes successful open source projects.
However, to what extent is this true? Can I, for instance, use just the Gnome file manager in KDE, and vice-versa? Is it an aim of these projects to make this level of interoperability a goal?
It'll be interesting to read a decent "neutral" KDE 3.2 vs Gnome 2.6 article though! And it also has to be said that the competition between KDE and Gnome really had driven both communities to excellence. Als competition has not deterred them from cooperating in freedesktop.org - something to be encouraged until hopefully one day somehow the libraries can be unified.........
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
Have to say it, this was one of the best written personal review article submitted to slashdot in recent past.
It covers the functionality well, does not break the continuity and was fun to read.
If only we had more articles like this, slashdot might gain few more subscribers.
- mritunjai
That's the same argument Microsoft used to say that Windows 95 is faster than Windows 3.1. And on a system with plenty of memory, it is. But most people's experience with the hardware available at the time was that Win95 was much much slower, thrashing horribly with less than eight megabytes and still rather uncomfortable with less than sixteen.
Making a program twice as fast in CPU time but at the expense of using twice as much memory may not be a good trade-off. If you start running low on memory then you get a very steep performance drop from paging to disk (or not having enough RAM for disk cache, which is effectively the same thing). The most important benchmark is how it performs on a machine with, say, 64 megabytes of RAM, or whatever minimum level you want to require. Not shaving a few fractions of a second off times on recent hardware.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
According to Google's Zeitgeist", Windows XP represesnts 45% of the market out there (well, of their customers/users). Windows 2000 represents 18%, and although it will run in 64MB, I don't view anything less than 128MB realistic. Therefore, I would guess that the majority of people are already using machines with 128MB or more.
Isn't Evolution a mail reader and not a file browser ? Or did you mean Nautilus ?
Or you could leave both options open and let people use whichever they want. Like it's done now.
Besides, if I have both mplayer and xine installed, how does the One File Browser know which one to launch ? Or Emacs and Vi ? Or whatever ?
And yes, I realize you can set this in preferences; but suppose you want to use different tools for different tasks, despite the file format being the same ? Or if I just want to try out a new program ?
Because that would mean resizing application windows to fit them besides the directory windows, and be a lot more hassle than simply using a selector window ?
No, it's a useability feature. Lacking a separate file selector would give users unneccessary grief.
The more features you bundle into a single program, the less likely it performs any of them well, simply because different features (such as useability and low learning curve) conflict with one another.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This new spatial apperance of the new Nautilus reminds me of old MacOS finder. I liked it back then and I will probably like it in Nautilus.
But I am a bit worried, some folder hierachies in Unix is quite deep.
Perhaps they should introduce something like the Mac spring loaded folders.I.e. if you want to move a file down in the hierachy you just drag and hold it over a folder, after a short while the window opens, and you hold the file over a folder in that window, until that opens and so on. When you finally reach the right folder you drop the file, and all windows you encountered on the way is closed automatically.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Maybe they never used Windows 95 either!
... and of course, the option to disable it completely if you want an explorer like UI.
True Spatial Navigation is quite good really. As long as you have options for opening the parent folder, and autoclosing the parent folder when opening a new folder to keep clutter down.