Ars Technica Looks At GNOME 2.6 [updated]

The Original Yama writes "Ars Technica takes a look inside the GNOME 2.6 Desktop & Developer Platform, due for release any minute now. It builds upon an earlier review of the GNOME 2.5 development series and their own examination of GNOME 2.4." darthcamaro writes "internetnews.com is running a story about the release of GNOME 2.6 today. They actually got a hold of Miguel de Icaza who had some real interesting stuff to say about it and the Linux Desktop in general. 'de Icaza told internetnews.com that a simpler interface has been the goal of GNOME since at least version 2.0.'" Update: 03/31 21:59 GMT by T : sn0wman3030 was one of many submitters to link to the GNOME 2.6 start page, including links to screenshots, documentation, and source downloads.

Comments

Spatial Nautilus

[ultrabot]

Incidentally, I'm testing it out as we speak. The Spatial Nautilus is very very annoying - it's much like the default Windows behaviour of popping up zillions of windows that you always have to turn off every time you reinstall Windows.

Yes, I'm going to go back to kde 3.2.1 Not because of the spatial nautilus that I can disable, but because of the missing "column list" viewing mode in Nautilus. I'm the kind of guy that wants to see as much stuff as possible w/ one glance, without needing to focus my eyes too much.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[functor]

O_o

View menu -> View as List.

Resize window as needed.

Oh, look, it's a detailed columnized view.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

Three things:

1) Spatial nautilus is disablable.
2) Even in spatial nautilus, you can close parent windows as you browse by middleclicking (that might require a pref change - not sure).
3) The "column list" viewing mode is called 'list mode'.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[linolium]

I've never tried it, but I can't see why they would do it... I really hated it when Windows used that spatial thing. But, you know, I think the Gnome team would have done a bunch of research before they changed something as significant as this, so I don't think I have to worry about it being unefficient or anything. It's just getting used to it that will be a problem. ;)

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[pldms]

I'm the kind of guy that wants to see as much stuff as possible w/ one glance, without needing to focus my eyes too much.
What, the partially sighted kind of guy?

Have we become so lazy that flexing a lens sounds tiring?

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[ultrabot]

Oh, look, it's a detailed columnized view.

It's not the same thing. I don't want to see the details, I want to see lots of items in a small space.

Zooming out doesn't do the trick either, because then the file names are under the icons, not right of the icons like in KDE column list mode. If the icon is just left of the file name, you can cram more objects in the same space.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

The Spatial Nautilus is very very annoying - it's much like the default Windows behaviour of popping up zillions of windows that you always have to turn off every time you reinstall Windows.

What the hell is that supposed to mean exactly? You can set explorer to open each folder in the same window? Is that it? I am confused. Everytime you reinstall windows? Huh?

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[ultrabot]

You can set explorer to open each folder in the same window? Is that it? I am confused. Everytime you reinstall windows? Huh?

I apologize the confusing wording I used. I meant that Windows explorer/file manager opens new windows by default, and you have to turn off that feature every time you reinstall windows.

Everybody I know turns it off, and I wonder why Microsoft chose the wrong behaviour as the default.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Shillo]

> The Spatial Nautilus is very very annoying - it's much like the default Windows behaviour of popping up zillions of windows that you always have to turn off every time you reinstall Windows.

Double-middle-click (or double-right-click, I'm not sure) on a directory closes the current window and pops the new one. This de-annoyifies Nautilus quite a bit. :)

--

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes now I gotcha. That is obnoxious, whenever I install a fresh copy of win2k I have this set of a gazillions options that I instinctively set including personalized menus (god i hate those), displaying known file extensions, all that crapola, tweaking the toolbar so the address bar, essential buttons, and menus are all on one single top row, etc.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Figaro]

Oh...for that you go to the "File Management" preferences and set "Text Beside Icons".

You could also turn on "Compact Layout", but that's pretty ugly.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[afd8856]

let's not forget that konqueror already "kinda" support the "spatial navigation" - right click, open in new tab. That is, if you realy care to see all the directories in separate windows. This feature is really handy, especially if one of the tabs is an FTP or whatever conection...

I wonder why don't they (GNOME people) work on integrating their existing infrastructure - like VFS support in any app, embedable apps like KParts in KDE, etc, there are too many issues - and only work to transform their desktop into a clone of MacOSX. I think that KDE is more suited to me as a simple user than GNOME, whose target is enterprise.

Disclaimer: I'm a KDE fan and user.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[horza]

Why not use ROX? It works equally well under KDE and Gnome, maximises use of screen estate, automatically switches to small icons at a configurable point, and one click switches between icon and detailed list view. It's also blindingly fast. Seriously, try it.

Phillip.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[drivers]

Double-middle-click (or double-right-click, I'm not sure) on a directory closes the current window and pops the new one. This de-annoyifies Nautilus quite a bit. :)

I was disgusted when I read that in the article. That is rediculous. Expecting users to get used to using an alternate button just for their app... and if you happen to be thinking about the task at hand instead of the UI you'll end up making mode mistakes. Who let this through? Aren't there UI standards in projects like these?

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[superjaded]

I want to see lots of items in a small space

You mean enabling "Use compact layout" and "Text beside icons" doesn't suffice it for you? I can see ~15 items in the default-sized spatial window at 100% (or ~35 at 50%), which is quite a bit, IMO.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[ultrabot]

Double-middle-click (or double-right-click, I'm not sure) on a directory closes the current window and pops the new one. This de-annoyifies Nautilus quite a bit. :)

Sounds reasonable if you are using a mouse. I like to navigate w/ keyboard - what's the tactic there?

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[ultrabot]

Sounds reasonable if you are using a mouse. I like to navigate w/ keyboard - what's the tactic there?

Whoops, apparently there is C-S-w to do this. Not the easiest possible combo.

Too bad it only seems to kill parent folders, not all the folders.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

run:
gconf-editor

goto /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser

enable this option

"If set to true, then all Nautilus windows will be browser windows. This is how Nautilus used to behave before version 2.6, and some people prefer this behavior. "

you get the old nautilus back by default :)

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[DCMonkey]

It hasn't done that by default since Windows 95 (ie: almost 9 YEARS AGO!). Maybe NT 4.0 did it too, but still...

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[hattig]

It is more like the classic AmigaOS (From Workbench 1.0 in 1985 to present) behaviour, which has always been a spatial filesystem view.

Spatial does not mean "open folders in new window" - it has that per-window location, size, view mode, etc aspect to it as well. AmigaOS also let you locate Icons within each window where you wanted and then snapshot their locations along with the window, so still more advanced, but maybe Gnome will get there 20 years afterwards ...

Now it only needs an option for the default action when double clicking (Either: "Open new window" or "Open new window and close parent") so my weaker middle button doesn't die too soon. Because of the latter you need an "Open Parent Window" button on the UI, although the popup on the bottom left seems to suffice it isn't exactly obvious.

Still, it is looking like a nice clean desktop now. I wonder what would happen if KDE put some effort into making their system clean and simple?

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[V. Mole]

let's not forget that konqueror already "kinda" support the "spatial navigation" - right click, open in new tab.

That's got nothing to do with "spatial navigation". Go read this for what it's about. The idea is to maintain the properties of real objects. Consider a real file folder. When you put it on your desk, it exists in only one place, and when you come back to it, it's in the same place. When you move, and perhaps open it to look at a particular piece of paper in it, it stays that way, until you change it.

Whether this is good or bad depends on how you like to work. Some research indicates that the spatial metaphor works better for people learning computers, or infrequent users. If you're used to the standard tree browser, it feels odd.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[FooBarWidget]

Users don't *have* to use that button. It's not a mandatory feature so you can't end up making mistakes.

And there's also Ctrl+Click.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Jooly Rodney]

Heh -- I like how the Ars guy describes it in relation to MacOS 9. That's a tad more palatable than NT4, which is what springs to mind after looking at those screenshots.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[petabyte]

Open up gconf-editor, and go to apps - nautilus - preferences. There is a key marked "always_use_browser". Check that off and the god-awful spatial crap goes away and nautilus works as it did in 2.4.

Also worth noting is that under apps - nautilus - desktop you can disable the useless my computer icon on the desktop. I've done both of this and 2.6 nautilus is actually useable now.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

I think everyone agrees that having a bunch of windows pop up as you "descend" through the file system is annoying and pretty much everyone either uses middle click or shift click so that the parent is closed when the child is opened.

Ok, this is really screwed up if you think about it. The whole thing with the OO metaphor is that it is supposed to be somehow more consistent and meaningful as an abstraction for dumb humans (I personally like browser). If you think about it, the fact that you can open a new window at all just by clicking on a folder is browsing but only in one direction. Ok, so what about the other direction? The asymmetry is really unjustified.

Look, I hate the spatial thing in nautilus. Really, most people who actually use gnome hate it. Everyone who used win95 and mac hated it. It is not a cool idea. But at least get your metaphor consistent. If the oo model is ok with having a notion like "this object contains these other objects" then there should also be a notion of "this object is contained by this other object" (parent) and it should be possible for me to click on that "parent" object to traverse back up the fs. But! Oops, that is navigation again isn't it?

The OO thing is just dumb. Get over it. If gnome developers are so confident that it is so great, then in all developer releases there should be a big prominent button in nautilus to toggle back and forth between the two modes (instead of the little hidden gconf key) and then enable a talkback in nautilus so they can collect statistics about which model people actually use. I promise you that it will be like 95% browsing metaphor.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a way to traverse back up the directory tree...

In spatial mode, click the directory name in the bottom left corner of the window. This brings up a list of all parent directories.

Somewhat undiscoverable, but better than command-clicking on the directory name in the titlebar on, say, MacOS 7.x.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[vandemar]

Sounds reasonable if you are using a mouse. I like to navigate w/ keyboard - what's the tactic there?

xterm + bash

works for me :)

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[drivers]

Users don't *have* to use that button. It's not a mandatory feature so you can't end up making mistakes.

Yes but the article and the previous post indicated that the left button behavior was annoying and so most people would want to use the middle button instead... so now you have a situation where which button to use depends on which app you are using.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[superjaded]

Expecting users to get used to using an alternate button just for their app...

How's that any different from learning the commands on vi? or the keystrokes of emacs? or the middle button opening a new tab that was pretty much only in Mozilla (and maybe Opera) back in the day?

I've effectively "taught" myself to middle click on links in only a few days when I started liking the tabbed browsing of Mozilla. Of course, when I go in IE every once in a while I'll vainly attempt to middle click on a link thinking I'm still using Epiphany or another tabbed-able browser.

Besides, as has been said multiple times whenever there's a slashdot article, there's a gconf key that let's the user default to the old browser-type view. That makes the "having to learn an alternate button just for their app" point moot.

And it's a double middle click, not a double right click. Right click brings up a context menu like it would in any other program.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[squiggleslash]

It's not aimed at you, and you can turn it off - that is to say, you understand the system enough to (a) be able to turn it off and (b) to see no disadvantage in doing so.

Most people have difficulty understanding the file system and how to find their information. I'm constantly amazed at how many people, for instance, do not even realise their files are laid out in a hierarchy on their systems (usually finding out that they've had their system set up for them by a "helpful" "expert" who's turned on browser mode.)

A spacial navigator is one of the few widely used systems that makes file system navigation intuitive. There are several reasons for this.

To begin with, it is immediately obvious that the system is hierarchical. This is not the case with the "browser" metaphor unless "browser" is combined with something else such as Window's File Manager/Explorer tree views on the left. A directory contains other directories (or folders contain other folders), they're not "links".

Secondly it helps with memory. Open a folder and it's where you left it. The icons are where you put them. You remember details like that. It's always easy to find the file you want if you know it's on the bottom left, or top right. You remember instinctively that the folder you just opened is the right one because it appears where you left it. A "browser" environment doesn't do that, you end up traversing through multiple directories that all look the same, and you need to do a fair bit of reading before you know where you are.

The major reason "experts" see it as a problem is because it tends to result in quite a few windows being open. This, really, is pretty trivial compared to the benefits for an inexperienced user. Additionally, better systems make it easy to manage those windows. In Windows, for instance, you can shift-click the close button on a directory window, and it and all the parents will close. Unfortunately this hasn't been replicated elsewhere.

OS/2 used to have this nice system where opening a drive would open a window that represented all the directories on the drive, in a sort of tree view. You could then open up branches of the tree to find the directory you want, and open that window directly.

Macintosh has a neat feature where if you're dragging files around, while you're still holding them you can hover over folders and they'll temporarily open, so you can move them without opening any additional windows.

It sounds to me for the most part a good thing that Nautilus has a spacial mode and that that mode is default. What's needed now is:

1. The "experts" need to understand the reasons for it rather than the kneejerk reactions we've seen here.
2. It obviously needs tuning. Apple, IBM, and Microsoft have all come up with sensible optimizations to reduce the "lots of windows" burden.
3. Improvements in GTK should be considered so that screen space is used more efficiently. More intuitive and automatic workspace management would help (such as the Amiga's launching of apps on new workspaces), the option of top-of-screen menus (which aids muscle memory too) would also help.

It's a good thing. I'm glad they've done it. For once, GNOME is getting ready for the desktop.

Next stop: File metadata?

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Waffle Iron]

I'm in the camp that says this kind of stuff is bad. IMO, the whole reason computers exist is because so many real objects suck. If physical folders and files had the properties we needed, then we wouldn't need to take so much effort to implement them in computers.

Invariably, my physical desk gets stacked deep with huge piles of papers and other miscellaneous stuff. This sucks because I can't find what I need amongst all of the clutter. My opinion is that this "spatial navigation", or popping up dozens of windows or whatever, is just emulating this undesirable clutter on the computer.

The computer is able to manage navigation very neatly with features such as the back-arrow dropdown list in file managers and browsers. If such a feature were available in the real world, my physical desktop would always be neat and I'd save gobs of time. (Hmm, maybe I should try installing a cafeteria dish stack holder in my desk...)

I don't agree that always trying to emulate the limitations of the real world is a good thing just because the limitations of the real world are more "intuitive".

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[peter_gzowski]

It sounds pretty annoying from the article. The dude basically says, "it's this new way of file browsing, where you have just have to get used to double clicking the middle mouse, and then figure out how to go back up the hierarchy, and then hit Ctrl-L if you want to navigate anywhere quickly". Um, yeah, and how is this better than a hierarchical view along the left hand side, with the contents of the selected directory in the right, and a toolbar that auto-completes along the top (i.e. what konqueror defaults to)? It has window memory? Great, that totally makes up for the hours of frustration I would spend learning this great new way of file-browsing.

Do you know what file-browsing needs that it doesn't have? A connected command prompt. That's it. I know I can bring up a command prompt in Konqueror. What I want is for that command prompt to follow the actions I take when I click on gui directories, and for the gui to follow the actions I take at the command prompt. This, for me, would achieve file-browsing nirvana.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[KozmoStevnNaut]

There is one big flaw with ROX.

It only supports unicode, and since I use ISO-8859-15, the filenames are a mess.

If ROX would just support other charsets than UTF-8, I (and many others) would be very happy.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[jhunsake]

The first insightful post in this damn article.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[water-and-sewer]

Wow, congratulations. The Gnome UI interface seems to not only going backwards in useability but making all the same mistakes Windows once made. Spatial Nautilus is god-awfully similar to the atrocity that was the file browser in Windows 3.1 and 95, opening up a new folder for each new level of file hierarchy. I was glad when Win98 fixed that problem (or was it 95 that fixed 3.1's problem, been too long since I last used Windows). Anyway, point is Windows screwed it up and then fixed it. Nautilus has just recently screwed it up.

Folks, this is not how we're going to win the desktop. (Congrats for fixing the file selector though. That was a good step forward).

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

Dink boy, did you just say 2 years back was "back in the day" like some trippy wannabe poser?

Give me a break.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[pyros]

here's a gconf key that let's the user default to the old browser-type view

I believe my last test install of Fedora Core 2 had an option in the Desktop Preferences -> File Manager application. Anyone know if that was an upstream change? Or are non-Fedora users going to have to use gconf?

And it's a double middle click,

Hopefully the Single/Double click option in the same Preferences application applies to the middle-click as well.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[ZarKov]

Shift is the modifier for "close current window behind me". So Shift-double-click and Shift-Alt-down open the selected folder and close the current window, and Shift-Alt-up opens the parent folder and closes the current window.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[someonehasmyname]

Do you know what file-browsing needs that it doesn't have? A connected command prompt.

PathFinder for OS X does that nicely.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Lussarn]

I'm going to stand in and defend spatial nautilus. First you have to understand whats different with a filemanager today and a fillemanager 10 years ago.

Today you mostly use it to browse you home directory. All the system stuff should be done with a good package manager, like apt-get, emerge or whatever.

That said even in your home dir you have your favourite places (like music and movies or whatever). These are the places I have shortcuts to on my desktop, I think the spatial nautilus does a very clean and simple job for finding my music and my movies.

On the new gnome desktop the filemanager is very toned down because it's not needed in the way it was before. If you need to explore your whole drive and move files arond you always have the old "browse" option.

I have close to never used the old nautilus, with this new spatial one I have setup some links on the desktop and when I open the it looks very clean (the way I want it).

I really don't understand why you should move your files around all the time which the old behavior is good at.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Ctrl-Z]

Yeah, double-middle-click is really easy on a scroll wheel. :-P

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[wowbagger]

First of all, this preference is not there by default. GCONF, much like Window's RegEdit, requires you to know the type of a key if you need to create it.

So if /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser does not exist, you have no idea if it should be a boolean, an int, a string, or what.

Second of all, in nautilus-2.5.6-1 this does not work. I've tried - at least, it does not work if the key is a bool. I have not had the patience to try all possible combinations of type and value.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[peter_gzowski]

Does it also have the other features I was talking about? It's unclear from your post, and I can't find specific info on the PathFinder website. Does it change directories in the GUI when you cd in the terminal, and vice-versa? Can I 'ls [aA]*' in the terminal, and get a list of everything that begins with 'a' or 'A' in the GUI?

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

this was there by default, and if you are interested it was using the gentoo 2.6-rc4 gnome ebuild, which gives you

* gnome-base/nautilus
Latest version available: 2.4.2
Latest version installed: 2.6.0
Size of downloaded files: 5,554 kB
Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/projects/nautilus/
Description: A filemanager for the Gnome2 desktop

and that value is a boolean set to true

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Blakey Rat]

If you read the article the grandparent linked, you'll see he also comes to the conclusion that a *pure* spatial file browser is pretty awkward to work with. (Example: MacOS pre-7. Adding aliases (shortcuts) pretty much ruins the spatial metaphor.)

He proposes that the ideal file browser would have a 'base' appearance of a spatial browser, but also allow customized non-spatial views. For instance, you can have 'spatial' window that displays the root level of your drive open at the same time as a non-spatial 'query' window showing the last 25 modified files. The windows would be visually distinct, so you could tell at a glance which was spatial and which was not.

Personally, I liked the MacOS 9 approach... spatial (mostly), with aliases, tabbed folders, and an easy way to drill-down in folders without cluttering the desktop. (Double-click-hold... this mode lets you hover over folders and open them instantly. When you release the mouse button, the folders in the background disappear leaving only the one you want.)

Pity Apple threw this interface in the toilet for OS X, it worked really, really well. (What the article is *really* about... the author at Ars is upset, like I am, that Apple would just throw 15 years of OS evolution down the window.)

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Coryoth]

Improvements in GTK should be considered so that screen space is used more efficiently. More intuitive and automatic workspace management would help (such as the Amiga's launching of apps on new workspaces), the option of top-of-screen menus (which aids muscle memory too) would also help.

I've been cntemplating new ways to manage lots of windows. The traditional methods are multiple workspaces, and tabbed windows (like fluxbox or PWM). Enlightenment had a cunning scheme for window groups, but it was clumsy to interact with, and hard to always make it do what you wanted.

With that in mind, I have tried to create a new scheme that manages to make Enlightenment style window groups accessible and simple to use, yet more flexible. I think I have something - you can read my proposal here. Effectively this system is to MDIs what Fluxboxes tabbed windows are to tab interface - only more so. For all those who are busy saying "MDIs suck!", take the time to read what I have in mind. traditionally the problem with MDIs are that they implement their own internal way of managing windows inside the MDI, and that usually sucks. Instead, with this system any MDI would simply use the existing window manager to do everything.

To implement the idea on a basic level is not hard at all (though I am not a coder, so unfrotnately that job doesn't fall to me), but to have it integrated well into the system, in the same way that multiple desktops are heavily integrated into te system, would take a little more work - if anyone wants to code up a version for their favourite window manager, feel free to do so - just let me know so I can try it out.

Jedidiah

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[cubic6]

I'd rather they adapted middle-double-click to open a new window and kept the left-double-click to open in the same window like every other file manager. That way, the "progressive" types can have their behavior and not piss off everybody else. Even better, make changing the button a configurable setting...

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Brandybuck]

Double-middle-click (or double-right-click, I'm not sure)

Are you shitting me? Do you know how difficult an operation that is? Never in any desktop since the beginning at Xerox PARC has anyone had to double click with anything but their index finger. And even with the index finger was considered a usability mistake.

Frankly I think Gnome needs to sit Havoc and all the other usability "experts" down and have a long father-to-son talk with them about how they need to start living in the real world.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[FooBarWidget]

GConf doesn't work like that. Every app installs a schema file, which describes what keys an app use. So if you fire up gconf-editor, you will always see /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser.
GC onf is much better designed than the Windows registry.

I think your problem might be because you've installed two GNOME versions in parallel. Maybe you have some daemons from your old installation still running. That might cause a conflict.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Brian Knotts]

Konqueror already does that.

Window -> Show Terminal Emulator

You just click the right corner of the term frame, and click the right corner of the browser frame, and they work together.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Tribbin]

You say "the whole reason computers exist is because so many real objects suck".

Think again.

The first reason computers exist is because they can calculate exact formula's much faster.

Today, the reason computers exist is that you can play music, send messages very fast over the world and play very good games, for example.

-

You say spatial navigation clutters your computer-desktop as folders and files would clutter you desk.

I say spatial browsing has many advantages. When you have used it for some time (weeks?) your folders will have gotten 'identities'. They have their own trusted appearance you gave them at the position youd like it to be. Then you know you dont need the window you are in you use the middle mouse button to double-click and the current window will close and a new one will appear the way it should. This prevents cluttering of your desktop.

For many 'beginning' computer-users the windows will _become_ the directorie. With 'normal' browsing the beginning user will understand it as following a serie of hyperlinks.

Anyway, if you don't like it, you could place a link that defaults to the 'browsing' method if you like to 'browse' (like browsing physical files). You can set it as global default also.

-

The back and forward options like we know it are a mistake. They should rather represent it as a 'history'. When you type a new adres you could aswel open it in a new screen because the two windows are not related. A window is only related to it's parent and children. The children are present in the window and you can go 'up' with backspace or the 'parent-directories' button that is new.

-

It's not blindly copying the real world as you say. It's merely showing directories for what they are.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Listen Up]

Actually, I completely disagree with you. In my current every day work, I need to use Excel almost 100% of the time. The reason the engineering firm I am employed at bought computers for everyone and does everything in Excel is because they needed a way to speed up lengthy, complicated, and interlinked/interrelated calculations. Most people in the world need a computer because it is a invaluable tool that cannot be lived without. The rest need it because it is fun to play with. People bitch about a file manager. Does the tool work to save you time, money, resources, or increase your efficiency or accuracy? If not, then dump it. But, computers do not exist solely as a replacement for physical objects.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Geeks messed up the UI.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Waffle Iron]

The reason the engineering firm I am employed at bought computers for everyone and does everything in Excel is because they needed a way to speed up lengthy, complicated, and interlinked/interrelated calculations.

Exactly my point. You use a computer because old-fashioned physical paper spreadsheets (they used to have those -- that's where the name came from) are inadequate. They were many orders of magnitude slower, massively error-prone, and required huge amounts of manual labor by humans ("computer" used to be a job title). So the physical spreadsheets have been replaced with the electronic computerized version.

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

it's much like the default Windows behaviour of popping up zillions of windows that you always have to turn off every time you reinstall Windows.

Sigh. Fucking anti-MS zealot. That isn't even the default behaviour in Windows! For fuck's sake, if you're going to make pathetic attempts to ridicule Windows, at least check your facts.

Re:USB

[altp]

USB support is done via the drivers and kernel not Gnome, GTK, KDE, QT or any other Desktop environment ortoolkit .

A simpler interface...

[Derek Mason]

Geez I wish those GNOME developers would spare a thought for us Mac-heads - it's bad enough getting used to control-clicking but trying to work out what three different mouse buttons do makes my head spin. Preferably: remove the command line too.

I Like Gnome

[Goo.cc]

I am a Mac OS X user and I have to say that I think that the UI of Gnome is appealing. If I was still using NetBSD, I would probably run it. (Hell, maybe I'll install YellowDog Linux and give it a try.)

Re:I Like Gnome

[bsharitt]

I've always found tthe Gnome UI(in the 2.x series) to be quite clean and professional, and it happens that I'm a Mac user too. KDE just seems to be trying to be Windows way too much, although it is improving too.

(btw- why is the parent a troll? He's just complementing to DE the article is about)

Re:I Like Gnome

[the_2nd_coming]

to me...KDE while having a lot of features and tweeakables...is way to messy. Gnome on the other hand has decided to go down the road of OS X with an HIG and simpler is better and integration is paramount(and by integration I mean the tools as part of the Desktop environment, not necessarily a modular design like Kparts)

Re:I Like Gnome

[gordon_schumway]

Hell, maybe I'll install YellowDog Linux and give it a try.

There's no need for all that. Use the X11 server in root mode with fink's GNOME package.

Re:I Like Gnome

[Goo.cc]

That wouldn't be really slow?

Re:I Like Gnome

[Turmio]

You can run GNOME (and KDE too, if you wish) with Mac OS X already with fink, if you wish. I don't think they've upgraded to 2.6 just yet but 2.4 is there and with no doubt, soon they'll finish packages for 2.6. Apple's X11 server has a full screen mode where you can start a GNOME session without interference with OS X session and you can switch back and forth between the two desktops. So grab fink, switch to unstable tree and run sudo fink install gnome. It'll take some time because it compiles from the source though.

Re:I Like Gnome

[gordon_schumway]

That wouldn't be really slow?

If your question is whether running GNOME on X11 on Mac OS X would be slow, it's been a good while since I did that but it was perfectly responsive. I can't imagine it's any different these days.

If your question is whether installing GNOME would be slow with fink, if you use fink to compile GNOME, then, yes, it would take forever, but fink has binary packages available with apt and here most of the time would probably be downloading the packages.

Re:I Like Gnome

[cozziewozzie]

I'm not sure where this widespread opinion comes from, that GNOME = Mac and KDE = Windows? Both are extremely similar in their basic configuration and both can be customised to act basically any way you want them.

I have KDE emulating AfterStep, with a Wharf-like program launcher on the right, a system tray/applet container on the bottom-left and a separate taskbar on the top. No desktop icons, single click for everything, magic window borders and focus-follows-mouse. It feels absolutely unlike Windows and yet it feels unmistakably KDE. I know that many GNOME users customise their environment to be very unique as well. We should promote the customisability of the free DEs, not squeeze them into some shoeboxes which don't even fit.

Re:Someone explain this to me, please.

[Rick Zeman]

Doing a search for technica reveals that slashdot links to that site frequently, yet in terms of content they deliver the same kind of news

Slashdot doesn't create content, but just links to articles. Slashdot is a portal; its only content are the user comments. Ars does great work and their articles are their content. Their stuff is definitely "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters."

Looks like a Mac

[bwindle2]

Does abody else think the screen shots look an aweful lot like Classic Mac OS?

Re:Looks like a Mac

[pyros]

GNOME has been looking like Mac since Ximian GNOME 1.4 (not sure what pure GNOME 1.4 looked like, but I'm guessing not much different)

Re:Looks like a Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Nautilus and the old Finder are both spatial.

Re:Looks like a Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Nautilus and the old Finder are both spatial. um, that doesn't show up in screenshots, genius.

that's like looking at a screenshot of an OS and saying "It looks fast!"

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, but I can't seem to be able to use my digital camera with Linux and it is driving me nuts.

Hey Rick

[Anonymous Coward]

...are you still shilling for the Macinotsh on Netware?

Re:Hey Rick

[Rick Zeman]

...are you still shilling for the Macinotsh on Netware?

LMAO! That's been known to happen. :) And behind the AC curtain you are....?

Re:Hey Rick

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Rick James, bitch!

Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.

It's been 19 seconds since you hit 'reply'!

Will 2.6 make Sarge?

[bjarvis354]

I am excited about the prospect of GNOME 2.6 making its way into Debian Sarge. with gnome 2.6 could be a really powerful desktop for more than a few years...Which is probably how long it will take Debian to release again...And I am sure if 2.6 made it to testing, it would push back Sarge's release date.

Re:Will 2.6 make Sarge?

[Anonymous Coward]

not a chance. We'll be lucky if kde 3.2.1 makes it.

Re:Will 2.6 make Sarge?

[gid]

It's already been said that 2.6 will likely not make it into Sarge.

Personally I hate it when Debian prepares for releases, it means I have to wait until the release is made until I get new software in sid again. :(

Re:Will 2.6 make Sarge?

[alex_tibbles]

GNOME 2.6 going into experimental. If it is stable (unlike GIMP 2.0, in my experience, and KDE 3.2.0, by report of the debian maintainer).

Re:Will 2.6 make Sarge?

[bjarvis354]

I hear you there. Why I would love for 2.6 to make Sarge, what I really want is 2.6 in unstable.

I am watching the status of the packages in experemental hoping the packages may go into unstable soon...

Re:Will 2.6 make Sarge?

[be-fan]

Correction. GNOME 2.6 is already in experimental. And on my harddrive, for that matter ;)

Re:Will 2.6 make Sarge?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it doesn't. The best approach for Debian is to avoid adding too much new stuff, and work towards getting the release ready. I would say that they made the right choice putting GNOME 2.6 in experimental.

As a KDE user....

[armando_wall]

I'll give Gnome 2.6 a try. I find it more appealing as its team releases more versions. Its GTK library is one of my favorites to develop with. But I always got a "something is missing" impression with it (the desktop).

Besides, I know KDE is free software, but I think Gnome is "more free" for all platforms to use (ducks).

Re:As a KDE user....

[Anonymous Coward]

if "more free" was an issue anyone cared about, Windows and MacOS wouldn't be so popular. Nobody gives a shit.

Re:As a KDE user....

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom doesn't count if you can't use it ... neither GNOME or KDE work on non-Unix/Linux platforms, but KDE is a lot closer than GNOME to that possibility.

Re:As a KDE user....

[sn0wman3030]

How so? I can run GTK+ apps on windows.

Re:As a KDE user....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you can, GTK+ supports Windows.

Re:As a KDE user....

[FooBarWidget]

Huh? Where do you see Ximian actively bashing KDE?
I see more people bashing GNOME, or accusing GNOME of bashing KDE even when it isn't true.

Re:As a KDE user....

[IamTheRealMike]

KDE app does not mean it is a qt app!

By definition a KDE app has to be a Qt app, as the KDE APIs are built on top of Qt and rely on them in almost every way.

Re:As a KDE user....

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you Miguel? This post smacks of a die hard GNOME user/developer troll. Oh believe me, I'm a KDE user but I've seen the light and I'm going to switch. Though I've used KDE for years I really prefer developing with GTK. GTK's main strength is its LGPL. Otherwise its never been particularly superior at anything.

Re:As a KDE user....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had gnome 2.2 running inside xfree86 on windows. That was a while ago of course.

Re:USB

[andy666]

I am not sure if you are trollin' me, but it is true that multimedia is a challenging area for open software development. Standards and hardware change and there are a lot of products out there to contend with writing drivers for.

Linux Predictions.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a prediction:

20% of posts will be about random crap about linux moving into the future.

30% of the posts will be about why KDE and/or Windows has such a superior interface and how they can't understand why people care about Gnome and why gnome sucks in general.

10% Of posts will be people disecting and ridiculing a minor feature that they may potentially find unpleasent or a feature that is lacking.

15% Of posts will be comments on how Linux has lots of work to get into the desktop market and they have to do so and so just to be a acceptable desktop OS for people who don't give a f*ck in the first place about what sort of OS they use.

5% Of posts will be about how cool 2.6 Gnome is and how cool Linux is in general

2% Of posts will contain critisms and information that will be remotely usefull to anybody.

The rest are trolls.

Re:Linux Predictions.

[sn0wman3030]

1% of the posts will offer statistics about the rest of the posts.

Re:Linux Predictions.

[stor]

And .05% of posts will be ridiculing the statistics posts.

We could go on like this forever, sn0wman3030 =)

Cheers
Stor

Re:Linux Predictions.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have forgotten the 10% of mind-nummingly bad jokes that somehow manage to get modded +funny.

What about

[big_groo]

Dropline?

Does anyone have any news on this?

Re:What about

[Gleng]

There's a thread on 2.6 in the forums.

It'll probably be ready in about a week or so, I reckon. (Looking forward to it!)

Re:What about

[jupitercore]

Before the delay, this is what Todd (maintainer) said this thread on March 22nd:

"The GNOME release is planned for March 24th, but I doubt I'll have everything ready until this weekend at the earliest. Even so, since *so* much stuff is changing, I may hold off until the 1st or 2nd week of April to ensure everything is stable."

I think we'll see Dropline 2.6 before the end of April. I'd rather not have it rushed and keep the stability in my Slackware install *wink wink*

Re:Someone explain this to me, please.

[dealsites]

Yes, your statement is true. While I could go to all the different sites to find my daily news, I try to save time by going to Slashdot. They link to different news articles that II may interested in. They've recently linked to techjapan, ars technia, and toms hardware. I'm sure those site publish great articles that Slashdot doesn't always pick up on, but Slashdot does provide a general overview.

On a similar note, I used to visit all the deal websites each day to make sure I don't miss out on a hot sale. To save time, I started this page to collect them all in real time. Anyone can use it and search deals from multiple websites. Clicking a link takes you to the orginating web page. So I guess I'm running a portal like Slashdot by merely linking to other sites.

Re:USB

[functor]

Look for things like hotplug, HAL Project, the D-BUS Project, the kernel events layer and other components of Project Utopia to get you things like automagic USB device identification, driver loading and GUI events.

Hopefully we'll see something in GNOME 2.8/2.10/3.0 that'll use this stuff.

(See http://www.freedesktop.org; lots of cool stuff going on behind the scenes.)

See http://tech9.net/rml/talks/rml_fosdem_2004.sxi for more info.

spatial metaphor?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "spatial metaphor" sounds pretty lame.

Looks like someone was trying too hard to do something "revolutionary".

Wow, it remembers the last folder you where in! So does the file browser on freaking xmms.

Everytime you click a folder it opens a new window? That sucks! Ya it can be avoided with a middle click but why do that in the first place, since everyone is obviously just going to use middle click. I wouldn't say that's a bug but it certainly isn't a "feature" either.

Re:spatial metaphor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like someone was trying too hard to do something "revolutionary".

Or trying too hard to be circa 1980s apple...

Re:spatial metaphor?

[i_really_dont_care]

Yeah, exactly. I use Gnome myself, but that's the thing happening when you let coders do interface decisions. You usually end up with things like this "spatial view" in Nautilus or, say, the cluttered interface of Gimp. Everyone will complain what an utter bullshit this is, yet the people actually coding it will insist that it actually improves usability, despite the fact that no one wants it like this (other than a handful people, but those are probably the some that also find editing sendmail.cf by hand more intuitive than using some configuration UI). Also, they say, it does work: just double click the middle mouse button. Middle mouse button, my ass! The end argument will always be, that it's free software, it doesn't cost something, and one could fork it if one really needed the feature so badly, besides, be nice to us, we're doing this in our spare time, case closed.

There's a reason why companies do usability studies rather than asking their coders what could be "cool" or "intuitive". Sometimes things like Clippy will result, but most of the time, it prevents stuff like "spatial views" to happen.

Re:spatial metaphor?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason why companies do usability studies rather than asking their coders what could be "cool" or "intuitive".

Your sheer ignorance of the gnome community is astounding.

People like Seth Nickell, Calum Benson, Eugenia Loli-Queru and other UI experts (from Red Hat, Sun, Ximian/Novell, volunteers, etc.) are constantly giving feedback and suggestions on gnome's UI.

Current gnome is the result of that participation of usability experts. So if you think it is just some coders playing UI designer, you're quite wrong.

P.S.: gnome 2.0 was the result of usability studies on ximian gnome 1.4, and there are some more going with the current release of java desktop system.

Re:spatial metaphor?

[IamTheRealMike]

Depends who you are.

I've met a lot of non-technical people who really don't grok (as in, have a good understanding) trees and folder heirarchies.

These people typically have very few folders, if any. They are not characterised by having deep folder heirarchies, in fact, they may only be one or two levels deep at most.

These people do not really enjoy computing, they tolerate it. They find the computer a thing to be wary of - unpredictability is like poison to them, eating away at their confidence with the machines. I've seen this happen with my own eyes: users who get basic stuff with files and directories wrong, and who end up fearful, convinced that it's their own fault.

Often, it is. They saved the file in the wrong place, or had two directories with the same name but in different places and got them mixed up etc. All very easy mistakes to make if you don't naturally think in terms of trees.

For people like this, the spatial system is really, really great. They don't have deep heirarchies so lots of windows popping up isn't a big deal. They love predictability. If the window for a folder opens in exactly the same way it did last time, that's brilliant - nothing changed, so by definition they did nothing "wrong".

For people like us, who often have lots of files, deep directory heirarchies, it's perhaps not so great but as the review noted it's trivial to go back to the old system, or use keys/middle button to work around the window clutter. So really we lose little - in fact, I never really use Nautilus for my file management at the moment anyway, so the only possible change for me is that I gain something.

Basically, you've got to realise that spatial nautilus isn't meant for browsing your source code directories. It's meant to help the very large number of people who can benefit from this model. There's a reason Apple used it in the old pre-OSX systems.

Re:spatial metaphor?

[i_really_dont_care]

Yes, Gnome (like many free software projects) have UI experts working on it too. But it's a difference if Eugenia writes some report, maybe (or maybe not) influencing the decision of the Nautilus developers on how to implement something, or if the UI design team in a company says to the coder: "you implement it like this, even if you don't like it."

I mean, as I and many friends first read about this "spatial design" (i.e. Win95A file manager behaviour), all of us were very skeptic and found that it would be a step backwards. I don't know how the exact situation is on the gnome discussion boards, but from the reaction here on slashdot it seems that they (the Nautilus devs) just ignore the thoughts and experiences of their current users, just like The Gimp team is ignoring a large base of potential users by not making the inclusion of a MDI mode a top priority.

Re:spatial metaphor?

[Coryoth]

just like The Gimp team is ignoring a large base of potential users by not making the inclusion of a MDI mode a top priority.

That's backward thinking in my view. If you make the application do the MDI, then it has to implement it's own window management scheme - which is always going to be second rate compared to a devoted window manager. On the other had, if you enable the window manager itself to enable MDI like behaviour, you have something far more powerful and flexible in the way of MDI, and at the same time, you get to automatically inherit the window manager's management into the MDI.

Jedidiah

Re:spatial metaphor?

[John Siracusa]

Basically, you've got to realise that spatial nautilus isn't meant for browsing your source code directories.

Heh, I find this particularly funny because working with extremely deeply nested source code trees it's precisely what I do all day--using as many spatial interfaces as I can get my hands on. Heck, even my FTP app now retains spatial information for each URL.

I view the usability curve of spatial vs. browser interfaces differently than most posters to this discussion. It's definitely task-dependent, but at the most extreme high-end of the task of "doing your daily work in a big tree of files" (e.g. working on a web site in its entirety: library code, web applications, HTML, images, everything) the spatial interface is truly the "experts tool" here--not the browser, and certainly not the command line.

I know because I've seen the most demanding examples of personal and project-based file management first hand for over 15 years, and I know because I've lived it myself. People can get by, get used to, and even learn to rely on and like almost any interface, no matter how measurably inefficient it is. This is especially true in the world of computers. But when confronted with the daily task of working among several huge collections of deeply nested files, the (measurably) fastest, most efficient, and (almost as importantly) happiest users have unfailingly relied upon a primarily spatial interface--one tailored over time to exactly suit their needs.

(Yet another advantage of the relentless stability of spatial interfaces: small, incremental improvements in efficiency are cumulative over time. It's almost like applying a genetic algorithm to file, folder, and window arrangement and appearance.)

If you don't buy (or don't understand) the theory behind all this "spatial" business, fine. But the practice speaks for itself.

Re:spatial metaphor?

[be-fan]

Dude. Your web-page is so cool looking.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

until gnome comes up with an integrated all-in-one development IDE ala' kdevelop, I'm not using it.

Nothing stopping you from using KDevelop in GNOME. I do every day.

Well, that, and because gnome is slow as ass compared to kde.

Riiiight... sounds like you've never actually used both. KDE used to be damn slow until they started pre-linking and stuff which helped a bit but it's still slower than GNOME.

Speed of 2.6???

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish he would have commented on the speed of 2.6, rather than just talked about what looked pretty or not.

Re:Speed of 2.6???

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't read the article before you posted since they specifically mentioned improved speed with Nautilus, Yelp, and Epiphany.

Re:Speed of 2.6???

[chefren]

Nautilus windows open much faster, Yelp (the help system) is faster as well. Otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Re:Speed of 2.6???

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish he would have commented on the speed of 2.6, rather than just talked about what looked pretty or not.

From the end of the article (a summary of what was told in it):

"Significant performance improvements in Nautilus, Epiphany and the help system"

(Takes breath): RTFA!!!

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[bjarvis354]

Gnome slower than KDE...Well that's a first.

newb gnome upgrade question

[cyranoVR]

I have a linux RH 9 install on a i386 box. I recently upgraded to gtk+2.4 (in a futile attempt to get rhythmbox working).

My question is: should I bother upgrading to Gnome 2.6 or just stay with the 2.x installation that came with RH9? I fear that attempting the upgrade will ruin my existing gnome installation. Or, at least, all the RedHat specific stuff will stop working.

If it ain't broke don't fix it?

Re:USB

[alex_tibbles]

not to mention udev
(now in unstable debian).

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not really sure what your point is? I try ALL the releases of KDE and GNOME, to be fair, and as of its 3.2 release KDE is significantly faster than GNOME. But don't take my word for it. Do check for yourself.

Maybe "that's a first" to you, but not to the rest of us, you know.

Oh god...

[bicho]

... I don like Gnome that much anymore.
Besides the panel and the fact it uses gtk, I disagree with a lot of things, like absurdly minimalist configuration options AND documentation AND a regedit-like nightmerish hell with also minimalist documentation.

Anybody has successfully compiled e17 ? (yes. I am aware its not supposed to be usable/compilable yet)
I have been waiting for it a looong time, and it seems there is always wan problem or another.

I remember I compiled once its file system when in e15 or e16 something, and It was really nice.... but haven been able to compile e17 ever.
Now, that is something I really want to see...

Re:Oh god...

[sploxx]

ACK. I'm still using gnome, but that "features are bad" attitude of the developers lets me consider switching back to KDE more and more. I hope they won't make the same mistake...

Re:Oh god...

[jjhlk]

What's wrong with Gnome's "regedit"? Would you prefer a text file with pretty much the same layout (one option per line) but where options are missing and you have to read the documentation to find out if they even exist? It is Ok to me.

Re:Oh god...

[Anonymous Coward]

E17 is being rewritten, and the "actual" window manager is not updated to use the rewritten libs. It does not compile. I think it'll be ready in a month or so (hopefully). I think GNOME might be forgetting what it used to be. I for one will switch to E17.

Re:Oh god...

[bicho]

I dont understand it.
Why have so many entries scattered all around in different places reffering the same applications?

What the heck information does a "schema" has anyway?
And why aren't they documented? (inside the app)

Although its already late to ask this...

"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[phoxix]

I could to totally wrong on this, but from what I've seen great features are being removed from really cool apps in this absurd strive for a "simpler interface"

Case in point:

Xchat used to have this GUI option called "Old Nick Completion" (Its like zsh's tab completion, but for IRC) But now it doesn't. The code for the function is still there, but the GUI option is not. No offense to the xchat guys, but this easily robs people of a great IRC great experience.

For proof of what I'm talking about:

a) look at this patch: Xchat Old Nick Completion Patch

B) the Mandrake Xchat package ships with the above patch

C) download the Xchat source code, and take a gander. Then notice how your own Xchat installation is missing this great feature

Lets not dumb down GREAT SOFTWARE like Xchat!

Sunny Dubey

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[Fujamabob]

Not everything has such a cost. Epiphany, for instance, makes for an extremely easy browsing experience that doesn't have the "everything including the kitchen sink" feel of Mozilla.

Arguably, this is a bad thing as it doesn't have some of the cool features of such browsers, but I for one appreciate having a choice. So would my mom, who simply wants to browse the internet.

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to second this in relation to spacial navigation.

There may well be principles that dictate that spacial navigation is "better". But is it really faster? Maybe for a granpa that can't grasp the concept of folders properly... but no disrespect but people like that are going to be dead in 10 yrs. EVERYONE understands folders now, and EVERYONE understands "browsers" with back and forward. I have yet to see a person who doesn't like tabs.

It's insane to be going the route of tabs for browsers, and then be dumbing down the file managers. The two concepts should converge (I don't particularly like konqueror, but they have the convergance bit right).

The rational for ignoring popular opinion and the popular skill-base (windows and osx and now both browsing files, the finder is genius)... let alone ignoring easy of use.

I seriously doubt a person with spacial mode could outpace a person with a window or two in browser mode (there is no dictate saying browser mode has to only have one window) a line on buttons below the title bar is a little larger... but having 5 fewer windows because of it is a massive improvement.

The only way I could imagine using the new nautilus is to have a expose style window management feature and maybe a seperate desktop for all your "file"needs .... and if you are going to have a seperate desktop... why not just have the browser.

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[lazy_arabica]

[DISCLAIMER] I do not intend to troll [/DISCLAIMER]

If you want a whole bunch of perfectly useless features, filling the user's screen of coloured icons disturbing him in his job or activity, simply use KDE. In my opinion, a "simpler interface" is a good thing.

XChat can be optionally compiled to use Gnome, but is by no mean a part of the Gnome project.

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever... Since when is removing options been a good thing? The best thing about UNIX is that the programmers always have let the end user control so much of an applications behaviour. That's why Unix can be so powerful. Compare what you can do in a Unix shell to DOS. It doesn't even compare.
Having to recompile an application to get an option is a stupid.
If I don't want to be able to configure anything and let a programmer assume he knows what's best for me I'll just use Winblows.

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is off topic but I just tried to use Xchat for the first time ever on Monday. WOW! What a piece of shit interface! I have rarely seen an application more in need of a GUI revamping than that horrid drivel. All I was trying to do was go to a specific location and I ended up having to use the command line for Xchat since the sicko's that made the interface couldn't screw with the command line as much.

So here's one (emphatic) vote for simpiler interface!

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[dalutong]

preferences->input box->"nick completion suffix"

you don't have to click anything. you can just stick that suffix in and pow! works better than before!

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[the_2nd_coming]

well,

1) disable the spacial version
2)popular and ease of use are mutually exclusive and given a choice, ease of use should win
3)I can outpace anyone with either of those modes using the terminal window....should I complain how the new feature of a GUI is a bad idea because it is not necessary for me?
4)an expose feature should be out in time for 3.0

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[the_2nd_coming]

huh? xchat rocks....it is about as hard to learn as a MUD...try reading the verbose instructions that appear when you do something wrong.

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[molnarcs]

"If you want a whole bunch of perfectly useless features, filling the user's screen of coloured icons..."

Like those perfectly useless applets for your system tray like knotes, which has been part of the 'bloat' often attributed to KDE...

oh, btw, from the review on ArsTechnica:

Our favorite new applet by far is the Post-It note-style applet, which lets you paste notes to yourself on your desktop (much like the Post-It notes that decorate many a monitor's front), and remains sticky between sessions.

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[IamTheRealMike]

Yeah, but everything has a cost and a benefit. I think what the xchat guys did here was right.

Why?

Let's see. I've used xchat a fair bit before. I have no idea what "old style nick completion" is. Gaim has as similar option - I tried switching it on and saw no difference. Whatever it is, is far too subtle for me. It's just sitting there, taking up space, and making me wonder what it does.

If every time you make a change, you need a pref to appease the old users, you end up with a bloated app full of "Old this", "Broken that" and so on. Witness KDE Klipper which basically has a "break my clipboard" option.

If you carry on that road, madness is ahead....

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[Pausanias]

I remember reading H. Pennington's manifesto on the Metacity window manager (which is or at least recently was GNOME's default). He basically said, "You've grown up now, so you don't need all the extra features" (paraphrasing).

Maybe I don't need all the extra features of fwvm, but I and many others would like some features beyond the very basic, like window rings, selectively disappearing title bars, etc. Now I know it's easy enough to install sawfish or fvwm and get some of that back, but they're not as nicely integrated into GNOME as Metacity.

I know the whole point of GNOME is to make X11 easy to use for newcomers, but they shouldn't let "ease of use" stop them from incorporating some of the great ideas that were featured in previous "experts-only" software like ??wm. Why not have an "advanced options" button that frees up a whole bunch of new settings that are normally hidden and might be scary to newbies? (And also have a "return to beginner mode" button which hides all those options and returns them to their default values in case someone ventures beyond the range of their expertise).

I've seen this happen to Mac OS X (and Classic before it), that in their quest to make a pure and simple interface they leave out a bunch of useful features. Then "Shareware" folks come along (OSS has not quite captured the Cocoa, non-BSD crowd). They write a bunch of "Haxies" that perform all the little necessary tasks that ought to have been there to begin with, and charge $10 for them.

I'm not saying that'll happen to GNOME. I'm just saying, why not include the kitchen sink, and hide in a place that makes it difficult for newbies to hurt themselves (or get turned off)?

Re:"simpler interface" but at what cost ?

[ArsonSmith]

exactly I love the mozilla way of doing it. having a basic configuration utility with common configs then having the about:config url that will let you configure all the 1000s of options for the more advanced users.

When will 2.6 make Gentoo?

[mcc]

A related question. I have been of late working with a Gentoo install. Once GNOME 2.6 is released, on what timescale will the 2.6 packages (and the new Epiphany, yum) show up in a normal emerge -u world? Like, are we talking minutes? Days? Weeks? Months?

When does the Gentoo community/coderbase tend to consider such things reading for unmasking?

Gnome needs an install program

[cubicledrone]

I've been working with Linux for over five years. It is too difficult and too buggy to upgrade or install something like Gnome or Gimp or KDE.

Gnome (and GIMP and KDE) needs a "double-click to install" program. I spent large portions of three days last week trying to compile and install GIMP 2.0. The dependencies were impossible. It still doesn't work.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[matqua]

Thats why you use Gentoo, 9/10's of the time you can simply go "emerge gnome" and it will take care of everything.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[StoneTable]

or Debian, and apt-get update. Whatever your distribution of choice is, there is likely an easy way to upgrade. emerge, apt-get, yum, up2date, red-carpet, etc, etc, etc.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[John Blake]

Linux is buggy. Dependencies is the most of the problem. If you want to get stuff done and move on with your normal life then get windows. If you want to spend time and hack some bastard code and submit bug reports to support the community then stay with linux.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[Anonymous Coward]

up2date doesn't allow you to install packages, just update whatever you have install from RH's archives.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[be-fan]

Use a distro with a proper package manager. There are no excuses for compiling from source and then bitching about it. SuSE, RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, and EVEN SLACKWARE, have package managers these days. I just installed GNOME 2.6 to try it out. Thanks to the 2+MB/sec download from ftp.us.debian.org, it took less time to install than it did to read the article.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[the_2nd_coming]

what the default package managers need to do is look to apt-get and Yum sources as dependency resolution sites so when you double click, you can get the packages with out having to type anything.... or better yet....have the package creator list some servers to download the dependencies from...that makes for a more dynamic less user fuss system.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[Tristan McCann]

'up2date' certainly does allow you to install packages, I am doing so as we speak. Just run 'up2date xchat' to get xchat, etc. on Fedora.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[/ASCII]

A assume you use a RPM-based distribution because you've run in to dependencies problems (a.k.a. RPM hell). This was a major problem with RedHat, Mandrake et. al until recently. If that is the case, try installing yum or apt. These programs will correctly resolve dependencies of packages you want to install and install everything you need.

You simply need to type something like 'yum install gnome' and yum will do all the hard work for you. As an added bonus, yum can also make sure your system is up to date. Typing 'yum update' will update all packages where a newer version is available.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[zerblat]

Conectiva's AptRpm can actually fetch dependancies for local packages.

What would be even cooler is if you instead of downloading actual packages would download some kind of description of where the package can be downloaded, its dependancies, and where to get them. This could also work cross distro. You could just tell users to get the description file, and it could contain pointers to an apt/dpkg repository for Debian users, apt/rpm, yum or whatever for users of rpm-based distros.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[nappingcracker]

im a complete linux idiot, but just to plug, after i set up gentoo, the whole dependencies thing has been moot, the emerge process is just like ron-co "set it and forget it". has been for the 100's of apps ive compiled. and i still really have no clue what im doing. (just to mention, i develop, and listen to music and surf the web and do everything except 3d game while i compile) i dont get what the whole compiling hubbub is about, i do it while i sleep or work, have not lost any productivity because of it.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[IamTheRealMike]

Of course, that only works if the program you want is in one of these repositories, and is up to date, and isn't badly packaged, and ... and ... and ....

No, the original poster is correct. You cannot rely on the distro packaging everything you want correctly, even if you use Gentoo or Debian (distros that are only used by people who are skilled enough to compile stuff anyway).

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[Heretik]

I'm sure you'd be able to compile MS office and all it's depedencies. *groan*

Use packages if you want easy to install. No kidding building every single thing from source isn't going to be as easy as click-and-drool.

apt-get install gaim

gee, that seems pretty easy to me.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[be-fan]

I don't know. Nearly everything I've ever wanted has been in Debian's repositories. Some software might need a special installer, but GNOME and KDE, which are in pretty much every repository, does not.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[grumbel]

I second that, even so its not a much of an Gnome issue, but more a general Linux issue, ie. there is no standard way to ship binary packages on Linux that don't depend on a specific distribution. So if your distribution doesn't provide the newest and fluffiest stuff it always ends up being a big pain to get things up and running. LSB might help here in the far future, but so far I havn't met a single LSB binary in the wild.

Anyway, back to Gnome. For Gnome there exist Garnome:

* http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/garnome/

It isn't a 'double-click' install, but its basically as close as you can get on todays Linux systems to that, ie. it builds from source, but gets the dependencies automatically.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[Kiyooka]

"apt-get install gaim"

That's only easy if you already understand linux. It's not easy if you're a noob.

Linux noobs expect something like "install.exe". They don't know anything about "apt-get", and after seeing it don't understand why it's there. And, intuitively, shouldn't it read "install Gnome2.6" or something? What is this "gaim" thing you speak of? I can guarantee you this is how linux noobs think because I am one.

Usability describes how easy it is to learn how to do something on-the-fly, not how easy it is to do something once you've already learned how.

The most efficient and brilliant code is very compact, so it's very easy to type. It's reaching that level of understanding from total noobness that's hard.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[Whelkman]

The type of people who want GNOME 2.6 right now are the ones who will compile it or fetch bleeding-edge packages. The unwashed masses are probably content in waiting for Fedora and Mandrake to get their acts together. How long can it be? A week? Any package-based distribution that can't correctly release something like GNOME in a reasonable amount of time isn't worth using, especially since every one of them tracks the CVS.

GNOME does not provide binaries, and that is unlikely to change in the future. GNOME is a fundamental part of Linux distributions, so critical, long-standing, distribution-specific problems are rare. Furthermore, packages are generally more dependable than working with auto-tools, and just about every distribution worth its salt will carry GNOME 2.6 shortly. Debian's been providing 2.6 for a week.

The only user-friendly alternative, creating generic installers, would be an enormous burden. Such a device would need to deal with a plethora of GCC and C library versions, operating system types and versions, architecture types and versions, packaging systems, miscellaneous library versions, and a bunch of other headaches that arise when attempting to support everything at once. Such a project would ultimately be deflating since the work has already been done--by the distributions.

Re:Gnome needs an install program

[juhaz]

A week? Not a change in hell. New versions of major system component like Gnome will usually not make it into current "revision based" distributions as updates.

There's just too much testing to make that happen, it'll be in the next distro version, but no Gnome 2.6 until Fedora Core 2 (few months), or Mandrake 11 (no idea).

Since you seem "in the know"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't suppose there's a Xchat patch floating around somewhere that makes Xchat-2, have, you know, normal copy and paste, like the other GNOME apps, is there? You know, so those of us familiar with other OSes who like linux but think auto-copy-on-text-select is stupid can feel at home.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Deusy]

until gnome comes up with an integrated all-in-one development IDE ala' kdevelop, I'm not using it.

You haven't looked hard.

What about Anjuta, or MonoDevelop, combined with Glade?

Well, that, and because gnome is slow as ass compared to kde.

Unqualified, unsubstantiated, stupid as ass FUD.

Re:Someone explain this to me, please.

[use_compress]

The difference between ./ and Technica is that slashdot can bring down Technica whenever it wants.

You're right.

[FreeLinux]

Installing Gnome 2.6 on your Red Hat 9.0 will "ruin" all the Red Hat stuff, in the sense of setting everything to Gnome defaults rather than Red Hat modified defaults. A better option for you would likely be to wait a couple of months for Gnome 2.6 to be integrated into Fedora and then upgrade your installation to Fedora.

If however you are really keen you could try the Fedora Core 2 RC2 release. Though it is only a relase candidate (RC) it does ocntain Gnome 2.5 which is the beta version for the pending release of Gnome 2.6

+1, informative

[ultrabot]

Oh...for that you go to the "File Management" preferences and set "Text Beside Icons".

You could also turn on "Compact Layout", but that's pretty ugly.

Thanks for the tip, I feel much more at home already :-). Another view mode would have been more intuitive, but what the heck.

Now, I might even be giving that spatial thing another shot...

Re:+1, informative

[Brandybuck]

Another view mode would have been more intuitive, but what the heck.

While another view mode would have been more intuitive, it would not have followed the Gnome philosophy of a more intuitive interface. Now isn't that intuitive?

Seriously, when a desktop starts making things harder to use in an effort to make them easier, there's a serious disconnect.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME is horrendously slow. Try KDE 3.2.1 with pre-linking -- it may just make you switch.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[bonch]

KDevelop runs on either.

KDE is much more lagged than GNOME. Personally I don't like the fact that it takes seconds to open a Home folder. Remind me again why they integrated the Internet and file browsers into one program? Is it because Windows 98 did it?

Performance?

[Moderation abuser]

No mention?

Not important?

Preliminary (and subjective) testing indicates that it isn't good when compared to the competition; CDE, GnuStep and having just loaded the current KDE, it looks like that is faster as well. Testing commonly used stuff; Menu operations and such over a LAN.

Bugger... Anyone know of a platform I can build an objective test suite on, for the various competing GUIs rather than relying on a stopwatch? I've found lots of Java specific and Web specific stuff...

One of the benefits of Unix I suppose. On Windows you get Windows and so have nothing to compare with.

Re:Performance?

[Mr. Piddle]

Performance?

Performance is truly irrelevant. For anyone with better than a 200MHz Pentium, all that really matters is having enough RAM, a fast hard drive, and an accelerated X Windows video driver. GUI performance has been perfectly acceptible for years. Some individual applications surely could use optimization, but that isn't really relevant to a general review of GNOME.

Also, the only applications where raw performance is really an issue tend to be OpenGL-based or do lots of non-GUI data-crunching. These applications couldn't care less what the desktop environment is.

Re:Performance?

[FooBarWidget]

Nautilus is noticably faster. Much faster. Heck, it's so fast that it isn't even funny anymore. Windows appear instantanously. It's faster than Konqueror or even Windows Explorer. :/

Re:Performance?

[Jagasian]

You have obviously never used Nautilus. I am using it right now on Fedora Core 1 on a modern 2Ghz Dell. It is the very definition of slow.

Re:Performance?

[cubic6]

Nautilus in 2.6 is *much* faster. Windows open almost instantly.

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying early 2005 we finally get our usb keys to "just work".

Default installs of the rpm "hand holding" distros still can't get mounting and unmounting CDROMs right... it is fustrating. I swap CDs in and out like a devil when I am working on stuff that I have archived ages ago, mp3s off various CDs etc. It just sucks when you put in a new CD and it takes over 30 seconds (fairly old comp athlon 1800XP, CDR and DVD on ata) to do the most simple task of reading a new removable media... DOS with floppys was better than this.

Seriously, I don't want to troll but I have to here. From 1991 to 2004 you would think that some of the bigger linux distros (mandrake and fedora) could get CDROMs working at optimal speed. Is it something to do with windows have assembly (I am ignorant of programming) and linux being available for multiple arches that makes linux so slow to do this? Or is linux (the kernel) fast and some bloated automount script isn't waking up to the fact that a new CD is in the drive fast enough?

There is no way I can get my parents or other family to switch if I go red faced in front of them when changing CDs doesn't work and have to drop into the console to mount them manually.

Oh yea.

[FreeLinux]

I totally agree! But, I expect some moron to start yabbering on about how great Gnome is because they concentrate on a quality UI and have a HIG.

It's great to have a standard and to require your apps to follow that standard but, when the standard is bizarre, counter intuitive, or just stinks that makes you UI and apps....

Re:Oh yea.

[FooBarWidget]

Last time I checked everybody says choice is bad and that having only one choice is good? Now you've suddenly gotten the insight that the only choice can be bad? Wow, you complainers are incredible!

Re:Oh yea.

[Speare]

Choice is fine for larger and more personal things, such as a few styles for laying out your information, or whether you want cargo space or sport performance out of your vehicle.

Choice becomes a barrier to entry when you can't stick to a consistent set of basic interface standards, such as what the right mouse button should do to most visual elements, and where the turn signals and brake petals are positioned.

Re:Oh yea.

[LMCBoy]

"Everybody" did not say that choice is bad. Some people prefer simplicity over choice, others prefer the opposite. Amazing, I know.

Re:Oh yea.

[MostlyHarmless]

Apparently, sometimes choice is good, and sometimes choice is bad. Imagine that. (I like having the choice of ketchup or mustard, but I would prefer the former to be red and the latter to be green.)

In other news, the Slashdot Borg Entity has dissolved itself after two members expressed different opinions on an issue.

Nautilus

[iantri]

Excellent.. I firmly believe that the Mac OS 9 Finder is the best file manager in existance.. nothing else even comes close. The speed and ease with which you can organize files is amazing.

Nice to see this interface ("spatial whatever") being put to proper use outside of the Mac.

Re:Nautilus

[the_2nd_coming]

let me guess...your a 55 year old Mac Classic die hard that will never upgrade to OS X because your principals just don't allow it.

Miguel de Icaza

[slickbob13]

I was at a lug event at Novell Brainshare where he basically said the same things. He focused more on the Mono project and really extolled its cross platform abilities. He also showed some of the new features of 2.6 it really does simplify some things.

Followup question

[cyranoVR]

How much of a pain is it to change distributions?

I.e. if I upgrade to Fedora Core, will I have to backup all my data, reformat my hard drive, and then copy all the data back?

I keep hearing that I should switch from RH to Slack | Gentoo | SuSE - so I guess this question applies for them as well.

Of course, I have a spare 40 gb drive...so maybe I could just install one or more distributions onto that HD and configure GRUB accordingly?

Re:Followup question

[FreeLinux]

There is an upgrade path from Red Hat 9 to Fedora BUT, if you care about your system at all, you should always make a backup first. Upgrades to other distros besides Fedora will be more tricky with a much greater risk of stuff breaking but, it is still theoretically possible.

Personally, when changing distributions I would rather a clean install. That's one of the many reasons why keeping your data on a separate partition is a good idea. Then you can switch distributions more easily. You can even set your system up to multi-boot several different distros and still have access to your data and setting(if you want to) regardless of which distro you choose to boot from.

Re:Followup question

[Queuetue]

Going from rh (7.2-9.0) to fc1 is just an apt-get dist-upgrade away.

Here's instructions to do it with yum, I did it just this week with apt (faster, in my opinion.) You should not have to reinstall anything (as long as you stick to rpms), and your home directory will be completely left alone, for the most part.

Upgrading from RedHat 8/9 to Fedora Core 1

Also #fedora on freenode is your friend.

This highlights a problem with GNOME/KDE

[blueworm]

Why do simple things like the file selector dialog box take FOREVER to get implemented anywhere near decently in GNOME/KDE? Simple things that really should be fixed almost immediately go on forever having horrendous interfaces.

At some point I'm going to get so pissed and just take up the code axe to them both.

Re:This highlights a problem with GNOME/KDE

[rocketfairy]

The new file selector broke binary compatability and thus required a new GTK+. You're right, it took too long, but GTK+ has long release cycles.

I don't know about KDE but I assume the issues are similar.

Re:This highlights a problem with GNOME/KDE

[blueworm]

Yeah, I can see the argument about compatibility. However, sometimes you just need to sacrifice that for innovation. This is a big problem for Microsoft right now and the only company I've seen do it successfully lately has been Apple. If everyone could "pull an Apple" we might be looking at exciting prospects.

Re:This highlights a problem with GNOME/KDE

[afd8856]

Sorry, but KDE's implementation is the best available (beats GNOME, WindowsXP, don't know about Mac). For example, in windows xp there is no easy way to modify the locations on the left bar. There are no bookmarks (KDE includes bookmarking directories - even remote - and files). Kde's file selector is network transparent, configurable, etc. Kde file selector has been decent since like forever. :) at least kde 2.2

Re:This highlights a problem with GNOME/KDE

[Erwos]

AFAIK, this isn't true.

What GTK+ did was create an entirely new way of getting a file system dialogue. The old system simply could not be extended, and this new one is much better.

However, it _did not_ break binary compat. The interface for the old file selector is still in there.

-Erwos

Re:This highlights a problem with GNOME/KDE

[Wyzard]

My understanding is that it wasn't so much about binary compatibility as about the GTK/GNOME split. The file selector is part of GTK, which sits below (and is independent of) GNOME, but everyone wanted it to be able to take advantage of GNOME features like icon themes.

The pluggable backend thing (use GnomeVFS if available, otherwise plain filesystem access, etc.) seems to be part of the solution that was devised for this problem. I don't know how it handles the icons and the bookmarks thing (that seems like it'd be part of GNOME, not GTK), but presumably there's some clever trick used there too. It's fairly tough to make a file selector that's extensible enough for GNOME but still independent of GNOME, and I think most of the delay was just figuring out the right way to do it.

OT: Bloody Blooming Hell!

[iainl]

Right, there's me thinking that for once a /. banner advert is useful - its got info on a new Sigur Ros and Radiohead thing. So I click on it, only to find out that the bloody thing is iTunes exclusive! Fecking bastages! Some of us are outside the US, and so can't get stuff from there.

If this is the future of music distribution, I'm going back to vinyl.

I love GNOME's timed releases

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a new version of GNOME every 6 months strikes me a perfect compromise between adding new features and improving exisitng architecture. The bottom line is that these last few releases of GNOME have felt consistently polished.

So far, I love using the latest 2.6 (ok, strictly speaking: 2.5) version. Even sweeter, the 2.8 version is already promising to be a significant improvement with new applications and better infrastructure!

Thanks and great job GNOME developers and testers!

Nautilus is looking very Mac-like.

[s3nns]

Since switching to OS X, the spatial Finder is the only thing I've found myself missing from the Classic OS. Although OS X's Finder is sucking less and less with each revision, I still don't think it comes anywhere near the usability of the old Finder. (YMMV, of course. Old habits die hard.)

Nautilus seems to get it incredibly right, though. Although I've yet to use it for myself, Nautilus seems to immitate all the right things from the spatial Finder of old. (I haven't actually used Gnome since version 1.4, but I'm tempted to take another look.)

Kudos to the Gnome team, it's looking better and better with each release.

Re:Nautilus is looking very Mac-like.

[justsomebody]

My thoughts exactly.

I've always hated Macs (and being forced to use them for my job my hatred was only getting stronger), but one thing always impressed me: Completely dumbed down Finder, but it always does everything I need and always less actions than anywhere else

OSX finder has gone seriously bad, comparing to OS9, way too complex and not even a bit visualy appealing as old one

Re:Nautilus is looking very Mac-like.

[s3nns]

Well, OS X's Finder is steadily getting better. 10.0/10.1 was weak, 10.2 was an improvement, and 10.3 is pretty usable. It really pales in comparison to the software it replaced, though, and Panther's half-assed "spatial Finder" is a pretty weak imitation. (Hopefully Nautilus does a better job.)

What's with the spatial desktop???

[Mjlner]

Seriously though... It's been tried on both the Mac and Windows and the conclusion has been almost unanimous: sure, it's nice for newbies to copy ten, twenty, maybe even fifty or so files, but it doesn't scale. It simply isn't practical for large amounts of files, which Apple noticed in time for OSX. Besides, had the Gnome team read "About face", they would know that UI design isn't all about catering for newbies.

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[blueworm]

I don't think spatial desktop caters to newbies that much, but keep in mind that you HAVE to cater to newbies to an extreme level to come anywhere near close to competing with Microsoft.

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[koali]

OTOH, if you are managing large amounts of files and you are not a newbie, the command line will probably be much better.

So maybe catering for the newbies is right...

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[DrWhizBang]

It's been tried on both the Mac and Windows and the conclusion has been almost unanimous

Whose conclusion has been almost unanimous? You never asked me.
Please don't call the MS's lame-asses attempt at copying the Mac interface aka Windows 95 "spatial". It is not. In fact, I had trouble swtiching from Win 3.1 to Win95 because MS screwed things up by taking a crufty filesystem, tacking on a couple of layers of recursive abstraction, and then removing the File Manager and replacing it with explorer, which couldn't do either spatial or browser correctly.

The Mac always did this correctly, making the spatial metaphor work because it was consistent (until OS X).

Browser based file navigation is OK as long as it is consistent, but spatial has the advantage of making the filesystem easier to understand. You complain about scalability, but did you use Mac OS 9, where you could "dock" windows as tabs to the bottom of the screen, and navigate using "spring-loaded" folders? I miss that every time I need to use a computer. I was never more efficient at managing my files than I was in those days :-(

The challenge that the gnomers face is using a spatial view on a much more complex filesystem. Hopefully, they pull this off - I can't wait to try the new nautilus to see if they have.

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[Mjlner]

You complain about scalability, but did you use Mac OS 9, where you could "dock" windows as tabs to the bottom of the screen, and navigate using "spring-loaded" folders?

Oh, don't get me started... Those actually prove my point, because they were ugly, hard-to-use kludges to compensate for what the spatial desktop lacks in scalability.

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[Anonymous Coward]

...did you use Mac OS 9, where you could "dock" windows as tabs to the bottom of the screen, and navigate using "spring-loaded" folders? I miss that every time I need to use a computer.

Apple owns the patent on "spring loaded" folders. So, unless Apple does an about face on their UI, you'll never ever see them again. Ever.

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[Bas_Wijnen]

This reminds my of Harry Potter when Umbridge gives him a lifetime ban on quiddige. He thinks he'll never play again.

Until he is reminded that a lifetime ban doesn't last a lifetime, but only as long as Umbridge is around.

So even if congress (or whoever is doing it) intends to extend patents forever, congress itself will also change. And of course the rest of the world is not quite as crazy, so patents will still expire everywhere else.

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[Blakey Rat]

This is exactly the argument. MacOS stopped be spatial at version 7 when they added aliases (shortcuts) precisely because they realized that a spatial browser can be kludgy at some things. The best solution is to create a file browser that has spatial elements, and also allows non-spatial elements... *exactly* what Apple did with OS 9.

To be frank, I haven't tried Gnome 2.6, but if it's entirely spatial then, yes, it will be awkward. They need to follow Apple's example and mix in non-spatial elements until you can really scream with it.

And tabbed folders a "kludge?" Spring-loaded folders "hard-to-use?" Did you even *use* these technologies?

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[damiam]

The challenge that the gnomers face is using a spatial view on a much more complex filesystem.

From what I've heard, the spatial Nautilus interface is aimed mostly at navigating within the home folder (which is 95% of what non-admins do). That particular portion of the FS is no more complex under *nix/GNOME than on any other OS.

Re:What's with the spatial desktop???

[DrWhizBang]

true. it's the non-non-admins that will do most of the complaining about spatial nautilus. if a distro provides proper administrations tools, then this should not be a great issue.

however, there will always be the guys that want to see the guts. right-click->browse is still easier than finding resedit for the mac :-)

Install program for Solaris?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sunfreeware does not have any version of Gnome and Sun only has 2.0 available.

Re:The Infantryman

[Progman3K]

War is the greatest sin and abomination a goverment can perpetrate against its own people.

Karma be damned.

"Almost unanimous"

[Anonymous Coward]

...except for the Mac users, whom, from whom i've talked to, have almost unanimously been demanding it back ever since it got Steved.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome slower than KDE...Well that's a first.
Spoken like someone who's still using gnome 1.4 (hey! I'm not knocking it! Just the opposite: it was the last decent gnome version, imho)

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[darthaya]

I seriously doubt you have ever used kdevelop and anjuta. kdevelop is a very mature product while anjuta still feels like a hack.

Disabling Spatial Nautilus

[Eddy Da KillaBee]

For those of you who don't like the new Spatial Nautilus (like me) there are a couple of things you could do to go back to the "old" way of browsing files.

You could right-click a file, and select "browse from here" (or something like that, can't remember).

Or, for a more permanent solution, check the following key in GConf:

/apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser

Enjoy! :)

I just don't get the Gnome devs somtimes

[bogie]

First off for a minor update it seems totally nuts to jump to a completely different paradigm for file management. Its just wrong throwing this out to users who are used to the other way of handling files for years. This should have been done at 3.0, not at 2.6. Second, the old behavior should STILL be default. The spatial setting should be secondary but let the user know he/she can try it. You don't just switch the way things have been in such a major way with no transition period. That's the thing about Gnome they seem to just make major changes to the way you interact with your PC between releases without any notice.

Another example that comes to mind is the way they up and switched the "Yes" "No" "Cancel" dialog out of the blue. Right now the way Gnome does it is just bass ackwards to the way 95% of the world is used to. Sure I'm used to it now, but any Windows or KDE user who tries out Gnome will find themselves clicking on the wrong button because Gnome has it backwards. That's what happened to me after getting used to the old Gnome way.

The people in charge at Gnome just don't seem to want to ever settle down and let people get comfortable with the way they interact with the OS. Next release the File Selector will probably be further modified and you'll have to relearn they yet again. It just seems that there is all of this talk about Gnome and their superior HIG methods yet the things that shouldn't be changing get changed with every release. Pick a file selector, pick a file manager setup, pick a file confirmation dialog and stick with it, Forever. Stop changing the basic ways in which we interact with the OS with every release.

Re:I just don't get the Gnome devs somtimes

[FooBarWidget]

The right-to-left order is used to MacOS X. As everybody knows, everybody on Slashdot worships MacOS X, and always praise it for being the most userfriendly OS ever.

That aside, GNOME is actively moving away from the "Cancel/No/Yes" button order. They've been doing that for years now if you still haven't noticed. :/
Instead, buttons now have explicit action verbs, like "Cancel, Don't Save, Save", just like in the much-praised MacOS X.

"but any Windows or KDE user who tries out Gnome will find themselves clicking on the wrong button because Gnome has it backwards."

Which further proves that "Yes/No" is braindead and should be replaced by action verbs.

Re:I just don't get the Gnome devs somtimes

[Anonymous Coward]

The people in charge at Gnome just don't seem to want to ever settle down and let people get comfortable with the way they interact with the OS.

They want to improve the desktop for users, and not stay with a stagnant mess.

If you prefer using software that will never change for your own use, just stick to enlightenment 16 or blackbox. But remember most modern desktops are in constant change/improvement.

Re:I just don't get the Gnome devs somtimes

[justsomebody]

Gnome does it is just bass ackwards to the way 95%

(:or in my point of view, 95% does it is just bass ackwards to the way of Gnome:)

If you ask me, I like that order much more than the old one, it's momre natural to have the confirmation as left down, then somewhere in the middle, just look at how dumb OK, Cancel, Apply, Help order is (this is layout of printer properties in windows)

Re:I just don't get the Gnome devs somtimes

[jupitercore]

any Windows or KDE user who tries out Gnome will find themselves clicking on the wrong button because Gnome has it backwards.

Am I weird because I actually read what the button says before clicking it, rather than clicking by instinct? Or at least look at the pretty icon defining Cancel/Don't Save/Save?

It takes a second to do this and saves heart ache by clicking the wrong thing.

If one doesn't take the time to actually know/think about what they're clicking, then invariably said user needs to also be thoughtless with whatever action happens from clicking. A dialog box asking for user input is there because the developer feels it's necessary for the user to THINK about what they are doing.

Re:Someone explain this to me, please.

[teh*fink]

They link to different news articles that II may interested in.

"II"? What is this? Show me your clone making facilities!!

Re:The Infantryman

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, since most governments don't go to war against it's own people, but rather people of other nations.

As good as MAC OS X?

[Garg]

"GNOME is turning into something that is really pleasant to use," he [de Icaza] said. "I can happily say that GNOME 2.6 is up to the level of MAC OS X usability."

Suuuuuuurrre it is. And I've got a bridge to sell you cheap.

Don't get me wrong; I hope he's correct. If so, Linux will really start to make some serious inroads on the desktop. But unless 2.6 is really a quantum leap, I don't think it's true.

Mac's are still the all-time usability champs. You can take people who are deathly afraid of computers and they can use a Mac after a short while. So I'll believe it when I see it.

Garg

Re:As good as MAC OS X?

[justsomebody]

or in my case,... Stop using them after a short while

Re:As good as MAC OS X?

[Bob The Cowboy]

"I can happily say that GNOME 2.6 is up to the level of MAC OS X usability."

"Don't get me wrong; I hope he's correct. If so, Linux will really start to make some serious inroads on the desktop."

Yeah, look what its done for the Apple platform!

(typed from my ibook, don't flame too hard!)

Bill

Re:As good as MAC OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? There's not a single fact, and only a vague idea that "people" afraid of computers can use a mac "after a short while".

You'll get what you promote, moderators.

Re:The Infantryman

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you missed my point;
By sending you off to war, your government is committing a sin against you and creating an abomination...

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[petabyte]

Well, that, and because gnome is slow as ass compared to kde.

Unqualified, unsubstantiated, stupid as ass FUD.

Have you used 2.6? I'm a die-hard Gnome fan but 2.6 is unbelieveably slow. It takes a good 10-15 seconds to come up after X does on an athlon-xp 1700+. 2.4 was never that slow. Honestly, I have run gnome since the early 1.x days and have never been more disappointed in a release.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. KDE is way slower then GNOME. KDE takes 2-4 times as long to load as Windows XP on my 2.66ghz 1gb ram box.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[be-fan]

If you're talking about redraw speed, then yeah, it is. If you're talking about application startup, the probably not. The redraw is more a fault of GTK+ than GNOME, though.

Re:USB

[mhesseltine]

Again, neither the blame nor the credit goes to Microsoft or Apple. Place the responsibility on the device manufacturers. They are the ones who write drivers for the platforms, and if Linux isn't supported, it's their fault.

After all, look at a bone stock Windows install and see how many drivers don't get auto-detected/installed.

Microsoft doesn't write printer drivers, camera drivers, etc. They simply provide an interface. It's up to the manufacturer to decide if they want to make use of it or not.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[be-fan]

Konqueror isn't an internet browser or a file browser. Its a document viewer. Thus, it views all sorts of documents, from directories on the hard drive to PDF documents to media files. Since KDE's architecture is network-transparent, web-pages are just more documents Konqueror can view.

Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[ericdfields]

The majority of the posts I'm seeing that are 'anti-gnome' stem from the sheer fact that all of you out there are more than just computer users; you are programmers, devleopers, engineers, students, enthusiests, etc. Gnome is not directly targeted toward you.

The Gnome Desktop is very forward looking, as what it does is based on the assumption that Linux On The Desktop will be truely realized one day, and it is preparing to meet the needs of those future (read: not yet existing) Linux users. That isn't to say that Gnome can't be used by any contemporary Linux user with an advanced computer knowledge, it's just not made tailored to you guys. Play around with it. Get to know it a bit more. Then customize to you're liking. Gnome can work however you want it to. That's one of the more beautiful aspects of it.

As for the so-called lack of intuitiveness, this is just plain false. Gnome is as intuitive as a never-used-a-computer computer user can experience (without violating any patents!). Beacuse realistically, the _user_ needs only their home directory with a few sub directories (Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies, etc.). You don't need more than a window or two to manage them. That aforementioned Linux _user_ of the future will appreciate how easy it is to drag and drop between these folders in multiple windows. For the rest of you, it's your duty to discover that parent folder widget as well as the "Browse Folder" option in the right-click menu (i think that's where it is).

In reality, the future linux user (and really all users) will only need to access files as items in a niche program like Rhythmbox or OpenOffice/AbiWord which specifically deal with a particular document type.

I agree that maybe nautilus-cd-burner doesn't jive well anymore. Something along the lines of Mac OS X's 'Burn to CD' radioactive icon is needed somewhere, or something. Thse sorts of things are minor, however, since the Gnome desktop is still not in its future where Linux is mainstream, they still have time to figure out how to manage this issue. In the meantime, chill out, or invest time in compiling k3b.

Slashdot seems to be full of impulsive radicals who vehemently stick to their OS/DE/Apps of choice, and are quick to insult anyone or anything else that's not their favorite. It's a strange sort of application bigotry. Of course, ignorance plays no part in bigotry...

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Jagasian]

Sorry, but I have been using Gnome on Linux exclusively for the past year on my desktop. I need an interface that is tailored to me, not some future theoretical average joe. I need an interface that is not slow and buggy. I need an interface that is feature-ful. Gnome just ain't cutting it, and I lately I have been flirting with KDE.

There is no doubt that KDE and Gnome are rivals. Hell, Gnome's very existence was due to the creation of KDE and KDE's license issues... which by the way are no longer a problem.

It is survival of the fittest. Gnome is looking quite sickly, while KDE is robust and nubile.

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Anthony Boyd]

The majority of the posts I'm seeing that are 'anti-gnome' stem from the sheer fact that all of you out there are more than just computer users; you are programmers, devleopers, engineers, students, enthusiests, etc. Gnome is not directly targeted toward you.

Oh. I see. It's not for us. OK. Hmm. I guess we shouldn't criticize.

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

You just confirm what he said. You are a power user. GNOME was not made for you. I believe that the existence of a GNOME interface on 200 mill chinese machines i enough to prove that GNOME has an audience.

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Brandybuck]

In reality, the future linux user (and really all users) will only need to access files as items in a niche program like Rhythmbox or OpenOffice/AbiWord which specifically deal with a particular document type.

I am getting sick and tired of Gnome telling me how to use my computer. They didn't buy. They don't maintain it. They don't use it. So they need to get the fuck out of my life! You guys have a hard enough time running your own lives without interrupting it to run mine.

I don't give a shit about the theoretical future Linux user. You all sound like a bunch of pansy politicians worrying about how the poor people on the other side of the tracks are getting along, when in reality the poor people on the other side of the tracks are getting along just fine without you.

You can go mess up your own backyard all day long and I won't care. But I'm sick and tired of you coming over here, leaning over my fence, and telling me how to clean mine. Why don't you go get some play-do and create a bunch of tiny little men you can preach to? They'll sure be a lot more attentive than the rest of us.

p.s. I apologize to all of you innocents that had to read my rant. I recently stopped smoking and my patience evaporated along with the nicotine.

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Bishop]

This is all fine and good, but all Linux and *BSD users are currently power users. This is not going to change in the immediate future. Gnome developers are free to target which ever market they choose, but ignoreing their only current market (power users) is not going to help in the uptake of Gnome.

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Tarantolato]

The majority of the posts I'm seeing that are 'anti-gnome' stem from the sheer fact that all of you out there are more than just computer users; you are programmers, devleopers, engineers, students, enthusiests, etc. Gnome is not directly targeted toward you.

Fsck that. I don't disagree with the spatial decision, much as I'll turn it off immediately on download; but slagging off power-users is a sure and certain way for a platform to kill itself quickly.

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Senjutsu]

I am getting sick and tired of Gnome telling me how to use my computer. They didn't buy. They don't maintain it. They don't use it. So they need to get the fuck out of my life! You guys have a hard enough time running your own lives without interrupting it to run mine.

Yes, damn those GNOME bastards!! Holding a gun to our heads and forcing us to use their software. If only there were some alternative desktop environments for those who don't like it...

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Brandybuck]

Okay, it's two hours later and I've cooled off. Lesson learned, never take out your frustrations on a Slashdot post, especially when what's frustrating you is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand :-)

While I shouldn't have been so angry in my previous reply, it still irks me that random slashdot posters speak with authority about the future. If history teaches us anything at all, it's that the future is unpredictable. Another thing it teaches us is that progress occurs through evolution, with revolution being the very rare exception.

For some strange reason, the Gnome community seems obsessed with grand sweeping generalizations based on insufficient evidence. The prime example is Havoc's assumption of expertise in the area of usability. By his own account he is not an expert! So why are we expected to accept his inexpert advice as the gospel truth? Another example is Nat telling us that the future of software is .NET/Mono.

I'm really getting tired of being told that KDE is going to be left behind in the dust just because it's not jumping into the first available bandwagon the drives onto the scene. ericdfields ended his post with "Slashdot seems to be full of impulsive radicals who vehemently stick to their OS/DE/Apps of choice, and are quick to insult anyone or anything else that's not their favorite." But it seems to me that the statement applies to him as well.

Re:Slashdotters just can't understand Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't 200 million chinese computers with GNOME installed right now. There won't be for many many years. Until then, KDE, which are used in RedFlag Linux and TurboLinux, are the dominant versions of Linux in China.

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Blame the device manufactuers for not supporting your low-market share OS. How stupid is this?

Most of the Linux drivers are not even written by the manufacturer of the product.

How about blame the OS for not having a sufficent market share to cause the device makers to give a damn?

Installing USB Digital Cam on Windows XP:

1. Plug in USB cable to computer & camera
2. Windows recognizes USB Mass Storage device. Drive letter is assigned to it.
3. Open My Computer and find the new drive. Open the drive and play with yuor pictures.

Linux Instructions:

1. Plug in camera to your Lunix box
2. Do nothing because your camera isn't supported

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[SoTuA]

I tried it and yes, it took seconds. Then I opened nautilus, and it took twice the seconds!

Hmm, something's wrong here. So I closed them and opened them again. Nautilus took three seconds, Konqueror (home folder) took one. Go figure.

no you dont.

[Anonymous Coward]

in mozilla you can choose to middle click links to pop them up in tabs, this does not mean you "have a situation where which button to use depends on which app you are using." it means users can choose what behavior they want.

Re:no you dont.

[drivers]

in mozilla you can choose to middle click links to pop them up in tabs, this does not mean you "have a situation where which button to use depends on which app you are using." it means users can choose what behavior they want.

Except opening a new window in Mozilla is a middle click, staying in the same window is left click. In Nautilus, it is the opposite. How stupid is that?

The greatest feature in KDE

[Lord Ender]

The feature that keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME is ALT-Click. In KDE, if you ALT-Rt.click on a window, you can resize by moving the mouse. It is much nicer than having to find a 2 pixel wide bar and clicking on it. Combine this with ALT-Lt.click to move any window without having to catch the title bar, and window management becomes much easier and quicker.

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[riggwelter]

In my GNOME setup (which with regards to this is the defaults)

Alt-Rt.click in a window gives me the window menu, which includes resize, as well as (mini|maxi)mise, move and close.

Alt-Lt.click moves the window.

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[zaqattack]

I use alt-middleclick to resize the window with the mouse under Metacity.

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Combine this with ALT-Lt.click to move any window without having to catch the title bar, and window management becomes much easier and quicker.

That feature is present in most Window Managers. Gnome is no exception. Try it.

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[Nodatadj]

Alt-left click moves the window for me in gnome
alt-middle click lets you resize it
alt-right click brings up the window menu.

This is using the metacity that comes with gnome 2.6

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

This is using the metacity that comes with gnome 2.6

Works in 2.4 too, and since some time ago.

Looks like we have someone who has no excuses left to switch to Gnome ;))

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[gnu-generation-one]

"The feature that keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME is ALT-Click. In KDE, if you ALT-Rt.click on a window, you can resize by moving the mouse."

With WindowMaker, you get all those features (alt-drag moves a window, alt-right-drag resizes it), plus you get to reduce your boot-up time by 10 seconds compared to KDE.

Oh yeah, and I'll second whoever suggested Rox as the perfect file-manager.

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[LouieLing]

The feature that keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME is ALT-Click. In KDE, if you ALT-Rt.click on a window, you can resize by moving the mouse. It is much nicer than having to find a 2 pixel wide bar and clicking on it. Combine this with ALT-Lt.click to move any window without having to catch the title bar, and window management becomes much easier and quicker.

Funny, thats what keeps me using WindowMaker ;)

Louie Ling :)

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[prockcore]

The feature that keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME is ALT-Click. In KDE, if you ALT-Rt.click on a window, you can resize by moving the mouse.

Gnome uses the Windows key for this. This is important because you can't use Maya under KDE because KDE steals the Alt-Click.

No app that I know of uses the Windows key.

WindowsKey-Click on a window to drag it around, WindowsKey-MiddleClick on a window to resize it, WindowsKey-RightClick on a window to pop open the WM menu.

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[molnarcs]

amaroK uses the windows key (my favourite juk replacement). WIN + ZXCVB (Prev, Play, Pause, Stop, Next).

Re:The greatest feature in KDE

[mrogers]

Funny, I have the same bindings in my .twmrc. ;-)

ummmmm... ZOOM OUT...

[Anonymous Coward]

gosh that was hard to figure out...

"without any notice."

[Anonymous Coward]

you smoke crack if you think there has been no notice about the switch to spatial mode went without any notice. how is near weekly artilces on slashdot, gnome desktop and tons of info on the gnome 2.6 start page count as "without any notice". same goes for dialog button ordering... it wasn't out of the blue at all, it was well reasoned and publicized. just because *you* dont like it doesnt mean its right. take a look around at some major websites (which is what 95% of real users end up interacting with all day) and you'll find that button ordering is not very standardized at all.

Re:"without any notice."

[Bas_Wijnen]

While I quite agree with all your arguments, you really should use the prieview button and proofread your comment. I mean, one spelling or grammatical error can happen, but this doesn't look like you even tried to write good sentences.

However, you make good points, and I would have modded it up if I had mod points :-)

hee hee

[Anonymous Coward]

a simpler interface has been the goal of GNOME since at least version 2.0

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHH

nautilus is reportedly much much faster

[Anonymous Coward]

from the article: "It helps that Nautilus' performance has improved remarkably with this release."

Re:Someone explain this to me, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

the last time a windows desktop was released.

it's called "devil's own"

and the operating system is called "windows xp"

and it was the biggest fucking heist this century you fucking moron.

Re:why

[Glytch]

Because Galeon has too many features. To the current Gnome leadership, features are evil.

'Course, this is coming from a Windowmaker-turned-KDE 3.2 convert.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[FooBarWidget]

Huh? I haven't noticed *any* increase in startup time. The one thing I did notice is how rediculously fast the new Nautilus is.

parent is wrong

[phoxix]

preferences->input box->"nick completion suffix

Is not the same at nick completion. That only adds whatever you desire to the end of of a completed /nick. (And thanks to some odd Xchat bug, it only works with a single char, though some of the code clearly supports using more than a single char.)

Sunny Dubey

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[petabyte]

Maybe its my compilation then. Either way I've figured that the course Gnome is heading with its HIG isn't really the way I want to go. I'm going to try KDE and if that doesn't work out for me I'll put XFCE4 on.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[FooBarWidget]

I've used both. Anjuta is very usable and is definitely not a hack.

If you still want to compare: KDevelop feels like a hack compared to Borland Delphi.

Hear, Hear!

[Senjutsu]

I think this is great news, as I'll finally have a file management program that works the way *I* want it to work. I'm really surprised at the amount of hate this is getting; you can just turn the option off if you don't like it, people.

Prior to this it too often seemed like all the serious file managment options boiled down to: "You can have a file manager that works however you want, as long as it's some minor variation on Windows' browser metaphor".

Choice is a good thing.

Re:Hear, Hear!

[Jason Hood]

you can just turn the option off if you don't like it, people.

"Oh really? Which option is the screen located on again? I have to open a command line? Whats that? I thought this operating system was supposed to be simple?" said my girfriend.

My money says gnome 2.8 will have this spatial malarky off by default. The first thing my girlfriend said when her laptop got "upgraded" with gnome 2.6 was, "I thought windows98 solved this problem years ago by just using a single window so you dont clutter your desktop. Where is the location bar in the explorer so I can just type in a URL and get to a website?" She now uses KDE.

Re:Hear, Hear!

[Anonymous Coward]

> She now uses KDE.

And that's why it's good to have a choice. As unbelievable as it may appear to you and your girlfriend, some people like the new behaviour of Nautilus (including the Ars reviewer, after using it for a while). If you don't, you can hack the Gnome settings, or go to KDE. What would be the point of Gnome if it behaves exactly like KDE?

Re:Someone explain this to me, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally agree, but one intrigues me:

don't rock the boat, sweep it under the rug.

How the hell did you manage to sweep THE BOAT under the RUG ?

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, in this case OS means Often Striking

Re:The Infantryman

[Anonymous Coward]

somewhat true. however, what about a government's obligation to protect the sovereignty of the nation and its people? in the case of world war II, if america had not gone transatlantic, would hitler have established a strong foothold over all of europe? granted it could probably have handled the russians if it i did not have to worry about the U.S. in some cases it is necessary, when lying idle would just invite a terrible attack on a nation's own sovereignty. vietnam was a slaughter partially because the politicians were deciding where the bombs got dropped, not the military generals. when the military generals got to decide where the bombs got dropped, then america's position improved, however we still lost the vietnam war, considering our objective was never completed. considering this, when the threat of sovereignty is very realistic, we should honor our infantryman, many who volunteer their own life for sovereignty / our freedom. to this, i salute ye infantryman!

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Your steps are too general. It should be:

Installing USB Digital Cam on Windows XP:

1. Plug in USB cable to computer & camera (Reboot)
2. Windows recognizes USB Mass Storage device. (Reboot). Drive letter is assigned to it. (Reboot)
3. Open My Computer, crash, reboot, and find the new drive. Open (reboot) the (reboot) drive (reboot) and (reboot) play (s/with/alongside/g) yuor pictures.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

For future reference, it's "Ridiculous", with two Is and no Es.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe its my compilation then.

You know, unless you're a gnome developer or collaborator, switch off the debugging information when compiling, or you'll get tons of lag and memory comsuption. And the same applies to any other sofware you compile on your machine.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror isn't an internet browser or a file browser. Its a document viewer.

If it's a document viewer, why is it used to manage files on your HD, FTP accounts, SMB shares, etc. (viewer != manager)? Identity crisis?

GnomeMac, KDEWin

[mst76]

Although it isn't completely clear cut, it seems that KDE takes a lot of inspiration from Windows Explorer (yes I know it does a lot more), while Gnome seems more like MacOS Finder (but isn't as good yet). I guess the majority of computer users (including the /. crowd) comes from a Windows background, which may explain why they feel more at home in KDE than Gnome.

Re:GnomeMac, KDEWin

[molnarcs]

"Although it isn't completely clear cut, it seems that KDE takes a lot of inspiration from Windows Explorer (yes I know it does a lot more), while Gnome seems more like MacOS Finder (but isn't as good yet). I guess the majority of computer users (including the /. crowd) comes from a Windows background, which may explain why they feel more at home in KDE than Gnome."

Your second statement is not necessarily related to the first one. Rather, it boils down to this question: which one would you prefer?

• a) An application that outperforms its windows equivalent in every respect (d&d ripping of cds, split views, embedded everything, including pdf viewer/converter - you can print anything to pdf in KDE - media-player, multi-protocol - fish, ftp, www, smb - lan browser without the necessity to mount those shares, in-line spellchecker to please grammar-nazis here on ./, etc. in one consistent interface.
• b) An application that doesn't perform as well as its Mac OS 9 equivalent from the last century.

Re:GnomeMac, KDEWin

[molnarcs]

flamebait... lol. So the subtle but boring GNOME follows Mac OS 9/X (./ idol for a desktop) while KDE follows Windows (not exactly idolized around here) wasn't. Besides, what I wrote is true. b) is only what parent suggested, a) is what KDE/Konqueror is capable of right now. Ironically, it is OS X which has similar system-wide pdf support, and according to this review, KDE has the better implementation (along with better network transparency).

Oh, well...

This widget was initially hard to find..

[hungfarlow]

so we're not going to tell you where it is!

release for the fools..

[nsahoo]

it certainly looks like a fools day release.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[nulltransfer]

If you preload Konqueror, it loads fairly fast as both a file manager and a web browser. And the ability to split Konqueror up into a browser in one pane and a file manager in another is quite useful (not to also mention terminal integration).

Re:The Infantryman

[Anonymous Coward]

>we should honor our infantryman

I do.
I cry for him.

I understand your explanation about how the U.S. did fight in the Great War.

If only the germans had understood what was being asked of them, then the war might never have happened.

As it stands, nothing has been solved.

There are still genocides happening everywhere in the world, whole peoples are still being oppressed.

Nothing will change until we evolve into something better...

WTF is this sun desktop thing???

[zogger]

....been mostly offline too long I guess... Sorry for the side issue in the discussion, but reading the ars technica piece, it talks about this sun java desktop? China gonna slap it on 200 million PC's? Huh, never heard of it before. Does it work, suck, any reviews or personal experience here, generally wuzzup with the thing? My experience with generic java stuff is that they are slow and buggy on my olden daze hardware.

Thanks in advance and stuff...

Re:USB

[handslikesnakes]

1. cd /usr/src

2. wget http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6. 4.tar.bz2

3. tar -xzf linux-2.6.4.tar.gz

4. cd linux-2.6.4.tar.gz

5. make mrproper && make menuconfig

6. in Device Drivers -> USB Support turn on "Support for USB", EHCI and/or UHCI, "USB Human Interface Device (full HID) support", and "HID input layer support"
7. configure everything else as you please

8. make

Yep, real hard.

Attention Captain Clueless!

[Jerk City Troll]

Spatial interafaces are not new or revolutionary, but they are extremely effective. I'll let Ars Technica do the talking: they have a really good article that discusses the MacOS Finder and what a spatial interface is. It will give you a better understanding about what Nautilus is trying to accomplish.

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

You got a point.

One only needs 27 steps to recompile Windows. I keep the source code in my breadbox next to the bagels.

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean 8 simple steps are too much for you ?

Man, you'll die childless... getting laid involves much more than this

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Which KDE are you using, because all the reviewers who said that 3.2 was a quantum leap over 3.1 speed wise weren't lying!

Since Konqueror is kept preloaded by default in 3.2, it only takes me about 0.6 seconds (very subjective) to open up my home window.

As far as the reason they integrated the browser and Internet viewer in one program, it was to show off their very nice component method, KParts. Konqueror doesn't render pages itself, it just hands it off to a KHTML KPart. Practically any kind of file that you have a KPart for can be viewed WITHIN Konqueror, including .cpp, .pdf, etc.

Re:USB

[Anonymous Coward]

4. Go fuck my mother.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[katz]

Because directories are documents, too.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[be-fan]

At a technical level, a directory is just another document. At a conceptual level, its not unusual for a viewer to embed management capabilities. Take acdsee, for example.

Re:why

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as Galoen is still activly developed, it doesn't bother me much which browser is official.

Sadly it looks like Debian needs a Galeon maintainer at the moment... I will really miss Galeon in Sarge

gnome-apt :)

[Anonymous Coward]

man gnome-apt

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

At a technical level, a directory is just another document. At a conceptual level, its not unusual for a viewer to embed management capabilities. Take acdsee, for example.

But when you include advanced management capabilities and launch of programs from the viewer to manipulate (or whatever) the document from said viewer... aren't we losing the grasp of the concept?

Personally, I'd love it if Konqueror considered just being a file manager that calls the needed apps to perform changes or view the files.

Misconceptions about GConf

[TrixX]

Unlike the windows registry, each GConf app includes the schema with the keys it uses, including its type and documentation. If that key does not exists, it means it's not supported by your currently installed version of nautilus.

If it does exists, selecting it at gconf-editor will allow you to see it's value, type, and documentation.

Nautilus is just a tiny part of the issue

[Moderation abuser]

The problem appears to be built into the widget set. Network performance is poor.

Re:Nautilus is just a tiny part of the issue

[FooBarWidget]

Yes, Gtk is not exactly the most network-friendly toolkit and could use more optimization.
I think Gtk treats X as a big framebuffer.

Performance is vital.

[Moderation abuser]

"Performance is truly irrelevant."

What a stupid statement.

Performance is vital. With X11 it isn't just the individual application performance which is important. The performance of the underlying widget set is also vitally important.

X11 is a network transparent display system. If the network performance of the GUI is unacceptable, it'll be virtually useless in a corporate environment. Unless you're an idiot and the best you can come up with is to put a full workstation on every desk.

For example. Running a full screen CDE session over an ADSL link is slow but perfectly usable. Gnome on the same machine over the same link on the other hand is completely unusable.

Potential GNOME Convert

[Anonymous Coward]

I presently like neither Qt/KDE nor Gtk/GNOME.
Qt/KDE is out of the question. However, I could
get excited about Gtk/GNOME if Gtk was to start
making use of the X resource manager and the X
Intrinsics (Xt) as IMHO it should have from the
beginning. If these changes were incorporated
into Gtk/GNOME I could/would probably become a
GNOME convert.

Re:USB

[justsomebody]

Linux instructions
1. Plug in camera
2. Linux does nothing
3. Right click desktop - Drives - Camera. Whop, camera disk is on desktop

Mine is easier

Benchmarking utilities

[Moderation abuser]

For anyone else interested in benchmarking X applications, there is a Perl module which is designed to perform user interaction.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/x11guitest/

It means that you can automate the testing of whole GUI applications or individual widgets.

Gnome is just slow

[Moderation abuser]

I don't know what the problem is specifically, but if you have a couple of machines with KDE and Gnome loaded and a wireless (or other lower bandwidth higher latency) setup, you can demonstrate it yourself if you configure your display manager to allow remote logins for a while.

Gnome has a noticable lag or latency on virtually every operation; Menus, buttons, redraws. You might just rationalise it as network latency but...

KDE on the other hand is instantaneous for all of the above, it's as good as local. Same machine, same network connection and similar operations, the difference being the widget set. It's a very similar story for CDE and GnuStep. As far as I can see, Gnome is just slow.

Some good points

[zpok]

Spatial finder. Great. Wonderful. I don't care what .1% of the computer population, the honourable geek says, it's up to now the only proven intuitive UI there is.
It would be good to include other options as well, if only to please the 99% developers contained in that .1% - and I myself don't mind using the NeXT-OS X column view.

Simplicity. KISS. Incredible how so many people who can't seem to program their VCR think a computer should be complicated in order to be fun. It's not only stoopid people who appreciate a direct and simple approach.

Takes a lot of proven mac concepts (button placements, verbing the buttons instead of making everything OK, all-right) and at the same time a few good Windows conventions (column view with explorer-like sidebar, a My computer "place for all your drives and stuff).

If Linux aspires to become the computer for the masses, something like this might do the trick. But when reading all the /. comments, I do begin to understand the advantage of choice choice choice in Linux, even though that means I get to choose between tons of "almost there" soft and environments.

application question

[calibanDNS]

I was browsing through the User Screenshots and noticed an interesting looking GKrellM-like application on the right side of this screenshot. Can anyone tell me what app that is?

Re:application question

[stor]

That's a gdesklet buddy.

I tried gdesklets a few months ago. Very nice in the eye-candy department but it all felt a bit fragile. Anyway it's a fun thing to investigate if you're into Gnome.

http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/

*Nick Burns the Company Computer Guy Voice* YOU'RE WELCOME!

Cheers
Stor

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 3.2 is the fastest thing since XFCE4 (yeah, I LOVE xfce now.. give it a try.. seriously). gnome 2.6 is dog slow compared to either of them (though the last version I tried was gnome 2.5.3)

Re:ROX

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, why use GNOME at all? Why not just use Sawfish, ROX, Mozilla, Emacs, and [insert non-GNOME, non-KDE application here]?

Answer: because you want the cohesive user experience, apparantly.

(I did indeed use random seperate apps, until I said "screw it, I want eye candy" and switched to MacOS X)

GnomeVFS sounds awesome

[the_truk_stop]

I'm really looking forward to this GnomeVFS abstraction layer while saving and opening. What I've read (without having yet compiled it for Gentoo) has already gotten me into some fun conversations with my Linux-using friends:

Allan: "Whoa, whoa, Gnome's getting _really_ smart!"
Me: "No, it's getting really STUPID. It only understands opening and saving.

Gnome: "FTP? Yeah, I'm not sure what that is, but I'd sure like to save this document right now to this location.
GnomeVFS: "Sure thing." *** 1337 under-cover action ***
Gnome: "Oh, you can do that for me? Cool!"

- Kurt

Re:GnomeVFS sounds awesome

[10Ghz]

KDE has had that for a long time already ;)

Double clicking

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiosity, if Gnome really wants to be as newbie friendly as possible, how come they still use double-clicks (not to mention this double-middle-click idea in Nautilus)? One thing I have noticed is that total newbies have a hard time double-clicking ("Hmm, nothing seems to happen, should I wait some more or try again?"). In my opinion, this is one area where KDE has got it right.

Of course, this is probably a gconf setting or something, but the Gnome paradigm is to have sensible defaults, isn't it?

Scriptable VNC session control

[sonamchauhan]

Also related: Scriptable VNC session control:

rfbproxy
rfbplaymacro

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[cozziewozzie]

It is very easy to set up Konqueror to do exactly that, if you want it to do nothing but file management.

Re:I'm sticking with KDE, thanks

[cozziewozzie]

They did not really integrate the file browser and the internet browser into one program. If you are browsing the internet, only the internet engine (HTML) is loaded. If you are browsing your home directory, only the file management component is loaded.

Konqueror is only a shell (some buttons and menus) which loads proper components as needed. It is not a cross between Mozilla, Nautilus and OpenOffice, which loads a behemoth of code each time it is called.

Re:Someone explain this to me, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time a release of Windows was delayed by a security intrusion?

We don't know. Microsoft is not obligated to tell anyone.

I wouldn't be surprised if _EVERY_ Windows version had been delayed by a security intrusion, god knows enough of them have been delayed for years.

Mate, your i386 is going to struggle with anything

[anti-NAT]

I'm surprised you managed to get RH9 to install ...