Feature Preview of Gnome 2.8

Leonardo writes "The GNOME foundation should release the new version of this desktop environment on the 15th of September. While we waiting for version 2.8, Foot Notes has a link that explains what's new in this release. Improvements include both core parts (like VFS and Nautilus) and UI modules, like a new applet manager, an improved gconf editor and a new theme. In addition there are some proposed modules like new system tools and a new VNC server. Take a look at Davyd Madeley' site (mirror) if you want to view some sweet screenshots."

Comments

System Tools?

[Speare]

I haven't RTFA, but it seems to me that GNOME isn't the right project for system tools. It's nice when gui-oriented system configuration features are made available in a GNOME style, but does it make sense for GNOME itself to have system-specific features?

The GNOME project and all its core features should be independent of what OS is running underneath, relying on a minimum of required components like suitable graphics, sound, pointer and keyboard services.

Re:System Tools?

[zerblat]

The Gnome System Tools are separated in frontends and backends. The backends are system specific, but the frontends are supposed to basically be the same on all system. Also, this separation means that it would be possible to create a non-Gnome interface (although I don't think one exists).

Re:System Tools?

[The Kiloman]

It's great that you didn't RTFA, but you obviously haven't read anything about GST either.

As another poster mentioned, the frontends are all Gnome and C, will look the same on all platforms. The C frontend calls into a standard library of Perl functions to do the distro-specific backend bits, the whole idea being that regardless of whose distribution you're using, the config tool will look the exact same and do the same things.

Pontificating is wonderful and all, but when you haven't RTFA and have no clue what you're talking about, what's the point? Just karma whoring I guess...

Re:System Tools?

[GileadGreene]

I think that what the parent was getting at is that GNOME should be independent of Linux, not just independent of a given distribution. There are other OSes out there than Linux you know. Some of 'em even use GNOME.

Re:System Tools?

[The Kiloman]

Re-reading the post now that I've had some coffee, that may be so. However, I think I can still say the same thing - GST is designed to be OS-agnostic. (I think they even use that term in the documentation somewhere.)

However, it seems more likely that the parent poster thought that the existance of GST meant that GTK was suddenly mucking around in his OS internals. I don't think he's aware that Gnome is not GTK... which is an important distinction to make. I can see how he might be confused, since they tend to rev Gnome and GTK at the same time.

Re:sso what?

[dcstimm]

umm, did you look at the screenshots, they look beautiful

Oh no !

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they keep bolting more and more stuff on ? Isn't it big enough already ?

I really wish projects would deal with getting stuff actually working and working well (bug-free and fast) before they start adding even more functionality.

There must be a million and one OS projects out there... ...but how many of them are actually usable ? Mose (like Gnome - and I'm not just picking on Gnome here) are buggy, increasing bloated, slow and memory hungry. ...not that many. And yes, I don't doubt someone will come up with a couple of examples that ARE quite good, but they are the exceptions.

Gnome (like the linux Kernal and loads of other stuff) is getting way t0o bloated to be useful - instead of adding more stuff, they should be slimming it down to core functionaly and the other stuff should be seperate projects.

OK, rant over

Re:Oh no !

[Xpilot]

Why do they keep bolting more and more stuff on ? Isn't it big enough already ?

And some say Gnome doesn't have *enough* features. Man, you just can't win. Maybe it's just fashionable to bash Gnome.

Re:Oh no !

[IamTheRealMike]

You realise that most of the changes in 2.8 are about fixing bugs and polishing, right?

The new MIME system is "fixing" the old one by totally replacing it, no other approach would work. The new system by the way is a lot easier to use for both users and developers, and is a freedesktop standard shared with KDE :)

The rest of the desktop is not receiving any major new features really, just lots of bugfixing too small to go in these sort of "what's new" pages and various cleanups. Actually Gnome seems to have slowed down in this release as a lot of the Red Hat and Novell hackers are tied up with non-Gnome work as they round out the rest of the Linux desktop (so, hardware integration, management tools, backwards compatibility work etc).

Re:Oh no !

[Mornelithe]

Perhaps you should use something like XFCE that aims to be a slimmed down desktop environment. Or Fluxbox that's just a slim window manager.

Gnome aims to be a fully featured desktop environment, with all the apps a user needs (more or less). If that's not what you want, then you probably shouldn't use Gnome (or you could refrain from installing all the applications).

And how is the Linux kernel too bloated? Would you rather they not support any new hardware drivers or something? Do you have specific examples?

Re:Oh no !

[nuggetman]

Why in $diety's name is this modded insightful? Telling someone to fork the project themselves when they complain about something is equivalent to the "I'd like to see you do better!" defense when you say someone can't sing/act/dance/play an instrument/etc.

Not everyone is a programmer, and not everyone has the know how (or the time/desire to gain the knowhow) to work on GNOME/any other OSS project themselves.

The idea is the developers take input from those who CAN'T develop, but DO use the software, and make adjustments accordingly.

Re:Oh no !

[blixel]

The linux kernel has grown enourmously over the years.

Yes, you need to support new hardware and stuff but it's not sustainable to keep adding it into the core product. If you do, you end up with something like MS Office - how many gigabytes is Office now ?

There's a world of difference between hiding a 3D maze inside of Excel and the Linux kernel having *optional* support for hardware that you dont' own. The kernel source code may contain - what you unjustifiably call bloat - but that "bloat" isn't being used by your system at runtime if you don't have a need for that particular part of the kernel.

And it's not fair to call it bloat just because you don't have a particular piece of hardware. The Linux kernel would be completely useless if it only supported 1 network card and 1 motherboard chipset. Sure it would be tiny, but it would be useless to 99.99% of the population.

Re:Oh no !

[Mornelithe]

Yes, you need to support new hardware and stuff but it's not sustainable to keep adding it into the core product.

What do you base this on? Do you have any evidence?

You can choose to compile drivers into the kernel or as modules or not at all. Some people use the Linux kernel in embedded devices. It isn't necessary to compile most things into the kernel.

Third parties can also maintain drivers that are separate from the kernel and are loaded as modules. Do you think Windows shouldn't include drivers for hardware on its install CD?

He was referring to MS Word

Do you have any Linux examples?

Printing doesn't happen immediately because it's necessary to convert the data into a format the printer understands. Printers don't understand Word files or PDFs or whatever. They can't magically see what's on you screen and begin printing immediately.

Maybe back in the days of daisy wheel printers it was easy to generate stuff the printer would understand, but these days you need to produce postscript or something else. Unless you want to edit all your documents as postscript, it's going to take some processing beforehand.

But you know, personally I think the output of modern printers actually looks good. You can have good looking printouts, you can have speedy printouts, and you can edit in whatever document format you want, but you can only choose two of the above.

I know you were implying more generality, but I think you're wrong. Yes, you can't use brand new Gnome on old hardware. But that's because it's made to take advantage of new hardware. It does more stuff than old fast applications did.

If you want a speedy desktop, you can use XFCE or Fluxbox. Or you could use bugfixed versions of older apps/Gnome/KDE if they exist. Gnome isn't designed to be super speedy.

Re:Oh no !

[AstroDrabb]

How is this AC Insightful? You see, the thing with F/OSS is that you have a chioce. If you think Gnome is bloated, use an earlier version such as Gnome 1.4, or KDE, FluxBox, BlackBox, XFCE (pretty nice and fast too), etc, etc. You think the kernel is getting bloated? Um, go and download an older one, like 2.4, 2.2 or even 2.0. Hey, you can go out and grab an old distro like RH 7.x or 6.x or Debian unstable : ). Use what you want. Exactly how is GNU/Linux going to keep up with technology with out adding "bloat". How would the Linux kernel support new hardware without adding "bloat"?

If you have written your own non-bloated kernel, OS tool chain, and desktop, please submit them to the OSS community so we can all enjoy your excellent, non-bloated work.

Re:Oh no !

[ajs]

Why do they keep bolting more and more stuff on ? Isn't it big enough already ?

Simple answer: because it's important and no.

Complicated answer: because it's important and yes.

I like to say (permuting an old saying about open source) that open source succedes because it scratches a niche. The more niches, the more success.

"Gnome" is not a single application, it's a distribution of applications that meet a plethora of needs based on all of the niche audiences that use it.

You can say that having an IRC client is just bloat, but if Gnome didn't have that some people wouldn't be using it, and they'd be using a desktop system that was inclusive of their needs.

I really wish projects would deal with getting stuff actually working and working well (bug-free and fast) before they start adding even more functionality.

Actually, Gnome works pretty damned well circa late 2.6. It's been a long time coming. 2.4 was a big change (as the version numbering implied), and a lot of people had a lot of good and constructive feedback that shaped 2.6. 2.8 is clearly taking the next steps in becoming the desktop environment that we can all rely on, and I'm happy with that.

As for bugs... well, I guess it's a matter of perspective. From where I stand, 2.6 is not bug-free (nothing ever is), but it's moving substantially in that direction (kaizen if you will). As for fast... I run a suite of applications on my desktop at home that do things my poor little 300MHz Pentium 4 years ago could only dream of, so I'm a bad judge. I'm quite happy with the current suite of Gnome video and 3D tools in terms of their response and bandwidth, though. I don't really use a file manager much, so that I can't speak to. The Web tools are slick and fast. The high-level object drag-and-drop seems like it could be faster, so there's a place for improvement.

But seriously, do you think the addition of system configuration tools is going to slow down the desktop?

Gnome (like the linux Kernal and loads of other stuff) is getting way t0o bloated to be useful

Well, let's look at Gnome and the Linux kernel. Both are highly modular, allowing the user to strip away what he/she does not need.

Both have many, large components that provide functionality so powerful that most users DON'T go without, at the expense of resources.

Both address the needs of dozens of niche users (internationalization, accessibility for disabled users, strange hardware, etc).

So... I guess I have to ask... what exactly is the bloat that you're not happy with, and how willing are you to configure your system so that that's not a problem?

I've seen Gnome running on top of Linux on an iPaq, so I'm not really buying the "bloated" party line. I just think you're too lazy to configure it to your needs.

Re:Oh no !

[Mornelithe]

Then why's it written in C?

I don't have any definitive answer to that question. But there are reasons besides speed to write in C.

For example, it's easier to make language bindings for other languages from a C API. If you write GTK+ in OCaml, how easy is it to make Python and Ruby bindings? You'd need to use an OCaml -> C bridge and then use the Ruby -> C bridge to interface. Most languages have a C interoperability API, but the same can't necessarily be said of Lisp or ML. How easy is it to bridge between Perl and Python?

Or, maybe the people who wrote GTK just like C better. Personally, I like C better than C++, although I like Lisps and so on better.

Also, C is more widely known than ML and Lisp.

Also, perhaps GTK (which came about before Gnome, b the way) was once designed to be speedy. That doesn't mean that everything built with it needs to be speedy, or that it can't go off in another direction. Gnome was a lot more lightweight in the 1.x days, but it's changed. That doesn't mean it makes sense to rewrite all the libraries in a different language and make all old applications port to a new language.

I'm not saying that the Gnome people don't want to be as speedy as possible, but their primary objective is to build a comprehensive desktop. If you want lightweight stuff, go use lightweight stuff. Saying "Gnome uses C so it therefore is trying to be speedy" is not really logical.

Re:Oh no !

[ericdfields]

In order to achieve the high-level of functionality coupled with ease of use that the Gnome project is striving for, it must - simply put - be bloated. Features like DBUS and HAL implementation via daemons, CD burning, etc create an immensely intricate desktop experience. Too many people forget that the Gnome project aims at being an extremely accessible desktop while catering to as many needs as possible in an unconfusing way.

It may seem 'bloated' compared to other DEs out there, but we compare the 'big boys' of the Linux DE world not to their peers, but to their foes: Windows and OS X. In this light, is Gnome really that 'bloated'?

It's a good idea

[ninjadroid]

It does make sense. Providing a uniform interface through which common configuration tasks can be performed is an excellent idea. If gnome can configure network devices, and you know how to use it's configurator, then you also know that wherever you go, if gnome is installed, you can setup the network. This is superior to having every individual distribution provide it's own custom interface, at least from the perspective of consistency (which is a valuable quality in UIs).

Even though different distros may have different internal solutions to configuration, I see no good reason why a consistent front end can't (or shouldn't) be provided. Furthermore, I'd rather have many hands working together to achieve the best interface once, rather than divering talent toward reinventing a boring wheel to mediocre effect.

Re:It's a good idea

[dcstimm]

Wow you hit the nail on the head with that, I have always thought that since I tried Mandrake out back in the redhat 6.2 days. I thought it was silly that every distro had its own UI for things like this. It just feels the more Gnome ages the more it becomes usefull, I remember back when WindowMaker was amazing, and I used netscape 4.6, opensource apps sure have come a long way, Now I use Gnome 2.7, Firefox, evolution, gimp 2.0, gaim, gqview, beep, abiword 2.0, xchat 2, mozilla, gnome-terminal, and Naut. I love how all my applications are compiled with gtk2 and they all share the same common look and feel. And with these applications I have become so productive with Linux its amazing..

Nice UI - better for Linvirgins?

[grunt107]

The inclusion of system tasks in the UI graphic selection seems to be a good way to allow the Linux newbies to more easily understand and control their non-Win computers. Once they get acclimated to the commands, they may venture into the faster cmd-line that 'experts' like to use.

This may even help faster corporate adoption, with the remote control software and other networking tools.

Haha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the screenshots - they have a shortcut to Adequacy.org's most infamous article "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?"

I still have hope for gnome.

[aussersterne]

But here's what would have to change for me to use it:

1. Jettison the whole gconf/registry thing in favor of a tree of plain text config files in .gnome or something

2. Resurrect the old GNOME control center

3. Give me a default window manager with the ability to select focus-follows-mouse mouse

4. Construct a usable menu editor somewhere so that I can customize my menus

5. Choose: either a) reincorporate gecko into Nautilus for Web browsing or b) go lightweight and jettison Nautilus for the old gmc

6. Create a base distribution of official GNOME applications from a lot of the GTK stuff out there, based on which authors agree to follow a rigidly follow a GNOME style guide and use the GNOME API rather than just GTK, so that there is more desktop consistency

7. Add compatibility with KDE themes to GTK, since they seem superior (ability to change colors, not just widget styles, etc.)

8. Give me an "advanced mode" to turn on all kinds of extra GUI configuration bells and whistles like keybindings, autoraise, MIME types, etc.

Re:I still have hope for gnome.

[JanneM]

1. Jettison the whole gconf/registry thing in favor of a tree of plain text config files in .gnome or something

gconf _is_ a tree of text config files in .gconf .

2. Resurrect the old GNOME control center

What did it do differently than the preferences view in nautilus?

3. Give me a default window manager with the ability to select focus-follows-mouse mouse

Settings->Windows, choose "Focus follows Mouse".

4. Construct a usable menu editor somewhere so that I can customize my menus

Not sure what you feel is wrong with the current method?

8. Give me an "advanced mode" to turn on all kinds of extra GUI configuration bells and whistles like keybindings, autoraise, MIME types, etc.

keybindings - in the preferences already. autoraise windows - you find that in the same preference dialog as focus-follows-mouse above. MIME type editor - already exists, improved for 2.8. For other things, gconf-editor _is_ your advanced mode.

Re:I still have hope for gnome.

[v01d]

gconf _is_ a tree of text config files in .gconf .

gconfd-2 is also a broken database server. On my two systems using Gnome 2.6 (Solaris and RedHat), gconfd periodically goes rogue and eats all configuration. Gnome poorly implemented what was a bad idea in Windows.

Consequentially I use either WindowMaker, WinXP or OS X.

Not sure what you feel is wrong with the current method?

So is there a menu editor? I've never spotted one anywhere.

Re:I still have hope for gnome.

[Jodrell]

1. Jettison the whole gconf/registry thing in favor of a tree of plain text config files in .gnome or something

If you're a system administrator, gconf is a godsend. You can "lock down" certain preferences so your users can't break things or waste time playing with useless preferences. Another win from using GConf is that it's "process transparent." This means that if I change a setting from one application, it instantly updates in all other applications that are interested in that setting. This technology is vital for the snazzy "instant apply" UI of GNOME, and vital for writing applications made up of multiple out-of-process components.

3. Give me a default window manager with the ability to select focus-follows-mouse mouse

GNOME Menu -> Preferences -> Windows, then select the "Select windows when the mouse moves over them".

5. Choose: either a) reincorporate gecko into Nautilus for Web browsing or b) go lightweight and jettison Nautilus for the old gmc

Nautilus isn't a web browser, use Epiphany for that. Nautilus's performance has come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, particular between 2.4 and 2.6.

6. Create a base distribution of official GNOME applications from a lot of the GTK stuff out there, based on which authors agree to follow a rigidly follow a GNOME style guide and use the GNOME API rather than just GTK, so that there is more desktop consistency

More and more of the GNOME API is moving into Gtk+ - the icon theme implementation, for example, and the new UI Manager system. But GNOME can't coerce other developers into following their guidelines, they can only encourage them.

You may also find that things like the GNOME Fifth Toe has what you want.

7. Add compatibility with KDE themes to GTK, since they seem superior (ability to change colors, not just widget styles, etc.)

Check out this project for a Gtk-Qt unifying theme.

8. Give me an "advanced mode" to turn on all kinds of extra GUI configuration bells and whistles like keybindings, autoraise, MIME types, etc.

gconf-editor and GNOME Hacks are your friend :)

Re:I still have hope for gnome.

[Laur]

I for one think haveing a tabed file manager would be just as usful as a tabed browser

It is. Konqueror does this and it's quite nice.

Re:I still have hope for gnome.

[ScRoNdO]

So is there a menu editor? I've never spotted one anywhere.

Well, it's disabled in fedora, but in a default Gnome install, like on slackware, you simply open Nautilus, go to Applications://, and edit it's subfolders. Really, it couldn't be simpler.

it's all about xfce

[TimODonnell]

Anybody who still hasn't settled on a wm, take this advice: try xfce. It's fast, it's customizable, it's simple, but it still feels like a desktop environment, not just a window manager like fluxbox. It's the middle ground between the two huge desktop envirnments and the dozens of ultra-lightweight window managers.

It's gnome without the bloat.

Re:it's all about xfce

[cronot]

I do use XFCE too, plus the Rox pinboard - makes the perfect combo, and still keeps the environment lean and fast.

However, I beg to disagree with your last sentence. The "bloat" in gnome is something relative - it may be heavier on the system, but Gnome and its apps feels far more integrated than XFCE. XFCE is pretty much only the panel, an eye-candied window manager, and a taskbar, and while it comes with easy to use configuration tools, they are very limited in the sense that there aren't not much room for customizing - something that gnome surely wins. The taskbar, for instance, have no real meaningful configuration, and always lives separated from the panel - IMHO, it should be a plugin, so you could attach the taskbar to the panel, thus freeing desktop space.

I can live with that tough. My main beef with the state of desktop on Linux is the fragmented situation of the GUI Tookits (mainly QT vs. GTK, though there are lesser ones). The problem is not having many toolkits per se, but the fact that this leaves the desktop with an unconsistent appearance. I'm all for having toolkit choices, but I wish they'd unite to create a standard themeing format, so a theme could be used on both toolkits, thus leaving a more or less consistent appearance to the desktop (there's still the GUI guidelines).

Well, not gonna happen anytime soon, tough... :-(

Re:it's all about xfce

[ajs]

No offense, but that's spoken exactly like someone who has no idea what a desktop environment is.

Gnome is 90% the application libraries that manage inter-process data, configuration, internationalization, accessibility, theming, common invocation semantics, error reporting, etc, etc.

That 10% that you're thinking of (window management, applet baubles, desktop layout, file management, changing the root background, etc.) is nice, but if you still have to have all of Gnome around for the important parts (the applications that integrate with the desktop), what exactly is the point.

If xfce is a Gnome- (and implicityly ICCCM-) compliant window manager, it will work just fine in the Gnome desktop, but that doesn't make it a Gnome-replacement.

What people love to refer to as bloat in Gnome (and KDE for that matter, I'm not playing favorites here) stop seeming like bloat the moment you a) want to know how to configure 20 different applications at once b) want to change all of your applications to use LCD-friendly font-smoothing c) speak a language that isn't the default (and perhaps has strange rules like being written backwards) d) can't see / hear / type / use a mouse / etc. ; or any other sort of desktop-level strangeness.... then you actually want a suite of tools and libraries that support your needs.

Re:it's all about xfce

[ajs]

grab yourself a copy of fluxbox or FVWM and get back those many megabytes of useful RAM that would otherwise be wasted on irrelevant "features" like themes and icons

And for those who thought the above made sense:

See FVWM themes here and Fluxbox themes here both of which are full of fine icons....

What you're really concerned about isn't memory usage (my task bar, just to use one example, uses a fair amount of memory under Gnome, but most of it is rarely used and often swapped in favor of things like OS file caching, etc.), but FUNCTIONALITY.

For example, a Gnome desktop can universally change the smoothing mode for font rendering across all applications at once to, for example, switch to an LCD display. That (in a generic sense, not just for the one special-case) takes a lot of hooks in a lot of places, and that code and all of its special cases certainly requires my desktop to "think" a lot more about a given chunk of work. Now, there are optimizations to be had, and that kind of thing will get faster over time, but it will never be as fast as back in my fvwm days when I couldn't do that, and the window manager didn't have any real communications path (other than ICCCM) with applications. Then, it was easy... if limited. FVWM didn't have any say in how an application represented data, what direction text was laid out in, what language was being used, what accessibility features were in place, etc., etc. That was back in the good old days when we didn't care about an awful lot of niches. Now we do.

Think of it like stepping up from tokenizing to scanning to parsing to compiling semantics. First you had windows that applications directly managed. Then global window management. Then session management. Gnome is working at a layer above all of that at the "desktop management" level. It's a lot of work, and that can be more cumbersome than just slapping a window up Windows 3.1-style... it also happens to be much more powerful.

Re:it's all about xfce

[Florian]

No offense, but that's spoken exactly like someone who has no idea what a desktop environment is.

No offense, but you replied exactly like someone who has no idea what XFCE is.

Gnome is 90% the application libraries that manage inter-process data, configuration, internationalization, accessibility, theming, common invocation semantics, error reporting, etc, etc.

Almost half of what you mention (configuration, internationalization, theming) is GTK stuff, not Gnome. And those aspects managed by Gnome are used by only very few programs. Most so-called Gnome applications, like The Gimp, are in fact GTK applications and have no Gnome bindings. Of those programs linking to Gnome libraries and middleware (Bonobo, Gnome-VFS, gconf), few if any make full and consistent use of them.

If xfce is a Gnome- (and implicityly ICCCM-) compliant window manager, it will work just fine in the Gnome desktop, but that doesn't make it a Gnome-replacement.

No, XFCE is an integrated desktop environment which includes a window manager (xfwm), a panel (xfce-panel) with applets, a file manager (xffm), a backdrop manager, and a printing manager. All these components are based on GTK and freedesktop.org standards, like the XDND drag'n'drop protocol or the wm spec which also the window managers of KDE and Gnome (kwin and metacity) implement. XFCE can be fully configured over its own GUI menus, which is another difference to window managers which aren't really desktop environments.

What people love to refer to as bloat in Gnome (and KDE for that matter, I'm not playing favorites here) stop seeming like bloat the moment you a) want to know how to configure 20 different applications at once

Well, except that this doesn't work because you will hardly find 20 applications running parallel on your desktop that support gconf. If you refer to themeing and color settings, this is generic toolkit (GTK) stuff for which no Gnome is needed. (After all, you can set GTK themes and colors in XFCE as well.)

want to change all of your applications to use LCD-friendly font-smoothing

Another shoot in your foot. This is GTK, not Gnome stuff again and can be set in the XFCE control panel as well.

speak a language that isn't the default (and perhaps has strange rules like being written backwards)

Again, GTK stuff, not Gnome library stuff at all.

can't see / hear / type / use a mouse / etc.

Mouse and keyboard settings can be configured within XFCE as well.

Your post explains nicely why Gnome's code is bloated, adding 10-15 megabyte of memory- and cpu-eating stuff on top of GTK whose usefulness can be seriously questioned. Check out XFCE to see how you can implement a DE in about 4 megabytes, running screaming fast on PII class hardware, that builds on nothing but GTK and freedesktop.org standards and still is a sufficiently integrated GUI.

Re:it's all about xfce

[ajs]

Almost half of what you mention (configuration, internationalization, theming) is GTK stuff, not Gnome.

Much of this functionality that has been trickling into Gtk+ over the last year or two is being moved there from Gnome to allow non-Gnome applications to participate in the desktop, but let's not confuse things like Gtk+ internationalization and accessibility support with Gnome... they work at different levels of abstraction.

Well, except that this doesn't work because you will hardly find 20 applications running parallel on your desktop that support gconf.

Wrong.

I'm running metacity (WM), glade, evolution, xchat, galeon, multiload-applet-2, stickynotes_applet, notification-area-applet, wnck-applet, pam-panel-icon, evolution-wombat, nautilus, xscreensaver (hackish Gnome integration only), gnome-panel, gaim, gnome-terminal (x 11), gdm, gnome-session, bonobo-activation-server, gnumeric, gimp (Gtk+) and a number of other things.

You might not think of bonobo as an application, but I'm going to be pretty upset if it doesn't change when I set a parameter in gconf that tells it to!

Mouse and keyboard settings can be configured within XFCE as well.

And mouse and keyboard settings do NOT comprise accessiblity. Managing accessibility desktop-wide is a HUGE undertaking, and an area in which Windows and MacOS had long held the high ground over Linux, BSD and other POSIX operating systems. We know and understand that some people (like yourself) are going to be very unhappy with the "bloat" associated with supporting people with different needs, but that's why you get to go off and use xfce while the rest of us move forward and operate at a higher level of abstraction.

Your post explains nicely why Gnome's code is bloated, adding 10-15 megabyte of memory- and cpu-eating stuff on top of GTK whose usefulness can be seriously questioned.

Question away, I'll wait.

Check out XFCE to see how you can implement a DE in about 4 megabytes

When you want to change the anti-aliasing mode in your browser and spreadsheet app, does xfce do that for you, or do you have to know how to configure those two apps seperately?

If seperately, wouldn't it be nice if (while continuing to use xfce) those apps could have a convention of some sort that allowed them to communicate that information? Of course, xfce would then want in because there are cases where it could use that information to the advantage of the user.

This is called being a Gnome-compliant window manager. Welcome to the 2000s.

The media device manager...

[Anonymous Coward]

is the best upcoming feature of 2.8 IMO. I will finally be able to just plug in my various USB drives into the computer and have them mount (and unmount!) automatically.

For me personally, this means that my non-ubergeek wife (who isn't aware of the root password or the commands mount -a and umount -f), and will be able to download pictures off of the camera without asking me to unmount the camera or to fix the multiple mount points that cropped up since she plugged in the camera multiple times.

Thank you Gnome hackers!

Gnome gets better all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome's been really impressive with their rapid turn around schedule recently. With their 2.8 release already, I wonder what kind of goodies they'll have to add before they can rationalize a bump to 3.x.

I'm looking forward to their plans to further integrate OpenOffice.org (though I can't think of anything off hand that they could improve) and once the Mozilla project changes to Firefox as the official browser component, hopefully Gnome will switch to it. (I liked Galeon for a while before I heard about Firebird, but now I much prefer the latter.)

However, being an Emacs user, I constantly find myself struggling between whether to do learn to do things in a more Emacsish way or Gnomish way. I know Gnome allows you to enable a few Emacs keybindings, but it's hardly the same experience for me. With Evolution's online calender thing, I'm tempted to switch from Gnus, but I just don't know yet.

Maybe an Emacs Bonobo component or something would suffice so when working on the email text buffer it's an actual Emacs buffer that I can use all of my keybindings and scripts in.

Oh well, good job Gnome team. :-)

Bigfoot

[SilentReproach]

Does it still have the goofy "foot" icon in the taskbar? I know this sounds trivial, but I swear it's the reason I chose KDE years ago (Although the "K" wasn't very attractive either in times past).

I don't think I'm trollin, I honestly want to know if that icon can be user-defined.

Re:Bigfoot

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use the taskbar, yes, the four-toed foot is their equivalent to "Start" or "K", but if you use the menubar like OS X, then the foot is smaller and just an accent next to the text "Applications".

Re:Bigfoot

[ajs]

It depends on the distribution that you use.

The way Fedora installs by default, no you get a ... wait for it ... Fedora.

But ... and I can't say this enough ... GNOME IS NOT A TOOLBAR, TASK LIST, WINDOW MANAGER or any of those other things you're thinking of.

Don't like the foot menu? Change it or install a theme that changes it. What Gnome is a set of tools, libraries and interfaces for allowing your desktop (infrastructure, apps, etc) to communicate and for providing a set of standards to which a user can hold their applications accountable (in areas as far-ranging as internationalization, accessibility, configuration, error management, bug-reporting, menu layout, etc).

If you don't like the default background, get another. If you don't like the default theme, get another.

But, don't discount all of Gnome because of these trivialities. That's like saying you don't like Linux because of the default console font.

Why VNC?

[MrNemesis]

I'm confused as to why VNC has been integrated. Most Linux users (and windows too...?), I would have thought, would be happier with X11.

I hope you can choose not to install the VNC server... it's of utterly no use to me, and seems to smack of copying XP's built in remote desktop functionality.

There are several good VNC client/server packages out there for Linux, if you really want to use it.

Re:Why VNC?

[moorg]

I'm confused as to why VNC has been integrated.

Look at the use cases for Vino, the proposed included VNC. Mark McLoughlin has done an excellent writeup.

If you follow GNOME development you'll notice the shift towards better integration into the other desktop applications. See: Evolution and GAIM speaking over evolution-data-server.

Mark's use cases answer your question.

Re:Why VNC?

[kbielefe]

I personally don't use VNC at work because straight X is available and looks better in my opinion, but a lot of colleagues do because they can be working at their desk and then go to the lab and have all their editor windows, etc. open in exactly the same way. I use screen for the same reason at home. One of the nice things about gnome is that you don't have to have everything installed that's available. Most distros only install about half when you install "Gnome". Probably, you will have to install a package like gnome-vnc to get the extra (but tightly integrated) functionality.

Please please please

[djohnsto]

Fix gnome-terminal. Any terminal that uses more cpu to display the text from compiling software than is needed for the actual compile is just broken. Miguel complained (and stopped using gnome-terminal) about this more than 2 years ago! This is one of the few reasons that I have stuck with KDE.

(Yes, I know I can run konsole within gnome, but aside from the inconsistent themes, it sucks up a lot of memory to load both the gnome and kde libs at the same time.)

Re:Please please please

[juhaz]

It's nowhere as bad as taking more cpu than the actual compiling, though granted the overhead is quite sizeable...

Besides, you're assuming the problem is in terminal itself and not the underlying font layout and rendering libraries (pango and xft).. full unicode support and anti-aliasing take a toll.

Can't you just run rxv/x/e/aterm if you know you need to run something that's going to put a LOT of stuff to stdout, if gnome-terminal isn't fast enough and konsole hogs as much memory as running the whole KDE?

Re:I know it's been discussed before

[TheFlu]

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser true

Standards are the key

[metalac]

One key point that Gnome has, btw I use Gnome as my one and only WM, are the standards. I think there should be more of this and similiar things in Open Source community. The GNOME Human Interface Guidelines is a great way to let the developers know what's a good way to code the apps so that when you make them those apps don't look off from the rest of the desktop. I believe that if every project at one point had a version that standardized it, we would get much better software at the end of it. I know many people are all about freedom to do whatever the hell they want, and they should have that freedom, but if there are few standards set then the interoperability of Open Source software would be much easier to implement and it would be much easier on a user to use and on a developer to code and write new features for.

Re:Did they kill "spatial" Nautilus yet?

[jcupitt65]

From the interview:

• There are some small features in CVS that might be interesting though:
  * Visible preference that allows you to disable spatial mode

Re:Did they kill "spatial" Nautilus yet?

[Enucite]

"Gnome seems to want to be MacOS ten years ago, as opposed to KDE who are trying to be Windows five years ago."

So in the end, they're both really going for the same objective?

Gnome: Good... Metacity: Bad...

[SixArmedJesus]

I really like the Gnome desktop. I find the spatial nautilus very useful, but there are two things that I really don't like about the Gnome desktop. First is Metacity, the window manager. I can't stand it that I cannot middle click or right click on the maximize button and have it maximize the window vertically or horizontally. That is on of the most useful features that i've seen for quite a few window managers running under Linux and *BSD, and I see no reason for Metacity not to have it. (btw, if someone knows how to set that up, let me know! I'd love to change it...) My second beef is with gnome-terminal. It's WAY slow. I find myself installing rxvt just to have a fast terminal, even though it's not as pretty... or tabbed, which I miss when I have to use rxvt.

Other that that, Gnome is great, and I look forward to updating it on my Linux/BSD box.