Gnome 2.8 RC1 Released

Too much like MS? by TheUnFounded · 2004-09-01 16:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'll probably get blasted for this, but like it or leave it, MS is known for making an interface that's usable to the masses. Want Linux on the desktop? That's the way to do it.

Re:Too much like MS? by OmniVector · 2004-09-01 16:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

why copy the copy cat? I'd rather they copy apple, who's known for quality interfaces. luckily though, gnome has taken a page or two from them rather than microsoft. i'd say it's kde who's mimicing windows (konqueror is a file browser + web browser. in gnome these are different. gnome strives for simplicity. kde strives for features, etc).

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- tristan
Re:Too much like MS? by MarcQuadra · 2004-09-01 16:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

I disagree, I run WindowMaker, and most kids who come over and sit at my desk figure it out quickly enough, they really dig the dock, and they LOVE the 'start menu whenever I right-click the background'. Almost everyone figures out the multiple-desktop thing too, when they see the pager with eight screens that shows a mini-screen for each one.

It helps that my menu items are named after the FUNCTION rather than the application that provides it. When you see 'music' it runs juk, when you click 'web' it opens firefox, etc.

The Windows-style taskbar interface is pretty weak if you intend to keep your session running for days or weeks instead of hours.

Everyone remarks how 'clean' and 'simple' my layout is, and the geekier note that 'it takes a lot less mousing around to get stuff done'.

The trick is that every corporate desktop needs to be uniform and MANAGED by someone who does the stuff like rename menu items to functions and remove all the excess cruft that the heavier desktop environments populate interfaces with.

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"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Re:Too much like MS? by SnprBoB86 · 2004-09-01 17:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

Personally I have always found Apple's interfaces limiting. They put the most common options right out in front (as they should), but seem to totally forget the more advanced options. And the lack of an (accessable) context menu is also very weird to me.

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http://brandonbloom.name
Re:Too much like MS? by AntiOrganic · 2004-09-01 17:19 · Score: 4, Informative

And the lack of an (accessable) context menu is also very weird to me.
No one's making you use a one-button mouse. You can plug in any regular two-button mouse and map the right-click to pop up a context menu.
Re:Too much like MS? by crackshoe · 2004-09-01 17:23 · Score: 5, Informative

accesible? if you're using the provided one button mouse (and i know very few people who do), you just hold down one key, and you get your context menu. just because you don't understand how to do something doesn't mean its not accesible.

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Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Re:Too much like MS? by InfiniteWisdom · 2004-09-01 17:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

I think button 1 does something, button 2 does something else is a lot more intuitive than button one does something if you press it for a short time and something else if you press it for a long time, and yet another thing if you move the mouse while you;re pressing it for a long time
Re:Too much like MS? by 10101001+10101001 · 2004-09-01 18:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

On that note, why should a click, two clicks, and a double click be treated differently? It's actually the third that's the issue, since with all the things that in Windows were made to require double clicking people double click on hyperlinks because they've come to understand a double click is what you use to activate a stand-alone widget (and MS stole this idea from Apple, clearly, who probably got it from PARC).

Fundamentally, a mouse is a pretty horrible tool to do a lot of things. Things like a second or third button and adding a scroll wheel all only attempt to overcome various limitations in control design inherent in trying to use a pointer in a 2D space. It's also a core reason why people are so attached to their keyboard, as it's often the case a lot quicker to just type a number into a spinbox or type in part of a url and arrow down to the right one (or finish it most often since your history has deep urls). Anyways, enough of that rant. :)

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Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Re:Too much like MS? by dtfinch · 2004-09-01 18:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

No one's making you use a one-button mouse.

I just checked the Apple store to see if I'm still correct. In their store, I tried ordering a Mac. A couple different models actually to be certain. The only option was a one button mouse. The two button mice are in another section of their store, and must be bought seperately. So if you want a two button mouse, you essentially have to buy 2 mice, the one button mouse that came with it (which you'll either burn for heat or use to decorate your christmas tree), and the two button mouse you'll actually use with the Mac. And of course they only resell two button mice. They don't have their own. Same goes for the tiny vs full keyboards. If it's a teeny tiny keyboard or one button mouse, it's made by Apple, if it's a 2+ button mouse or full sized keyboard, it's it's not.

But it's not the mouse and keyboard that bothers me, it's that I can't find the reason for it.
Re:Too much like MS? by prockcore · 2004-09-01 18:55 · Score: 3, Informative

I think button 1 does something, button 2 does something else is a lot more intuitive than button one does something if you press it for a short time and something else if you press it for a long time

Pet peeve: the "hold button for context menu" only works in the dock. How inconsitant. Doesn't work in the finder, doesn't work in safari.. doesn't work anywhere but the dock.
Re:Too much like MS? by farnz · 2004-09-01 19:44 · Score: 4, Informative

What happens if I want to be notified of an incoming IM, and I have sound disabled, while working in another desktop?

Certainly with Kopete, and presumably with other multiple desktop aware IM programs, a new message notification can be made to appear briefly on all desktops; this can be configured on a per-contact basis.
Thus, when my close friends IM me, I get a prompt no matter what virtual desktop I'm on. When it's IM spam, or a stranger, I don't get prodded.

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I appear to have a blog. Odd.
Re:Too much like MS? by @madeus · 2004-09-01 20:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

There are several relevent points:

(i.)Knowing how to design good GUI software and interfaces (both physical and graphical) means knowing what to leave out.

Software ought not to require users to use context sensitive menus to perfom an operation - if it does so then it is badly implimented because most users will simply not figure this out (and if and when they do, it won't be until after a significant of time wasted searching for the way to do it).

Context sensitive menus should assist 'power users' in accessing things or performing operations more quickly, but should never be the only way to perform a given operation. I would further say that developers ought to be striving as much as possible to remove the need for right clicking from their interfaces.

These tennets hold true even when an application is targeted at what are preceived as 'advanced' users. Sooner or later someone not as advanced as you think is going to end up using the software (or alternatively someone just having a bad day) and they are going to run in to problems because they can't find the way to perform the operation because they didn't realise they had to (or even could) right click to perform this operation.

(ii.)People who don't know that context menu's are avalible are the exact same people who are better off with a one button mouse in the first place.

The 'average joe' still replies to instructions of "click that icon" with "With what mouse button?" Most people are casual users of computers at best, and they are still daunted by having two butttons. The situation could be possibly be improved by having graphical (and possibly textual) representations of the behaviour on the mouse buttons themselves but that is not common.

When they are ready for added complexity it is there, just like the Unix command prompt is there for those who want it, but it's completely hidden from the majority of users.

(iii.) Dispite being a unix software developer I have come to prefer the design of Apple's own mouse over my 5 button scroll wheel mouse when using Mac OS X.

The primary reason being that I don't have to hold down a specific area of the mouse, just push down on it generally (the physical level of pressure required is adjustable). I have found this much better for my hand/wrist postioning (meaning I spend less time with my fingers crawled up in a ball).

I also find that on Mac OS (this applies to both classic too) software is generally designed in such as way as to be completely usable without the need to right click, largely thanks to things like more comprehensive drag and drop support.

It's not without sacrifices, I like scroll wheels for example, but when using OS X I don't find the lack of scroll wheel nearly as much of a problem as I do when using Gnome or Microsoft Windows, largely due to three factors relating to scrolling:

1). Window scrollbar indicators are always proportional (with a 'sensible' minimum size).

2). When I click on a scroll bar the visible area of the window jumps to exactly where I have clicked instantly (not just generally scrolls 'up' or 'down' a page).

3). Both Scoll Up AND Scoll Down arrows at the top AND bottom of each scollbar.

These of course are toggleable through the Preferences panel but I find with them I no longer miss having a scroll wheel enough to give up my 'no button' (push-to-click) Apple branded Bluetooth mouse when using OS X. Though it is something of a close call (mostly I miss having back/forward buttons and scroll wheels are still very useful with FPS games).
Re:Too much like MS? by Ford+Prefect · 2004-09-01 22:51 · Score: 3, Funny

Later, he admitted that he could also have put a text label on both buttons, but back then he thought that were ugly.

'LEFT' and 'RIGHT'?

I can imagine the jokes about Mac users that would have ensued... ;-)

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Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Re:Too much like MS? by swv3752 · 2004-09-02 01:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

There is another school of thought that says: Design for the upper tier not the Lowest Common Denominator. Who wants something designed for fools and morons?

One must learn to drive a car, ride a bike, row a boat, swim, operate power tools, et cetera. Why should one not have to learn to use a computer?

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Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life

more like windows? by dnotj · 2004-09-01 16:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

Commentary in article submissions now...

Personally (as a long time KDE user) I don't find windows all that much like KDE. I sat down at an XP box the other day to try and accomplish some simple editing in a word document with embedded visio and felt lost. Perhaps Gnome is becoming more KDE like?

BTW: open office has trouble saving (via crashes) documents with a large number of embedded visio drawings. :(

.dn

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No more Micro$oft bashing from me. Its like bashing at the special olympics.

cache? by TCM · 2004-09-01 16:39 · Score: 3, Informative

since it even got its own story, why not use it?

try here.

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Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6

Re:cache? by MikeCapone · 2004-09-01 16:59 · Score: 3, Informative

Yeah, that's the thing.. I guess submitters can't all know about this, but the slashdot editors could re-write URLs to include the .nyud.net:8090 and that'd save quite a few people a slashdotting.

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Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Re:cache? by geeveees · 2004-09-01 17:04 · Score: 5, Funny

Anyone have a google cache of the freecache of the coral cache (which is suffering from the /. effect)?

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It's not KDE by steveha · 2004-09-01 16:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

I looked at all the screenshots, and nothing on there jumped out and bit me and yelled "Windows! IE!" I have no idea what FlipmodePlaya is complaining about.

It looks to me like it's just the GNOME 2.x that I know and love, with subtle, very incremental bits of polish. FlipmodePlaya, perhaps you could be a bit more specific?

P.S. I'm really looking forward to some of the new features, specifically Volume Manager and the new MIME handlers. GNOME 2.8's MIME features won't just be easier to use than previous GNOME versions--they will actually be easier to use than Windows's application association system.

steveha

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lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely

Re:It's not KDE by theantix · 2004-09-01 17:00 · Score: 3, Informative

do you not see a striking resembalence to Windows/Internet Explorer, as I stated?

No. Hey, you asked -- I just answered. They *do* share a commonality with dialogs that are designed to be clear and consise -- some Windows dialogs meet this criteria but others certainly do not.

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501 Not Implemented
Re:It's not KDE by RevAaron · 2004-09-01 19:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

this is in response to a lot of people talking about this...

If you don't see any striking similarities between KDE and Windows, then you've been using Windows too long. GNOME has a lot of the same similarities that KDE has with Windows, though oftentimes they seem to steer away from the level of borrowing that KDE does. It could be independent thought on the part of the GNOME developers, or they may just be borrowing from other sources, which is fine by me.

A lot of folks don't really see many similarities. Why? They assume that all of these features that KDE or GNOME borrowed from Windows are just the way that any desktop would do them. They take for granted the way things look and feel, first on Windows where they got started, and then on Linux using KDE and/or GNOME. Not all desktops need to look like Windows, KDE or GNOME.

Most KDE developers grew up using Windows first, rather than the Amiga, NeXTSTEP, BeOS, Mac OS Classic or CDE. They associate the idea of a desktop environment with what Windows provides. The Windows desktop is the benchmark for a person who has been using Windows. That's fine, especially when they are targeting Windows converts, making the move from Microsoft Windows to Linux/Windowsish on the same x86 PC easy enough. It makes sense, but it shows. Most regular Windows users- and most regular KDE/GNOME users and a very high percentage of KDE/GNOME developers only have substantial experience using Windows. Most folks have used Mac, but it's Windows that is running in VMware while they try to put together analogous features *not* those other OSes/desktop environments.

P.S. Just out of curiousity, how will GNOME 2.8's MIME features be easier than the Winders way of doing things? From the screenshots in some of the replies to your post they really don't seem much different. IMHO, the GNOME version is ultimately better, as it depends on a MIME type rather than the extension.

Although with our current file systems, it is the file extension that tells the DE what MIME type it is- but down the line, when we are finally all using more flexible databases for data storage rather than random containers of unstructured binary and textual data that MIME type system will come in handy, I expect. Or on a file systems like BeFS or HFS+ where you can have metadata tagged on specifying the MIME type regardless of what goes after the past period in the filename.

But how easier? Both are pretty straight forward- you got a file type. You tell it what apps can deal with it and choose a default. When you double click the file, it opens the default, but when you right click you get the option to open the document up in any of the associated apps. The Windows version seems to add a little more power- that is, you can specify different actions (open, edit, print, analyze, whatever makes sense for that file type) that calls those different apps, etc etc. Perhaps GNOME 2.8's MIME system has that but isn't something I'm seeing in the screenshots, but if not, it's something they should add and I'd expect they would.

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Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Re:It's not KDE by CaptnMArk · 2004-09-01 21:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

Not using file extensions on today's file system is a bad idea. They are the easiest way for most people to identify a type of file. An icon is much worse most of the time and a separate column with file type is often less visible (and in some views not at all).

Most clueful windows people enable file extensions immediately. They are very useful between separating safe-to-click files and unsafe-to-click files. They are also a hint to the user about what will happen when they click on the file.

And if the above is not enough. I haven't seen anyone proposing elimination of .c and .h extensions yet.

Yeah by dedazo · 2004-09-01 16:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

My opinion: the GUI changes look too much like Windows/Internet Explorer for my tastes; I guess it's not just KDE

Honestly I'm getting a bit tired of this march towards boring copied GUIs that only half-work. I mean, KDE is becoming almost unusable with all the crap in the menu and little parts and whatnot. I mean, I suppose it's nice for new users but I really don't like it.

That's why I went with the little mouse.

No disrespect to the GNOME and KDE hackers, but it's good to have choices. The big desktops are becoming more difficult and time consuming to customize "just right*.

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Re:Yeah by Brandybuck · 2004-09-01 18:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

The big desktops are becoming more difficult and time consuming to customize "just right*.

If XFCE is customized "just right" out of the box for you, then great. Someone must have been reading your mind. But for me and a lot of people, it is NOT customized just right out of the box for the way we like to use the desktop. Frankly, there's way too many people and way too few desktops to expect very many instances of people finding a desktop whose default settings perfectly match their preferred customizations.

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Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!

Submissions by entrigant · 2004-09-01 16:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

My opinion: the GUI changes look too much like Windows/Internet Explorer for my tastes; I guess it's not just KDE."

You know it wouldn't kill the slashdot editors to EDIT submissions instead of just dumping them as is into the main site. Especially when one is as unprofessional as this. Flaming does NOT belong on the front page of slashdot. This is absolutely rediculous. First "four of parts", and now this bull? Why, Slashdot, do you feel like you can ask me for money when you pull crap like this?

Re:Submissions by stor · 2004-09-01 17:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

I hate to agree with you but I do.

The snide and brain-dead remarks/trolls/flamebait should be left to the posters, rather than be in full view on the front page.

Otherwise you end up with patronising posts such as this one =)

Cheers
Stor

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"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Re:Submissions by optikSmoke · 2004-09-01 18:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Um, its a copy dialog. Really, it's ok. If they've decided to make it a dialog, there isn't much else to do with it. It looks like they put the progress bar at the top instead of the bottom........ but there isn't much else to put in there, so I don't see how it can be considered "copying" windows. If you take the simplest dialogs as an example, obviously there will be similarities.

Anyway, I don't understand people's outright negative reactions when things "look like" Windows. Some parts of most desktops look like some parts of others, it's just a matter of choosing which parts are best for inclusion, or building something better if that's possible. Windows may not be the best in all areas (I'll be the first to admit my annoyance with some of its behaviour), but in some areas it has good UIs -- and I don't see why making a similarly good UI is frowned upon. However, in no way do all of either KDE or GNOME resemble Windows or Apple, and both desktops have their own pluses over other systems.
Re:Submissions by prockcore · 2004-09-01 18:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

Look at dialogues such as this and tell me it doesn't look as if they went out of their way to make it look like the Explorer copy/download one.

Looks exactly like the OSX copy/move dialog box. No reason to be different just for the sake of being different.

Evolution does not belong !! by Qwavel · 2004-09-01 16:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Evolution should not be part of Gnome - it should be added by the people who build the distro's.

If you start adding applications to Gnome, where do you stop? Are they going to add OpenOffice or AbiWord/Gnumeric to the next version of Gnome? After all, a word processor is pretty basic.

The Gnome people should focus on making it easy for distro builders and end-users to add (well integrated) apps. Don't build the apps into the desktop.

Re:Evolution does not belong !! by theantix · 2004-09-01 16:57 · Score: 5, Informative

There is a good reason why Evo is being included -- having the contact information centralized and standard in every Gnome installation means that other Gnome applications can use that data. This has implications for IM clients, browsers, file managers, and the interesting new fringe projects like Storage and Beagle and Dashboard. Without Evo's datastore built into Gnome, they would have to build an independant contact manager, and to me it makes sense to use the perfectly good one that Evolution already has.

And I'm not even an Evo user, I just understand the logic behind one of the reasons to include it. I'm sure there are other reasons too.

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501 Not Implemented
Re:Evolution does not belong !! by Eric+Smith · 2004-09-01 17:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

good reason why Evo is being included -- having the contact information centralized and standard in every Gnome installation means that other Gnome applications can use that data.
If having that data is valuable for other applications, then it would be reasonable to include a system component that provides the storage and APIs for that data. Then Evolution and other Gnome applications could use it. But that doesn't justify including the entire Evolution client as a standard part of Gnome.
Re:Evolution does not belong !! by JamesHenstridge · 2004-09-01 17:18 · Score: 5, Informative

The component of Evolution that handles storage of calendar and address book data has been split off into a separate evolution-data-server module. This is the module that other programs use for calendar and address book integration.

It would also be possible for other mail clients to make use of e-d-s for address book storage, in which case they would also benefit from the desktop integration.

Re:For the slashdotted by Camel+Pilot · 2004-09-01 16:51 · Score: 3, Funny

hmmm... Has anybody cached the cache?

Explorer Easy to use? by Luineancaion · 2004-09-01 16:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't think that microsoft have done a good job of making computers easy to use at all, for a complete beginner it's completely confusing, when my father first tried to use a windows box he didn't know at all what to do with it to get the stuff he wanted done. Since using Gnome he hasn't asked me a single question and has found it incredibly easy to use. Keep it simple stupid.

Re:Explorer Easy to use? by ciroknight · 2004-09-01 18:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

Important question: Had he used Windows before GNOME?

I only ask because the skills learned in Windows are easily portable to any current GUI, and visa versa. I personally believe that I could sit down at any computer and figure out the GUI, but then again I was like this when I first started using computers with Windows 3.1 on them. So it's really important to look and see how GUIs are alike and how they are different.

Today, the main functionality of a GUI is virtually the same in any operating system, under any Windows Manager (minus a few frenge ones...); we are getting to the point that we are "desktop-agnostic". The only thing that remains in Linux is to get video accelleration up to Windows/MacOS X levels, and once there, start sprucing everything up with a bit of eye candy (drop shadows rock eye-candy wise, fast window transforms like in Mac OS X, etc). But I do have to admit that Linux, at current, is far more themeable than either Windows XP or Mac OS X, and I believe it will probably remain that way for a long time... (bad for new users, good for established users).

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"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush

Not necessarily bad... by FiReaNGeL · 2004-09-01 16:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

Ressemblance to Windows / IE goes a long way toward new users migration for Microsoft, keep that in mind.

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Eureka Science News - automatically updated

I see these +0.1 releases discussed often, but.. by SpookyFish · 2004-09-01 16:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

I use linux and 'doze both daily, but spend ~70% of my time hacking code on linux. The WM doesn't matter that much to me, because it just needs to be a good way between 4 desktops full worth of bash shells and vi windows.. but both gnome and kde feel weak when it comes to the 'everyday' stuff I usually do on windows .. email, browsing, office apps, etc.
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the real BUT, though, is this thought - Would it help the (big) open source groups to start being more feature focused?

Look at many dot releases from M$ or Apple.. 90% is NEWNEWNEW and a little is 'does xyz better, zyx works now'

The geek stuff needs to be available, sure, but "higher level" messages might go far to boost adoption.

My thinking is, Average Joe just dipping a toe into 'non-conformist' ways, and sees a big new announcement.. he looks in and sees a ton of stuff he doesn't understand, and a long list of bugs fixed that makes him think 'ugh, this still has too many problems.'

If he looks in and sees mostly "Now imports Word 2006 docs with perfect formatting! .... New graphics engine leverages 3d hardware to be 80% faster! .." he is going to have a very different view.

$.02

Re:Slashdotted by davydmadeley · 2004-09-01 16:57 · Score: 4, Informative

http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-8/

Official Mirror by davydmadeley · 2004-09-01 17:00 · Score: 5, Informative

I'm not going to make the mistake of getting in trouble for getting /.ed again. The maxclients on that server has been set down quite low, I've added a redirect to offload to offload to GNOME's webserver.

If someone could update the story URL, that would be great ;)

Human Interface Guidelines by phreakv6 · 2004-09-01 17:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

GNOME 2.4 used to be slower than KDE 3.1... atleast on my configuration... but GNOME 2.8 seems to have improved hell-a-lot in terms of speed.. looks like am back to GNOME again..
It is also very interesting to see how Gnome is developing Human Interface Guidelines. I wish programmers would stick to them.

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fifteen jugglers, five believers

Re:Slashdotted by TCM · 2004-09-01 17:11 · Score: 3, Informative

Argh. It ate my link :(

This I meant. Yes, I preview from now on :(

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Too much like Windows!?!? Oh, Heaven Forbid!!!!!! by ZuperDee · 2004-09-01 17:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

My opinion: the GUI changes look too much like Windows/Internet Explorer for my tastes; I guess it's not just KDE.

Since when does "looking too much like Product X" automatically make something bad? Are you really that much of a zealot that you concern yourself more with how much it "looks like Windows/IE" than with how USEFUL GNOME IS AS A PRODUCT IN ITS OWN RIGHT?

Good grief, man!!! I'd hate to break it to you, but I hate Microsoft just as much as anyone here, if not MORE so... They *ARE* an evil company, no two ways about it. HOWEVER, having said that: it IS possible for even the most evil of people/corporations to have a good idea once in a while. (Need I point out that Hitler, for all his evil, was the one who started work on things like the Autobahn and the Volkswagen.)

If I were to take your argument to an extreme, I would have to say: Ogg Vorbis is no good--after all, the concepts behind it sound too much like MP3 or AAC.

Heh. No wonder Slashdot has so little credibility with some people.

I need some karma by md17 · 2004-09-01 17:24 · Score: 3, Informative

So that you all can avoid those google searches here are the links:

Storage Beagle
Dashboard

Outsider's Take by cjsnell · 2004-09-01 17:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

I haven't looked at GNOME since the very early versions. I've always been a waimea/blackbox fan. The look and feel is very impressive--and nothing like MS Windows in my opinion. It looks crisp and business-like. This is attractive enough to get me to try it out. I wonder how long it would take to build on my P3 FreeBSD box...

Re:Outsider's Take by ajs · 2004-09-02 00:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

Look and feel are uninteresting except where they are expressions of unique features. Gnome, KDE, WindowMaker and dozens of minor desktops I've probably never heard of are all themeable.

The real test is how FUNCTIONAL your desktop is. Does it have modern internationalization and accessibility featurs. Does it provide a framework for application cooperation? Does it provide a framework for user management of desktop features that is consistent, even for external elements?

Pretty baubles are easy and relatively universal. Functionality is hard.

Brave New GNOME by Doc+Ruby · 2004-09-01 17:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

The inclusion in GNOME of the improved MIME lookup engine, with configurable renderers, is a tremendous step. Apps should use IPC to exchange data, each handling only their own processing specialty. Transport apps that merely retrieve data per specified protocol (eg. FTP, HTTP, torrent), and presentation apps that merely render data per type, and accept user interaction, with standard APIs among them, make the entire system more stable. And easier to expand. Sometime soon we'll have apps which include layered, overlapping window panes each rendering and accepting user events, calling across to mixed logic components, and down into any data source, whether local storage, network, or sensors. Compilable flowcharts, anyone?

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make install -not war

I agree... by carlmenezes · 2004-09-01 18:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

Let's look at things from a Windows user's point of view :

1) Things work.
2) They look good.
3) Few options available, but most are hidden in the registry. Those few options seem more than sufficient for the teeming masses.

Now take someone from that environment and put them on Gnome. What does he/she experience?

1) Stuff works.
2) It looks good.
3) Few options available, but most are hidden in the registry. Those few options seem more than sufficient for the teeming masses.

Now, let's take a windows power user :
1) Things work, but always looking for ways to make them work faster.
2) It looks good, but always looking for ways to customize it.
3) Few options available, so the user always has some program Xteq XSetup Pro to tweak hidden settings all over the place.

Take THAT user and put him/her on KDE:
1) Things work and work fast. User is quite happy.
2) It may or may not look good, but hey, it's VERY customizable, so it WILL look good after a week.
3) Tons of options available all over the place - the former windows power user is in heaven.

So to sum it up, KDE and Gnome in my opinion, both serve a VERY good purpose - they cater to the needs to both ends of the spectrum of Windows users - and they're both getting better/faster with each new version.

Now since we're celebrating Gnome 2.8 RC1 here, kudos go out to the Gome devs out there for capturing the essence of Windows' ease of use and porting it to Linux. You guys are doing a great job.

It would be nice to have a unified Desktop one day, but hey, I'm not complaining right now, even tho I'm a KDE fan - GREAT WORK GNOME! - I'm seriously thinking of setting up Gnome 2.8 as my mum's default Linux account and see how she likes it - she currently uses KDE 3.3 :)

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Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't by Alioth · 2004-09-01 20:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, from the screenshots, I don't think it looks anything like Windows (other than having the features that all GUIs have, so there will always be some similarity).

But part of the problem with Free desktop critics is you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you make your interface look like Windows, these critics will have a go because it looks like Windows. If you make it look unlike Windows, they will criticise you because it's "unfamiliar".

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Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows

Too much like Windows? by 10Ghz · 2004-09-01 23:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

Answer me this: Why is anything that even remotely resembles Windows automatically a bad thing? Is this just a case of "Windows? It's made by Microsoft. And since Microsoft sucks, Windows suck as well. And since Windows and Microsoft sucks, the Windows UI sucks as well!".

I don't think Gnome looks like Windows. Well, of course it (and KDE as well) shares some common things with Windows. They all have windows. they have a taskbar. They have a start-menu or equivalent. And they all offer integrated system with similar look 'n feel between apps and tools. Are ANY of those things bad things? Why? Just because Windows has them as well?

Why don't you whiners start your own GUI-project. Call it UTIADFWAP, or "UI That Is As Different From Windows As Possible". Make sure that it doesn't look anything like Windows. Maybe then you will be happy. Who cares about usability or consistensy, at least it would be different from Windows! And it seems that many people think that being different from Windows is the primary feature of a Linux/Unix-UI these days!

Some "anything but Windows!"-zealots usually whine about KDE that "it looks too much like Windows". I use KDE at work (occasionally I boot to W2K for a game or two) and XP at work. I don't think KDE and Windows'es look that much alike. Well, the file-dialog is a bit similar, but that's it. And that's not really a bad thing, since I think the Windows file-dialog serves me well. The one in KDE looks somewhat similar, but it's alot better.

Yes, I dislike Microsoft as well. And Windows the OS has it's share of problems. But it's UI is OK on the basic level. Yes, the UI does have problems as well, but luckily KDE (and Gnome I think) fixes those issues.

repeat after me: just because something can be found in Windows does not automatically mean that it's a bad thing.

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