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GNOME 2.8 Released

Posted by timothy on from the it's-slippery-and-cute dept.

damogar writes "The GNOME 2.8 Desktop and Platform release is the latest version of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment, out today, with an awesome schedule time. Some pretty cool improvements have been made, specially the Nautilus file manager, the new MIME system and others. Release notes are already available, as well as screenshots and a variety of sources. Enjoy!" jimmy_dean adds a plug for the new GNOME Journal, which is meant to be a source of "good written material surrounding GNOME and the opinions of the community."

20 of 506 comments (clear)

  1. cool by Chuck+Bucket · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm still happy with the progress Gnome/KDE keep making even though I've moved on to Openbox and/or XFCE4. We need Gnome/KDE for new adopters, truthfully perhaps very few of them will ever want to move to something simplier (or more complicated in their eyes). WIth the HIG ideas of Gnome I think they're leading the way with a consistant and (somewhat) easy to learn desktop.

    When I get my mom on Linux, she'll be in Gnome, as I think it'll be the shortest step from WinXP(ee).

    Also, first "BSD?" post? LIkely not.

    CVBalkjsfdj$#@$#@

    --
    free ipod and free gmail!
  2. xorg by barcodez · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know xorg 6.8 has only just been released but does this new version of gnome support any of the new features like transparency, damage or shadow?

    Either way it's an outstanding feat the gnome team have achieve - will in installing it tonight!

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  3. Memory usage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This isn't flamebait, as I appreciate the work the GNOME team is doing, but when are they going to concentrate on performance and memory usage? Right now it's _terrible_ - just as bad as Windows XP. And if we want to convert Windows users over to Linux, we need to provide incentives. There's no use telling a newcomer to run Lynx and Blackbox to get a fast desktop; they want the integration, the flexibility and the features.

    This seems to be a problem afflicting many open source projects now. OpenOffice.org is slower and heavier than MS Office. Firefox is slower and heaver than IE (not by a great deal, and it's still a superb browser). GNOME/KDE are slower and heavier than WinXP. I mean, I can run Office, IE and Outlook together SMOOTHLY on a WinXP box with 128M RAM.

    Try running OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Evolution and GNOME on the same system - it slows to a crawl. There are LOADS of people with 64 and 128M boxes out there who can't run a modern, desktop Linux effectively because it's getting so large and sluggish, and there are endless posts around the Net from newcomers who're puzzled as to why Linux is 'so slow'.

    This really needs to be sorted out. It makes Linux look half-baked, when we know how powerful it is. I supposed we have to look at open source in another way: it may lead to secure code, and it may lead to bugfixed code, but it doesn't lead to efficient, clean and elegantly-written code. Otherwise we'd have the speed advantage, and Linux's flagship products wouldn't be heavier and slower than Microsoft's.

    Just a thought. Good luck to the GNOMErs, but if Linux is going to really take off, it needs to offer some kind of speed advantage over Windows. Fewer users will switch if they just have to follow the upgrade treadmill.

    1. Re:Memory usage? by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Its no secret however that Linux can be configured to run beautifully on lower spec machines. Dont expect to be getting great performance with KDE 3.3 on X-Org (with composite manager installed) fancy icons/fonts and the rest of it - on an old P2 , thats asking for trouble.

      If you turn every thing on, yeah it will be as slow as GNOME. But if on start-up, you decide to turn off all goodies, or even a number of the goodies, then it runs great

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    2. Re:Memory usage? by Carewolf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually that _is_ the Dell philosofy, the default configurations have to little memory to be usefull, and any Dell salesman will tell you so truthfully. They make up for low base prices with overpriced memory-upgrades, since few of their customers have the guts to upgrade the memory themselves, even if it can save them 100-200$

  4. hope they finally got rid of some annoyances ... by drmancini · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... like:

    - gui option to switch off spatial nautilus
    - improved gdm which doesn't cause random system hangs on logout (with a dual display GeForce setup)
    - faster nautilus
    - fixed constantly non-functional (without necessary tweaking) file preview (audio and video)
    - more keyboard mapping options (I mean only having a gui option to toggle Alt click or Ctrl click to move windows sucks ... even an option to turn it off would help)

    ... i know that you can cope with most of these with enough forum hunting, GConf editing and XML hacking ... I did ... but come on gnome, you're soon gonna be 3.x ... these things should work out-of-the-box

    and I hope the new MIME implementation will finally be usable ...

    all in all ... can't wait to get home and ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge gnome ... ebuild anyone? :-P

    --

    Never underestimate the power of idiots in large groups
  5. Q: sandbox playtime? by 4of12 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can I use garnome to automagically build, install and test drive this latest Gnome without impacting my default installation or corrupting my ~/.g* files? As a non-root user, too?

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  6. Installed programs? by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not sure if Gnome handles this or not, but I was curious if the newest Gnome handles shortcuts properly. In the latest incarnations of Mandrake and SUSE, when you install a program, it simply disappears, with no shortcut anywhere to be found to the newly installed program, making both distributions that I tried completely useless in my opinion. Hell, even when I installed Firefox (what I thought was one of the better known, better made open source apps), I couldn't start the goddamned program after I installed it! But then again, this could be a distribution-level problem that Gnome doesn't have anything to do with... I have no idea.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  7. VNC support? by deragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Have you seen the VNC support description? Is this feasable now? Usually, you could not remotely see the desktop of a remote user. You could start a VNC server with no window to a CRT, and have multiple users share it with VNC clients, but to look at the actual X desktop that shows up on the console, this is a feature that never existed before.

    Anybody care to comment this? This is a neat feature if it works as described. However, how does this work when I run an accelerated Xorg server?

    --
    Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
  8. Identity Crisis by sEEKz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it just me or is gnome having identity problems?

    When I view the screenshot 3.png I see an Apple logo in the bottom left corner.
    Why advertise for other OS'es if you think you've got the best?

  9. Re:why do you use gnome? by ChaoticCoyote · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I use both KDE and Gnome (and XFCE from time to time on older boxes). As a developer, I need to see how my programs will operate on both environments, hence my schizophrenic selection of desktop environments.

    Gnome applications work and look just fine under KDE; I use Gnumeric as my spreadsheet, but Kword as my word processor. Since the programs run the same way under both desktops, my preference is largely determined by the set-up of the graphical environment. Gnome feels simpler and less "flashy" -- but on higher-end hardware, I like having my KDE eye candy. After all, why have a powerful machine if you don't use it's capabilities?

    I recommend Gnome to general users (my wife), while I run KDE most of the time. Like many matters in life, the choice of desktop environment is very personal, and should be base don what works best for you, and not on emotional rants by zealots.

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    All about me
  10. Everyone has lost their minds by Proc6 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    or fired all their user interface designers.

    I always thought the whole CONCEPT of a Windowing system / GUI was to provide a single, stable, cohesive "standard" to which all applications adhere. By doing so you've obligated the end user to learn the functions of a widget and application only once. Each new application learning cycle builds on the knowledge of the previous ones.

    Think back to Windows NT 4.0, as it's *maybe* _one of_ the best examples. During that time, most every application used the same look at feel (as in, identically), even Windows Media Player. The launch mechanism for most every application found its home in the Start Menu -> Program Files folder, and so on. OSX, (though my time spent with OSX is limited so far) seems to also build on this paradigm. Clean, but most importantly cohesive.

    But as the years have gone by, instead of refining this basic concept, subjecting users to minimal UI enhancements, but rather continually refining the model, the development cycles have gone completely the other way. Its a [geek] feature war and a designer war. Applications (like Media Player on Windows) deviate horrifically from the solid foundation of UI standards with a glowing trainwreck of 3D buttons and glass bevels plastered all over custom window framing. (I love the insanity that ensues when you move between full mode and windowed mode, that spawns another window with just an icon in it, someone get me a revolver.) While a "Media Player" can possibly (barely) be argued for a "custom experience", its spilling over into everything else. DVD ripping software, the entire Office suite, even Macromedia Flash uses a zillion windows with their own fucked up grips and icons.

    But now, it's moving into the desktop. The actual UI. Everyone (again, except maybe OSX so far, and based only on what I've seen) is to blame. Windows and Linux both. Longhorn is a god awful nightmare of confusing combinations of task and event driven models. Checkboxes by each filename in Windows Explorer? Redundant clocks and taskbars? Wizards and dummy-versions of everything like the (currently in XP) Control Panel that can be in classic mode or the new re-organized gay-mode. The implications are exponential learning curves and nightmare support models "Click Start -> Control Panel -> Network Settings... you dont have that? Hmm, oh wait you're in gay-mode for the Control Panel, okay well first click Classic Mode on the sidebar, THEN start over." . Linux distros have their craptasic methodology of installing every useless thing they can (X-Eyes anyone?) by default and the "Start Menu" clones of KDE and Gnome are a maze of "Start -> Settings -> System, Start -> System -> Preferences, Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Settings." with redundancy and gray deliniations of whats where.

    I dont know, when I see applications putting icons to launch them in

    • Start -> Programs -> MyApplication
    • Start Menu's commonly used bubbling app list
    • Start Menu's Pin-to list
    • Icons on the desktop
    • Quicklaunch icons on the quicklaunch toolbar
    • Mini-icons in the tray
    • Icons on taskbars of other apps (like editing a webpage with Word icon inside of IEs toolbar)
    • And being able to launch fucking Age of Empires from MSN Messenger (at least you used to be able to, I dont know if you still can, I stopped running it.)
    It makes me want to hang everyone thats in charge of this bullshit. Windows needs to quit providing more wizards, carnival buttons, redundant ways to do the same task and per-application custom UIs and Linux needs to stop ripping off everything every other OS does and sticking it all together into a disorganized mess.

    * Prediction: As soon as Longhorn comes out with its secondary taskbar littered with useless widgets like picture slideshows and analog clocks (like OSX is doing now I believe too), no matter how bad of an idea it is to start with, all major window managers in Linux will have one too. It's the, "What! They have something we don't have?! Who cares if it sucks, IMPLEMENT IT!" mentality.

    --

    I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!

    1. Re:Everyone has lost their minds by P-Nuts · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The parent post makes some very good points. I've used Windows, Linux and OSX quite a bit, one of the things I really don't like is the way the Desktop is used. I always feel I'm fighting against the computer to persuade it to use the Desktop as what it should be - a temporary working area.

      I don't want to launch programs from it, even commonly used ones. That's what a programs menu is for [skip to the last paragraph now if you're skimming], though it is convenient to have a shorter route to the commonly used ones, so it's a good idea to have a toolbar next to the complete menu. Gnome does quite well in this regard, in the default setup you get a programs menu next to launch bars, Windows is close to getting it right, but you have the Quicklaunch bar, the recently used start menu bit, the Internet/Email bit, the top level of the Programs bit, which is overload. If you drag Applications to the Dock in OSX, then you get a launch menu too.

      Then I remove all the icons from the desktop that shouldn't be there. By hard disks, home folder and any applications have no place there - I'll launch a Explorer/Nautilus/Finder to navigate them. As directory/folder navigation is important, I might like to be able to have several special places to start off in set up, as subitems of the file navigator icon. XFCE allows for this quite neatly.

      Then, clearly separate (oposite sides of the screen in Gnome and XFCE) I like to have some way of navigating open windows (and multiple desktops). OSX gets this a bit confused, as the Dock launches and resorts, on top of that Expose performs this function.

      Anyway, I like the Desktop to be a sort of in-basket. If it doesn't have anything on it except a pretty background, I have achieved a sense of calm. Stuff on it is awaiting filing somewhere else in my home folder, or deleting. I don't want anything else to be in my face. This is the computer analogue of my real world desk (well, the half of it not occupied by equipment).

    2. Re:Everyone has lost their minds by JCholewa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > Prediction: As soon as Longhorn comes out with its secondary taskbar littered with useless widgets like
      > picture slideshows and analog clocks (like OSX is doing now I believe too), no matter how bad of an
      > idea it is to start with, all major window managers in Linux will have one too. It's the, "What! They have
      > something we don't have?! Who cares if it sucks, IMPLEMENT IT!" mentality.

      You can already have a secondary panel (what you above call a "taskbar") in both GNOME and KDE. Heck, you can probably have more than that. Both environments are built around the idea of having multiple panels which contain the taskbar, pager, notification area ("system tray" in winspeak) and multipurpose applets. I run KDE with a top and bottom panel -- the top has a news ticker, a dictionary field, the apps menu and a list of currently mounted media (CD-ROM discs and so forth), while the bottom has my taskbar and notification area, as well as a digital clock, a binary clock, the show desktop button, a weather applet and some system monitoring stuff.

      Yep, that's right: KDE and GNOME were *first* with the idea of a "secondary taskbar littered with useless widgets". Heck, I didn't even tell you about the "fuzzy" clock. "Half past ten" indeed!

      We like having the best of all worlds. That's why you can change between applications using any or all of the windows way (task bar), the Apple way (Kompose, which acts like OS X's Expose) or the Unix way (multiple desktops plus focus-follows-mouse. The beauty of it is that any of these features that you don't like can simply be deactivated so that you never have to see them again.

      --
      -JC
      http://www.jc-news.com/coding/freedom/
      http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main

  11. GNOME/Debian? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    GNOME 2.8 will be fabulous running on top of Debian Sarge. We've got the desktop now, when will we get the OS itself? Or is the latest daily build of the RC1 good enough? Maybe we should wait until Sarge has been fully released, by which time GNOME will likely have released a patch to 2.8.1, and the relative haste/prudence of the two releases will be synchronized?

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    make install -not war

    1. Re:GNOME/Debian? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      At the moment GNOME 2.8 is in experimental. Hopefully the Debian developers will ignore GNOME 2.8 until the release of Sarge.

      BTW: Here are instructions for installing GNOME 2.8 on sid
      http://www.gnomejournal.org/gnome_debian.php

  12. Re:Once again, I must complain about fonts by mjm1231 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Oh, yeah, that's so much worse than the start button on my WinXP machine at work. The letters in the word "start" look like a rat chewed on them.

    (Apologies for the crappy geocities link.)

    --
    Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
  13. My Gnome 2.8.0 experience by dpw2atox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well ive been running the 2.7.x devel series and I gotta say gnome keeps getting faster and better in my opinion. HAL is amazing and I think that it really will make a nice environment for new linux users to take advantage of. I for one though am very pleased with this release. Instead of trying to do a ton of new features they instead only made a few new features and spent a lot of time on fixing bugs and doing little touches. Even during the code freeze I saw several bug fixes get pushed for outstanding issues in nautilus and eel2 which will make a better user experience. There were a few things I wish that they did do such as work on the menu code, and also to switch over to firefox as the default browser but mayde this will happen for 2.10. On a seperate note one thing that really disapointed me is that gtk2.6.0 isn't released yet. They did a few nice performance improvements in the 2.5.x devel series, specifically with screen window resizing, so as soon as its released I recomend giving it a shot with gnome 2.8 and then post your comments on the performance of gnome.

  14. Re:Epiphany Extensions by noda132 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We're very keen on an adblock extension. Personally, I wouldn't write it unless I could think up a MUCH less sucky user interface.

    Anyway, expect adblock in an upcoming epiphany-extensions release... probably before GNOME 2.10.

  15. Prevolution? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    According to the GNOME 2.8 release notes, it includes Evolution 2.0. But Novell hasn't released Evolution 2.0 (though we're in its promised "2004Q3" delivery window). Is the Evolution 2.0 included with GNOME 2.8 a stable version? Is there any reason to wait for Novell to release it on their own?

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    make install -not war