GNOME 2.8 Released

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."

Comments

cool

[Chuck Bucket]

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$#@$#@

xorg

[barcodez]

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!

Memory usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

hope they finally got rid of some annoyances ...

[drmancini]

... 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

Everyone has lost their minds

[Proc6]

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.

Re:Everyone has lost their minds

[P-Nuts]

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).