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GNOME 2.10 Beta 1 Screenshot Demo

linuxbeta writes "GNOME 2.10 Beta 1 has just been released. There is a nice screenshot demo here. Also known as 2.9.90, GNOME 2.10 Beta 1 is the first pre-release intended for wide public scrutiny before the final release in March. It is packed full of tasty GNOME goodness. This release is a feature frozen snapshot primarily intended for wide public scrutiny before the final GNOME 2.10 release in March. Like the good old days of Linux kernel development, GNOME uses odd minor version numbers to indicate development status. Please check the 2.9 start page for more info. - gnomedesktop.org/node/2138"

19 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. Fonts look nice by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But everything is so huge. The screen resolution looks really terrible. What is that 640x480? Did GNOme just enter the VGA world?

    And I'm not sure I'd like that "Courtesy of OSshots" banner at the top. Ugly.

    So my initial reaction, is, "Hey, that's cool. Where did the mouse pointer go?" Then my second reaction was, "It looks like every other window manager out there."

    Screenshots are nice, but what are they trying to show us that can't be done with any other window manager?

  2. Difference by mboverload · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Honestly, I relaly don't see much of a difference.

    1. Re:Difference by Brandybuck · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I understand what you're saying, but the "gestural paradigm" doesn't work when you have lots of available actions. Some of them are fine. But to do everything with some sort of gesture, you're going to end up with dozens of keys to press while dragging. You can't remember them all. Alt+P+drag equals print, Alt+Y+drop equals compress, Shift+Alt+M equals upgrade the package the icon came from, etc, etc. What if you do Alt+P+drag on a binary executable? Does it print out the splash screen?

      That's why there are context menus. The most common items can remain gestures (copy, delete), but you're going to have to put actions in a context menu, especially if they are not universal to the object being manipulated.

      Drag-and-drop and other gestural interfaces are far more obvious.

      Nonsense. The only reason it seems that way is because so many people have prior experience with other desktops. There are no analogues in real life to holding down a key while dragging. Some people may stick their tongues out while trying to thread a needle, but that's an individual behavioral quirk, and not a universal instinct applicatble to the computer desktop.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    2. Re:Difference by cortana · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > No, it's right up there next to the "Audio" tab ...you know, the one that should
      > read "Sound."

      Then I don't understand how the fact that the multimedia systems selector is *not* a volume control, could have escaped your understanding.

      > Sound and video are two different things. They don't belong together. Break
      > one out and call it -- I'm gonna get wacky here --"Sound," and the other
      > "Video."

      The actions of picking which subsystems to use for audio/video (hence the 'multi' in multimedia) capture/output belong together. The actions are known as "selecting which multimedia systems to use". Hence, "multimedia system selector".

      > Of course, if you have no video card attached to your computer, a "Video"
      > control panel is superfluous. No video output, no need for a "Video" control,
      > see? So if there's no video output (composite, 601, 292M, whatever), there
      > should be no video control panel.

      Quite incorrect. I may wish to select one of the video sinks that records a stream to disk, shunts it accross a network, or calculates MD5sums of the data stream. Not to mention configuring video capture.

      > To change the volume, you click on the little volume icon shown at the top
      > right of the screen.

      Because:
      * the multimedia systems selector is not a "sound" control panel; strcmp("multimedia systems selector", "sound") != 0
      * if changing the volume was hidden away in a control panel then unskilled users would never find it
      * if it were hidden away in a control panel then anyone who did find it would be annoyed that it was hidden away!

  3. Gnome? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful


    A changelog be more useful than crappy screenshots...

    And why is this news anyway? There's several hundred current distros. Wheres the news posts for all those?

  4. bad menu UI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's a big space between the "foot" and "Applications" (same spacing as between other menus), yet they're the same menu?! Either glue the foot to Applications, or call it foot *or* applications. What where they thinking?

  5. still only one background for workspaces by DeathAndTaxes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is just about the only complaint I have with gnome. You're stuck with the same desktop pic on all your workspaces. It's gone on too long, and it's silly.

  6. A geeks wishlist... by rmdir+-r+* · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Smaller GTK widgets (Maybe its just perceived, but GNOME, and GTK apps in general seem to waste waay to much real estate... not everyone has a 21' monitor..)

    A decent default theme (Grey is ugly. Get over it.)

  7. Perhaps I'm missing something... by hatrisc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But screenshots of the next version of a piece of software do absolutely nothing if it looks exactly the same!

    --
    I write code.
  8. Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux by Anubis350 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    as both a mac and linux user I'm bothered by both you trolls, stop being jerks and actually realize that a) both platforms have their merits and drawbacks and b) competition is good.

    [begin rant]

    I'm getting goddamn sick and tired of fan-boy posts, be they linux, mac, windows, goddamn paper tape, etc. Take the time to actually use a platform and you'll realize that it probably has its merits (yes even windows). Go out, stop trolling, and get a life. Posts like the parent and grandparent are the reason why slashdot is sometimes such a pain to read.

    [end rant]

    --
    "goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
  9. fix the file selection by wotevah · · Score: 2, Insightful


    I just hope they fix that godawful file selection thing. I have never found a tool so unfriendly to "power users". I mean, what's up with forcing people to browse instead of letting them type the path.



    I mean having to browse through to /usr/bin and waiting minutes for it to build a fancy list so I can finally select what I already knew I wanted, that annoyance is worth wanting to switch to KDE or something else that allows me to TYPE stuff. Yaknow, like the old interface.

  10. GNOME by Codifex+Maximus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There was once a day when I was in the GNOME camp. I didn't like the non-free Qt stuff. These days, Qt is not much of an issue. I still appreciate the GNOME guys for giving us an alternative but...

    Why does GNOME always seem to be in a state of trying to define itself - to always be in the concept stage? Perpetually in ALPHA state.

    Is GNOME still the GNU Network Object Model Environment of old?

    Now, in favor of GNOME I must add: There are some GNOME apps that just rock. I really like the process list, some of the games and the panel apps. The widgets are crisp, beautiful and intuitive just like they were on the original GIMP.

    The GNOME guys have got alot of impressive code. Now to use that code to form a cohesive and easy to use interface that doesn't change drastically with every point release.

    --
    Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
  11. Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux by hazah · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So a Pretty GUI is the beall/endall? Comon, linux functions on many layers, and a GUI is only one of them. Yes.. it lags behind your precious Darwin (of which I'm fond of, of course). But that's hardly an obsticle for the OS itself.

  12. Re:I love gray, but GNOME ain't gray by Leo+McGarry · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Gray is a beautiful colour.

    Um. It seems like you either misspelled "grey" or you misspelled "color." Pick one and stick with it, huh?

  13. Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux by l3v1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hahahaha! And you know what the worst thing is? You probably actually believe yourself.

    You know what, Mr. AC ? If we would judge an OS by it's looks, noone would ever buy WinXP or else, and Apple would've become world leader with OSX.

    Thing is, which is not necessarily sad, but nevertheless true, that the most part of computer users are not in any way developers, nor do they want to do anything development related, nor do they wish to know the insides or power usabilities of any OS they ever coem in conatct with. And that means that usually the GUIs will not be suited for a power user.

    From that point of view - developer, geek, power user, etc. - Linux could really prevail in the x86 world. And these prople also are in perfect knowledge of an OS's power lies not in the GUI, so your parent post has quite a bit of truth in it. On the other hand, a KDE GUI is much more user-friendly than many others, for the simple fact that be _very_ easily customized to one's needs. I've seen and heard many opinions according to whom this is exactly a drawback of KDE (too many places to tweak on too many locations), but I've come to appreciate this approach over the years.

    --
    I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
  14. Re:Vectorized graphics by Brandybuck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Tell me about it. I did an SVG icon recently for an app of mine. It looked great at 48x48. But when I went to create bitmaps for the Mac OSX icon (which required a greater range of resolutions), I discovered that what looks good at 48x48 often looks like crap at 16x16, and fugly at 128x128. The problem is that when you scale an SVG image, everything scales, including the line widths. I had to manually tweak each resolution by hand.

    Why would you need so many resolutions? Why can't everything be 128x128? Because that same icon is going to be used as the app icon in the folder or destkop, a smaller size if the folder is in a columnar view mode, as a quick launch icon on the panel, and as a mini icon in the titlebar or task manager. You will also have the rude heretic users who will change the GNOME defaults.

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  15. Screenshoots? Is this a fashion site or what? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What about posting articles talking about features, bug fixes and enhancements. I mean, we are talking about software after all, aren't we?

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  16. file chooser still broken by coaxial · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So after much out cry over the file chooser in 2.6, they decided to change it again. The problem with the 2.6 dialog was that there wasn't a way to type in filenames. GNOME is the only framework that doesn't allow users to type in filenames. Almost 30 years of GUI research and development had this, but GNOME decided that was dumb. Now, GNOME did allow users to type in a directory names if they hit CTRL-L. The problem with that is that it's hidden from the user.

    Now, GNOME has added typeahead find to the dialog. Well, that got rid of the CTRL-L nonsense, but it's still hidden functionality, and doesn't allow users to paste in filenames.

    This is just incompetence.

  17. Re:But does it now have a usable interface ? by BenjyD · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The first complaint is moot, as you can select multiple files in the open dialog in the standard way by holding down shift.

    Your second point seems to have been corrupted by slashdot filters or something. Let me try to rephrase that for you:

    Bug Submission #1
    Severity: Enhancement
    Title: Allow quicker navigation through nautilus file windows through keyboard navigation
    Description: Finding files in a Nautilus directory view could be made much quicker if simple type-ahead find was implemented. Several other GUIs (such as Windows 95) on a keypress in a directory view move the focus to the first file beginning with that letter in the view. This makes keyboard navigation much quicker and reduces the need for the user to move their hand to the mouse.

    Personally I like spatial Nautilus, and so do many people. Turn it off if you don't like it.