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Gnome 2.10 Released
Mad_Rain writes "The new version of Gnome (you know, the desktop of many Linux users?) has just been released. You can even try it out with a LiveCD (bittorrent link). There is a video player and CD-ripping utility included, and the all-important new splash screen!"
...are here.
The Army reading list
Does anyone else find something wrong with the progress/height chart on the new splash screen?
2.10
2.8
2.6
2.4
2.2
2.0
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Packages are already in ubuntu hoary.
:)
just do an apt-get update and then an apt-get dist-upgrade
Err, that should be "KDE trolls are koming"!
OK, that's my contribution to the obligatory stupid DE-related comments. I won't throw in a "But I just emerged 2.8!" (even though I just did).
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
In the past, while typing something into one application when suddenly your instant messenger offered a chat request from your friend, your words would be typed into the chat window. Imagine if you were typing your password at the time. This should no longer happen in GNOME 2.10.
Ahh, finally. This was the most annoying thing for the longest time. I actually had to change my password twice because I unintentionally IMed it to someone else. I'm actually surprised that they didn't fix this a long time ago. It was a usability/security nightmare.
I attempted to use KDE on my laptop recently because it felt more refined to me than Gnome. The menus that came up seemed to offer a more intuitive way of doing things, and the system as a whole just felt more polished. I got the sense that someone was working to make sure that the KDE experience had some consistency to it, which was much appreciated.
But I still wasn't as happy with the KDE desktop as I had been with Windows XP, so I figured I'd give Gnome a shot. After all, it had things like Beagle and Dashboard that sounded pretty cool. Plus, Hula and several other new applications were all being announced for Gnome. But I found that for a new user, there wasn't the same consistency to the Gnome experience as there was with KDE. Lots of things seemed (to me) to work differently from app to app. Changing settings could be done lots of different ways, it wasn't always clear what the preferred method of doing something was (true for the file manager, getting help, etc).
Consistency issues aside, my biggest difficulty with each of the desktops was that there wasn't an easy way to install new software. I use Debian, and apt-get is great, but half the time after choosing to install something new I couldn't find it by looking through the menus. I never even tried installing something that didn't have a Debian package, but can imagine it would have been pretty evil. I realize that the LSB and freedesktop.org are working to improve this situation, but at the moment Windows is worlds ahead with its simple software installations.
So in the end I went back to Windows XP for my desktop; I'm comfortable with it, it is stable (I've had fewer crashes/lockups with XP than I did with either Gnome or KDE), and I'm smart enough to be able to deal with the spyware & viruses. I still use Linux on my web server, and will try the Linux desktops again in the future, but for now I'll go with the evil empire simply because I like the product better. True, had I spent more time learning to use the Linux desktops I might have eventually preferred one of them, but for now the comfort factor just wasn't high enough to make me feel it was worth investing the effort.
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Disclaimer: I'm a KDE user.
I always give Gnome due dilligence for each release. Each time a new version comes out I test it out for one full week and see how it works for me. Since the release of 2.0 I have always gone back to KDE for this reason:
[on #gnome on irc.freenode.net]
Me: Where is feature X? It seems like I ought to be able to do X but I can't seem to find it.
Dev/Zealot A1: Yea we think that's a good idea but we haven't gotten to it yet.
or
Dev/Zealot A2: Well, X is too complicated so we did Y. You must use Y. X is not implemented.
As with other releases I will try 2.10 out and see how it's progressed but here's a list of show stoppers in previous versions:
* Inability to edit or affect the panel menus in an intuitive way (somewhat addressed through the addition of applications:/// which was hard to find)
* Inability to hold down the mouse button (drag through) while navigating the menus. The thinking was accessibility related. A click event occurs after some arbitrary criteria has been met that convinces Gnome that the user really wanted to click and just didn't know to let go of the mouse button and then click again. Very annoying.
* No window snapping
* Non-existance of KIO-slaves equivalent (ability to open and work with files on arbitrary network resources) -- very useful
* Gnome terminal lacking ability to rename tabs by interacting with the tab (can be done through menu option somewhere)
* Gedit lacking features as compared with KEdit
* Epiphany / Galeon (which is it now?) not as feature complete as Firefox
* Until recently, the Gnome file open dialog box was a nightmare. It still has some problems, though. Many of its features are hidden in shortcut keys that one would only know existed if one scoured the Gnome manuals.
A lot of people bitch about spacial Nautilus but I don't think that's nearly important as some other basic needed features (window snapping). I can modify the way my brain works with a particular computer paradigm if I think it might be more sensible but I cannot do without features that increase my productivity.
So here's to hoping.
That's such a long post that I think you should've included a BitTorrent link to it.
The 2.12 release is what i'm excited about... the cairo implementation, better compositing support (aka transparency and shadows... fading in and out of windows etc), gstreamer, dbus, Beagle, Mono, memory reduction...
2.10 has some nice improvements and what one should consider as a release that smooths over some issues. But it's nothing terribly exciting and new. Hopefully 2.12 will be a release that blows people away.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Personally I've always thought they both sucked. In the meantime I've fallen for every damn "E .17 RELEASED!" April Fool's Day joke on Slashdot ever since .16.5 was released.
I never pay attention to my calendar so come that fateful day I go "HOLY CRAP! FINALLY!" and tell atleast 6 people.
Then my world crashes around me.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
But spatial Nautilus is simple. One window per folder, just a menu and a parent folders button.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Getting modded funny when you're serious is the ultimate bitch slap.