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Gnome Removed From Slackware
Anonymous Coward writes "After long consideration, Pat Volkerding has removed GNOME from Slackware. Pat mentions in the
-current ChangeLog that GNOME takes a lot of time to package, so this move should allow more time to be spent on the rest of Slackware." From the changelog: "Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME
itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond
the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent
desktop choice."
I can think of this piece of news being bought up at least 6 months ago and everyone moving over to using replacements like Dropline GNOME etc.
Actually if you read the article you'll see that dropline is Pat's 3rd choice.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Patrick has always kept up with KDE releases in Slackware.
Weren't Sun and HP supposed to help with this stuff and let Gnome catch up?
Technically speaking, they have been. However, the scuttlebutt out of the Sun team is that the GNOME developers are not entirely appreciative of the help and tend to shove back. While this may or may not be true, I'm afraid that the whole "Spatial Natilus" debacle didn't do much for the GNOME team's reputation.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I suspect the main reason behind this is the popularity of Dropline GNOME.
.tgz package format, in addition to the usual source code. The current release is based off of the latest GNOME 2 distribution from the GNOME Project."
"Dropline GNOME is a version of the GNOME Desktop that has been tweaked for Slackware Linux systems. It is available in Slackware's standard
Why not let Dropline do all the work... so don't fret slackware users you still have GNOME. Just not being packaged by Slackware officially.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Anyway. Gnome and GTK+ are very object oriented, they use classes, virtual member functions and polymorphism right to their cores. Also, skinning in GTK+ is a simple matter of loading a config file.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Gnome, since 2.0 has been based on Glib/GTK+ 2.0, which is a full OO architecture built on C.
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gobject/
Have you ever tried to build GNOME?! Just take a look at the build scripts for the two in Slackware. KDE has a unified build script. GNOME is a dependency nightmare.
Do a google search for xorg and sub-pixel rendering. Cleartype is not a microsoft exclusive thing.
Oh yes they do, at least the 2.10 ones do.
make -e install DESTDIR=/tmp/[gnomepkgname]
Yes I am makeing packages.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
As a programmer, I see a lot of differences. ME fixed the resource leak in msimg32.dll finally that exists in 98 and 98SE both with no available patches. ME has the explorer extended style common dialog for open/save as with the toolbar on the left. 98SE and ME both support WDM while 98 does not. ME comes with the Trebuchet font that 98 and 98SE do not.
Morphing Software
For those not RTFA there are two choices he recommends:
GSB
GWARE
I don't see it as such. After all, slackware does not provide support for the hurd kernel or the bsd kernel either. I doubt Patrick has any big beef with any of the packages he doesn't support, but its not worth the extra layer of complexity to provide something as 2 monolithic desktop environments that are both in active development for each release of slackware. Its simply an executive decision, and I don't know why other distributions are still wasting their time supporting both.
Well, he mantains a Linux distro. But anyway, GNOME is nowadays one of the two most widely used DE's in *NIX. He dropped official support for it not because it wasn't needed, but because it's hell to mantain. Slackware. One of the most reliable (and conservative?) "old school" distros.
Thing is, this comes at a time when GNOME is taking a lot of flak because of performance issues and poor design decisions. Slackware dropping Gnome support is a bit like Debian dropping it off the stable branch.
I don't see what the big deal is. If other distros can become so popular without supporting everything and build a very strong community around that streamlining concept I don't see what is wrong with Slack doing the same thing. Pat is making the right decision in only supporting one DE.
PS: yes I know some religious Gnome fan boy will come and try to comment on my post and say that I'm just a KDE fan spewing his views. Except I'm a gnome fan too.
The kernel is written in C, and for very good reasons.
Most definitely not a M$-only thing: Apple's OS X has been doing it since the release of 10.3, and a side by side comparison between it and XP puts OS X's implementation well in front aesthetically (I'm a typographer).
you had me at #!
What exactly does it say? If you RTFA (or even the summary), he has no complaints about the quality of GNOME, just that it takes a whole lot of work to package.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
You really should try getting used to the middle click, it's super nice even if you only use it as an occasional addition to the keyboard functionality.
Of course most of my text editing is done in vim, so I don't really need to highlight anything to replace it.
The Farewell Tour II
Clearly, you and Pat don't agree. The article summary clearly states that Pat doesn't think there is anything major wrong with GNOME the desktop, it is the packaging of GNOME that is difficult.
Geez. Not only aren't we reading the articles, we aren't even reading the summaries anymore.
-- KDE user and summary reader.
Well, I'll do my bitching about the moderators first: where the hell are your brains if you considered the parent post insightful ? It's just a brainless statement that doesn't even rely on facts. It's much like saying that "the Windows GUI relies on libraries all written by Microsoft" so GNOME is better because it doesn't.
The truth is that the KDE libraries are not all clumped together into KDE libs. They have never been. In version 1.0 KDE libs might have been larger than the others, but that was five years ago. Things have evolved a little bit and the KDE libraries are actually very modular.
So, Gnome is not more difficult to compile because there are a lot of different people work on it. Hell, there are more people working on KDE and the results are much better. The problem with GNOME is that it's poorly coordinated and it's way too dominated by ideological issues (we have to write it in C comes to mind, even if it was unrelated).
As about your statement that programs that need some KDE feature exclusively are KDE programs: bollocks! You don't have a clue about the structure of KDE or how to link a program. Unless you need to write the program as a DCOP client, you don't need other any part of KDE except for what you link in your program.
> One of the biggest differences between KDE and Gnome is that KDE's use of the Qt library dramatically cuts down on dependancies.
Yes, that is a very valid point. I have compiled ethereal from scratch. It is only a gtk app (not even gnome), but the dependencies where killing me. config, libz, libexpat, glib, atk, freetype, fontconfig, pango, gtk... it is a nightmare, especially since you have it figure out and find every package yourself (and the relation seem to change from version to version).
http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/announcements/00 000192.html
Or their morale probably. I wish Sun would do another HIG. The developers need more unbaised feedback. All they are likely to hear on Slashdot is the vocal minority.
The GNOME heirachy needs to be walloped with a clue stick when it comes to useability. Before the Sun usability GNOME suffered from the Tyrany of Choice. Too many almost identical apps all with similar names. The clock applets were my favorite, "clock", "another clock", "clock with mail check", "jbc clock", etc. Sun came back and said, "You have too many choices." Havoc et al. took away from this, "Choice is bad" and systematically removed almost every preference in GNOME. They didn't have to go from one extreme to the other. Now you're stuck using undocumented gconf keys to change things, even though gconf-editor plainly says "don't use this to change preferences". Nice.
The other problem with GNOME is the whole culture of "Let's rewrite everything!" The file chooser has changed almost 6 times since GNOME started. Entire architectures are tossed overboard without much second thought. Damn. It's like it's being developed by a bunch of ADD teenagers trying to show how 1337 they are.
But yes, GNOME needs another usability study.
I use Gnome, with e16, and I like it very much but I'm not likely to say anything about it until I have something to bitch about.
I'll give you something. The filechooser. "Nah. No one will ever want to type in a filename when they can simply click 15 times!" (Yes, I know MacOSX 10.2+ introduced this. I'll simply recount the wisdom of Obi-Wan, "Who's the more foolish? The fool or the one who follows him?"
Trust me, Pat knows far more about Linux than you will ever know about Linux. In particular, when he says Gnome is hard to compile, you can bet your sweet ass that Gnome is nay-to-impossible to compile.
I've been using linux for only 2 years (before I was a Windows user), and with jhbuild and a mailing list I've been compiling gnome since the 2.7x days.
Perhaps with "Gnome is nay-to-impossible to compile" you meant "I lack a clue"/"I didn't try"/"I'm trolling"?
I'm telling you right now to put up or shut up: Give us here, on Slashdot, a URL of these "well-advertised build scripts". Additionally, point to where in the official GNOME docs these build scripts are referenced.
From http://www.gnome.org/start/2.10/:
Of course, our sources are always available for you to build GNOME from scratch. See the Release Notes for more information about our build scripts, GARNOME and jhbuild.
JHBuild project page. Note it's used to compile freedesktop projects too.
garnome project page
Now that you've demonstrated you don't have a fucking clue about gnome, and are just bashing the project because of some mental problems, shut up.