Slashdot Mirror
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."
Because you can always easily install dropline gnome.
..supposed to help with this stuff and let Gnome catch up?
I think this happened a while ago (months?), but that Slackware, which is still a major, well thought out distribution, decides to drop GNOME support just like that is major news. Dropline GNOME and other community support projects for Slack exists, so it's not Slackware users will need to part with GNOME. But still, a slap in the face to the GNOME crew. I wonder what they have to say about it.
Anway, i found interesting that Pat mentions XFCE as a "fixed an polished" desktop. It's great, and while i'd hate to see GNOME loose popularity, at this time XFCE 4.2 is a better GNOME than GNOME itself.
I don't think slackware needs Gnome. I think (which means i could be wrong) use KDE. Gnome is a little behind with features that allow customization and if a little strange to work with. Slackware is an easy distro but, it's also a small as in not heard of by some. By that i mean that newbies are more likely to use fedora or mandrake, and the rest of use can install Gnome ourselves if we want to... Or use a other distro,based on Slackware with Gnome.
Huh? Fonts on my KDE 3.3 DE look fantastic. Better than Windows IMHO.
This guy is way out there
Sounds like a way of saying that they aren't terribly happy with the GNOME releases but don't want to start a big fight over it. Read the comments in the ChangeLog; when justifying the decision they hint repeatedly at the problems. I suspect they wanted to say a lot more than they did. ;)
This does open the door for third-parties to tidy up the GNOME releases and provide a drop-in package for the distro though. Perhaps one of them will become strong enough to make it back in the door again.
why on earth is GNOME so RIDICULOUSLY difficult to compile by hand? yes, it's a big and complicated project. so is kde. kde comes in packages: libraries, base, etc.
last time I tried -- admittedly a VERY long time ago -- compiling gnome without the benefit of something like portage was a days-long dependency hunt. dependencies of FINAL releases were often still in CVS only. ick.
if you think that's what computing should be all about, you have WAY too much time on your hands.
Are you building and 'make install'ing, or building .tgz package files? GNOME 'make install's fine. But doesn't obey the DESTDIR envar, so making stand-alone packages is very difficult. (No, setting --prefix= does not work, because that path gets hard coded into various places.)
Which would you rather have?
1) A distribution that includes everything. Of course this means that the team's resources are spread too far, producing an inferior product.
2) A distribution that provides a subset, but is a solid foundation upon which others can reliably add functionality.
I'll take quality over quantity, thank you!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
i'm glad to see it go. it's always been a big waste of burned disk space when all i want to do is upgrade the latest core packages and recompile everything else that linuxpackages.net doesn't have a binary for.
and while we're on the topic of cutting out unnecessary GNOME fat... GTK developers: please stop depending on GNOME-specific packages!! when i want a cute little program for a slim little purpose to run on my less mainstream enlightenment setup, i *don't* want to install an entire DE that i never use!! please write programs independant of GNOME *and* KDE. both Qt and Gtk are perfectly fine libraries by themselves, without the additional bloat!
There I said it. No I'm not trolling or flamebaiting, it's just the simple truth. Every time I've ever used gnome over the last near decade it's been that way.
It's a shame really because I love C and I like gnome is about, but the bottom line is the results simply aren't there. Going a day with a Segv in a gnome environment is unusual in my experience.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Having done the whole "Linux from scratch" thing as a learning experience, I can tell you that building a complete Gnome installation takes at around 3-5x longer than KDE and is much more difficult. This was 4-5 years ago, but the situation has gotten worse from casual observation of the Debian packaging.
One of the biggest differences between KDE and Gnome is that KDE's use of the Qt library dramatically cuts down on dependancies. Gnome requires use of dozens of libraries to match the functionality of Qt and this complicates the build process.
Frankly, from a developer perspective, I don't think Gtk/Gnome libs have quite kept up with Qt in terms of overall quality and I'm not sure how they can be expected to. Qt is heavily supported commercially. There are people being paid full time to add features, improve performance, and write top quality API docs. Gnome expends much effort maintaining its own libraries. It's a shame that KDE and Gnome do not both use Qt. It would eliminate almost all of the compatibility issues, save memory on hybrid desktops, and allow them to compete on things that really matter like UI design. (where there are legitimate arguments on both sides) But, unfortunately, Qt began it's life as a less-than-Free piece of code. As a result, the Gnome folks rightly avoided it. But then they continued their own efforts even after Qt went GPL.. Now there's even a GPL full version for Windows, so the cross-platform argument is totally shot.
FWIW, I'm not trying to bash Gnome, but I do think there is some re-evaluation in order. Competition is good, but wheel re-inventing is usually not.
I want a decent file browser, useable (system-wide) drag and drop, homogenized toolkits (none of this "three apps, three different looks" bullshit), a friendlier clipboard (I got a powerbook here, this whole THREE BUTTON MOUSE!!!!! thing is killin' me!), a non-shitty default aesthetic that doesn't compell me to change everything out of its sheer ugliness, a useful offline help system, CAREFULLY THOUGHT OUT CONSISTANT AND TESTED CONFIGURATION MENUS and.... (pause for breath) everything else MacOS had in 1994. Which so far only MacOS and OS X seem to have.
:|
Windows still hasn't caught up and freenix "desktops" are still catching up to windows. 32-bit icons and font smoothing are candy things.... and unfortunately, they're a hell of a lot easier to impliment than Basic Functionality.
The "choice" obsessed people would beat them down. They want every OSS effort to be splintered and fragmented, so that I have to install and load two entire desktop environments just to be able to run each other's apps.
The solution is quite simple: don't run the other DEs apps. Or actually pay for an OS - be it Windows, MacOS X, or something else altogether. No one is forcing you to use Linux/*BSD. If it sucks, by all means, stop using it.
The "Linux Desktop" is no some vast concerted effort, it is a hodge podge of whatever people are willing to contribute. As long as people are free to code whatever interests them there will always be splintering. If you don't like that, buy a system where there are enforced standards of what is acceptable.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
KDE may sound fine, but the way they have to spell everything with a K is retarded... might as well make it the MKDE :P
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
As others have pointed out, there's nothing object oriented about your code. And, of course, if that were C++, and pretending that a C++ version of the gtk header exists, you could do this:
// return 0 is implicit from main in C++
void callback(button& b) {
cout << "click\n";
}
int main() {
init();
window my_window(200, 200, "title");
signal_connect(my_window, destroy, main_quit, 0);
button my_button("label");
signal_connect(my_button, click, callback);
container_add(my_window, my_button);
widget_show_all(my_window);
gtk_main();
}
Now look how this C++ version is 10 times easier to understand. Plus it can do many more things. The callback function can be typesafe, for instance, and doesn't need a given signature - it could be a functor, or return a value (which is presumably ignored). This is possible due to templates. C++ is better than C, period.
It's a shame that KDE and Gnome do not both use Qt. It would eliminate almost all of the compatibility issues, save memory on hybrid desktops, and allow them to compete on things that really matter like UI design."
It would also eliminate the option of creating closed source applications without paying thousands of euros for Qt licenses (or at least apps that fit the general UI look and feel).
Not in million years. Companies don't want to be that dependent on Trolltech.
This comes from a KDE user (KDE 3.4 is a gem). But I'm also a developer, and I don't see Qt as *strategically* viable route to bring Linux desktop forward.
(For those that don't know, Gtk is LGPL which is more free than GPL, which is the license Qt uses).
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I see lack of choice (i.e, Windows, MacOS) as lack of progress.
I see freedom to choose amongst many alternative as progress.
The original poster was right. You don;t like what you see then get what you need or contribute towards what you would like to see (whining does not count as a contribution, hunting bugs, participating in development forums, adopting one application and helping to steer it in the correct direction, etc is what is needed. People whining for Windows or MacOS like functionality just don't understand the philosophy of Linux and GPLed software...).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Your entire argument is based on the opinion that winning over the general public is somehow the "goal" of Linux.
Think about it for a second.
Now think about it for another.
Personally, I don't want it to become mainstream, or the OS of the general public. The general public is a bunch of morons who destroy the fun and life in everything it collectively touches. Disney is what the public wants. NASCAR is what the public wants. Windows is what the public wants.
Now I have known people, that I respect, that like each of these things. But as a whole, these things cater to the lowest common denominator. In my opinion, Linux is above that. And you can't say it is elitest, because *it* isn't a thing with someone behind the wheel steering it in any one direction. It is more like evolution than a lab experiment. In all honesty, I think it is a beautiful thing, and I don't want it to be degraded to the point where it is on the public desktop. If someone or a company can put it there, so be it. But hopefully if that happens it won't drag "Linux" down with it.
One of the problems with Linux is that there is too much choice.
I know I quoted you out of sequence, so forgive me. But choice is EXACTLY what got Linux where it is today. I can agree that it is daunting, even for me, to choose. But I would rather have the choice. I was on the same distro for about 5 years, which is like millenia in distro time. By the time I decided to upgrade, the choices were staggering! I tried one, then another, then settled on my third choice. There are still things that I don't like about the one I chose (or should I say that I like better about the ones I didn't), but I made a good choice. Linux is evolving, constantly, and is improving. I have been using it since RedHat5.1, and Unix before that. There are some tools that I use today that I used the first day I logged in. And I still learn about new tools today - some brand new, some that have been there since day 1. It is awesome, and I love it. There are 50 ways to do the same thing, some more elegant than others, some brute force. I write scripts all the time that perform actions like taking photos, resizing them to 3 standard sizes, making thumbnails, and creating HTML around them so people can view them on a web page. There are packages that can do this, there are hundreds of ways via shell scripts, different languages, etc. But I did it my way. Is my way the best way? There is no best way. My way works, and it is mine. THAT is why I like Linux. I think it is better to offer choice. Everyone can choose, but everyone doesn't have to choose the same thing.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.