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."

Comments

Ironic...

[Bytal]

How ironic, seeing that Gnome tries to be the simplest and easiest to use full-featured desktop on Linux. I guess easy to use doesn't mean easy to package.

Re:Ironic...

[Neon Spiral Injector]

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.)

Re:Ironic...

[0racle]

Oh yes they do, at least the 2.10 ones do.

make -e install DESTDIR=/tmp/[gnomepkgname]

Yes I am makeing packages.

Re:Ironic...

[Ogerman]

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.

What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bunch of slackers.

Over at OSNews

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

you can hear Eugenia yelling "I told you so, Gnome developers!"

Re:I thought this was decided a long time ago

[Tarcastil]

Just make sure you know what you're doing when installing Dropline GNOME. When I tried to uninstall it, it killed my system. I ended up reinstalling Slackware.

Re:Weren't Sun and HP..

[AKAImBatman]

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.

LFS

[Bios_Hakr]

Before you all go freaking out, let me suggest something.

Build Linux From Scratch. Then try adding some common desktops. KDE is quite easy to add to LFS. Gnome is an absolute bear to add.

At one point, I had a printout of all the deps for Gnome. It was a huge spiderweb of tangles that had to be decoded and followed exactly to get Gnome to build.

Anyway, Gnome is lots of work.

slow your roll fools

[Stalyn]

I suspect the main reason behind this is the popularity of Dropline GNOME.

"Dropline GNOME is a version of the GNOME Desktop that has been tweaked for Slackware Linux systems. It is available in Slackware's standard .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."

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.

A few subtle hints

[OverflowingBitBucket]

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.

Re:KDE 3.4

[Fnord]

Do a google search for xorg and sub-pixel rendering. Cleartype is not a microsoft exclusive thing.

hear hear

[grepMeister]

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.

I'm sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Netcraft confirms it: In Soviet Russia, only old Koreans use GNOME.

I, for one, welcome our new KDE overlords.

1. Remove GNOME from Slackware
2. ???
3. Profit!!

Re:I thought this was decided a long time ago

[kv9]

FTCL:

There is also Dropline, of course, which is quite popular. However, due to their policy of adding PAM and replacing large system packages (like the entire X11 system) with their own versions, I can't give quite the same sort of nod to Dropline. Nevertheless, it remains another choice, and it's _your_ system, so I will also mention their project: http://www.dropline.net/gnome/

he recommends these two

thank you

[dermusikman]

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!

for crying out loud!!

[xutopia]

This doesn't mean the end of Gnome on Slackware! Dropline Gnome is so popular on Slack that Pat doesn't see the need to support gnome anymore. Anyways if you look at other now very popular distros you'll see that many only support just one Desktop Environment. Why should Pat bother because his Gnome version was always overwritten by something more current anyways (see dropline-gnome).

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.

Re:KDE 3.4

[Anonymous Coward]

They're dropping KDE as well. This GUI thing has all been a mistake that's gone on long enough.