Slashdot Mirror
GNOME 2.12 Previewed
An anonymous reader writes "Davyd Madeley has completed his Prerelease Tour of GNOME 2.12. Scheduled for release on September 7th, 2005, GNOME 2.12 has picked up a new theme, some features popularised by Apple's System 7, some new multimedia tools and plenty of bug-fixes."
Is this some subtile joke by the editors among the BSD is dying trolls ?
Is this mature enough to include it as standard? Desktop search is key missing feature in Linux...
This Is Not a Sig
for a second I was... "hey I have to install that imme... wait... I already did... I... *click* 2.10... [strange feeling]... ah, 2.12..."
:)
can someone correct the headline or something?
Even changing the GStreamer backend for the Xine backend, Totem still never manages to play half the movies I seem to give it.
I do like the idea of a GStreamer based Mozilla plugin though. It will give users a great choice to drop the ugly Mplayer based plugin.
From the article: More software is taking advantage of the Hardware Abstraction Layer from Project Utopia. HAL-aware applications can display more information to the user, as well as benefit from "it just works" plug and play style hardware support. GNOME-VFS in GNOME 2.12 has improved integration with HAL, and now gives more visual cues about the types and names of media devices.
I am looking forward to this feature, especially - just another step towards making Linux more user-friendly.
In fact, this prerelease tour shows many exciting features for those who want to see a real desktop linux - improvements to Nautilus, a panel with Edit Menu option compliant with Freedesktop.org spec (how long have we been looking for something like this?), and more. Yay
I don't want to troll, but I have always wondered... Why are there two major windows manager projects?
I don't want to flame, but I always wonder... how do people like you manage not to have seen this question discussed to death in every single previous Gnome or KDE-related discussion here on Slashdot since the dawn of time?
Gnome is great at turning a fast computer into a sluggish one. Just because you have all of those CPU cycles doesn't mean that they have to use them, especially when lots of them seem to be wasted.
For instance: if you look (strace) at a typical gnome program when it starts up, it stats zillions of files; many of them more than once. This is why startup is so sloooooow.
Oh, I am trolling am I ? We all have fast computers so why am I making a fuss ? Think about: being able to save power (improve battery life) with a slower CPU laptop; people in the third world who cannot afford the super computers that we, in the 1st world, have on out desktops; think about sharing a server between many people (eg LTSP).
It would be nice to see a gnome release that just concentrated on making the code faster.
Give me font rendering that doesn't suck.
The same reason that you have to choose between Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and *BSD. The developers all have a different perspective on what defines good software, different project goals, different target audiences, and these differences are irreconcilable for the purposes of a single project.
I have to admit, I fail to see what is so utterly difficult about this concept that causes people to be so blind to the answer, despite the fact that they accept it on faith for everything else: why we have competing cars, fast food restaurants, colas, and so on.
No comment.
TFA didn't seem to mention anything about it. I would hope that 2.12 can utilize X.org's native transparencies that have been present for months now.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Note that there's nothing stopping a company from taking a snapshot of GNOME or KDE (or whatever), and spending a year or two turning it into an average-joe-perfect distribution. IMHO, selling to the teeming masses is more the job of a commercial distro vendor than hackers working on a desktop environment. Let the hackers have their fun (I know I do), and let the businessmen make their money by appealing to the largest customer base.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
KDE was influenced by CDE, a desktop environment on Solaris which showed that not everyone wants to have the same desktop environment, but has some nice features. Gnome was originally a backlash against a software licence used by KDE, and originally was some sort of odd mixed KDE (ie. CDE once removed) and MS Windows based on some code taken from the drawing program "the gimp". The project became more popular and less politically driven, breifly included Enlightenment as it's window manager (until the Enlightenment people ran screaming for the hills a few weeks later because gnome broke all of their cross-platform code and didn't care) and eventually became cross-platform and the useful thing you would have seen over the past few years. Now about the only vestige of it's beginnings is stuff like the windows registry style gconf which really is aimed for single user stand-alone systems and not for anything with aspirations beyond being a personal computer (ie. like something on a network!). There is a tool developed this year that allows gconf settings to be exported to other users on the same machine, so it's getting somewhere.
As for the actual window manager, you can use plenty of different ones and still use KDE apps or gnome apps - including the taskbar and menu style things.
The OS:
Some call the OS just the kernel, and others put the OS as the kernel + libraries + basic utilities, and others put the OS as "everything that ships with your distribution". All of these are more or less correct, and just a matter of perspective. I personally prefer the latter two because it is the measure of compatibility of downloaded tools.
X is a graphical system. It is actually rather barebones, as it doesn't specify anything about how the controls work. It doesn't include a text entry box, buttons, graphics, or anything. It is simply a basic toolkit for network-driven graphics. It doesn't even hook up to sound.
A "toolkit" is a set of widgets -- text entry boxes, standard icons, buttons, etc. GTK and QT are toolkits.
A widnow manager is just what it says -- it manages windows. The top bar of windows, with their close, minimize, and maximize buttons, are actually drawn by the window manager, not the application. The Window manager often, but not always, draws to the background (sometimes the file manager does this). The window manager is involved if you have multiple desktops. It handles minimizing and maximizing. It handles laying out the windows, and telling them where they can and can't go.
A "desktop environment" is a complete collection of tools and specifications for a desktop. For example, the GNOME desktop environment consists of (a) the GTK toolkit, (b) a set of libraries for making applications work together in a consistent manner, (c) a panel and a set of applets (most desktop environments include a panel), (d) a set of specifications for interaction. These specifications include specifications for the function of window managers, specifications for human interface interactions, specifications for the handling of clipboard data, specifications of standard application interfaces for doing various things like printing, configuration, etc. Many desktop environments specify a default window manager as well.
Windows and Mac roll all of these parts into one. All you have is the desktop environment, which contains everything else. There is _some_ separation, but it is not as clear-cut as it is on UNIX. Whether this is a benefit or a flaw depends on your perspective.
Engineering and the Ultimate
2: You could install them via this script: http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/webFonts4Linux/webFonts. sh
Then do the following:
Configure X and Gnome to 96 dpi sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Locate Section "Monitor" and add the following lines before EndSection:
# DisplaySize 270 203 # 1024x768 96dpi
# DisplaySize 338 254 # 1280x960 96dpi
# DisplaySize 338 270 # 1280x1024 96dpi
# DisplaySize 370 277 # 1400x1050 96dpi
# DisplaySize 423 370 # 1600x1400 96dpi
Uncomment the line corresponding to your current resolution.
To get other values, use the following formula:
displaysize = {pixelsize}/96*25.4
Remember:
The display size must be "right" so adjust those values till you get your size right.
If they could only add an option to block "middle click pastes" too, it would all be perfect in clipboard land. But browsing the web, evertime someone even thinks this thought it is immideately flamed through the ground by all the people who knows how superior this way of doing things is, and that also knows that there is no chance in hell that anyone could do this by mistake.
Heads up: I'm not proposing to remove it, or even turn it off by default. I just need a way to turn it off manually. It is extremely annoying, and I (and other with me) *do* click middle by mistake - often - and that is a hell when scrolling around code in text editors... Yep, a lot of it probably owes to the mouse I have, it has a tendency to get stuck slightly on scrolling, which results in a click. But really, do I need to buy a new mouse for something as simple?
I don't use, want or need it, and it hinders me in my work. I would really like to see it go. (Maybe it really is a X.org issue in the end, though. Not sure where it would be best to implement it).
Spine World
Qt still is not as free as GTK+, because it is a library and licensed under GPL. GTK+ is licensed under LGPL for a reason. If you use Qt, the license of your application cannot be chosen freely. Either you use the GPL, or you pay for the freedom to choose another license.
A GUI toolkit is part of the critical infrastructure of a software component on the desktop. Every application needs such a component (apart from fullscreen applications like games).
And a GUI toolkit is commodity, nothing special anymore.
Many developments begin at home, and these developments are the programmers' own crown jewels. I want to secure my investment in time and energy, and want to be able to deploy my ideas anywhere I see fit. Of course, I want to take my developments to the workplace and go on without interruption. This is freedom, and highly productive.