GNOME 2.12 Released

Moderator writes "At long last, Gnome 2.12 has been released! Among the many new features are clipboard management, a menu editor, an improved search tool, and a spatial-tree view in Nautilus. Check out the start page for more info."

Comments

Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

Since I moved from Debian to Ubuntu on some workstations, I now get to whine "but how long will it take Ubuntu to release the debs?" Or at least whine about GNOME app upgrades that depend on upgrading a new libc, which then forces upgrading all kinds of other apps (like Evolution v2.3.7 does). It's a whole new dependency hell, slightly less hot.

Re:Hot off the presses

[13bPower]

Ubuntu testing (Breezy) has had 2.12 for the past couple days. I assume you mean stable though.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Grey Ninja]

Hey, I'm an Ubuntu user, and I've been running 2.12 on my laptop for about 2 days now. Breezy Badger is actually quite a nice distro at this point in time.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Anonymous Coward]

one month after the gnome release usually.

Re:Hot off the presses

[gmf]

I'm using (mostly) Ubuntu Hoary together with the libc packages from Debian Sarge, this has been working very well so far. It makes installing packages from Debian stable / testing much easier. Of course there a several other dependency problems as well, as Hoary was released somewhat earlier than Sarge. But if everything else fails, you can in most cases still download the source packages from Debian an build them yourself, which thanks to dpkg-buildpackage an friends, is not much of a hassle either.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

Yeah, I mean stable. Because updating some highly-depended packages, like GNOME, from unstable means updating lots of other packages from Breezy, too.

Unless I'm missing something - I am new to Ubuntu, and even to Synaptic. If all I want is Stable (5.04), plus GNOMEv2.12 and Evolutionv2.3.7, but not to upgrade the whole dist to Breezy, can I do that?

Re:Hot off the presses

[jon787]

You can make it so that only GNOME + Evolution + their dependencies are upgraded, but if Ubuntu is doing the same library transition Debian is in right now you are going to get most of unstable right now anyway.

Re:Hot off the presses

[ElleyKitten]

>>I am new to Ubuntu, and even to Synaptic. If all I want is Stable (5.04), plus GNOMEv2.12 and Evolutionv2.3.7, but not to upgrade the whole dist to Breezy, can I do that?

Breezy should be stable in another month or so. As a newbie, the easiest thing you can do is just wait that month. I know, that's not as fun, but that's what I'm doing. :)

Re:Hot off the presses

[dmaxwell]

Ubuntu is pretty much done with their library transition. It is essentially a GCC-4.x distro now. They are shooting for a Breezy release in October. While I'm on the subject, I'll mention that tracking Ubuntu's unstable has been waaaaaaay more painful than tracking Debian's unstable. It has been stabilizing lately. The modularization of X.Org hurt worse than anything. For awhile it seemed like they were breaking X every other day. I tracked Debian's unstable for years and rarely got burned. Once Debian completes their x.org packages and finished their GCC transitions, I'm seriously considering changing my apt sources back. Unless a stable release is imminent, Debian's anal retentive ways do a decent job of providing late-model software that isn't broken.

If a Hoary user tries to pin Gnome or even just major Gnome apps then the parent post is correct. It will pretty much result in upgrading to Breezy. The only other way out is to pull down the source debs and build them against Hoary's -dev libraries. You can avoid some hair pulling here by using your friend checkinstall to have renamed versions of some upgraded libraries under /usr/local. It is basically what backports.org does for Debian stable (minus the alt libraries part) and it is an undertaking.

I'd just wait for Breezy to release and stabilize and get it then if a working system with a minimum of effort is important to you.

Re:Hot off the presses

[poofyhairguy82]

Unless I'm missing something - I am new to Ubuntu, and even to Synaptic. If all I want is Stable (5.04), plus GNOMEv2.12 and Evolutionv2.3.7, but not to upgrade the whole dist to Breezy, can I do that?

As one of the more active Ubuntuers, I can tell you that major stable changes (new kernel, new Gnome, etc) only come with new releases. Gnome 2.12 just hit Breezy today. The month between now and its release is the time it will take to work it into Ubuntu. It is possible for you to do it yourself, but I would suggest waiting.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

Y'all are doing a terrific job - Ubuntu 5.04 was what it finally took for me to switch my primary desktop from Windows to Linux. But 5.04's GNOME and Evolution are unstable enough that I have to restart Evolution sometimes several times a day. If it's just a month, then I can wait - it's hardly the 3 year Debian cycle (I know that's the point :). If only I can sync my Treo600/USB to Evolution - the Calendar sync doesn't work at all - I'll stop whining, at least while I'm busy working with it :).

BTW, your advice last time I whined was quite sound. It turned out that one of my Inspiron8000 fans was stuck, causing it to overheat, and crank CPU/RAM clocks way down (talk about "Hot off the presses" :). By the time I figured that out (dismantling the notebook to a pile of daughterboards, then flicking the fan back to life), I had also applied all your nVidia configs (except xcompmgr), so I now have a very speedy Ubuntu notebook, as you promised. What do you think will be the status of xcompmgr by the time GNOMEv2.12 is released into Ubuntu Stable? Will I really be able to have the GeForce2Go execute all my rendering (not the CPU), without lockups and slowdowns?

Re:Hot off the presses

[dtfinch]

I've used some dirty tricks to get specific new packages in the past. It involved adding breezy to the sources.list, reloading the package list in synaptic, upgrading only the specific package I want, and taking breezy back out of the sources.list when I'm done. If it appears the package requires just too many dependencies to be upgraded (more than 20, or large components of my desktop), I decide to just hold off until I'm ready for a full upgrade to breezy, because the risk of breaking stuff increases with every package I upgrade.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're whining because the Unstable packages have been...unstable?

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

Isn't there a way to tell Synaptic to install a specific package from one repository, like one of stable, unstable, or testing, then look at the dependency list, finish the install, and reset to the stable dist?

Re:Hot off the presses

[Penguin Programmer]

If they stick to their 6-month release cycle (which they did, roughly at least, for Hoary), Breezy will be out in October. Gnome 2.12 will ship with it.

Upgrading from Hoary will, of course, be as easy as doing a dist-upgrade.

Re:Hot off the presses

[a.different.perspect]

Yes, of course; I did that to get OpenOffice.org 1.1.4. Just change

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted universe multiverse

to

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy main restricted universe multiverse

do an

apt-get update

and install the package you want. The problem is that upgrading something like GNOME will replace a lot of dependencies as well -- so much so that you'll have in large part upgraded to Breezy, which, as you know, is unstable.
 
Can you wait a month?

Re:Hot off the presses

[poofyhairguy82]

What do you think will be the status of xcompmgr by the time GNOMEv2.12 is released into Ubuntu Stable? Will I really be able to have the GeForce2Go execute all my rendering (not the CPU), without lockups and slowdowns?

You asked the right person- I care way too much about xcompmgr.

As it is xcompmgr does not have really active development. Pretty much the "final version" was released and is in Ubuntu....but that does not mean nothing has happened. You have two options:

1. (the one I recommend) I am using Breezy right now and I can say that it works much better with xcompmgr than before. The biggest bug for me- artifacts when playing full screen video- is gone in Totem-xine. GONE! The only xine to do that. Its what I really wanted for Christmas. The other bug- the log out screen one- still exists but I have found an elegant work around. Using these directions you can create a panel button to turn it off and on (no crashing). So just turn it off before you log out. Because Breezy likes xcompgr more (the developers were nice and compiled Gnome 2.12's Metacity without its featureless compmgr like they did in Hoary because they heard my begging-it helps to be the second biggest poster in the forum) I found a way to make it stable for you. If I remember correctly you did not like the fading trick, right? Thats awesome for you. Run xcompmgr with this command:

xcompmgr -n

and it will just use the GPU. No tricks, no crashing (me and another Ubuntu fan hammered on this and with just that option it was very stable compared to the fading and drop shadow options)....it just flys! I personally don't do that command (I love the fading) and so I have to deal with some random crashes-much less than Hoary though. You are lucky you do not. Then you must make it start when Gnome starts (go to "System," the "Preferences," then "Sessions." Click the last tab and hit "Add" and the "xcompmgr -n" command and run it in "order 48" -thats what I do, some say use "0" but that only worked for me in Hoary, not Breezy). I must admit that when it boots the desktop might be a little out of focus (or really out of focus with a little garbage) but as soon as you maximize a window everything works like a charm.

2. Use KDE. KDE forked xcompmgr and integrated it into its Window Manager. If you have your xorg file set up, then it gives you a "transparency" tab in the "window decoration" settings box. Its cool, and I hear a lot of the effects (like the fading and such) will be more stable by 3.5. The Gnome guys seem to refuse to do anymore than make Gnome work with xcompmgr because it requires non-OSS drivers to work (Gnome was started because of such strong principles). But since you don't ask much (in the way of effects)...either way will work for you. As you can tell, I care a lot...and the Gnome approach is enough for me for now...

Re:Hot off the presses

[poofyhairguy82]

The modularization of X.Org hurt worse than anything. For awhile it seemed like they were breaking X every other day. I tracked Debian's unstable for years and rarely got burned. Once Debian completes their x.org packages and finished their GCC transitions, I'm seriously considering changing my apt sources back.

Just so you know...I'm using Breezy right now with Gnome 2.12 and its very stable. The hardest part is over! Sorry you rode then and not now!

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

That's all great. But those directions you list all apply only to Breezy, the current unstable, right? First GNOMEv2.12 will be in Breezy in about a month. Isn't Breezy scheduled for release at that time (2005-04-08 + 6mo = 2005-10-08; today is 2005-09-08)?

In short, which version of xcompmgr will work the way your directions prescribe (xcompmgr -n), and when will that version be released as part of a stable Ubuntu (theoretically, in one month)?

Re:Hot off the presses

[poofyhairguy82]

That's all great. But those directions you list all apply only to Breezy, the current unstable, right? First GNOMEv2.12 will be in Breezy in about a month. Isn't Breezy scheduled for release at that time (2005-04-08 + 6mo = 2005-10-08; today is 2005-09-08)? In short, which version of xcompmgr will work the way your directions prescribe (xcompmgr -n), and when will that version be released as part of a stable Ubuntu (theoretically, in one month)?

I do all this with the xcompmgr installed through Synaptic in Breezy. If I was you I would try that command in the Hoary terminal to see if the actual effect is good for you. If so, then wait for Breezy (I predict mid October) and go through the steps. Then finally- at the end of 2005- you will have a more modern desktop!

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

I ran "xcompmgr -n" in an xterm, and my windows seemed to freeze. The cursor continued to work, but no effect from clicking on the open windows. Clicking panel buttons triggered the usual "exploding box" indicating app start, but no windows. I --F1 to a console, then --F& to restart X, but still no action below the panel.

(Then I switched to console, logged in, killed xcompmgr, restarted X)

I put "xcompmgr -n" into Sessions->Startup #0 (I have Hoary), rebooted, and saw some extra "blank/flashing" as X/GNOME started, ran mplayer on a WMV (which dropped frames before), and it killed GNOME, restarting into gdm.

It doesn't seem to work well for me. I wish it did, because I'd love to get more power out of the nVidia chip, rather than just my old P3/1GHz.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

Also, glxgears crashed/restarted X with "xcompmgr -n". "xcompmgr -s" just froze me out of windowing below the panel, and stopped me from C/A/F1 to a console.

Re:Hot off the presses

[poofyhairguy82]

It doesn't seem to work well for me. I wish it did, because I'd love to get more power out of the nVidia chip, rather than just my old P3/1GHz.

Well, that is a set back but its not the final story. One more try for Hoary (there are two commands that are very similar):

xcompmgr -a

As far as I can understand, its the same as -n without transparancy support...and you don't use that. I thought the difference was too slight to matter, but please try this and report back the results. If it doesn't work don't give up all hope...as I said Breezy is better. Thanks for the feedback.

Re:Hot off the presses

[poofyhairguy82]

Also, glxgears crashed/restarted X with "xcompmgr -n".

Yeah, 3D stuff doesn't work with xcompmgr on. Its good to turn of OpenGL screensavers to avoid problems. If you like to run games or 3D stuff, the on/off script I gave is very helpful. I'm not much of a gamer so it does not bug me!

Re:Hot off the presses

[Assimil8or]

Oh well. I'm on debian testing here and still stuck with gnome 2.8!

Re:Hot off the presses

[RossyB]

The Ubuntu and GNOME release cycles are in sync, which is what happens when the GNOME Release Manager was the same person as the Ubuntu Release Manager.

Now that GNOME 2.12 is stable, Ubuntu will release a preview of Breezy and in a month, ship it.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Harbinjer]

In Debian parlance, 'unstable' means 'changes often', and not 'crashes often'. It also means tracking newest version, instead of backporting fixes to older versions.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

+1 Insightful. Any predictions on which version of Evolution will ship with Breezy?

Re:Hot off the presses

[m50d]

So, you're whining because the Unstable packages have been...unstable?

Ubuntu being a Debian distro it's reasonable to assume that unstable takes the special debian meaning rather than the normal one. So yes, but because Unstable doesn't mean unstable.

Re:Hot off the presses

[RossyB]

Probably the version of Evolution which shipped with GNOME 2.12, i.e. 2.4.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

"xcompmgr -a" worked OK with mplayer on some videos, speeding them up (no framedrops). But other videos crashed mplayer, and others crashed/restarted X (all were WMV).

And with "xcompmgr -a" running, desktop operations were buggy (paint updates). Renaming a file on the desktop (with the right-click context menu "Rename" item) selected (highlighted) the icon with the right-click, and selected the filename for text retyping, but did not accept keystrokes to change the name. Canceling (with <Esc>) the text entry repainted a large (~200x200pxls) rectangle around the icon that cut into a nearby xterm window, revealing the underlying desktop. The file could be renamed with "mv" in the xterm. And moving the xterm window repainted.

So it looks like, in its current state (U5.04), xcompmgr doesn't really work on my Inspiron8000/GeForce2Go notebook. Maybe I can use it to watch some videos that drop too many frames without it. Otherwise, it's got to get a lot more stable with GNOME to be anything but a curiosity for me. Maybe the Breezy versions will be stable.

Re:Hot off the presses

[poofyhairguy82]

As long as it does not lock up your computer, you have hope. As I said, the Totem-xine in Breezy works better with xcompmgr on than any media player I have messed with (I personally dislike mplayer so I don't know about that), and overall Breezy works much better with it. I only get "paint updates" when it first turns on in Breezy then no more. So now that you know what command to use, when Breezy comes give it a new shot. As you can tell I really like xcompmgr, but I wouldn't leave it on all the time before Breezy. Thats how much improved. I had some of the same problems in Hoary. Good luck, and I hope I helped you a little bit.

Long live Ubuntu.

Re:Hot off the presses

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, thanks. I'll certainly be tracking the stability of xcompmgr now, where before I never would have heard of it. I really want my videochip handling all the computation it can - why leave its power slack? That's why I'm so interested in Xgl, which harnesses the most powerful GPU engine for X. But it doesn't seem to work, either. Someday...

Notes.

[wlan0]

Release notes.
What's nre for admins.
What's new for developers.

Re:Notes.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this new "spatial tree" spatial? Isn't this just "tree view"?

I was expecting something like everything is a node and I can move it around like I want (I dunno how id find that usefull for a filesystem, but I dont find spatial navigation usefull either)

Re:Notes.

[ilyaaohell]

What's new for USERS?

Re:Notes.

[Matheus Villela]

What's New For Users

Re:Notes.

[ilyaaohell]

Touché. :)

Re:Notes.

[murrayc]

> How is this new "spatial tree" spatial?

Like before, there's only one window for each folder, and the folder window remembers its position, size, and display properties. What's new is just that you can view sub-folders inside a folder window without opening a new window.

Re:Notes.

[Elektroschock]

I hope Gnome gets a colour schme that plays better with KDE. Default colour scheme, themes, this shall be bridged.

In other Gnews...

[big_groo]

Gnome developers switched dialogue buttons to an inverse vertical alignment, from the previous back-assward 'No' 'Cancel' configuration.

Burn Karma, burn!

Re:In other Gnews...

[caseih]

I hope they never change the button order back to the old backwards way things used to be. I'd consider using KDE, but the button order always drives me up the wall, as do the dialogs in MS Windows.

No Gnome dialog box should ever have "yes," "no," and cancel as buttons.

To each his own, I guess. We're all going to die sometime.

Re:In other Gnews...

[Bastian]

Nah, I agree. There are times when "Yes" and "No" are barely acceptable - namely, when you are asked a very short, simple question by the dialog. But really, if the whole point is to use your computer quickly, even a short dialog should avoid them. Why make the person read a sentence like "The action you are about to perform cannot be undone. Are you sure you want to do this?" in order to figure out what every dialog is for when you can give the familiar user a chance to do things so much more quickly by allowing him to read two buttons - "Delete" and "Cancel", "Delete" and "Don't Delete," something like that. If you are forcing the user to read the dialog in order to know the correct answer, you might as well have buttons labeled A, B, and C, and tell the user what each does in the dialog text.

That said, it's not enough. Prime example: In Quicken (2006 for Mac, anyway), if you are in the middle of the account creation wizard, and click the Cancel button, Quicken pops up a sheet with the usual "Are you sure you want to do this?" type question, and gives you the buttons "Cancel" and "Close." There are plenty of people out there (myself included) whose first instinct is to click the "Cancel" button because Cancel is the first button I clicked and Cancel is what I want to do. Of course, it's also the wrong answer.

Re:In other Gnews...

[Klivian]

I'd consider using KDE, but the button order always drives me up the wall,

Why don't you change it then? Add the following text to your ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals to change the button order:
[KDE]
ButtonLayout=1

Re:In other Gnews...

[caseih]

Why don't you change it then? Add the following text to your ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals to change the button order:
[KDE]
ButtonLayout=1

Thank you!

Re:In other Gnews...

[UnrefinedLayman]

This is a great example of how using colors and shapes can easily obviate the need for long text. If every single dialog that results from a non-undoable action is red, it takes far less time to think "Red -> Non-undoable" than "The action you are about to perform cannot be undone. -> Non-undoable."

Gnome, Windows, KDE and Mac OS X all do things I like with the GUI, but their relationships are so incestual it's getting a little tiresome. How about shaking things up (even a little bit, like Enlightenment)?

It's 2005 and Microsoft is just now getting around to fixing redraws of Windows? And Christ, what's their solution? Draw the same window the same way but require a DX9 compatible video card to do it. Microsoft has basically said "Dual core hyperthreading processors don't work that well with Windows, so go buy a third processor with another 225 million transistors that sucks up another 100 watts to enable you to... draw a window." Nevermind that the damn thing is called Windows.

Re:In other Gnews...

[coaxial]

Yes and No isn't so bad, since it does answer the question. You can redo the dialog to use OK and Cancel without any losing any clarity.

Cance and Close is another kettle of fish though. Both are used to mean "dismiss without action", only now Cancel actually does something. That's misusing the semantics of the GUI, and is Bad and Wrong.

Re:In other Gnews...

[grimJester]

Why don't you change it then? Add the following text to your ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals to change the button order: [KDE] ButtonLayout=1

This isn't meant as an anti-Linux/KDE/whatever flame but...

Why can't stuff like this be configured with a radiobutton / dropdown menu so you can see what the options are? Why the magic number "1"? What does that mean? Reverse alphabetical order?

Re:In other Gnews...

[Anonymous Coward]

If every single dialog that results from a non-undoable action is red, it takes far less time to think "Red -> Non-undoable"

Apart from locales where Red is a positive color you mean?

This is a perfect example of how developers need to be far more locale-aware.

Re:In other Gnews...

[Seehund]

No Gnome dialog box should ever have "yes," "no," and cancel as buttons.

Speaking of buttons... Something I loathe in GNOME are configuration dialogs/apps with only a stupid, menacing "Close" button.

What the hell? That button doesn't just close the window, it saves the settings first, regardless of whether I want to keep any changes I've made, intentionally or not!

When I see "Close", I think "Cancel". I want a "Save" (=save and close), an "Apply" (=test changes, don't save or close) and a "Cancel" (="get me outta here", discard any changes and close) button.

Re:In other Gnews...

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC most/some of the dialogues save the setting when you leave that text field.

I would prefer an "undo" and a "close" button.

Re:In other Gnews...

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I'm not particulary fond of the way gnome changes some things without my explicit approval.
I have a file with a win32 filname encoding, the filesystem doesn't really mind and the gnome gui changes the regional characters it can't display to a ? and adds (invalid encoding) when displaying the filename. Now I'd like to know a bit more about the file and select properties from the context menu and boom, it changes the filename on the fs to what you see in the gui,and there's nothing you can do about. That's data loss in my book and extremely annoying.

Re:In other Gnews...

[Mornelithe]

Because this is a hidden, experimental option that almost no one would ever realistically change.

KDE is highly customizable, but one has to draw the line somewhere. In fact, the fact that KDE is so customizable is a frequent point of attack against it. Putting a GUI option for this, which would probably be used by way less than 1% of people (or, people who use KDE, rather than mostly Gnome with a couple KDE apps), would just be inflaming the situation.

Re:In other Gnews...

[ReinoutS]

So have you reported this to GNOME bugzilla yet? Or do you expect developers to simply read slashdot for bug reports?

Re:In other Gnews...

[Total_Wimp]

Name one.

If you have one named, then tell me how their stoplights work. If you can give me even a single example of a stoplight where red means go, they you get my absolute and total respect.

TW

Re:In other Gnews...

[UltimateRobotLover]

In China, red is associated with good luck and money. If the operation you were performing was connected with either of these, there could be confusion.

And let's not get started on red/green colourblind people....

Re:In other Gnews...

[Total_Wimp]

a) but what color are their stoplights?
b) don't get me started about totaly blind people.

I already know the answer to a) because I've seen Bejing Bicycle and the lights are just the same as in the west.

b) suggests that handicapped people will always have a disadavantage. The solution for this is to still give the handicapped what they need, but also give every bit of help you can to the able bodied who can make use of it. In this case, using colors in addition to words doesn't disadvantage colorblind people, but also gives a bit of help to those in a position to make use of it.

The truth is, I don't know if colors would help that much and even if they would I'd think a cautionary yellow might be more appropriate thana "don't do that!" red. And I really don't have a problem with considering culturable variability in UI design. It's just that sometimes it's overblown. Japanese men wear business suits and Chinese women stop their cars at red lights. Clearly people can learn different ways of doing things if that is their need or desire.

TW

Re:In other Gnews...

[UltimateRobotLover]

Personally, I agree with you! That Chinese example was the best (and only) one I could come up with... Just having a cruddy day at work :(

Re:In other Gnews...

[teprrr]

I'd consider using KDE, but the button order always drives me up the wall, as do the dialogs in MS Windows.

I'd consider using Gnome, but the button order always drives me up the wall. How can I change it? It's easily done in KDE, but how about Gnome.

Re:In other Gnews...

[nutshell42]

No Gnome dialog box should ever have "yes," "no," and cancel as buttons.

Actually I'm not sure I agree. Yes the standard dialogs ("do you want to save", "do you really want to quit", "congratulations, every single one of your programs crashed at once") should have descriptive buttons so I don't have to read them again and again. But there are dialogs which actually contain information which tell you something new. Trying to put all that in a single word, which absolves the user of actually reading the dialog, seems dangerous. jm2c

Re:In other Gnews...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it's also the wrong answer.

Fucking hell... It's also abysmally shite, utterly incompetent interface design.

Re:In other Gnews...

[m50d]

This is a great example of how using colors and shapes can easily obviate the need for long text. If every single dialog that results from a non-undoable action is red, it takes far less time to think "Red -> Non-undoable" than "The action you are about to perform cannot be undone. -> Non-undoable."

Unfortunately then you'll get the accessibility people bitching at you. Remember a pretty large proportion of the male population can't tell red from green, and even with shapes there's a significant number of people who can't see well enough to tell them apart.

Re:In other Gnews...

[albalbo]

That's not quite true; the close button doesn't save a thing. Your preferences instant-apply - what you're really asking for is a 'Reset this to how it was' button.

Re:In other Gnews...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you change it then? Add the following text to your ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals [...]

If this was in the "Apple" section, people would realize what's wrong with this.

Re:In other Gnews...

[e_xworm]

Alas, as global as it should be, it isn't... some dialogs will still have inverse layout

Re:In other Gnews...

[e_xworm]

Actually the Close button just closes the window. You might as well "close" the window from the window manager.
The changes you make are applied on the fly

Re:In other Gnews...

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I'm under the impression that removing the cancel button on the properties dialogue is a "feature" they are particulary proud of.

But of course you are right, issues like these should be reported.

While wading tru the many bugreports against nautilus I just tried to reproduce the issue, and happily (although embarrassed) I can report that it's actually been fixed. And not only that, another issue that's been bugging me, select properties, "accidentally" press delete, and you have to re-type the filename, has been fixed as well (right-click and it comes back).

Might as well file some bugs before i start trolling on the rhytmbox nuisance, to save me from public humiliation.

Re:In other Gnews...

[Seehund]

Yes, you and albalbo are quite right. But the changes are still applied and saved with no way to easily revert them if I make a mistake or if I'm not happy with them. I could for example write down the original typefaces, DPI values, hinting et c. before I go experimenting with fonts, but that sort of defeats one purpose of having a computer... Give me a "Cancel"/"Revert" button, damnit!

Maybe this is done to scare away users from trying to configure things to their own tastes, then the last few remaining configuration possibilities in GNOME can be removed altogether without anyone noticing... Maybe all those options are removed so we won't have to remember so much if we want to undo something, since there's no Cancel button... :P

If there only was a single "Advanced Settings=1" GConf key that we could set somewhere if we don't like the User Hostility of the GNOME2 HIG.

"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

A MENU EDITOR!
what a concept!

maybe they will go back to letting me change the icon of the damn foot menu ...

such features, years ahead of the alternatives..

mod me troll bait or whatever, but im sorry gnome really urks me sometimes.

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

/s/urks/irks

Re:"features"

[Mr. Underbridge]

A MENU EDITOR! what a concept!

No shit. I hadn't tried Gnome for a few years, figured I'd give it a shot when I installed linux on a new box recently. I was all ready to add my most used programs to the foot menu...and...couldn't find a way to do it. I assumed it was buried somewhere, but began to consider the possibility that the paternalistic Gnome people knew better than me what programs I need to use, and had decided I simply didn't need to add programs.

I quickly switched back to KDE. Although I've since moved to blackbox since it isn't a memory hog, and is insanely easy to configure.

What I don't understand about Gnome is how it can have so few features and take up so much memory.

Re:"features"

[mabinogi]

I'm waiting for the day when I can change my colour scheme without changing the theme...

I guess users get confused by too many choices of colour or something?

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody but me still use fvwm with themes?
(bah, I am just and old fogey...)
((you kids today, with your spiffy Window Managers...))

Re:"features"

[elbobsa]

I have a theory that Microsoft employees are trying to sabotage the open source initiative by "volunteering" to help work on the code. Personally, I'd just like to be able to set an evironment variable, e.g. MS_EMULATION_ATTEMPT=0 and have all this eye candy crap go away.

Re:"features"

[Mr. Underbridge]

Now you're not the only one using a no-fuss, lighter-than-air window manager out there. In fact, from what I've seen, blackbox is lighter than fvwm. And I know, that's saying something. Took me a while to come around, but I finally decided I didn't give a damn about eye candy, Gnome was virtually unusable, KDE was unstable, and both were memory hogs.

Re:"features"

[aaronl]

I give these desktop session environments a whirl every now and then. I've always ended up back on my pretty, fast, and unintrustive FVWM setup. Most systems already have it installed, and I wrote my config to fall back gracefully if I was on a system with a 1.x release.

This version of GNOME looks nice, so I'll give it a go. Might be something that I'll like using, but I suspect the footprint will annoy me again. Looks good enough to pursue for Windows to UNIX conversions, at least.

Re:"features"

[clintcan]

Well, gnome has some great features... but I was really agrieved when they removed the menu editor in an earlier release. I'm just glad its back.

Re:"features"

[Mr. Underbridge]

I have a theory that Microsoft employees are trying to sabotage the open source initiative by "volunteering" to help work on the code. Personally, I'd just like to be able to set an evironment variable, e.g. MS_EMULATION_ATTEMPT=0 and have all this eye candy crap go away.

Here you go. Not an environment variable, but does the same basic thing. ;)

ln -s /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.blackbox ~/.xinitrc

Re:"features"

[IANAAC]

I'm waiting for the day when I can change my colour scheme without changing the theme...

Oh good grief. It's dead easy to change the color scheme in gnome. Go to gnome control center, then theme. All themes have the same color scheme choices.

You get at least as many, if not more, color choices per theme than you do with Windows.

Re:"features"

[spauldo]

Yep, I do, on my laptop and my workstation. No themes, but I write my own .fvwm2rc files.

I do it on my laptop because it's a pentium 133. Gnome would kill it.

As far as my workstation goes, it's not because of gnome per se - it's because of metacity. I really, really hated metacity (haven't used it in a while so I dunno what it's like now) so I switched to fvwm... then I kinda quit giving a crap about gnome compliance and all that.

FVWM is a pain in the ass to configure - just like it was back when I first started playing with it in '97. I use it because of how flexible it is - once it's configured, it can do damn near anything look-and-feel wise.

Anyone else using my machines is driven insane because the way I've set it up to operate is completely unique - and I like it that way.

Re:"features"

[damiam]

You've been able to edit menus in GNOME for a long time. I'm not on a Linux box at the moment, so I can't be sure of the details, but I think you can go to applications:/// in Nautilus and delete/add menu shortcuts. In addition, you can find wherever it is that GNOME stores the menu hierarchy (somewhere under /usr/share/gnome/ IIRC) and just edit it directly.

The new menu editor is a convenience, but not really a necessity. After all, Windows doesn't have a menu editor and it seems to get along just fine (then again, the Start menu does allow a lot more drag-and-drop manipulation than the foot menu).

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to throw my hat in the cyber ring...I use FVWM on and off, you can't beat it for customizabilty, but I get tired of it from time to time. I have been using xfce4 for a while now and I really like it...sure like all software, it has things about it that annoy me, but overall it works well, is easy on memory and the out of the box config doesn't look deplorable.

Re:"features"

[lav-chan]

No kidding. I prefer GNOME to KDE, but come on.

New clipboard management, based on the Freedesktop.org specification and tightly integrated with GNOME, allows for objects to persist in the clipboard longer than the lifetime of an application. This means that if you cut or copy an object and then exit that application, the item you put on the clipboard will remain until you replace it.

Wow guys. That's amazing. Great job on that one, you're truly revolutionising the computer world.

Re:"features"

[jonadab]

> What I don't understand about Gnome is how it can have so few features and
> take up so much memory.

This is *mostly* Nautilus. If you exorcise Nautilus from your Gnome session, memory usage goes down by more than half. It's a tradeoff, though, because Nautilus is what draws your wallpaper, so your background will be blank. Still, on a low-memory system it can be worth it. (I'm assuming here that you don't have any need for Nautilus as a graphical file manager, because the whole idea of graphical file managers is exceedingly inane, but if you are one of those people who like to have such a thing, then by all means, keep it around.)

The other thing that can make Gnome take up a lot of memory is the large number of libraries it depends on. Gnome depends on _approximately_ every library on your system, give or take half a dozen.

Re:"features"

[DashEvil]

Which of course is all stored in shared memory, so any program you launch that uses those very libraries will consume less free RAM than it usually would.

Re:"features"

[Enahs]

I think the innovation phase of the GNOME project is scheduled to start in a decade or so.

Seriously, I use Ubuntu, and it's a nice, solid desktop. Boring as hell, definitely designed for the cubicle drones; hell, even MacOS is more fun and more tweak-fiend-friendly these days.

I'll take an OS X box with Quicksilver over this boring-as-hell desktop any day. And this is from a current user. And don't tell me "if you don't like it, hack the source" because that doesn't do any good. People were doing that, and mountains of code were thrown away because it wasn't cubicle-drone-friendly enough.

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that's the _illusion_ of changing the colour scheme - that's selecting different themes that are identical in all but colour.

Why can't I select an arbitrary colour scheme? It's not like GTK is incabable of it...

Re:"features"

[LnxAddct]

The only reason that there is a menu editor is for you damn KDE freaks who were taught that bad habit. Gnome menu editing is integrated with the damn menu, everything is drag & drop or context menu. Many KDE users couldn't figure it out when in reality HIG studies by both Red Hat and I believe also Novell showed that normal users found that intuitive and having to open up a whole new program just to edit a menu in KDE was absurd.

Red Hat does quite a few studies on user interaction on the Linux desktop and they found that only 5% of a developers needs overlap with regular users. All those decisions that are made about the gui are made because 95% of the people prefer them or find them more natural. Don't let KDE's bad habits affect your opinion of Gnome.

In Gnome if you want to do something, its most likely the most obvious way of doing it so try it (don't think obvious as a developer, think obvious as a regular user). Also some of the configuration things that KDE people bitch about are nonsense. If you want to configure every little thing, then use KDE, if you want your Desktop Environment integrated naturally, use Gnome. You can still configure anything you want, albeit you may have to do it in a slightly more convoluted way. Regular users should never come face to face with a configuration dialog of any sort unless they have every intention of it and they know whats going on. Most users don't know, configuring minor things should not be readily available to users. One more note, developers tend to be sloppy, spatial is much better once again for an average person. Once you use it for a bit, you realize the benefits. So many people have spent years in that alternative horrid messy directory structure that they automatically assume change is bad. Wake up and give Gnome a shot, it does alot under the hood for you and will make your desktop experience more efficient.
Regards,
Steve

Re:"features"

[SnprBoB86]

and load faster as well!

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in a dark alley, back around Slackware-3.2 and some stranger said he'd let me try a dime bag of fvwm for free. I was young, and lost between windowmaker, openwin and gnome.

Been on it ever since. Sweet, sweet fvwm.

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I just tried... How do I make a new entry in the Applications menu by drag-and-drop? When I drag a link the menu doesn't open and I can only drop the item onto the panel. How do I edit the actual menus by drag and drop? For that matter how do I add a new menu? All I can figure out is to add that hidious "Drawer" with a bunch of custom launchers... Anyway, so much for "intuitive".

Re:"features"

[HorsePunchKid]

You may be interested in Ion. I've been using it for over a year now, though it doesn't get a huge fraction of my desktop time. It discards the notion of overlapping windows and instead just lets you tile the desktop as you please, with windows completely filling those tiles (frames). Each frame is tabbed, so you can basically tab applications that don't offer it built-in.

Most of the navigation among the tabs, frames, and (virtual) desktops is done from the keyboard (I use vim-like bindings), though much of it can also be done with the mouse.

The screenshots, unfortunately, are not too representative (and I can't get fbgrab working properly), but they'll give you a general idea of what Ion can look like.

Re:"features"

[mabinogi]

Translation -

Gnome developers know better than users.
It's easy to use if you're one of our model users - if you're not, fuck you, we don't want you using our desktop environment.

See sig.

Re:"features"

[Fruit]

You can set the

/desktop/gnome/background/draw_background

gconf property to get GNOME itself to draw your backdrop. Took me a while to find, too.

Re:"features"

[jdclucidly]

There is not and never has been any way to "drag and drop" update the menus in Gnome 2.x. In Gnome 2.8 and 2.10 there was no menu editor of _ANY_ kind what so ever. In Gnome 2.6 and earlier the applications:/// interface could be used to edit menus but that was removed due to incompatibility with Freedesktop.org's standards.

Please check your facts before writing huge flames.

Re:"features"

[Jerk-O-Meter]

The only reason that there is a menu editor is for you damn KDE freaks who were taught that bad habit.

No, the ability to edit the menu was lost several versions back. Before now, there was no way to edit the menu.

Gnome menu editing is integrated with the damn menu, everything is drag & drop or context menu.

This is not true. There is no way to edit the menu by drag and drop or via the context menu, nor has there ever been.

Many KDE users couldn't figure it out when in reality HIG studies by both Red Hat and I believe also Novell showed that normal users found that intuitive and having to open up a whole new program just to edit a menu in KDE was absurd.

If this is true, it is quite astounding, as no such feature ever existed! HIG studies into nonexistant features, whatever next?

Re:"features"

[artson]

I think one of the reasons I avoid Gnome like the plague is the nasty attitudes of developers and fans. As well, I run an old box and Gnome just drives it to its knees. Whenever I try to configure anything in Gnome, I end up stymied and frustrated. I don't want to be frustrated and pissed off, I just want to get some work done. This is not intended as a flame or troll, just telling it the way it feels to me.

The developers might feel that simplification to the point there is only one choice or no choice is the way to go, but I don't. I don't know who these mysterious users are who prefer over-simplification, but I wish someone would ask me.

For what it's worth, I find KDE annoying at times too, but it's much prettier.

Re:"features"

[RAMMS EIN]

``If you exorcise Nautilus from your Gnome session, memory usage goes down by more than half.''

So how do I do that, in a clean way? I do all my file management from the command line, so I figure I don't need Nautilus.

``It's a tradeoff, though, because Nautilus is what draws your wallpaper, so your background will be blank.''

Bah, I use xsetroot anyway.

By the way, the browser is what uses most memory on my system. I'm currently using Epiphany, which is slightly lighter than Firefox, but crashes once in a while. I would actually like to use a KHTML-based browser (like Konqueror), but I don't want to have to install half of KDE for that. Does anyone know of any packages for Ubuntu that give you a KHTML-based browser without depending on half of KDE?

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

And what is wrong with that? (Except that you've framed the sentence in a more offending manner)

Re:"features"

[dedded]

"configuring minor things should not be readily available to users"

I strongly disagree. Largely because what the developer considers a minor issue might be major to me, the regular user. Say rather that "configuring minor things should not be necessary" (because the system is designed so well). But it should still be possible and available.

It takes remarkable skill for a developer to listen to user comments of the form, "I want feature X, and feature Y, ....", realize that features X and Y have merit but integrate poorly, and come back with a reconfiguration of the design incorporating the merits of X and Y but in a consistent and well-thought-out way. In my experience, I've only really seen this with in-house CAD developers who work very closely with their users.

/Dan

Re:"features"

[Mr. Underbridge]

Because they don't know better than me how I can best use my computer.

Re:"features"

[Felonious Ham]

I suspect they _do_ know better than you how _I_ want my computer to function. Gnome's commitment to the "logical default" is it's greatest strength. Twiddling your desktop to nth degree may be fun, but it's hardly productive.

Further, there are tons of alternative desktops and window managers out there; use them. I've never understood the rabid hating that goes on here on Slashdot, and the promotion of same with "insightful" ratings.

Gnome has lots of room for improvement (mostly in making Nautilus faster and more stable), but it's a damn nice environment to get work done in.

Now get back to your E17 and twiddle the shade color of the blinking fade thing.

Re:"features"

[Mr. Underbridge]

Gnome menu editing is integrated with the damn menu, everything is drag & drop or context menu. Many KDE users couldn't figure it out when in reality HIG studies by both Red Hat and I believe also Novell showed that normal users found that intuitive and having to open up a whole new program just to edit a menu in KDE was absurd.

Then that's a flawed study. It's easier if you know that is an option, but how the hell are you supposed to know how to do that? Guessing? If they're going to try cute-sy things like that, it better be really intuitive. Maybe add a tooltip or something that indicates how programs may be added to the menu.

It's hard to argue HIG studies against a ton of real-world experience. You can say menus shouldn't be edited by external programs, and that it's the fault of those users. First, that attitude sucks - if all the users can't use your program, it's your fault, period. Second, all major operating environments require some kind of external programs to edit menus, among those that use menus. If you're going to be different, make it easy to figure out how you're different. Third, those HIG studies only make sense among people who have never used computers, which seems for some ridiculous reason to be Gnome's target market. And you wonder why fewer and fewer people use Gnome.

To paraphase Feynman, if your theory is in conflict with reality, it's wrong, no matter how pretty it is.

In Gnome if you want to do something, its most likely the most obvious way of doing it so try it (don't think obvious as a developer, think obvious as a regular user).

I'm not a developer, and it wasn't obvious to me as a regular user. Dragging something onto a menu doesn't make much sense. Having an uption like "edit menu" which brings up a nice spatial environment with icons makes it obvious that you're supposed to drag and drop. That would be nice. I'm not saying I want to type a bunch of crap in, and I'll admit KDE is screwed up on this. As a side note, I don't use KDE.

Regular users should never come face to face with a configuration dialog of any sort unless they have every intention of it and they know whats going on. Most users don't know, configuring minor things should not be readily available to users.

I'll grant that, but some things actually need to be done. Gnome goes way overboard in ensuring that their systems can only be used by people only doing the bare minimum with computers. Contrast that with the Linux userbase which is generally computer proficient, and I can't understand their motivation.

I use Mac OSX in addition to linux, which strikes a very nice balance between ease of use and customizability. That's the thing - Apple makes everything nice and spatial by getting rid of menus almost alltogether on the Desktop. There is no applications button. Gnome goes halfway, mixes everything up, and ends up with something that is very much counterintuitive. Some personalization needs to be done to a computer by even regular users, and Gnome makes this impossible.

One more note, developers tend to be sloppy, spatial is much better once again for an average person. Once you use it for a bit, you realize the benefits. So many people have spent years in that alternative horrid messy directory structure that they automatically assume change is bad.

I'll grant that for the average user, although I personally need the organization of a directory tree to avoid losing things. Does Gnome still allow turning off of spatial?

Wake up and give Gnome a shot, it does alot under the hood for you and will make your desktop experience more efficient.

Like I said, I did give it a try with the last version, because I was sick of KDE. I couldn't figure out how to add things to menus, so I quit. Methinks the Gnome Foundation's hubris is costing them users. In any event, they switched back - something they almost never do - so I'd consider that an admission they were wrong.

All I nee

Re:"features"

[Mr. Underbridge]

Gnome's commitment to the "logical default" is it's greatest strength.

I don't believe their defaults are all that logical. Also, since there's usually only one way to do things with no consideration for standard use, they need to do a better job (a la Apple) of making that method easier to determine.

Further, there are tons of alternative desktops and window managers out there; use them.

I am. However, that general attitude has been marginalizing Gnome for some time now. Put it this way - if I thought Gnome had nothing to offer, I wouldn't be frustrated. Fact is, it has some great characteristics that it continually kills through some completely hare-brained design choices.

I've never understood the rabid hating that goes on here on Slashdot, and the promotion of same with "insightful" ratings.

I don't hate, and I'm not rabid. I'd like a DE with a clean interface, hell, I own an Apple, you'd think I'd be their target market. But last I tried (last month), I couldn't figure out how to modify Gnome in any way. So I quit. I gave it a try, with an open mind, and it doesn't work. Sadly, I think Gnome is worse now than it was 3 years ago, and that's not a good thing.

Now get back to your E17 and twiddle the shade color of the blinking fade thing.

See, you assume that, because it's easy, but you're wrong. I switched to Blackbox, which is clean, doesn't do much, so it has nothing to twiddle. I don't want to twiddle, but I do want to be able to add some damned applications to a menu. I'm not a moron, and I couldn't figure out how to do that in an hour, so I quit.

Gnome needs to consider the possibility that normal people who would consider using their program can't figure out how to do simple things, and that it's not the fault of said users. Assuming, that is, that Gnome F. actually wants people to use its program?

Re:"features"

[jvital]

Before this release, you couldn't add menus, only menu entries.

To do that, go to a menu, right click, and choose Entire Menu-> "Add a new item to this menu".

The reason why you couldn't add new menus is because most users simply don't do that. It's that simple. You and all others 'slashdoters' screaming "i don't use gnome because i can't edit the menu!' probably counts for 0.9% of Gnome's target audience.

Gnome's target is simple users, moms, dads, grandpas. I'll tell you, i've presented Linux to many many newbies, and if there's one thing i never got asked is "how do i customize the menu?" Most people don't waste time doing that.

Re:"features"

[e_xworm]

That's right. I want to start from the default Clearlooks theme and start changing the colours
make the background colour that way
make the button colour that way
and so on
you know... like in KDE?
And it's not hard. You CAN do it writting your own gtkrc but shouldnt there be an easy way? for the end user?

Re:"features"

[ashayh]

Really ???

Let me try some intuitiveness.

I see the Scite icon has landed in two placesin the Foot menu. For me the most obvious thing to do is right click and hope theres some menu that'll help me. There no menu entry to remove anything. But lots of options to ADD the Scite icon in various locations in a variety of different ways.

I keep the icon selected and press Delete. nothing happens.

I drag the icon to the Trash bin in a variety of ways. Either nothing happens or it tells me I cannot Copy items to the trash, I can only move them. yay.

I drag the duplicate Icon to the other menu that contains it hoping I can atleast get away with one Icon. No luck.

I browse the .gnome2 directory for some clue. If theres anything there, I certainly couldnt find it.

Ok listen, while I immensely appreciate the efforts of Gnome dev's, I cannot call a shitty menu system by any other name. Why couldnt they simply do it the MS way ?? Windows puts links to apps in directories and each dir automatically becomes a sub menu. Is there any great reason the Freedesktoop standard was not designed this way ? Instead of links, we could have had some other fancy files, but they could have still lived in dirs and sub dirs. Windows also has a 'All Users' dir for links that go in every users menu.

Editing menus in Windows is simple. Right click and select Explore. Or simply Right click and say delete. Since the entries are Win shortcuts, you can also edit them, rename them and add commandline arguments. Why cant i do a 'Add Launcher' with Gnome menus, like I can with Panels?

I'm sure someone can reply to this post giving some extremely long winded, counterintuitive and retarted way to Add and or Delete menu entires, but thats NOT the way I want to do it.

In Gnome, I avoid the menu and put most icons/launchers on the panel. The Command line on the Panel is really nice.

Re:"features"

[cortana]

For the record, since Gnome 2.10 uses the freedesktop.org Desktop Menu Specification, you can use any menu editor. It is true that gnome-menu-editor hasn't shipped with Gnome before 2.12, but nothing has stopped you from using Smeg or even kmenuedit!

Re:"features"

[Anonymous Coward]

In Gnome 2.8, menu editing was with a clumsy "Add item to this menu" menu line that appeared at the end of menus. There was no official standalone menu editor program, but you could edit menus. And I'm pretty sure that the "applications:///" trick worked.

In Gnome 2.10, they adopted the freedesktop.org standard, and any fd.o compatible menu editor would work. There was no official Gnome menu editor in 2.10, because they release every six months and the menu editor was not ready in time. The "applications:///" trick definitely does not work in 2.10.

For 2.12 they added an official fd.o compatible menu editor.

There was never any evil plan to not support menu editing; they simply did not delay the release of 2.10 while the menu editor was finished.

Please check your facts

Always a good idea.

Re:"features"

[jdclucidly]

applications:/// was broken to the state of unusabe due to some underlying change in 2.6. In 2.8 it was officially removed. So, between 2.6 and recently when fd.o editors made an appearance (sometime after 2.10), there was no menu editor at all.

Re:"features"

[GecKo213]

What I don't understand about Gnome is how it can have so few features and take up so much memory.

When I read that, I just remembered the Sega Saturn's little whisper catch phrase. So, without further delay... To reply to your confusion of Gnome's memory usage...

"it's thinking"

Re:"features"

[RedBear]

The only reason that there is a menu editor is for you damn KDE freaks who were taught that bad habit. Gnome menu editing is integrated with the damn menu, everything is drag & drop or context menu. Many KDE users couldn't figure it out when in reality HIG studies by both Red Hat and I believe also Novell showed that normal users found that intuitive and having to open up a whole new program just to edit a menu in KDE was absurd.

Red Hat does quite a few studies on user interaction on the Linux desktop and they found that only 5% of a developers needs overlap with regular users. All those decisions that are made about the gui are made because 95% of the people prefer them or find them more natural. Don't let KDE's bad habits affect your opinion of Gnome.

In other words, KDE users are a bunch of idiots who are doing it the Wrong Way[tm], and that's why they can't figure out how to use almost anything in GNOME even though they figured out KDE in a matter of minutes without any instructions.

Or maybe, just maybe, GNOME doesn't provide enough clues to how it works, and its way of working is so narrowly defined by the Super-Intelligent Developer Gods that if you aren't on the Enlightened Path already you can't get there. Maybe the mind of every user doesn't work quite the same way. Maybe you and those studies don't have all the answers you think you have.

But I wouldn't want to mess with your ideology, so I'll take my blasphemy and go elsewhere. I'll stick with a simple, intuitive system that's easy to learn and use, like [BeOS|XFce|Windows|KDE|MacOSX].

Re:"features"

[Mr. Underbridge]

Hey that's good! It would be great (for about an hour) if when something took a while to load, the OS whispered through the speakers...."It's loading!"

Re:"features"

[dbIII]

The only reason that there is a menu editor is

There's the single user non-network aware way of things, which is to drag stuff around with a mouse and have to do it with every user (which is getting fixed in gnome) on every system (not being fixed in gnome - a common home remotely mounted in expected.) Then there's the concept of an exportable and editable configuration of some description - flat or XML or whatever. In a multi-user environment gnome has a very long way to go before it can get around some design problems. I'm sure KDE and others also have problems, but this menu editor is not just to keep KDE users happy but to help gnome get to the situation where it is easy to have multiple users with the same launcher icons etc on multiple systems - which is currently a distant goal.

I still remain convinced that gconf is an example of someone wanting to copy the MSWindows registry on *nix but doing it badly having one for each user and no simple way to get settings from one to the other. That, the lack of man pages and abandoned parts of the codebase (although gdm is going ahead again now) are my major problems with gnome - apart from the obivious speed and memory usage issues which I'm sure are getting resolved more with each release.

I use gnome on many machines, I like many aspects of it, but there are of course a few situations where more than the single user GUI configuration would make it more usable. The seemingly trivial situation of adding a few launcher buttons to gpanel on every machine on a network for every user has to be accomplished by sitting down in front of each one and dragging a mouse around - unbelievable in 2005. Some work is being done on being able to export gconf keys for use in other configurations but it is apparently not trivial even for the gconf developers.

Re:"features"

[jonadab]

> > If you exorcise Nautilus from your Gnome session, memory usage goes down by more than half.''

> So how do I do that, in a clean way?

I don't know whether the Gnome people would officially consider this "clean" or not, but I just go into the control center to Advanced, Sessions, select the Current Session tab, select the thing I don't want, click the Remove button, Apply.

> By the way, the browser is what uses most memory on my system.

I wasn't counting the browser as part of Gnome, since I use a mozilla.org browser that I obtain separately from Gnome. I also wasn't counting the X server as part of Gnome. Those things do use RAM too, of course, but it was Gnome's memory usage we were discussing in this thread. Nautilus uses a significant amount of the RAM that *Gnome* uses; this may or may not be a significant amount of the total RAM use on your system, depending on your usage pattern.

For me it's probably not; I have this habbit of leaving a number of applications open all the time (at least three windows each of Emacs, OpenOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, and Deer Park, plus about eight gnome-terminal windows, and assorted other apps with fewer windows each... yeah, so this absolutely dwarfs what I save by not using Nautlus, but like you I've been doing all my file management from the command line since I discovered tab completion, plus I go weeks between minimizing enough windows to see the wallpaper, so having Nautilus running is pretty pointless). Oh, and my window manager probably uses more RAM than the one that Gnome ships by default, since I use sawfish instead of metacity, because of assorted minor features it has that I became addicted to back when sawfish *was* the default window manager in Gnome (Gnome was better then... the panel had more features then too... although the newer gnome-terminal is better. Actually, besides sawfish, which works fine with Gnome2, it's really only the panel from 1.4 that I want back.)

Re:"features"

[SComps]

Windows doesn't have a menu editor? When did that disappear? Try a right click on the task bar, and go to the "Advanced" tab (this works in windows 2k btw) you'll see a whole part in there about customizing, adding to and removing stuff from the start menu. Of course that's too easy and probably doesn't lend itself to slamming microsoft so I digress.

Anyhow, my complaint with Gnome isn't so much that this stuff can't be done, but how convoluted it is to do it. Typing applications:/// in Nautilus, or digging around for some buried functionality or looking for the menus in the /usr filesystem is bullcrap.

Customizing your menu to add applications that you use, and remove applications that you don't is basic functionality for pretty much any desktop. Not having that capability right off the get-go is a big black mark for any desktop environment. That Gnome had it and removed it tells me that the person who used to swing the clue stick on the dev team has gone someplace else--and took the menu editor with him (or her)

Re:"features"

[Door-opening Fascist]

No. I'm still on TWM. :)

Ubuntu

[JanneM]

For those who want the latest 2.12 goodness nicely prepackaged, Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) will be released with 2.12 on October 13:th, about a month from now.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BreezyReleaseSchedule?high light=(release)

Re:Ubuntu

[Muramasa]

Or if you're slightly more daring, you can upgrade to breezy now. There hasn't be any real breakage in a while now.

Re:Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

ya know, i'm starting to notice that ubuntu is becoming more and more the defacto linux distro that people refer to when they talk about using linux. not to flame other distros, but i find it interesting that ubuntu is really gaining such a userbase. i know i've been very happy with it, despite a few quirks, and have been heartily recommending it to people for quite some time now.

the first thing i thought when i saw this post was, gee when will that appear on my Ubuntu updates? and by the responses i've seen here, a lot of other people had the same thoughts. :)

Re:Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Ubuntu a lot simply because they pay attention to little details. They make sure things Just Work, much like Apple. They even have a hardware reporting tool to let them know how things work on your particular configuration.

About the only thing I really miss from another distribution is the rc-update tool from Gentoo. No other distribution seems to use this, and it is, IMO, leaps and bounds ahead of any other linux init script setup. Going back to look at bsd and SysV setups just makes my eyes bleed.

Re:Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Of you are even more daring you can upgrade to KDE 3.4

Re:Ubuntu

[ender-]

About the only thing I really miss from another distribution is the rc-update tool from Gentoo. No other distribution seems to use this, and it is, IMO, leaps and bounds ahead of any other linux init script setup.

Hmm... I'm not terribly familiar with the way Gentoo does things, but taking a quick look at rc-update on the Wiki, it seems like what you're looking for in Ubuntu/Debian is update-rc.d. Perhaps the syntax is slightly more annoying but it isn't really difficult.
ie.
update-rc.d -f scriptname remove
or
update-rc.d defaults scriptname

Hope that helps.

Re:Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

That's somewhat useful, but not nearly as powerful. For example, using 'rc-update show' shows all current daemons and their status.

Yeah I can go look through /etc/rc.d/ to figure it out. But it's annoying. Having an tool like rc-update makes it much easier to weed out daemons you don't need. Especially with modern linux distros that have automatic updates and package managers which may install something you didn't realize at the time.

Re:Ubuntu

[jdeluise]

hey make sure things Just Work, much like Apple.....that's a laugh. Explain why two separate DVD's with thumb prints on them caused two separate PowerMac G5's running Panther to panic and crash, losing all unsaved data.

Re:Ubuntu

[Doc Ruby]

I prefer Ubuntu's boot on my laptop. DebIan's got a little of each side of the equation, so I keep it mostly in the closet.

Computers are mistresses: betcha can't eat just one!

Karma!

[Anonymous Coward]

Link to torrent:
http://torrent.gnome.org/gnome-livecd-2.12-i386-en -5.iso.torrent

Re:Karma!

[poningru]

I study at UF you insensitive clod.

Different strokes for different folks

[Sheetrock]

I've been a longtime fan of Enlightenment, but from time to time I've looked at the featureset of GNOME and thought about trying it out.

I just wish a little more effort would go into the user-interface aspect, which is really the whole point of a GUI right? It should be flicker-free. When I want to run a program it should come right up rather than changing the mouse pointer and making me wait. The fact that its logo is a foot doesn't help matters any.

Are there any window shells out there that have a little more pizazz than Enlightenment but retain the crisp response to user-input? Because that's what's needed to get the desktop crowd.

Re:Different strokes for different folks

[fimbulvetr]

Are you saying that the app should come up immediately? What do you mean by "come up right"?
Things like firefox/k3b/thunderbird/synaptic would be almost impossible to get up right away, even on a moderately fast computer. What would you prefer instead of the mouse pointer changing? Do you want it to bounce? Do you want it to act like nothing happened?

Re:Different strokes for different folks

[aconbere]

The way I see it you really have 2 options here.

First you have Gnome/KDE which dictate everything are huge projects that suck in all sorts of stuff and seek to standardize everything through brute force.

Second you have the rest... XFCE/Enlightenment/*Box/etc Which for the most part seek to stay out of your way and let you pick and choose. If by "pizazz" you mean a long list of features I don't think your going to find it in the WM's that compete with Gnome/KDE at the moment. If you mean a quality fast slick user interface your own choice (or if you haven't upgraded ~E17) is really pretty and responsive though will of course suffer from lack of uptake with it's own widgets library. And my personal favorite XFCE which I think has some promising projects in the works (Thunar for instance) that should bring it closer to competing in the feature set department with Gnome/KDE. Either way as soon as Gnome/KDE speed things up a bit, stay out of my way more, simplify their options and clean up the chaffe I'll probably give them another try. But for now Enlightenment and XFCE have my heart. ~Anders

Re:Different strokes for different folks

[nuOpus]

The load time of an application has NOTHING to do with the window manager you are using. IE in Windows loads very fast only because most of it is already in RAM when WindowsXP loads. Portions of MS Office are already running also. Add a large software like OpenOffice that is NOT running when Windows loads and you will see the load time.

Linux is the same way. If you have a slow computer there is no hope of you speeding up its load time just because you switched window managers. Well, if you have little RAM and the WM is taking up most of it ... it would slow things down a bit due to swapping. And in that case it is not the WM slowing down the load, it is the swapping because there is not enough physical memory.

What I suggest, if your tired of waiting, is to upgrade your old processor and get more RAM.

Re:Different strokes for different folks

[Chemicalscum]

I just installed one of the Mandrake kernel rpm's compiled for optimum multimedia performance on my 10.1 box. I found that compared the default mdk kernel it was loading applications much faster, for example OOo2Beta was loading in about one quarter the time.

I 'll have to check out what they did and start rolling my own

BTW I have far too little memory 128Mb.

Re:Different strokes for different folks

[m50d]

First you have Gnome/KDE which dictate everything are huge projects that suck in all sorts of stuff and seek to standardize everything through brute force.

I don't think KDE tries that at all. It's customizable to a fault. About the only thing you could argue it's sucked in is running its own sound server, but to me that's part of the environment - I want audible notifications for gui events, the two need to be linked together. And you can compile without it or disable it if you want.

Re:Different strokes for different folks

[nuOpus]

Depending on who did the kernel, it could have been optimized for 686 instead of 386, or it could have just been installed without lots of other junk making the kernel smaller and taking less memory.

But ... in either case, there is no way to get a program load instantly like the parent author wants.

Have to try it out

[stoolpigeon]

There is a lot I like about gnome- but last time I did try it, the lack of a menu editor drove me nuts. I dug around trying to find out how to do it manually for days. Even wrote up a journal entry or two on it. I ended up giving up and went back to KDE. I'll check this out and see how it goes.

Re:Have to try it out

[digidave]

Ubuntu has supported the development of Smeg, which for months has been a very good menu editor for Gnome.

Re:Have to try it out

[mhesseltine]

Ubuntu has supported the development of Smeg, which for months has been a very good menu editor for Gnome.

I'm not using anything called smeg because it's too similar to this. Who the hell named that anyway?

Re:Have to try it out

[Nasarius]

Who the hell named that anyway?

A Red Dwarf fan, probably.

Re:Have to try it out

[cortana]

Simple Menu Editor for Gnome

Maybe the author is not English? Or liked Red Dwarf... :)

Re:Have to try it out

[LnxAddct]

Gnome menu editing has always been integrated with the menu, either through context menus or drag & drop. It's been dead simple, for some reason KDE folk can never figure it out, read the Gnome mailing list discussions. Honest to god every KDE user that switched to Gnome bitched about that, but just about noone else. A sane person would think that it is absurd to have to open up a whole new program just to edit a menu. KDE's lack of a good HIG is teaching bad habits.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Have to try it out

[shywolf9982]

Well, there is a way to customize it. Manually add the *.desktop entry in /usr/share/applications (and there is a way to put it in the user home dir too to have user-specific configs). I agree that, anyway, it's horrible. Glad they brought the function back (cause I think there was such a feature in old releases).

Re:Have to try it out

[Bent Mind]

This probably won't be my most intelligent post, and I probably won't get any karma, but what the hell...

Editing the menu through context menus and drag & drop is intuitive if you are only changing one item. However, it's a pain to weed through multiple levels of menus when you want to change multiple items or move items between levels. For that, I much prefer to be able to see the whole picture at once. This is where a nice editor that shows the structure is a god-send.

Now I haven't tried Gnome since I used SuSE 7.3, so I don't know what has changed. Every once in a while I get fed up with KDE and concider switching. KDE menus have come a long way since I started using it. Use of the menu editor is not required. KDE supports context menus and drag & drop for simple editing and the menu editor for more complex editing. However, there is a lot of room for improvement. I'd like to see the dedicated menu editing application replaced by a Konqueror plug-in. Something simular to how tar files are browsable in Konqueror. It would also be nice if I could edit the global menus as easily as the per user menus. As it stands now, to edit the global menus, you have to load the .desktop file in kwrite. That's if you can figure out where they are. KDE does have an application for creating menu profiles. However, I just want some simple way to edit global menus. I shouldn't have to set up a system of profiles to accomplish that.

My last thought... I often hear about human interface studies from Gnome users. I think these studies are a great idea and very useful. However, isn't it a contradiction to say the way a user wants to do something is bad because it doesn't agree with your study? I thought the point of these studies was to find the most intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Sure, maybe users are creating more work for themselves.Maybe there are better methods. Show those methods to the user and see if they agree. Don't call the user stupid if what's intuitive to you isn't to them. Not everyone thinks exactly the same way.

What Gnome needs

[andrewman327]

If the GUI could match the sheer attractivness of Tiger or Vista, there would be many more converts. Although it is billed as "an intuitive and attractive desktop for end-users" on GNOME's website, it still has a way to go. Say what you will about the other named OSes, but real progress is being made on the GUI front, and I'm afraid that GNOME is falling behind.

Re:What Gnome needs

[Anonymous Coward]

vista...attractive?

you must be joking right

cause i sure as hell am laughing

Re:What Gnome needs

[Nasarius]

If the GUI could match the sheer attractivness of...Vista

You've gotta be kidding. KDE's now-default Plastik theme is clean and attractive, much more so than any default Windows option. Adding semi-transparent bling like Vista does is easy, though IMNSHO it's very annoying.

I haven't used a recent version of GNOME, but KDE already looks very slick. There are a few mind-boggling UI quirks (why can't I keep my desktop icons auto-arranged??), but for the most part it's just as easy or easier to use than Windows. The audiocd:/ kioslave is a thing of beauty.

Re:What Gnome needs

[vcv]

While I agree the current Vista Beta1 theme isn't too great.... Plastik?! God, that is so terribly ugly it makes me cry. Absolutely TERRIBLE. It's almost up there with Luna.

Re:What Gnome needs

[Nasarius]

Plastik?! God, that is so terribly ugly it makes me cry. Absolutely TERRIBLE. It's almost up there with Luna.

Are you sure you're not confusing it with the old default, Keramik? That was truly awful. If you really do mean Plastik, what do you prefer?

Re:What Gnome needs

[vcv]

Well then, don't I look like an idiot. You are right, I was thinking about the old default theme. There are actually people that like it. Plastik is much better, though I think ClearLooks for GNOME is probably the best theme I've seen for X.

Re:What Gnome needs

[jcr]

KDE's now-default Plastik theme is clean and attractive, much more so than any default Windows option.

Now, that's what I call damning with faint praise.

-jcr

Re:What Gnome needs

['The '.$L3mm1ng]

Gnome's Clearlooks is very slick and pretty. I liked it best from all the alternatives that are installed by default (Ubuntu Hoary) and I am happy to see it become the default for Gnome 2.12. Though I had to recompile it to not use animated progress bars - they made x.org use 10-15% of my CPU instead of 1-4% (using a good ol' Athlon 700).

Re:What Gnome needs

[unoengborg]

What Gnome needs is for its developers to loose the UNIX-think. One example: Most users see their physical file cabinet, desktop, and trash can as separate entities.

Just the same we see a Desktop folder when we open a Nautilus window. First of all that could fool the user into believing that the contents of his Desktop folder actually was copies of what he sees on his real desktop. What if he decides to delete the file in on one of the places. That would lead to loss of data.

Showing the Desktop in two places is also inconsistent with the spatialness of Gnome. By the way it is also inconsistent with how the Trash is handled. The Trash is visible on the desktop or as a panel applet, but it still isn't displayed as a visible folder in Nautilus. I really think that the Desktop folder should be handled the same way.
Preferably the Desktop folder could be hidden by using the .hidden mechanism allready present in Gnome.(Files listed in .hidden of a directory behaves as if they were dot files).

Speaking of hidden files, direcories rarely visitid by non sysadmin users should be hidden files by default (though it shoud be possible to show hidden files). Candidates for default hiding would be: /etc, /proc, /usr/, /bin, /lib, /sbin, /dev, /root.

Not seeing these directories would be less intimidating to users with no or little UNIX experience, and thus with no knowledge what they were for. Regardless if you know what these files are used for, not seeing them in non sysadmin situations would speed up navigation. This would be especially true if .hidden files also worked in file dialogs.

Re:What Gnome needs

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you missed the news...

but Gnome IS A UNIX desktop environment

Re:What Gnome needs

[Rutulian]

Showing the Desktop in two places is also inconsistent with the spatialness of Gnome.

I sort of see your point with this, but I don't really see it as a usability problem. I think most users will realize that the Desktop folders contains the items that show up on their desktop. I don't think hiding the Desktop folder aids usability; it only irritates system administrators. Although you are right, it does violate the spatial metaphor.

Candidates for default hiding would be: /etc, /proc, /usr/, /bin, /lib, /sbin, /dev, /root

No, and fsck no. The correct way of hiding system complexity is the way it is already done. The user is rooted in their home directory. The Home bookmark or whatever you want to call it is prominently placed in the file choose dialog, the desktop, the places menu, and the computer window. All views of the filesystem default to the home directory, and the only way to get to the rest of the computer is by going "Up" from the home directory (which is not an obvious action if you are navigating with the location bar), or clicking on the Filesystem bookmark. The completely borked up Windows way of doing it--hiding anything system related unless you click the "show contents" button--is not only extremely irritating, but it doesn't work.

Re:What Gnome needs

[prockcore]

Just the same we see a Desktop folder when we open a Nautilus window.

Same with OSX. The Desktop is the first icon in my home folder.

Re:What Gnome needs

[cortana]

Better yet: set /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir to True.

"If set to true, then Nautilus will use the user's home folder as the desktop. If it is false, then it will use ~/Desktop as the desktop."

This makes so much sense. It's great!

Re:What Gnome needs

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 3.5 -- or 3.4.99999 svn already has 'Keep icons auto-arranged' feature ...

Re:What Gnome needs

[dotgain]

Hmm. I'm going to have to wait around for someone with mod points. Until then I won't whether you're joking or not.

Re:What Gnome needs

[poofyhairguy82]

If the GUI could match the sheer attractivness of Tiger or Vista, there would be many more converts.

Tiger is more like a Xbox game than Linux or Windows as far as development goes (way smaller control group), and Vista doesn't come for a while. My Gnome desktop looks awesome today. GNU is doing the best it can with the resources it has.

Re:What Gnome needs

[Arker]

What planet are you living on? GNOME developers seem to be congenitally incapable of grasping Unix-think, there's nothing there to lose, or to 'loose' either.

Now if they could be pursuaded to learn something about Unix and produce tools that actually reflect that learning, they might produce something useful for a change.

Re:What Gnome needs

[RenatoRam]

And it's been like that from the 2.0 (or 2.2) days, also.

Re:What Gnome needs

[Pecisk]

About Desktop folder - sorry, but OS X and Windows XP lists Desktop folder as part of User home directory too, so it is how developers see that. I LOVE GNOME interpretation of Desktop folder icon. KDE also uses Desktop folder too, so my guess there are common agreement between desktop devs about that.

About system files - in theory, it would be good, in pratice, I don't see a point to invest something in such effort. When you work, actually first you can open is your home directory. So user will save all his content under his home directory, and won't have iniciative to mess with system. He also can't even read some of these directories, so - what's the deal, if permissions is set up right.

However, I would like to see more meaningful names of directories, but it doesn't really bother me - and most of specialists who needs to use them too. So I just guess it is not worth that.

But it is just my IMHO :)

Re:What Gnome needs

[unoengborg]

About Desktop folder - sorry, but OS X and Windows XP lists Desktop folder as part of User home directory too, so it is how developers see that. KDE also uses Desktop folder too, so my guess there are common agreement between desktop devs about that.


First of all Apple is not always right, only almost always. BTW, the original MacOS did not have a Desktop folder.

The difference between Gnome, Windows and KDE is that KDE and windows doesn't use the spatial methaphore, Gnome and the old MacOS-9 do.
What's right in one setting isn't always right in another.

Changeing the actual directory names would probably not be a good idea as that would create internationalizon problems. You could however uses .desktop files to accomplish that, but that would require Nautilus to be fixed so that it always displayed the internationalized name in e.g. the new paht bar.

Re:What Gnome needs

[Pecisk]

Your last idea is something I really would like to tested at least in prototype level - it is good one.

And it is not about "right or wrong" - there are so much very different user desktop expierences that there should be rules, not 'someone's expierence' to follow, otherwise then usability would be target which never could be reached.

Re:What Gnome needs

[amck]

The danger of this (and reason its a seperate directory) is unpacking files, downloaded files, etc:

if you donwload a file, it puts in on the desktop. easy for beginners. You can also unzip, etc. files there. if there was a hidden .login in that zip file, you'd be 0wned, as it just overwrote your existing one. Instead its relatively safe for
beginners to use.

Re:What Gnome needs

[teprrr]

While I agree the current Vista Beta1 theme isn't too great.... Plastik?! God, that is so terribly ugly it makes me cry. Absolutely TERRIBLE. It's almost up there with Luna.

Don't you think Gnome new default theme looks ugly too? For me it looks Plastik-alike...

Re:What Gnome needs

[m50d]

Bundling a glitzy theme and offering a choice at the start (like kde's first run wizard) would make the world of difference. Sure, not everyone likes fluorescent flashiness, but not everyone likes drab grey and brown either. Choice is good, though sometimes the gnome devs act like they don't believe this.

Re:What Gnome needs

[zootm]

Additionally, I might be the only one, but does nobody else want a differentiation between a folder housing one's documents, and the desktop?

Re:Jesus...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think that fucking while repenting is counterproductive.

Nice

[e_xworm]

Gnome is getting better and better but KDE is still eye-candier (ermm is that proper? candier?)

About gtk-2.8... What are those new "features not currently available in any other toolkit" that the article is talking about?

Re:Nice

[Nuclear Elephant]

Gnome is getting better and better but KDE is still eye-candier

Only for the uninformed.

Re:Nice

[10Ghz]

How exactly are those different from SuperKaramba on KDE?

Re:Nice

[DrXym]

And kitchen-sinkier. GNOME appeals to me because it is trying very hard to keep it simple. The desktop is clean, the control panel and core apps are clean. To me, KDE is overwhelmed with superfluous options and tabs until finally you don't know where the hell anything is, including the really common things.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

> About gtk-2.8... What are those new "features not currently available in any
> other toolkit" that the article is talking about?

Marketing.

Re:Nice

[e_xworm]

OK you're quite right about that. After going from kde to gnome and back to kde, I had to spent hours configuring my desktop to be the way i want it which in terms of usability is more gnome-like (XMLUI for konqueror really helped there). I really hope that they will change this in the upcoming kde 4.

Re:Nice

[diegocgteleline.es]

Notice that the latest QT version released has a "painting engine" similar to cairo. KDE does not use it today, but will use it for future versions...

Re:Nice

[m50d]

A lot of it is just the horribly ugly default theme. If you install a good looking one it can look almost as nice as KDE. Now if only the gnome devs would overcome their aversion to preferences and offer a real choice of themes shipped with it (not just high contrast etc, some themes that are actually different).

Re:Nice

[m50d]

I've never been unable to find a preference I want, and there are too many preferences that I do want that gnome's got rid of. KDE may be somewhere beyond optimal in terms of how many options are available, but gnome's way below what I need.

Re:Nice

[TravisWatkins]

Don't forget about clearlooks using cairo. *drool*

FreeBSD and Gnome 2.12 is ready

[ozzmosis]

Gnome 2.12 is ready for FreeBSD, it will not be added to ports
until after 6.0 is released. Check out http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/docs/develfaq.html for info
about installing Gnome 2.12 now!

Re:Jesus...

[suso]

Don't worry Jesus. We'll get back to saving the world after just this one download.

quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a simple way to install the new version? Can you install gnome from the livecd or is that just for previewing it? I went into the source directories, do i have to download each individual source package then somehow compile it that way?

Any other advice here? Ive never updated or installed a desktop environment. Im running MEPIS on this box.

Re:quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

MEPIS is one of the tweaked Debian distros, and it defaults to KDE desktop, not Gnome. I guess you would need to use APT (and synaptic to make it easier) and point it at Debian unstable repositories in order to change it around.

With that said, MEPIS does pretty good, I would stick with what you have and use that and get your packages and updates from them. It is smoothed out for you by a smart guy who knows what he is doing. Why second guess?

I use both Gnome and KDE a lot and honestly, I see little difference once you learn the various programs you want to run. It's the programs that are important to you, not the desktop environment really. Figure out what you really want to DO with your box, that decides what to run then. Clicking on something is clicking on something, there's not nearly as much difference as most folks get on about, in various linuxes, and add in mac and xp too. Same crap really, different packages. Web browse. Play tunes. email. IM. and etc yada yada yada.

    It's fun and all to razz each other, but it's like razzing about your ride, good points and bad points with every make and model car out there. But it's the same clutch and stick and gas and brakes, you can get in and drive any of them.

Re:Good bye OSX

[qw(name)]

Yeah, and monkeys might fly out my butt! :-)

Awesome!

[AutumnLeaf]

"It's awesome! It's completely radical and kicks ass! It's completely awesome!"

- How Jeff Waugh described every Gnome project and technology development at OSCON 2005.

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2005/view/e _spkr/1549

Re:Awesome!

[EnderWiggin99]

So true, so true.

Did anybody else get flashbacks to reading the marketspeak splashed all over the Windows 98 - XP install processes? Now this, now that, 50% faster, you can even do this, and so on and so forth...it was disgusting.

Wrap KDE in a paper bag that says Gnome and everyone will be happy. Sheesh. At least then we can cut the bullshit marketing. It seems that Gnome forgot that the best marketing is in creating the best product and letting the results speak for themselves. More like MS every release...

Evince looks useful

[dankelley]

The 'evince' app looks useful, letting you see PDF or some other formats, sort of like the 'preview' app in OSX. But, wait, there's more! As I read the webpage, Evince will now (or will one day) also handle presentation formats (openoffice "impress" and Powerpoint). This last thing is more than just a copy of non-free software, and that in itself is notable. But I think it's more important than that ... I think it would be very helpful to have just one interface for viewing many types of files. Of course, they will have had to make a comfortable and powerful interface; once this gets into Ubuntu or Fedora, I'll have to check it out!

Re:Evince looks useful

[tehshen]

I think it would be very helpful to have just one interface for viewing many types of files.

Konqueror has managed to display most of the files I throw at it, is something like that what you mean?

Re:Evince looks useful

[Ben Escoto]

I think Evince has been over-hyped. For instance, the Fedora Core 4 release notes says that Evince supports pdf, ps, "and many others". In fact pdf and ps are the only 2 formats Evince fully supports. The Fedora 4 version of Evince doesn't even display dvi files.

Perhaps in the future Evince will be the best thing ever, but I'm not sure why it's getting so much hype. At the moment it just seems to be a prettier ghostview.

Re:Evince looks useful

[Kristoffer Lunden]

I've been trying the Evince in Breezy and it's a really neat application. Up till just recently I was defending Acrobat Reader as the only useful PDF reader, because no other reader handled thumbs, ToCs and were generally bug free enough for general consumtion. Actually, I still think Acrobat is ok, as long as you don't install the plugins package - that's what is taking all the resources. Drawback is that you can't click external links anymore and some other minor things.

And then: enter Evince. Does everything I need, has good support for thumbs, ToC, search and it is is really fast too. I can even click those links, both external and internal, very very nice. It also provides thumbnails to Nautilus, further strengthening preview. More formats will be nice, but I mainly do and will use it for PDF. Acrobat's a goner!

The only thing I'm missing is multiple documents, preferably in tabs. Acrobat has this via the "Windows" menu, and most other apps use this as a great way to collect multiple relevant whatevers in the same window instead of cluttering the task bar. Browsers, IMs, editors, well just about anything does this. Sadly it seems the makers of Evince disagree: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=306060 - I think they misunderstand the issue though, it's not about interlinking and "remembering to read". Hope it will be reopened at some point as it is both consistent with other apps (like Epiphany) and extremely useful.

Re:Evince looks useful

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Don't know about hype, but to me it's very useful because it has support for *all* features of PDF that I need (and that I can think of), while at the same time being as light and snappy as Acrobat without plugins. Most of these features are navigational ones, internal and external, thumbs, ToC and so on, well executed and easy to use.

More supported formats would be useful, and under way, but it is already far, far more than a prettier Ghostview.

Oh sorry, missing one feature from Acrobat: multiple documents. Have hope up.

Re:Evince looks useful

[macshit]

Does evince have nice keybindings? I generally avoid gpdf (though it's much prettier than xpdf) because while it has some keybindings, they're all annoying, and it generally seems to want you to use the mouse... xpdf has much nicer straight-forward keybindings, e.g., n for next page, etc.

Also, many pdf files I try to view cause gpdf or gv to spew tons of errors and give up, whereas xpdf or acroread handle them correctly. Hopefully they've made evince a lot more robust...

Re:Evince looks useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried KGhostView?

Re:Evince looks useful

[spauldo]

I've used it, have it installed, and was generally unimpressed. I didn't like the interface, and it didn't read a lot of the documents xpdf wouldn't read, making it useless for me since I prefer xpdf. I do like it better than gpdf though.

But I'm stuck in the old school mindset that you use one viewer for one type of document - image viewer for images, browser for webpages, and a viewer for printer-agnostic documents like pdf and postscript. Being able to view everything under the sun with one viewer just isn't appealing to me.

So... I ended up going back to xpdf, and acrobat when I'm working with something that confuses the hell out of xpdf. I f*%#ing hate acrobat, but at least it's a good fallback for those documents xpdf won't read.

Re:Evince looks useful

[Kristoffer Lunden]

As far as I can tell it mostly follows the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines for keyboard shortcuts, so the question I guess is if you like those or not. =)

n for next page

PageDown or Space does (almost?) this, jumping a good part forward (as in jump forward not quite a complete viewport). CTRL-PageDown jumps a whole page.

Re:Evince looks useful

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Nope, running Gnome at the moment. Nothing against KDE, but I don't like to mix environments - although whenever I try to use Gedit I do cry for Kate. =)

Re:Evince looks useful

[NeoChaosX]

While Evince is nifty, I've noticed that it's slow loading image-heavy PDFs like the the Hardcore Gamer issues I download each month. Also, it has some serious issues of not rendering the transperancy on some images (for instance, take a look at page 17 of the HGM September issue PDF - why are there white retangles covering the other two characters there?) that don't happen in Adobe Reader. Until those issues are fixed, I'm sticking with Adobe's Reader.

Re:Evince looks useful

[macshit]

Does evince have nice keybindings?

As far as I can tell it mostly follows the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines for keyboard shortcuts

Ah. I guess the answer would be "no" then.

Sigh; I suppose it's just a matter of time before Gnome's "(UI suckiness + developer arrogance) / eye-candy" ratio becomes simply too insanely large to ignore....

Re:Evince looks useful

[CRCulver]

I didn't like the interface, and it didn't read a lot of the documents xpdf wouldn't read, making it useless for me since I prefer xpdf.

That's mighty strange, because evince's PDF support is done with libpoppler, which is based on the exact same codebase as xpdf.

Re:Evince looks useful

[Fitzghon]

Evince is already in Fedora Core 4. Either it comes in the base install or it is available on Yum, but I know that I have it running on Fedora Core 4 right now.

Fitzghon

Re:Evince looks useful

[NeoChaosX]

That would explain why it's so poor at rendering image transparencies as xpdf was, then.

Re:Evince looks useful

[seguso]

And what about text highlighting in PDFs? When I am studying a paper, I need to highlight the most important text... Maybe even adda nnotations. Does anyone know of a way to do that with GNU/linux?

Re:Evince looks useful

[ookaze]

One problem I have with Evince is the Print function. I don't know if it's caused by gnome-print, CUPS or Cairo (I think that's the culprit), but the output :
- is different from what is on screen
- uses different fonts, which do not work with non-ascii characters

I will try and investigate the issue further once I have all Gnome 2.12 installed. I actually tried on Gnome 2.10 with Cairo 1.0 and evince 0.4.0, so perhaps that's the cause.

Re:Evince looks useful

[Anonymous Coward]

because it doesn't use 'n' for next page, when it's much more intuitive to use 'space' 'page up/down' 'home' 'end' and the arrow-keys to move around in a document?

if you have to troll, at least do it sensibly.

Re:Evince looks useful

[dedded]

"problem ... with Evince is the Print function."

With Evince on Gnome 2.10 I haven't been able to get print to work at all. I need to use xpdf for that. Rotating documents is another problem. Both of these just _have_ to get fixed, and given that they already work reasonably well in xpdf, I don't understand why they're a problem in Evince/Popplar.

/Dan

Re:Evince looks useful

[teprrr]

And what about text highlighting in PDFs?

KPDF has somekind of tools for that.

Re:Evince looks useful

[spauldo]

The sentence was confusing, but if you reread it, it makes perfect since.

It won't read the documents xpdf won't read.

In other words, they both fail on the same documents.

Since I prefer xpdf, I use it instead. When it (and evince) doesn't work, I use acrobat.

Re:Jesus...

[rafael_es_son]

BAAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAH

mod parent up!

BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHA!

OR SUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

And for those that want a solid easy to use distribution with GNOME 2.12, expect OPEN SUSE 10 to be released in late September.

Re:Good bye OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

No crap, does ubuntu have this yet?

Re:Jesus...

[PunkOfLinux]

Hey -- nothing wrong with self-interest. Besides, that was over a week ago now -- FAR from 'just happening'.

Runs great on DragonFlyBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

While it won't be in FreeBSD until FreeBSD 6, it already runs great on DragonFlyBSD, so I'm switching all my desktops over from FreeBSD to DragonFlyBSD.

Re:Runs great on DragonFlyBSD

[sremick]

So what about all those people running Gnome 2.12 on FreeBSD already?

The fact that it's not going to be in the ports tree until 6.0 comes out is more of a logistical thing... it's certainly ready to use and it only take a minor step to merge Marcus' "stable" ports into your own local ports tree:

http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/develfaq.html

It amounts to all of one additional line in your ports-updating script, which I comment/uncomment as needed. From there on, everything is the same.

So you're switching the OS on multiple desktops for the sake of avoiding a single one-line command (marcusmerge)? Doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Re:Runs great on DragonFlyBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

So by "all my desktops" .. you mean one right ? It's not as if you're running a corporate or anything with FreeBSD on the desktop is it ? :-)

clipboard?

[ne0n]

I wonder if they've finally done away with that abominable X clipboard/buffer crap, eh wot?

Re:clipboard?

[Red Alastor]

I wonder if they've finally done away with that abominable X clipboard/buffer crap, eh wot?

Yes, they have. It's in TFA. You might consider reading this one, it's full of pretty pictures.

Re:clipboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. They just added a behind the scenes clipboard whatsit. Sounds pretty nice.

Re:clipboard?

[bersl2]

You insensitive clod! Some of us like the X clipboard-buffer!

Nobody said you had to use it, but it's certainly helpful for it to be there by default.

Re:clipboard?

[ne0n]

no, all it says is this:

New clipboard management, based on the Freedesktop.org specification and tightly integrated with GNOME, allows for objects to persist in the clipboard longer than the lifetime of an application. This means that if you cut or copy an object and then exit that application, the item you put on the clipboard will remain until you replace it. The new clipboard manager is technically superior to existing implementations and integrates tightly with specially designed GTK+ APIs, allowing for a faster and more flexible clipboard implementation.

The bloody X clipboard is separate from GNOME's clipboard, it's actually a "feature" of X. If they've got rid of it, that's a pretty cool achievement and a huge step in the right direction.

Re:clipboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. If I can't just highlight into the PRIMARY selection and then middle-click-paste into an xterm (or my other "real" X11 applications) anymore, then Gnome is useless to me.

Re:clipboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

persist in the clipboard longer than the lifetime of an application

Wow, now that's what I call the 21st century. Bloody hell.

Re:clipboard?

[Guy Harris]

If I can't just highlight into the PRIMARY selection and then middle-click-paste into an xterm (or my other "real" X11 applications) anymore, then Gnome is useless to me.

If selecting text doesn't set the PRIMARY selection in a GNOME application, then GNOME doesn't follow the freedesktop.org clipboard explanation.

If the middle mouse button in xterm doesn't paste the PRIMARY selection, either your xterm is broken or somebody's configured it not to do so.

Re:clipboard?

[Guy Harris]

New clipboard management, based on the Freedesktop.org specification

...which is probably referring to the freedesktop.org Clipboard Manager spec.

The bloody X clipboard is separate from GNOME's clipboard

Really? How is GNOME's clipboard implemented? Does it really have nothing to do with the ICCCM's CLIPBOARD selection?

If they've got rid of it

Given the freedesktop.org Clipboard Manager spec's references to the ICCCM, I suspect they have not gotten rid of the X clipboard in the sense of the CLIPBOARD selection.

Re:clipboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The bloody X clipboard is separate from GNOME's > clipboard

No. Gnome's clipboard is implemented on top of the X11 clipboard.

You are confusing the X11 selection mechanism with the clipboard. The X11 selection is bound to the middle mouse button and is easy to switch off, just don't use the middle mouse button or buy a mouse with only two buttons.

Speed boosts etc?

[mnemonic_]

Does it still perform like a more stable version of Windows 98? That is, is it still a massive memory hog and is it slow as all hell?

Re:Speed boosts etc?

[ratta]

Is really gnome interface more stable than win98? I don't mean the underlying os (Linux/FreeBSD/etc), but the user interface?

Re:Speed boosts etc?

[spauldo]

Yes. Quite a bit so.

But most of win98's instability problems _were_ due to the underlying OS. It's hard to separate the OS from the GUI in windows - especially 9x.

In any event, you get the standard UNIXy goodness - if an app crashes, it doesn't take down the window manager or GUI, etc. (with the exception of 3D programs locking up the system with a buggy video driver - rare, but it happens). Gnome applications don't seem to have a crashing problem related to gnome itself.

X, of course, runs beneath gnome's level and doesn't care what happens either way.

Re:Speed boosts etc?

[unlabeledchick]

That us uncalled for and mean. Gnome is cool, it just is less efficient than KDE in some areas. Why don't we all use windows 98 for the next decade, and then give you Gnome. See how you feel then!

it was buried

[Anonymous Coward]

You were digging in the wrong places...
You always used to be able to go to
applications://
in nautilus and add and edit menu shortcuts there

Still, now they have a proper menu editor it's probably simpler to use that.

Re:it was buried

[sremick]

Actually, that (basic) functionality was removed in the previous release.

The lack of any decent menu editor has been a hot topic for quite some time...

meun editor...

[josepha48]

wow.. finally .. I wonder if it is any good. I really hate the default menu's in fedora. If entries are not made for the menu to appear then it does not show certain apps that are installed. Funny thing is that it used to show some of these apps too.

Re:meun editor...

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of a separate menu editor is kinda clumsy. I think any user would more willingly drag and drop shit into the menus on the fly. Can't be hard to code unless the menu implementation is fundamentally braindead.

Re:meun editor...

[Anonymous Coward]

That would work, except the menu implementation IS fundamentally braindead...

... Nothing interesting here

[}InFuZeD{]

Those seem like features that should have been in a 1.0 release a long time ago. I remember when I used Linux a few years ago clipboard support was horrible. It works out of the box for the most part now, but really...

Compositing manager

[BigBadRich]

I can't see anywhere whether gnome 2.12 has a compositing manager that handles drop shadows, fade in/out etc without having to use the bug-ridden 'xcompmgr'.

KDE does all this nicely. Gnome on the other hand...

Well, I guess it has some new games and a menu editor this time around...

Re:Compositing manager

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see anywhere whether gnome 2.12 has a compositing manager that handles drop shadows, fade in/out etc without having to use the bug-ridden 'xcompmgr'.

As someone who cares a lot about this and uses Gnome, I can tell you that happened is that Gnome was made more compatible with xcompmgr. Totem-xine no longer has artifacts full screen, and it crashes less...still it is not as good as what KDE will have with 3.5.

KDE does all this nicely. Gnome on the other hand...

KDE's compmgr is a fork of xcompmgr I think. Major improvements to it won't come until KDE 3.5. Then I plan to switch from Gnome to KDE for the exact reasons you mention.

Re:Compositing manager

[Breakfast Pants]

KDE has a lot of problems with widgets not redrawing correctly with compositing turned on.

Re:Compositing manager

[Rutulian]

Gtk just added Cairo support in this release, and Cairo doesn't quite yet have a fully functioning Glitz backend. I would keep an eye out for more eye candy in the next few releases because the infrastructure is there now, it just needs to be fleshed out.

Re:Compositing manager

[juhaz]

It doesn't.

And you can bet it won't be a high priority until composite is actually supported by more than one display driver.

ooohh...

[XO]

a MENU EDITOR? jeesus. Now the users won't have to directly manipulate obscure data files?

  That's so.. uh.. 1982.

Re:ooohh...

[Anonymous Coward]

'obscure data files'?

The concept of using a program such as vi/pico/edit via the command line is something you view as obscure? This menu editor isn't for the linux fans, it's or the lazier computer users.

Re:ooohh...

[MadAhab]

You got that right. I have nothing against manipulating data files, personally. I used windowmaker for quite a long time. Still do when I'm running on battery power, sometimes. And even windowmaker had a decent graphical menu editor many years ago.

But meanwhile, KDE has added an automated menu updating tool that seems to find all my graphical programs, whether they are Gnome-ish or KDE or just plain old X, plus adds a number of terminal programs (e.g. lynx), and adds nice icons for them all.

Not really having used Gnome in years, I might be missing something, but... Recent Gnome additions also include a tool that looks a lot like KWallet.

Catch up much?

Re:ooohh...

[gcauthon]

Oh, I see. So if you know vi/pico/edit then you can edit any configuration file for any program in existance. That's right, if you know 'x' and 'dd' cut and 'p' pastes, then you can hand hack Oracle configuration files, kernel parameter files, httpd conf files and anything else you could imagine. You can even write your own operating system!

No, it has nothing to do with having knowledge of the syntax and/or knowing what exactly to type into the f***king files! It doesn't matter that GUIs give you choices rather than letting you read the mind of some obscure programmer. Simply checking a box is no challenge. Lets try and see if we can misspell that variable name in exactly the same way the developer did! It's like a puzzle!

Re:ooohh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry you lack the mental capacity to do more in this life than just point and click.

Actual thought processing and logical reasoning to better yourself in other fields than just understanding the base components of an operating system is something that.. as I stated before.. is something shunned by the lazy.

Re:ooohh...

[PenGun]

Uh it's editing text files pooky. All of *nix config is a text file.

  Manipulate your wang but just use an editor to configure yer box ;).

    PenGun
  Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:ooohh...

[Nasarius]

Actual thought processing and logical reasoning to better yourself in other fields than just understanding the base components of an operating system is something that.. as I stated before.. is something shunned by the lazy.

Learning configuration file formats is a necessity for sysadmins. But as a desktop user? What the fuck? I have better things to do with my time, thanks.

P.S. The "base components of [the] operating system" ends at around glibc.

Re:ooohh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry you lack the mental capacity to do more in this life than just point and click.

Uhh, I think someone missed his point, that was mostly "it shouldn't be necessary", not "what is VI and a config file"?

Re:ooohh...

[XO]

Actually, I had been using GNOME for the last oh, 4 or 5 months until I switched to Windows about a month ago, and I never even TRIED to edit the menus. I never even bothered USING the menus because they were full of crap I never used. Just throw some launchers on the panel, or on the desktop, and command line for anything else.

Never tried to edit the menus because I knew it would be an exercise in futility, and I figured it would probably seriously break debian's upgrade process, as virtually any change to any configuration file would do.

Re:ooohh...

[labratuk]

Now the users won't have to directly manipulate obscure data files?

Well, you could of course drag & drop items directly to the menu like you've always been able to do, but that would have required you to have actually tried it before you posted.

Tool

[blindbat]

From the release notes:

GNOME 2.12 is the latest version of the popular, multi-platform free GNOME desktop environment, providing all the tools a computer user needs

"It is NOT all the tools a computer user needs" - Mouse from the Matrix

Re:Tool

[blindbat]

Obviously the humor is too subtle for the moderator who said this was flamebait.

Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing is

[Kristoffer Lunden]

I don't mind waiting so much, if it's a heavy app, but I'm really, really annoyed that applications steal back the focus when they finally appear. It's so unintiutive and annoying. Then again, all (or at least the ones I know of) OS:es and managers do this, so it's not specific to Gnome.

If you don't understand what I mean, here's the point: I often start up an application that I will use "in a while" and then proceed to navigate further in Nautilus or whatever. When the app starts, it steals back focus even though I already do something else. That is not usability. There's two use cases:

1. User starts application, waits for it to complete. This would cover almost all common use and especially non-power use. Focus remains with started application from the point that I start it.

2. User starts application, proceeds to give other window focus (by click, ALT-tab, whatever). Starting application at this point loses focus and will not regain it.

Ok, so if the app doesn't steal focus, it may not be obvious that it's finished? That's what the new taskbar hints is for, and it's also a matter of how you behave. Any user likely to have problems with this probably wait for each app to start in turn anyways, so it's not likely to be a problem.

Now this I would like to see. It annoys me at least a couple of times a day. :) And if there is a way to get this behaviour today, please please tell me!

release notes app font

[Anonymous Coward]

what fonts are they using for:

a) window title
b) application

in this shot for instance:

http://www.gnome.org/start/2.12/notes/en/figures/f igure-menueditor.png

don't include guesstimate answers

Re:release notes app font

[spauldo]

The window titles look a lot like 12pt Adobe Helvetica Bold.

Dunno about the application fonts, but probably something similar - i.e. something in the default X fonts.

Re:release notes app font

[dedazo]

All the GNOME screenshots I've ever seen look absofuckinglutely fantastic - so fantastic in fact that I've never been able to duplicate them in my own machines. Ever.

I've always found that to be interesting, because I'm either stupid, they're cheating, or getting useable fonts in X is just too fucking hard. Much more than it needs to be.

Re:release notes app font

[davydmadeley]

The application font is Bitstream Vera Sans 9.

The window title font is Bitstream Vera Sans Bold 10.

Re:release notes app font

[simetra]

agreed. Basic GUI stuff like fonts is the reason why Linux will never approach the usability of commercial OS/GUIs like Windows, or Apple's.

REAL users don't know that there's such thing as a windowing system, a display server, an operating system, etc. To a REAL user, these are one in the same, and it shouldn't be necessary to struggle to get these configured the way they want. Just think if you had to add Windows fonts by dumping files into a folder, then opening a DOS window and executing some obscure command.

Re:release notes app font

[fender_rules]

Most distros provide many popular fonts pre-packaged so you can install them very easily with package manager app.

If you prefer 'the Windows way', you can just direct your file manager to 'fonts://' directory and drop true type font file you want to use.

Here's my GNOME 2.12 screenshot btw :)

http://www.gnome.or.kr/albums/screenshots/gnome_2_ 12.png

Re:release notes app font

[LnxAddct]

You've never used Fedora or Ubuntu, eh? Significantly easier then Windows XP or Apple and much cleaner interfaces (I prefer Gnome). All of the problems you mentioned haven't been problems for dekstop oriented distros for 3 or 4 years now (In large part due to Red Hat paying many of Gnome developers, doing HIG studies and providing other resources). Only distros like Debian (I do run some debian servers) and slackware still have that bullshit to deal with. If you ever hear of a linux user complain about something with desktop configuration they msot likely are using a server oriented distro.
Regards,
Steve

Re:release notes app font

[Anonymous Coward]

this is my Gnome 2.8.3 and I dont think its that ugly. It wasnt ugly even before I made it look a bit like OSX.

http://koti.phnet.fi/saminiem/kuvat/desktop.jpg

Re:release notes app font

[dedazo]

file manager to 'fonts://' directory

Yeah... except that that only applies to your account. Other accounts on the box can't use the fonts. And for some reason I had to reboot the box (!) in order for the fonts to show up anywhere.

I tried doing the su -> copy fonts to /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts/TTF (or wherever) -> mkttfontdir (or whatever) -> /sbin/service xfs restart but I kept getting a segfault from mkttfontdir and I gave up.

I'm no Unix newbie - I used CDE on HP-UX for a long time. But that was an 'utilitarian' who-cares-about-the-eyecandy desktop. Sure as heck never tried to install a font on CDE, jeeperz.

It's a basic thing that's just to fucking difficult.

Re:release notes app font

[Gilesx]

Foresight Linux will give you an appearance like this out of the box - and 0.9 has just been released with 2.12 stable!!

Re:release notes app font

[kerrle]

Bitstream Vera Sans - and Bitstream Vera Sans Bold for the title. The Bitstream fonts I'm using are quite nice - at least up to par with Arial and the other Microsoft fonts, if not a little better. And this is coming from someone who used to import the mscore fonts within half an hour of setting up a linux box.

Re:release notes app font

[kerrle]

Weird. I haven't had a problem installing fonts on any of the Fedora Core releases I've used or on my current Gentoo box.

I wouldn't say it's any easier than Windows, but it certainly isn't any harder.

Re:release notes app font

[poofyhairguy82]

I've always found that to be interesting, because I'm either stupid, they're cheating, or getting useable fonts in X is just too fucking hard. Much more than it needs to be.

You will like the new Gnome then. I'm using it in Ubuntu now, and the biggest advantage over the old version (I think) is better fonts because of Cairo.

Re:release notes app font

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not interessted in the technology behind why are you opening your mouth at all. You don't have to know what an XServer is if you don't want to. Pure flamebait and I'm feeding the troll. shame on me.

Re:release notes app font

[hulinuxboy]

Bitstream Vera is OK for iso8859-1
but for us living in Europe/Hungary its crap

Re:release notes app font

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop the file in /usr/share/fonts.

Re:release notes app font

[cortana]

Here is how to install a font:

Put it in /usr/share/fonts (global) or ~/.fonts (per user).

That is all.

Re:release notes app font

[Anonymous Coward]

have you tried dejavu?

Bitstream Vera fonts with additional characters

Re:release notes app font

[ReinoutS]

Use DejaVu. Based off Bitstream Vera but with all the central-europe glyphs included!

Re:release notes app font

[fforw]

Bitstream Vera is OK for iso8859-1 but for us living in Europe/Hungary its crap

hmm.. must be some deficit of special hungarian characters then. I never had a problem with german umlauts.

Re:release notes app font

[cortana]

How to install a font:

Put it in ~/.fonts

Thank you, come again!

Re:release notes app font

[ookaze]

You must be pretty stupid then, as the Bitsream Vera fonts that are used (I use the same on all the desktops I have on Linux) are provided by XOrg (at least in 6.8.2). These fonts were the standard since the fontconfig system was stable, as seen in its default config files (in /etc/fonts I think).

So you don't even have to install them, and it looks fantastic like that out of the box (with AA of course).

So yes, I repeat, you are pretty stupid or worse, a pretty stupid troll. At least the correct answer to your post was actually in the 3 choices you provided, good point.

Re:release notes app font

[TractorBarry]

I couldn't agree more.

Then there's the perennial question as to why are all the widgets/fonts etc. so damned big in relation to the desktop resolution ?

Most of my installs have been to machines using 1024x768 resolution displays and the GNOME desktop always comes out of the box with evertything looking HUGE ! Open a file in Gedit and the icons on the toolbar seem to take up half the screen real estate with the first two lines of text taking the other half (yes this is a slight exagerration :)

So I then spend ages tinkering after which I inevitably end up with a truly dissapointing looking desktop (with utterly mangled fonts) which I have to "make the most of".

By contrast when I install Windows all the fonts and widgets are a good size and look great, there's a simple way oif altering things (in control panel) but I'm left with a truly dissapointing O/S which makes me want to hit my computer with a bloody hammer.

Oh well maybe one day...

P.S. I think your post should have been modded "+5 informative" as well as "+5 funny" !

Re:release notes app font

[dedazo]

You must be pretty stupid then

Fuck you, you ridiculous elitist turd. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Cheers.

Re:release notes app font

[dedazo]

/usr/share/fonts

I TRIED THAT!! It doesn't work. I'm running RH9 with XFCE. It just does not work. I must be doing something wrong.

Re:release notes app font

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say "You should not use this system because it is too good for you", only that "You are stupid if you can't figure out how to put a file in ~/.fonts". Those statements are orthogonal.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[stef0x77]

This is fixed in GNOME 2.12 with the exception of starting apps from the terminal (where the problem becomes real complex).

Re:Good bye OSX

[MassacrE]

Gnome is the OSX killer.

You are killing right? Its been how many years, better part of a decade and they just added freakin' clipboard services.

Call me back when they:

• Have GnomeVFS built into the underlying OS and not as a IO library wrapper/hack
• Applications stop steaking focus a minute after I told them to start, gave up, and went on to do something else
• Icons and windowing theme are standardized. By standardized, i mean "ship with clearlooks or don't call it Gnome"
• are possible for users to use, including installing and removing commercial applications, without learning such concepts as "compilers" or "administrative users"

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Hey, that's fantastic news! Guess I wasn't the only one that was annoyed then. =)

I'm lost and weather report won't help!!!!!

[dzorz]

The weather reporter now allows you to quickly search for your location, useful for when you don't know what state you're in.

I wish I knew which city I'm in :(((

Re:I'm lost and weather report won't help!!!!!

[Jason Hildebrand]

The internet has all the answers. Just swallow the blue pill:
          http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

Re:I'm lost and weather report won't help!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Orgrimmar, the city of Trolls :-)

Blah.

[jcr]

It looks like MS windows.

These guys are still shooting too low. I've said the same thing to every other bunch of guys who were working GUIs for UNIX, all the way back to VISIX Galaxy: if you aim to only match the status quo, you lose.

-jcr

Re:Blah.

[sinewalker]

Well I share your point. I think if you read the GNOME HCI guidlines, you'll see where they are aiming, though. And yes, presently there is a ways to go.

I'm more into KDE myself, and it's very much like Windows, though that's not why I like it. I like konquerer better than nautilus, mainly. But I like Aqua better than everything else I've seen, and GNOME seems to be headed that way, from my viewpoint, so I keep my eye on it. And the initiative of freedesktop.org means that the two work well together, which I think is fantastic.

Still, each to their own. Where would you like GUIs to go? It's a very interesting research question. So far there is nothing perfect, perhaps their won't ever be. Maybe we'll eventually end up with something like Plan9 or LCARS (which both feature hightly configurable, pannel-like interfaces, though LCARS is fiction and heavily supplanted by an oral interface), or maybe we'll develop something else entirely. But so long as we are stuck with a 2D pallette/mindset, we won't get a lot further anyway.

However for a "mainstream" GUI, where should GNOME/KDE/Commercials be aiming? For a future that is not supported by current tech, or for something that's the best we can do within current limitations?

Re:Blah.

[jcr]

However for a "mainstream" GUI, where should GNOME/KDE/Commercials be aiming?

They should be trying to beat Apple. That's the long and short of it.

-jcr

Re:Blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, cool. And they are aiming that high, just read the guidelines. Does not mean they are there yet, but they are trying, and good luck to them.

If we can think of ways the HCI could be improved (to "beat Apple") then we should help, not sit on the side and say "bah, it's just another Windows clone".

Re:Blah.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I like konquerer better than nautilus, mainly.

That's the biggest reason why I use KDE, too. Konqueror is just so versatile, so usable, so brilliantly obviously directed at power users who aren't afraid to use Emacs :-P

I just love it, and the fish:// kioslave alone should be enough to "konvince" just about everyone. Especially since all the kioslaves are integrated into every single KDE app.

Re:Blah.

[poofyhairguy82]

It looks like MS windows.

My Gnome 2.12 desktop does not look like Windows you insensitive clod!

Re:Blah.

[10Ghz]

It looks like MS windows.

How exactly? because it has a taskbar? menu's? Windows? Icons?

Here's a newsflash for you: Just about ALL GUI's out there "look like Windows". Hell, even OS X looks like Windows (and vice versa of course) when you really think about it! If you designed something completely different, it would be so different to use that it would not gain widespread usage.

Re:Blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh-huh. Usable like emacs.

How is "fish://" better than gnome's "sftp://", courtesy of gnome-vfs?

Re:Blah.

[Edmund Blackadder]

"It looks like MS windows."

So whats wrong with that?

People must understand what Gnome is trying to do. When you are trying to be a popular GUI you cannot do adventorous things. You have to make people feel safe. You have to make people feel like they already know what to do and present them with the improvements as they are walking along a familiar path.

Why do you think GUI's use little pictures of files to represent files? Why are they called "files" to begin with?

Of course for you it may be much more fun if a GUI is completely different, but that is not true for the average user. And if you want to be popular you have to be safe for the average user. And the average user knows Windows.

Re:Blah.

[Alioth]

Hey, I used to live not too far from College Station...

Re:Blah.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Yes, Emacs is very usable. Perhaps not intuitive, but usable nonetheless.

And kioslaves are better than gnome-vfs in that they are stable, there are lots more of them (locate:// is so much better than most other search tools) and because they were there first, and are more refined.

Re:Blah.

[cortana]

A better criticism of Gnome-VFS is that it's a bloody shame that most "Gnome" apps don't actually use them.

The last time I ran into this was with Gnome 2.10, trying to open an image on a CIFS share: Eye of Gnome (the Gnome image viewer) can't open files via Gnome-VFS.

I have also seen people griping on blogs that Abiword and other "Gnome" Office applications don't use Gnome-VFS; and of course Openoffice.org doesn't use it.

All together, not a good situation. :(

Re:Blah.

[anakog]

How did you make the calendar week start on Monday? I've been trying to find out how to do this for quite a while now without success...

Re:Blah.

[poofyhairguy82]

How did you make the calendar week start on Monday? I've been trying to find out how to do this for quite a while now without success...

You are gonna hate me for this....but that was the default!

Re:Blah.

[tzot]

Perhaps you and poofyhairguy82 should compare your environ(ment)s, and more specifically, locales.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Michael Woodhams]

Woohoo! It has really been bugging me too. Now all I have to do is wait for Debian to package it and get it stable - only 18 more months of having my focus stolen!

Re:Good bye OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

including installing and removing commercial applications, without learning such concepts as "compilers" or"administrative users"

You're right. We should let all users install any software at anytime from any place. Then when they complain about security, tell them they shouldn't use a GUI.

Re:Jesus...

[xutopia]

well I think that repenting while procreating is counterreproductive. :-)

A few steps back?

[SumDog]

I've been disappointed with many of the Gnome release, however for some reason I keep on using it. I will never like Ephanie as I think Galleon was much superior, however it hasn't really been maintained in a while.

Anyone using the Gentoo unstable tree has seen some of the more recent Gnome features including stability in Nautilus. Going from Nautilus 2.8 to 2.10 I noticed it was a lot faster, however it crashed every 10 minutes (I'm not exaggerating). However in several of the point releases since then, I've noticed improved stability and even the cool tree view thing in the browser.

I am hopeful for Gnome 2.12. Hopefully it won't suck anywhere near as bad as the initial release of the other Gnome versions.

SumDog

Re:A few steps back?

[photon317]

My 2.10 I've being using from stable gentoo never crashes. Perhaps you should try "stable" gentoo, or scale back your CFLAGS :)

Re:A few steps back?

[Phleg]

Please don't blame instability on applications when you're running Gentoo. I've used the latest GNOME releases on multiple other distributions, and I have not experienced any crashes with the GNOME desktop.

Ah, with Breezy I'm only an update (or two?) away

[bad_outlook]

I just reinstalled with Breezy Colony 4 this afternoon (let's hear it for 1/2 days) and I've got to tell ya, it's very nice. Gnome is 2.11.94 or something, and I'm updating a ton of apps just now, so after a reboot I may be up to 2.12. The little things like the focus of the 'root password prompt' and the pulsing tab in the taskbar is so much nicer than the FLASH in windows. The add/remove programs, while the name bothers me, is really nice and something n00bs and g33ks should dig.

Oh, and the pac-man screensaver now has diff colors for the ghosts, a big/flashing pill so pac-man can eat the blue ghosts and finally pac-man dies properly when he touches a ghost! Now that's progress! ;)

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[AnnualSparrow]

Sorry, no ideas for Gnome - but KDE doesn't seem to annoy me this way. Looking at my config, I've set

Control Center > Desktop > Window Behavior > Advanced > Focus stealing prevention level = Normal.

The default seems to be "Low", which allows more apps to steal focus.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Makarakalax]

KDE introduced focus stealing protection at 3.2. Even OSX and Windows haven't done this yet, which I find bemusing. I'm sure GNOME will be next to implement it. Although I thought I read somewhere that they already had?

Anyway, yeah for sure KDE doesn't do what you described, and yeah, it's nice.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[diamondsw]

Mac OS X acts the way you want. I frequently launch Photoshop and then switch out to do something else. Photoshop (or any other program) finishes loading in the background and stays out of my way until I want it.

The polar opposite to this behavior is, of course, Windows, which steals your keyboard focus constantly.

No it doesn't.

[InfiniteWisdom]

I don't know what version of Gnome you're running, but I'm running 2.10, and applications most certainly don't steal focus if you've switched to a different application after clicking the icon.

Can't agree, sorry

[Makarakalax]

I use XP, OSX and KDE in equal amounts everyday.

So, apparently the attractiveness of each is a matter of opinion, because I sure don't agree with your assessment! On sheer initial looks I rate GNOME better than OSX, and based on the screenshots, better than Vista too. KDE (Plastik) I rate much higher than XP, but not higher than OSX (only just), nor GNOME.

Sure OSX (and Vista so we are told), have excellent graphical effects and transitions that improve the user-experience. But I still prefer the way GNOME looks, it's nice, and it the theme is more usable than Aqua. I'm not talking about the general usability of the environments mind, just the themes. I haven't used GNOME enough to comment on its general usability, although initial impressions suggested they have a good attention to detail and some great ideas that KDE could benefit from.

lol

[Makarakalax]

lol, this defines slashdot for me nowadays. This could only have been moderated up by a GNOME fan. How is it worthy of my 3 point viewing threshold? It isn't.

GNOME is pretty attractive, IMO the default theme has the edge over Plastik, and I'm a KDE user. However I think it's clear the new GNOME theme was influenced by Plastik. But I expect Plastik was influenced by something else anyway. We all share ideas, that's why we do so well. Die patents die!

Mod me up pls!

Re:lol

[LnxAddct]

I believe the clearlooks theme has been around for ages, it was just recently cleaned up. (If it wasn't around for ages, then it was derived from another theme which was because I remember using it)
Regards,
Steve

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on an old installation of Mandrake 9.2 with Gnome 2.4, and even I have clearlooks.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[daemonc]

I don't mind waiting so much, if it's a heavy app, but I'm really, really annoyed that applications steal back the focus when they finally appear.

Starting with Gnome 2.10, applications never steal focus. Instead, if an app wants focus, or you started a new program and switched focus to something else, it's icon and name in the window list gently pulsates.

New Live CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's with this live CD torrent? First time they've done this? Is it debian-based? Knoppix hardware detection? Is there an installer?

Looks like a cool idea to have a live CD ready with the new release so people can actually try the stuff out without going through the vile compile hell that you usually run into with these new desktop releases.

Anyone have any insight? Anyone grab it yet?

Ah well, guess I can always DL and find out for myself. But I find it strange no one is really talking about the live CD.

Gnome and Nintendo

[Wylfing]

Bashing Gnome is like bashing Nintendo. It's fashionable, but typically groundless.

Re:Gnome and Nintendo

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention fun

Re:Gnome and Nintendo

[WilliamSChips]

That's going to be my sig.

Re:Gnome and Nintendo

[benjcurry]

Rah! Rah! I'm an XFCE user, but...right on, brother!

Re:Gnome and Nintendo

[m50d]

Oh, so gnome never did reverse the buttons in the confirmation dialog and confuse anyone actually trying to use the damn thing? And never switched nautilus to that stupid amiga-like "spatial" interface without even a preference to change it back? (The historical revisionists seem to have gotten away with this one actually, but you run 2.6.*0* and try and find the preference). And never replaced the file dialog with that horrible folded-up one that means you need an extra click to save anything, if you can find the folder to save it into at all in the tiny browsing viewport?

I've tried to use gnome. I don't bash it to fit in (I've probably lost more karma bashing gnome and java than on anything else), I bash it because it's horrible to use.

Re:Gnome and Nintendo

[Bent Mind]

The XE Game Machine was years ahead of the Nintendo. Too bad Atari had a very poor marketing department and a CEO that liked to shoot himself in the foot...

Sorry, had to bite, I never liked the original Nintendo.

Re:Good bye OSX

[qw(name)]

Redundant? That's a first! I don't see how but this is /. you know.

How to kill Nautilus (sort of OT but useful!)

[Frodo Crockett]

Okay, I know a lot of people dislike Nautilus, and I think it keeps a lot of people away from GNOME. Here's how to kill it for good:

1) Find a better filer! It's not that hard. Try "gentoo" (the filer, not the distro), and "rox-filer" for starters.
2) Run gnome-session-properties from an xterm.
3) Find Nautilus' entry in the "Current Session" tab.
4) Click "Remove", then "Apply". Bam! No more Nautilus.
5) To make the change stick, close all the apps you don't want to run when you log-in and then log out. Be sure to check the "Save current setup" box.
6) Profit!

GNOME will now start more quickly. However, you will not have a desktop background or icons, unless you're already using a non-GNOME utility to set them. The background is easy enough:

1) Open up gnome-session-properties again. Go to the "Startup Programs" tab.
2) Click "Add" and input the following: gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename /path/to/your/background.jpg
3) Leave the "Order" field set to 50 (trust me on this one!), hit "Okay", and close the session tool.

Your background should be displayed next time you log in. Note that, if you somehow screw this up (say, by setting a order value that's too low), you can fix it from text mode by editing the ~/.gnome2/session-manual file. Just wipe out everything under [Default].

The icons are a bit trickier, and maybe not worth it. You need a program like desklaunch to create desktop icons. I suggest just creating a new hideable panel and putting launchers on it instead, since desklaunch requires you to explicitly set x and y pixel positions for icons. If anyone knows of a better prog than desklaunch, please chime in.

Re:How to kill Nautilus (sort of OT but useful!)

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Idesk on Windowmaker and love it and you dont have to know all of the x and y garb.

http://idesk.sourceforge.net/

Re:How to kill Nautilus (sort of OT but useful!)

[advocate_one]

Okay, I know a lot of people dislike Nautilus, and I think it keeps a lot of people away from GNOME. Here's how to kill it for good:

Use KDE.... ducks... ;) seriously... I fscking really hate Nautilus... and cannot for the life of me understand why a file manager is required to manage the desktop icons and wallpapers... it's absolutely fscking stupid... those functions should have been split out of Nautilus so that it could be used safely as a general file manager in other desktops... try launching Nautilus when running a nice clean desktop like IceWM... see what happens... stupid... (yes, I know you can fsck around in the Gnome registry and turn it off... but what about when you launch Gnome instead... you no longer have your icons and wallpaper... totally fscking stupid)

Re:How to kill Nautilus (sort of OT but useful!)

[GauteL]

Personally I think most peoples objections to Nautilus is the first impression they got when it was new, raw, slow and buggy. The newer releases are snappy, stable, beautiful and usable.

This latest release adds a whole bunch of new features while remaining clean and simple, and if you really hate the spatial metaphore, there is a very much improved navigational mode in Nautilus 2.12.

Some people will always say "Nautalus is da suck" and you usually recognise trolls by their spelling mistake when writing Nautilus. Most of these are either caught up in old misconceptions, refuse to change their minds on things or just don't realise that something can be good even if they don't like it.

My favourite troll is when people take a borderline case and states that some perfectly good software is unusable until this borderline case is fixed.

Re:How to kill Nautilus (sort of OT but useful!)

[Anonymous Coward]

nautilus --no-desktop

Re:How to kill Nautilus (sort of OT but useful!)

[Frodo Crockett]

I haven't tried it yet, but rox is capable of managing desktop icons and wallpaper. Best of all, it exists seperately from the excellent rox-filer.

applications:///

[theantix]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that in Gnome 2.10 (and maybe the previous release too), even the previously working applications:/// was stripped out. The new menu editor, and the more advanced menu editor smeg, are a very welcome re-addition.

Re:applications:///

[dotgain]

I think Gnome 1.4 was the best. IMHO it's just got worse ever since. I mean, look at SameGnome now!

Re:applications:///

[cp.tar]

Oh, yes... Gnome 1.4 is the reason I still couldn't care less about KDE...

Detachable menus, switchable window managers, a config button next to each menu entry, lots of applets that I haven't been able to find in the new Gnome...

I'm using Gnome 2.10 presently - I started using it out of habit and I just *hate* what they've done with it, and I'll switch to E17 as soon as it's a bit more developed: it's fast, has a lot of eye-candy and epplets (or whatever they are called now), which I like a lot... and is configurable as hell. *And* I can change the resolution whenever I want to; I prefer the standard Unix desktop zooming to this Windows-like re-arranging of desktop and every single panel - when I change resolution, it's because I have an old machine and things like CrackAttack work better in 640×480 than in 1600×1200.

Don't get me wrong, Gnome is great for newbies and I still prefer Gnome's design to KDE's... I just never expected to become so nostalgic so soon...

And don't get me started on applictions... the games that were great are now crap - not just SameGnome, but also AisleRiot... every single thing I'd found an advantage in Gnome over other DEs was stripped, Nautilus is a memory hog and Metacity is one of the worst WMs ever. The one and only reason to use Gnome are the panels which, frankly, isn't that much any more.

Having said all that, I'll probably upgrade to Gnome 2.12, if nothing else, out of bizzare curiosity... that, and the feeling I have to test all the desktops before I decide which ones I'll install when I buy a new machine and take the old one to college as the first Linux machine there. I just want to see the face of the guy that said 'Why put Linux, only you know how to use that crap...' when he sees any of the configured desktops. ;)

Damn you, dotgain! I gave up my mod points because of you! Damn you, you... insensitive clod! ;)
(Someone else, please mod parent +1 Nostalgic) :)

Re:applications:///

[nutshell42]

I prefer the standard Unix desktop zooming to this Windows-like re-arranging of desktop and every single panel

If you mean a virtual desktop, setting "Virtual" in your xorg.conf should do it, for all DEs.

Strangely, contrary to the KDE whiners...

[suitepotato]

...my use of Gnome on Fedora Core 3 has been nothing short of miraculous in simplicity and efficiency and most closely comes to the interface I've come to expect after years of Windows and even, hack/wheeze/cough, OS/2.

KDE on the other hand seems to pride itself on being as different as possible, seems to be designed to make guesses as to what I want as opposed to asking me or simply doing the logical default, and is largely irrellevant to most supposedly KDE-centric apps when it comes to running them on Gnome. I don't have to change out of Gnome for KDE for them to work in almost every case.

Gnome is a pretty damn decent environment and I can see why it is the FC default.

Re:Strangely, contrary to the KDE whiners...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a RedHat/FC user since RH5 (I'm using FC4 now), and yes, Gnome is slightly better by default in these distros by default, simply because Redhat insists on crippling its "version" of KDE, supposedly so that the two desktops are more similar in terms of features/usage.

That said, it is very easy to upgrade to a "standard" (and better) KDE using apt/yum (check out kde-redhat.sf.net); you'll notice the difference immediately. For me at least, Gnome is quite pale in comparison, especially when it comes to application integration and features.

You seem to imply that it is/should be *difficult* to run Gnome (or rather, Gnome-centric) apps in KDE. Why? And why should running a KDE/Qt (or "KDE-centric") app in Gnome be at all challenging? Last time I checked, Qt and GTK work fairly well side-by-side, and the two desktops BOTH try to maintain inter-compatibility.

Anyway, both Gnome and KDE have their place in the world. But do not bash KDE based on your RedHat/FC experiences - you do not know the "real" KDE.

Re:Strangely, contrary to the KDE whiners...

[arkhan_jg]

I don't have to change out of Gnome for KDE for them to work in almost every case.

That's because the apps just load the libs they need from kde. Gnome apps do the same in kde, they just load the gnome libs they need. That's how they're supposed to work! Hell, you can use gnome and kde apps in blackbox... They just won't fit in with the 'look' like the rest of your desktop, unless you use the same theme for both DE's, like bluecurve.

Me, I like KDE. You like Gnome. It's all good.

Re:Strangely, contrary to the KDE whiners...

[m50d]

KDE on the other hand seems to pride itself on being as different as possible,

Odd, other gnome zealots criticise it for being a "bad windows knockoff". What exactly is "different" about it?

seems to be designed to make guesses as to what I want as opposed to asking me or simply doing the logical default,

KDE always asks you, wheras gnome always chooses the illogical default, IME.

and is largely irrellevant to most supposedly KDE-centric apps when it comes to running them on Gnome. I don't have to change out of Gnome for KDE for them to work in almost every case.

If gnome wasn't trying to lock you in it would be just as easy to use gnome apps in kde.

KDE: Integration

[phorm]

I note that a lot of people here mention how KDE has better eye-candy than gnome. While the eye-candy is cool, I'm not much for that. I was originally a big fan of icewm (lightweight, simple, functional), but what really got me into KDE were some of the great programs, applets, and especially the great integration of the various KDE components. Nothing quite like being able to fish:// to a server in a split-screen browser with document previews for multiple formats...

There are some Gnome apps that I definately love (gnomemeeting), but overall I think that KDE must be more friendly/enticing to developers as it just seems to have an edge.

Re:KDE: Integration

[jrcamp]

I definitely used to feel this way about KDE. kio-slaves definitely work a lot better (and more reliably) than gnome-vfs.

However, KDE's design was very straining for me personally. A million options, broke icons, cluttered menus and toolbars.

After a while I just couldn't take it any more and by that time GNOME had matured a little bit more. But I definitely understand your view.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[dedazo]

KDE introduced focus stealing protection at 3.2.

Wow, when was that - in 2004? Yep.

Even OSX and Windows haven't done this yet

I don't know about OS X, but Windows does. Since 1999 (W2K).

which I find bemusing

Of course.

Alternatively...

[robotoverflow]

$ gnome-session-remove nautilus; gnome-session-save

And for a much easier way to change your bg you can always use gnome-background-properties

Re:Alternatively...

[Frodo Crockett]

$ gnome-session-remove nautilus; gnome-session-save

Thanks! I only switched to Linux about a month ago, so I have a lot to learn.

And for a much easier way to change your bg you can always use gnome-background-properties

The problem is that, without Nautilus, GNOME doesn't properly set the background on log-in. Now that may only be because I'm using gdm to manage sessions, and it sets its own background.

Anyway, right after I posted, I discovered that my method for setting the background at login is not reliable! D'oh!

What I just found that does work is the wmsetbg command. It's part of WindowMaker, but it is window-manager agnostic. Replace that dconftool-2 command with "wmsetbg /path/to/your/image.jpg". (You'll want to check the man page to find what options you want to use, i.e., centered, tiled, etc.) This seems to work flawlessly.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[LnxAddct]

Desktop windows haven't been able to steal focus in Gnome since I believe 2.10 (or whatever version shipped with Fedore Core 4), the taskbar blinks when the window is loaded.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Good bye OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Have GnomeVFS built into the underlying OS and not as a IO library wrapper/hack

Why would you want to tie any desktop code into the kernel? Should the kernel then include code for *all* desktop environments? KDE? XFCE? Blackbox? Enlightenment? WindowMaker? ... Talk aout bloat!

are possible for users to use, including installing and removing commercial applications, without learning such concepts as "compilers" or "administrative users"

1) You don't need to compile anything if you're using a distro that supports apt, yum, up2date, YaST, etc...
2) Not only is install-as-admin a security feature, but also
3) It's rather trivial in most distros to install "from" a non-admin account -- ie. in SuSE just click the RPM, enter the admin password, and it installs. If all fails, there's sudo.

Re:Good bye OSX

[shutdown -p now]

are possible for users to use, including installing and removing commercial applications, without learning such concepts as "compilers" or "administrative users"

Just to clarify, this isn't really a part of a desktop environment (which Gnome is). It's supposed to be provided by the distribution.

Re:Good bye OSX

[LnxAddct]

Umm... use Fedora or Ubuntu, every problem you listed is not a problem. The clipboard services is simply a clipboard management spec by Freedesktop and it supports many items on the clipboard at a time. Similar things existed before but only recently did they implement the freedesktop.org spec. GnomeVFS is fine in userland, its not a hack, thats how it is supposed to be and its more secure that way. Applications haven't stolen focus since Gnome 2.8 or 2.10. Themes have been standardized for some time now at least on desktop oriented distros like Fedora. Note that Windows XP ships with various themes and many corporate environments default to the classic theme, does that mean it isn't Windows XP? Least-privilege users are exactly what the world needs more of. Installing applications is a rare occurence, you never need a compiler on Fedora or Ubuntu (everything is binary packages handled automatically) and if a user tries to do something that requires root, they are simply prompted for the password. Linux is way ahead of the game, wake me up when OSX starts focusing on usability and not on cheap gimmicky effects and when they get a package management system, not some dumb "drag your application here to install it and watch as many files on your harddrive are duplicated".
Regards,
Steve

Easy install to FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, for those of us that are still learning about X and Unix, can someone post some reasonably easy steps to install Gnome 2.12 onto a FreeBSD 5.4 system? I can install ports, packages and most tarball apps from the net, but this thing is really complicated....

too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The ability to easily add/change menu items reappears a few weeks AFTER I switch to KDE in FC4, over this very feature?

Too late, I'm not going back.
I'm sure they lost a lot of people, permanently, over this one issue alone.

DevonThink does much of this (but not all)

[NanoProf]

DevonThink http://www.devon-technologies.com/ for OSX can display multiple file types (rtf, pdf, images, movies), and has very powerful classification functions (that's its main purpose). But it doesn't handle presentation formats, as far as I know.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Professional Slacker]

Slightly OT but, another one that get's me is that when applications start after first loading they don't stay on the desktop I put them on. I'll be doing something on one desktop. scroll over to another fire up an app, scroll back to where I was and go back to what I was doing, then the window pops up on the current desktop, not the one I opened it on. This is under Xfce, so like I said slightly OT, but how much work would it really be to have an app spawn on the desktop it was invoked from.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Black Acid]

KDE introduced focus stealing protection at 3.2. Even OSX and Windows haven't done this yet,

TweakUI has a "Prevent applications from stealing focus" option (General->Focus). You can have Windows either flash the taskbar button X number of times or until it is clicked. Quite useful.

Re:Jesus...

[HansieC]

I don't see how the former can be anything BUT productive, no matter what else is happening 'while'.

Slackware?

[rastos1]

Gnome was dropped from slackware because it was 'too difficult to build and maintain'. Is the situation improved by this new release?

Re:Slackware?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was dropped because there were too much work to maintain _both_ KDE and GNOME. And since KDE is default, and I guess Pats favourite, the choice was obvious.

Re:Slackware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, there are a few options for Slackware users.

I've been running slackware-10.1 and -current for a while now, with the GWare third-party GNOME packages. They perform wonderfully, and I haven't had any problems whatsoever.

Go here: http://gware.sf.net/

Re:Slackware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no.
GNOME was dropped *explicitely* because its dependencies are an utter mess. Pat mentioned spending something like three times as much work on it as the *whole* of KDE takes, if my memory serves.

The libraries that KDE packages depend on are provided in the kdelibs package, and that's *it*.

The whole packaging of KDE was designed specifically with that issue in mind, mind. (It has other drawbacks though, like making it a bit more difficult for end users who want to compile apps themselves to compile just one app from a package -- it can be done, but it requires passing environment variables to the configure script, so it's no longer as straightforward as configure; make; make install.)

It is all well and nice that you would have preferences in terms of desktop environment choices, really. I'm serious! If we didn't care about our choices, life would be horribly dull. But I would not advise lying to yourself in order to back that choice. KDE has its flaws, so does GNOME, and they won't get fixed by trying to convince yourself they don't exist.

Re:Slackware?

[Golthur]

As someone who has been using LFS (Linux From Scratch) as my primary system at home for several years, I'm not looking forward to the prospect of upgrading GNOME again.

The dependencies are brutal. Often to get full functionality from a package, you will need to install it, install some other package (which depends on it), then reinstall the original package (because it can optionally depend on the second package) just to satisfy all of the cross-dependencies.

Installing things like totem and gstreamer are even worse, if you want the "full GNOME" versions.

There are plans in the works to rid GNOME of libgnome and libgnomeui, but they haven't happened yet, AFAIK.

evince already in fedora/debian

[Bernie]

Er... evince is already in Fedora Core 4 (where it is the default PDF viewer on fresh installs) and even Debian stable, so quite likely Ubuntu too. Were you being ironic?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Tim C]

Then again, all (or at least the ones I know of) OS:es and managers do this,

Well, so far I've seen replies indicating that OS X, KDE and even Gnome itself no longer do that. To that I can add Windows, which hasn't done that since XP was released.

I can only conclude that you don't update your OS very often ;-)

-O 666 baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo puts the fun in funroll-loops!

j/k, I've got Gentoo on my server :-)

Re:Good bye OSX

[einhe1t]

Call me back when they:

        * Have GnomeVFS built into the underlying OS and not as a IO library wrapper/hack

What underlying OS? Solaris? HP-UX? FreeBSD? NetBSD? OpenBSD? Linux?

I can just see it, the gnome devs all drop work on gnome and make a career of visiting various unix vendors: "We have vfs patches for your kernel" Oh Man, that's funny.

Dunno about the other points, I'm a very satisfied kde user...

Re:Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL

[thaig]

If you do this then your software will become irrelevant like the GNU Hurd.

Cheers,

Tim

First impressions:

[jdclucidly]

I just downloaded from the torrent and booted it up and it's another disappointment.

First of all, congrats to the Ubuntu folks on a fine Live CD system. It's rather nice and very intelligently makes use of the Debian Installer system for hardware probing. Also, props to the Gnome guys for their hard work on this release.

Now, having said all that, I don't get it. I try every single Gnome release because so many people in the Linux community whom I respect seem to think the world of Gnome. And I just tried it again and yet again I'm left thinking that there's some fundamentally philosophical misunderstanding between myself and the Gnome developers.

The first thing I checked was how well Gnome and KDE integrate in a hybrid environment. Sure enough, Gnome still insists on ignoring the X Windowing system's DPI information and overriding it (and all other applications started after gnome-settings-daemon) with it's favorite 96 DPI. Without a copy of KDE on the Live CD I wasn't able to see if Gnome has adopted the Freedesktop.org MIME standard in this release so that downloads in Epiphany and Firefox will default to the same applications that Konqueror does (it doesn't in 2.10).

Moving on, three failings on the Live CD itself: First, the video and audio samples that are supposed to be used to show off Totem don't work at all. Totem declares that "Cannot play: the resource file:/// isn't writable". Second, Abiword, the word processor defaulted to handle the Gnome philosophical documents on the CD has several problems rendering glyphs on its page. For instance, a lower-case "g" will have the bottom of it cut off because Abiword hasn't correctly set the line-height of the font in question. This is an example of font rendering problems all over Gnome 2.12 apps. Third, the network browser application correctly found my local browse master but instead of listing any server or desktop which responded to its smbtree requests, it requested a username and password to connect to my local browse master. When I rejected it because I didn't want to log in, it failed to show my network entirely rendering the entire network browser system useless (no information of any kind displayed).

Usability: my two pet peeves are still there. Window snapping can only be activated by an undocumented holding of the ALT key while dragging. The file open/save dialog boxes STILL don't have a URL field. One can only access this field by hitting an undocumented CTRL+L (that's usability!?).

I didn't have time to check to see if this version of Evolution has working support for Maildir's that doesn't crash the system when moving large numbers of messages around.

Other things I noticed: a couple of new Gnome apps (Tom Boy, Minue) are moving to Mono/(Linux's .NET implementation). This means that these apps are less prone to memory leaks, buffer overflows, etc. Meanwhile Gecko and Evolution seem (as recently as Gnome 2.10) to be gaining memory leaks which ultimately result in these programs crashing. Is Gnome going to go all .NET? If so, in the mean time are they going to do something about this legacy code that is leaking? Also, gnome-settings-daemon, STILL doesn't play nice with other WM's. If you want to load up Gnome themes, you'll still have to resort to editing .gtkrc-2.0 files in your home directory. gnome-settings-daemon will start Nautilus and XScreensaver from your session profile gnome-session-restore even if you're using another WM resulting in your root window being clobbered and two screensaver daemons running.

And feel free to flame me. But these are my experiences.

Re:First impressions:

[poofyhairguy82]

Usability: my two pet peeves are still there. Window snapping can only be activated by an undocumented holding of the ALT key while dragging.

I tried to Google it and failed....what is Window snapping? Like automaximizing?

Re:First impressions:

[GauteL]

On the LiveCD I can't comment as I haven't tried it. Firefox uses it's own MIME system (sadly),

"Sure enough, Gnome still insists on ignoring the X Windowing system's DPI information and overriding it (and all other applications started after gnome-settings-daemon) with it's favorite 96 DPI."

I agree that it should default to the X DPI information, the GNOME DPI-settings are per user, rather than per machine. A much more sensible way, especially since people's eyesight vary wildly.

"The file open/save dialog boxes STILL don't have a URL field. One can only access this field by hitting an undocumented CTRL+L (that's usability!?)."

The Save dialog obviously has one. The Open dialog NEVER will, because it is ridiculous exposing this to most users who have no clue what it does and get scared by exposure to the UNIX file system.

If it is not documented, that is not good, although it is also available in the right-click menu, a feature which IS documented. Using a word like "STILL" is inflammatory, however, as it assumes that showing it as default would be a good thing. Documenting it is important, but hitting ctrl-L while your fingers are already at the keyboard is not going to slow you down much.

It is also the exact same keysetting to show the address bar in Nautilus and to focus the address bar in Epiphany and Firefox.

"gnome-settings-daemon will start Nautilus and XScreensaver from your session profile gnome-session-restore even if you're using another WM resulting in your root window being clobbered and two screensaver daemons running."

Just remove them from your session profile. While I do agree that this is unfortunate, I doubt this is the GNOME people's first priority.

Re:First impressions:

[jdclucidly]

Window snapping is where windows on the desktop will 'gravitate' while being moved toward other window edges within 10 pixels of its own edge. This makes it easy to organize your desktop without overlapping a scroll bar by accident. Or to resize a window so that it meets an edge exactly.

Re:First impressions:

[jdclucidly]

Sorry about that "STILL"... that was my frustration from the 2.8 series coming back. I spent /hours/ trying to understand why the (then) new file selector was supposedly better for all users (including power users like me) and ultimately someone in #gnome on irc.gimp.net told me about CTRL-L. Most of my time wasted was looking through incomplete docs and mailing lists for something that should be -- I believe -- somehow made obvious.

Re:First impressions:

[vidarh]

I think you've just demonstrated why this functionality isn't exposed very well. Most people don't care. From looking at people using their desktops, my impression is that there's a very small minority that neatly organises their windows. The rest either leave their windows in a mess and usually keep most of them minimised, or maximise most of them (my preference - I keep a few virtual screens dedicated to various main tasks and alt tab between related apps on the same screen, with very few exceptions).

It's one of those "nice to have" functions because some people really like it, but it doesn't belong in the UI and shouldn't take up space on menu's etc. because it's a niche function (just waiting to get flamed now...)

Re:First impressions:

[Elladan]

[Regarding ctrl-L] The Open dialog NEVER will, because it is ridiculous exposing this to most users who have no clue what it does and get scared by exposure to the UNIX file system.

You know, I decided to stop using GNOME when I first saw this, since it was proof positive that gnome is a piece of shit and the developers are arrogant morons.

It's nice to know I made the right decision.

Re:First impressions:

[cortana]

"Without a copy of KDE on the Live CD I wasn't able to see if Gnome has adopted the Freedesktop.org MIME standard in this release so that downloads in Epiphany and Firefox will default to the same applications that Konqueror does (it doesn't in 2.10)."

Bull! 2.10 makes use of the freedesktop.org shared mime system.

One problem is that Firefox completly ignores Gnome's MIME provision library and does all its own stuff. One of the reasons I ditched Firefox for Epiphany is its poor Gnome integration.

Re:First impressions:

[Criffer]

"I agree that it should default to the X DPI information, the GNOME DPI-settings are per user, rather than per machine. A much more sensible way, especially since people's eyesight vary wildly."

DPI is an attribute of the screen. It is the physical number of pixels crammed into a single inch on the monitor at the current resolution. It should be discovered from the X server.

But then, Gnome stupidly uses "DPI" as a typeface size selector. Changing DPI should not change typeface size. One point is defined as 1/72nd of an inch, so if you have a 96-DPI monitor, a 10pt font should appear as 10/72nd of an inch, or just over 3.5mm. That same 10pt font should always appear at 3.5mm, regardless of resolution.

So why again should DPI be a per-user setting?

Re:First impressions:

[ReinoutS]

Most of my time wasted was looking through incomplete docs and mailing lists for something that should be -- I believe -- somehow made obvious.

Since GTK 2.6 at least, the path entry in the file chooser will appear when you just begin typing a path by entering a slash. How much more obvious do you want to have it?

Re:First impressions:

[ardor]

How about not hiding it at all?

Re:First impressions:

[IamTheRealMike]

It does? This is news to me. Firefox as shipped by Fedora DOES use the new system.

Re:First impressions:

[cortana]

From my experience it ignores the shared-mime-info database and instead parses /etc/mailcap. It also stores the user's preferences for mime handlers in its own mimeTypes.rdf file, instead of the standard $XDG_DATA_HOME/share/applications/defaults.list.

Re:First impressions:

[Elladan]

That would be intelligent, and thus against gnome's UI design policies.

GNOME used to be a relatively usable desktop environment, back when ordinary developers were actually the ones who made UI decisions. It had functional tab-complete, most of the applications could be configured in sane ways (though they were very immature), etc.

Then hoity toity "usability experts" were brought in. As a professional software engineer, I've never seen a usability expert design something in a way that couldn't have been done better by junkie in detox. The few times they offered a logical suggestion, it basically amounted to a simple bug report, like "Hey, this takes 34 button clicks and still doesn't work."

GNOME has now been taken over by people who actually listen to these nimrods, and it shows in the shockingly worthless user interface decisions and generally retarded interface, as well as the patronizing attitude of its promoters - "What? It sucks and doesn't work? Well you're stupid then for trying to use it!"

Re:First impressions:

[FooBarWidget]

"Sorry about that "STILL"... that was my frustration from the 2.8 series coming back. I spent /hours/ trying to understand why the (then) new file selector was supposedly better for all users (including power users like me)"

It is better because it looks almost exactly like the one in MacOS X. And we all know MacOS X is the holy grail of usability!

Re:First impressions:

[FooBarWidget]

Exactly, you are a software engineer, thus you have already lost all rights to even comment on user interface design! Leave the design to the usability experts! Programmers should be banned from interface design!

(this is the general opinion of the Slashdot crowd)

Re:First impressions:

[IamTheRealMike]

I'll have to disagree, we don't do anything with /etc/mailcap or Firefox files in autopackage yet our .package file association works just fine. Possibly the version you're using doesn't have the GNOME integration built in.

Re:First impressions:

[cortana]

All I know is that the set of handles presented me from Firefox matches that in mailcap much more closely than it matches what is in shared-mime-info; that updates to one do not show up in the other; and that making an application the default handler for a mime type in Gnome does not affect my preference in Firefox and vice-versa.

Re:First impressions:

[juhaz]

Can't say how it's set up in other distros, but Firefox in Hoary _can_ make use of shared mime, but it does so at lower priority - it reads mailcap first, but if it can't find suitable file there, it'll try gnome system.

Which is goddamn stupid, but if you don't use old apps that need mailcap, at least it can be prevented.

About Spatial Mode...

[Amoeba Protozoa]

Not keeping up with the Joneses or the latest discussion about the latest version of Gnome, I was left in the dark when it came to know what was meant when the poster mentioned, "spacial tree browsing." I found the following two articles useful:

• Inside the GNOME 2.6 Desktop (discusses spatial browsing)
• Perhaps the Origin of the Term

However, I don't have the foggiest as to what spacial tree mode really means. Can anybody enlighten me or point me at some screen shots?

-AP

Re:About Spatial Mode...

[Gallvs]

I don't have the foggiest as to what spacial tree mode really means. Can anybody enlighten me or point me at some screen shots?

I guess it's a sort of hybrid between spatial browsing and hierarchic navigation as in this screenshot.

Foresight Linux beats it by a month

[Gilesx]

Or, you can choose the vastly superior Foresight Linux and avoid waiting a whole month just to use an antiquated package management system and a frigged-with version of Gnome 2.12...

GNOME lags behind

[ardor]

Someone wrote that GNOME is an OSX killer before.
Well yeah, maybe in 2020.

You see, Nautilus alone is vastly inferior to Finder (the new one). Of all gnome components, nautilus is the one that sucks most. Try browsing a large directory with thousands of files with nautilus, konqueror and windows explorer. The latter ones scan the directory MUCH faster. Nautilus takes about 1-2 MINUTES - unacceptable.

The main point of new gnome bugfix releases should be to improve nautilus. Speed it up, say, to about 100 times its current "speed".

Also, it is evident that once an ORDINARY USER (no hacker, no power user, no admin, no dev) has to edit a config file, the whole design has failed. Of course, this is not gnomes problem alone, but to a great deal the underlying OS; however, we are talking about an OSX killer, right? If you aren't lucky, and the hardware doesn't fit 1:1 with the distro, you have to dig through obscure manpages.

I also read that anyone that is not able to edit configfiles is an idiot and everyone MUST learn how to do this. See, I doubt a biologist that made some photos about a weird plant and want to download them from his cam to his PC is interested in editing config files just to get this to work - he JUST WANTS TO DO HIS JOB and is certainly not interested in learning sh and all about the Unix architecture. Config files per se are ok, as long as editing them is optional. Unfortunately, it still is mandatory sometimes (fortunately, the camera issue is resolved automatically by modern distros - but still, simple samba shares have to be edited by hand for example).

Re:GNOME lags behind

[cortana]

How is config file editing "mandatory sometimes"?

Either you must edit a config file, or it is optional.

As for myself, I don't need seem to need to edit any config files to plug in a digital camera and arse about with the pictures therein.

Re:GNOME lags behind

[ookaze]

Someone wrote that GNOME is an OSX killer before.
Well yeah, maybe in 2020.

OK well, you corrected someone, fine.

You see, Nautilus alone is vastly inferior to Finder (the new one). Of all gnome components, nautilus is the one that sucks most. Try browsing a large directory with thousands of files with nautilus, konqueror and windows explorer. The latter ones scan the directory MUCH faster. Nautilus takes about 1-2 MINUTES - unacceptable.

What I see :
- You didn't explain how Nautilus is vastly inferior to Finder, but you still affirm it
- You did explain why Nautilus sucks, only problem is that you used a flawed argument

Of course Windows Explorer will display the directory faster, which does not mean it has scanned it faster or that it scanned it correctly. You forgot to say that the functionality is abysmal in Windows Explorer compared to Gnome, and that Windows Explorer is broken, while Nautilus is not and will display things correctly. Try renaming a OpenOffice document to .doc in Windows Explorer, it will change the app icon despite it being the same file !!! Now remove any extension, the broken Windows Explorer don't know anymore what this file is. Now do the same in Nautilus, and see the icon stay the same. Do the same with an image or video file, look at how Nautilus show you a thumbnail when Windows Explorer shows you an app icon. Now rename the file the same as before. Look at how it is broken and Nautilus is not. In some MS OS (like Win200), once you changed the extension (for example, .png to .gif) the stupid Windows Explorer will not even show you any image anymore in the left side, like something in it crashed or something.
And you dare say Nautilus suck ? Perhaps by your standard, where it must be fast before it works, but in my standard, I don't give a damn that it is fast if it does not work. What is the purpose of your fast displaying of thousands of files if you can't even be sure of their type, let alone see their content instantly ? You will take more time finding the right one than me with my Nautilus in the end !!! Unlike you, I don't open directories for the sake of opening them, but to get work done.

Also, it is evident that once an ORDINARY USER (no hacker, no power user, no admin, no dev) has to edit a config file, the whole design has failed

I would have thought that only the configuration GUI design was at fault, but you know better of course ... You're pathetic really, you talk like Gnome is a huge block like Windows while every self-respecting troll knows that Gnome is made of lots of parts, the configuration being one. And yet you say the whole design is wrong if a config file has been edited ? I see, you prefer having nothing at all like in other OSes ?

Of course, this is not gnomes problem alone, but to a great deal the underlying OS; however, we are talking about an OSX killer, right?

No we are not, only someone called it that, you could not even give his name. What is your audience for this post ? I'm starting to wonder ...

If you aren't lucky, and the hardware doesn't fit 1:1 with the distro, you have to dig through obscure manpages.

Are you confused ? We call them "obscure manpages" the "Web" or "distribution vendor support". You did pay for the distro you're complaining about right ? You know they offer free phone support when you buy their distro right ?

I also read that anyone that is not able to edit configfiles is an idiot and everyone MUST learn how to do this

By the same someone than before or another ? You seem to base your facts on random writing by random people : are you a stupid fool or what ?

See, I doubt a biologist that made some photos about a weird plant and want to download them from his cam to his PC is interested in editing config files just to get this to work - he JUST WANTS TO DO HIS JOB and is certainly not interested in lear

Re:GNOME lags behind

[ardor]

- You didn't explain how Nautilus is vastly inferior to Finder, but you still affirm it

The scanning & displaying speed. I thought this was self-explaining in my post. well, I was mistaken.

Of course Windows Explorer will display the directory faster, which does not mean it has scanned it faster or that it scanned it correctly.

It is irrelevant if it is the scanning that is so slow, or the sorting, the filetype enumeration etc. Fact is that from opening to the final display the thing takes too much time.

As for the extension stuff: yes, that is an inherent flaw in Explorer. But its not better with most Unix file managers, actually. Most use "file" for finding out the filetype. Without it, they have to resort to the extensions. OK, there are inodes, but how many programs actually use them?
Also, the filetype is pointless when I CANNOT BROWSE because the browser seems to be in a catatonic state.

What is the purpose of your fast displaying of thousands of files if you can't even be sure of their type, let alone see their content instantly ? You will take more time finding the right one than me with my Nautilus in the end !!! Unlike you, I don't open directories for the sake of opening them, but to get work done.

You call these arguments? First: I am USED to browsing with the Explorer (I have a dual-boot system). I can find the files pretty quickly. One of the first things I disable in Nautilus is the preview, since it takes too much time, eats CPU thus having the laptop CPU running at 100%, and is usually not necessary (useful for browsing through images though). For the record: I disable the preview in Explorer too. And no, I dont open directories for the sake of opening them, I want to do my work thank you very much. But fact is that the files are on my file server, and some directories have thounsands of files - no, more subdirectories don't help here, I already subdivided. I want to get at my files QUICKLY, thats why I usually use rox, gentoo (the filer), xfe, mc, or the plain console instead of Nautilus (Konqueror only when using KDE).

I would have thought that only the configuration GUI design was at fault, but you know better of course ... You're pathetic really, you talk like Gnome is a huge block like Windows while every self-respecting troll knows that Gnome is made of lots of parts, the configuration being one. And yet you say the whole design is wrong if a config file has been edited ? I see, you prefer having nothing at all like in other OSes ?

I am talking about the OS as a whole, not only gnome, AS I SAID IN MY POST. Now who's pathetic? The whole user-friendly distro design DOES fail if there is one case of mandatory config file editing, since the distro should prevent this (assuming we are talking about the distros for users, of course). Editing config files is NOT user friendly. You can write as many comments as you want, it is simply too scary for most people.

Are you confused ? We call them "obscure manpages" the "Web" or "distribution vendor support". You did pay for the distro you're complaining about right ? You know they offer free phone support when you buy their distro right ?

Now here we are at a crucial point. Linux problems can be extremely frustrating. It should NOT require technical support for most hardware. I admit, exotic hardware is a problem. But there are lots of brain-dead errors, even in modern distros. For example, the famous USB scanner error of not being able to scan as a non-root user. One has to manually edit the fstab to have the usbfs be available for non-root users. This is the job of the distro developers, and NOT the users job.
Or the really annoying DPI issue mentioned earlier here.

By the same someone than before or another ? You seem to base your facts on random writing by random people : are you a stupid fool or what ?

I am talking with you, so yeah I must be one. Also, references can be found anywhere in the postings her

Re:GNOME lags behind

[GauteL]

I call bullshit. It is obvious you haven't tried any of the newer versions of Nautilus.

My AMD Athlon takes 6 seconds to show /usr/bin with 2112 files without having opened it before. After it has been cached it takes 2 seconds. This is with 2.10, not 2.12.

Showing huge directories is also an incredible borderline case that hardly defines the operation of the file manager (and now PLEASE don't ignore the previous paragraph just because I wrote this).

Re:GNOME lags behind

[justsomebody]

The scanning & displaying speed. I thought this was self-explaining in my post. well, I was mistaken.

Well, not on my G5. Even my P4M1.7 is faster, not to say Opteron

It is irrelevant if it is the scanning that is so slow, or the sorting, the filetype enumeration etc. Fact is that from opening to the final display the thing takes too much time.

As for the extension stuff: yes, that is an inherent flaw in Explorer. But its not better with most Unix file managers, actually. Most use "file" for finding out the filetype. Without it, they have to resort to the extensions. OK, there are inodes, but how many programs actually use them?
Also, the filetype is pointless when I CANNOT BROWSE because the browser seems to be in a catatonic state.

Oh god, you say irrelevant and bug about the same feature? Scaning the content is time expensive and without scanning the bug appears, it is related. Based on your comment it is not filemanager that is catatonic, the one causing these problems is your brain

The rest of your bullshit, where you don't agree even with your self

Well, yes... Your brain is definitely in catatonic state

Re:GNOME lags behind

[cortana]

Hm, my /usr/bin is of a similar size and it takes Nautilus 25 seconds to do the same job. The CPU is an Athlon XP 2500+.

I like Nautilus a lot, but it does have performance problems, and there are still a lot of bugs to be worked out WRT interactions with FAM and Gamin.

Re:GNOME lags behind

[Anonymous Coward]

simple samba shares have to be edited by hand

System->Administration->Shared Folders. Point and click your way to Samba in one of the simplest windows I've ever seen.

Please don't make statements like this if you honestly haven't tried the latest that Gnome has to offer. The point-click Samba has been working like a dream for me for months in the stable releases!

Re:GNOME lags behind

[FooBarWidget]

Nautilus was started by ex-Apple engineers.

So there.

Re:GNOME lags behind

[ardor]

My AMD Athlon takes 6 seconds to show /usr/bin with 2112 files without having opened it before. After it has been cached it takes 2 seconds. This is with 2.10, not 2.12.

For the record: I use gnome 2.10, so yes I USE the newest stable nautilus. So much for "obvious".

On my P4 2.4 GHz with Serial ATA HD and my laptop with an AMD Athlon XP-M 2600, konqueror, rox, xfe etc. always have been much faster than nautilus. The real nightmare are the samba shares with the large directories - nautilus takes AGES to read the contents, the other filemanagers are ready pretty soon (coding folder with 6500 directories and files: konqueror 5 seconds, rox 6 seconds, nautilus more than one minute).

Showing huge directories is also an incredible borderline case that hardly defines the operation of the file manager (and now PLEASE don't ignore the previous paragraph just because I wrote this).

An incredible borderline case, eh? A pretty lame excuse, just have a look at a big software project, more than 2k files in one folder are achieved pretty quickly. In fact, you proved yourself wrong by mentioning /usr/bin, which is NOT a borderline case.

Re:GNOME lags behind

[ardor]

I considered answering this nonsense.

Then I noticed that you obviously were unable to actually read and understand what I wrote.

So, please comment only when you know what you are writing. Pulling parts of my post out of context is not very bright, you know.

Re:GNOME lags behind

[ardor]

Spelling error, sorry. I meant that sometimes, you HAVE to edit config files to get stuff running, no matter whether you actually want or not.

As for the camera: it was just a _general_ example. Yes, modern distros handle cameras pretty well. However, I mentioned other examples where one still has to edit some configfiles to get stuff running.

Then download Foresight Linux 0.9!

[Gilesx]

Foresight Linux 0.9 has just been announced in the last couple of hours, and not only is it the first distro to include stable Gnome 2.12, but also a whole stack of innovative bleeding edge Gnome apps that you won't find on your normal distro!

KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[Gilesx]

Interesting how every time we see a new Gnome release announcement, you see pages and pages of comments about how Gnome sucks and KDE is better, yet every time there's a KDE announcement, the comments are filled with KDE fanboy-ism.

Wow! Gnome must really suck right? Wrong. Let's take a look at the top 5 distros in Distrowatch right now:

1 Ubuntu 2737
2 Mandriva 1635
3 Fedora 1310
4 SUSE 1277
5 MEPIS 1155

Ubuntu and Fedora are primarily Gnome based. Mandriva and MEPIS are primarily KDE based. SUSE has a strong gnome and KDE offering, and also is owned by Novell who own what used to be Ximian so I guess we can call that one 50/50. Which leaves the distrowatch DE table at:

Gnome - 4047 (Ubuntu + Fedora)
KDE - 2790 (Mandriva + MEPIS)

So there are over 1000 more hits on a distro using sucky old Gnome than KDE a day? But wait a minute! Gnome? But that sucks!

Hmmmm looks like what we have here is a case of the "vocal minority". - we've seen it all before... Users become attached to "their" desktop environment, and when it's not the most popular, and it's not getting all the limelight, and it's not being adopted right left and centre in big business, and not getting a lot of the major commercial support of the other desktop environment, they start to get insecure. They mask this insecurity with vocal fanboy-ism and immaturity. Which takes us right up to present day, this gnome release announcement and the whole KDE vs Gnome trolling thing (which aptly reflects on the caliber of user of this Fisher Price environment).

Sorry guys, but the DE wars are nearly over - and you guys are taking a beating from a combination of the true adoption of many exciting new freedesktop technologies, a desire to look like something other than Windows, and the embracement of Gnome from big business. The funny thing is, this is not looking like changing any time soon, no matter how many of you fanboys decide to get up off your lard butts and flame spatial browsing. Krap!

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guess what DE fags -- nobody gives a fuck about your gaywad DE feuds. It's the most irrelevant fucking thing ever and it's only seconded by Spock vs Darth Vader arguments. GTFO.

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[AlexMax2742]

No, screw you, vi for life. :rolleyes:

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[vidarh]

I use Gnome and certainly prefer it over KDE, but by your logic we should all be running Windows. After all it's what most people use, right, so it must be absolutely fantastic?

Or perhaps it's more of a question of how many other things that play into what distro's people decide to use.

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[FidelCatsro]

Your numbers would be fine , but you forgot one thing . Suse defaults to KDE , atleast it did last time i used it .
Gnome - 4047 (Ubuntu + Fedora)
KDE - 4067 (Mandriva + MEPIS + SUSE)
That is unless Suse switched to using Gnome since i last checked , then there are a hell of a lot more default gnomes

It's all about personal preferance , and there are as many Gnome trolls as there are KDE trolls.
There are also about the same number of problems with each (dependant on personal taste of course)
Don't look at me though I use fluxbox .(Que flamewar about how E17 is better than fluxbox )

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how every time we see a new Gnome release announcement, you see pages and pages of comments about how Gnome sucks and KDE is better, yet every time there's a KDE announcement, the comments are filled with KDE fanboy-ism.

That might indicate that more people like KDE...

Your statistics on the other hand are complete bullshit. Page rankings on a single site? It doesn't count page hits on the distro sites themselves, it certainly doesn't count the number of users. All it does is measure how much hype a certain distro is currently creating on a single site.

Users become attached to "their" desktop environment, and when it's not the most popular, and it's not getting all the limelight, and it's not being adopted right left and centre in big business, and not getting a lot of the major commercial support of the other desktop environment, they start to get insecure.

Damn, my irony meter just exploded...

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[ardor]

Ubuntu and Fedora are primarily Gnome based. Mandriva and MEPIS are primarily KDE based.

Well, as for Ubuntu, you are wrong - Kubuntu is the KDE-based version. Also, you fail to include the people that switch from GNOME to KDE once the distro is installed (I did - KDE has a much better filemanager and integration than GNOME) and the ones who use a distro that does not install a DE by default (Debian, Gentoo...). The entire Vienna University of Technology uses KDE and rejected GNOME because of latency and integration issues. So your numbers are way off. Also, AFAIK in business solutions usually KDE is preferred because it respects the X DPI settings, looks & feels more "solid", and has a much better responsiveness.

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[B2382F29]

Also, you fail to include the people that switch from GNOME to KDE once the distro is installed

Also you fail to include the people that switch from KDE to GNOME on KDE-default distros. And Kubuntu is not Ubuntu. Ubuntu is Ubuntu. Kubuntu is Kubuntu. In other news, A is not B. And Ubuntu is Gnome based.

The Entire Vienna University is an example but i could give you examples which go the other way.

Typically KDE is not preferred for some "solid" look&feel but because of Qt which makes development easy for Visual Studio Programmers. On the other hand, Gnome is preferred because of the LGPL.

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[MrHanky]

Yeah, fo sho', but what does DistroWatch mean? I can't imagine it counts us oldtimers who have run Debian for years (how could it?). I never visit the site. It's a site for people who try new distros, or try Linux for the first time. The statistics there don't mean a thing.

And BTW, you find the same rampant fanboyism in all stories these days. There is no interesting discussion left on this site, at all.

Re:KDE Zealots: A vocal minority of a dying DE

[eldacan]

So you would count Debian as a GNOME distrib, because although it installs by default both GNOME and KDE, you log in to GNOME by default?

Anyway, it's of course not a good way to evaluate the popularity of both desktops... there are KDE users on Ubuntu, GNOME users on Mandriva, etc. But I think the parent does have a point: looking at a typical slashdot thread doesn't represent the percentage of people satisfied with GNOME.

Desktop is Home

[nz17]

Or better yet, do what I do.

At a terminal, type:

'ln -s ~ Desktop'

This will make a symbolic link to your home directory that will show up as your desktop. Best of all, if you have to delete your Gnome configuration for some reason, this will still work afterwards.

I cannot recall for certain, but I believe that this also works for KDE.

What they should do next

[Omega Blue]

What the Gnome developers should do next is to concentrate on the basic elements. Making the code cleaner and faster. Make the interface more customizable. Make the file manager more functional and friendlier.

Right now, they are just doing too many things at once. Sure, there are Evolution users, but most people use Firefox and Thunderbird nowadays. Who needs yet another video player or CD ripper? It's more important to have a good CD burner - right now I still need to resort to the command line to blank a CD-RW. I sometimes have problems connecting to Samaba servers via Nautilus, the use of the mount command is required.

So, focus on the basics and make them better. Don't reinvent the wheel.

Re:What they should do next

[eldacan]

To me Sound Juicer is clearly the best ripper. Totem is the best video player (apart from mplayer in some cases, but mplayer is not really HIG compliant :) ). So I very much appreciate that they're actively worked on.

CD burners: lots of work here... apart from nautilus cd burner (which does blank my CDRW when that's what I've inserted), see graveman, gnome baker, coaster...

I agree about Samba though

Funniest feature ever

[shywolf9982]

The weather reporter now allows you to quickly search for your location, useful for when you don't know what state you're in.

Useful, if someone just hit you on the head with a fry pan, making you lose all of your memories. Including how to use GNOME, sadly.

Re:Funniest feature ever

[Anonymous Coward]

It's handy when you're travelling abroad. Do you know the state and provinces of every country in the world? I don't. And a lot of countries don't even mention the state in addresses and stuff, so it's not uncommon for people to take a trip to, say, Stuttgart and have no idea what state it's in.

Mandriva packages of GNOME 2.12

[G�tz]

Hi Mandriva users,

I've prepared packages of GNOME 2.12 ready to be installed with urpmi on your Cooker system:
http://gpwgnome.osknowledge.org/

There are a few missing features, especially support for the new HAL and D-Bus, this is owed to Mandriva's decision of shipping with the old versions of both in the 2006 version. Otherwise, these packages are working fine, please give them a try.

Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is like a one night stand, a shag.

Debian is a lifetime relationship. It's not the sexiest, but the best!

Yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you aren't lucky, and the hardware doesn't fit 1:1 with the distro, you have to dig through obscure manpages.

This is of course completely different if using Apple solutions: A wide spectrum of mind-numbingly different systems from a dazzling multitude of vendors will always hum along nicely with OS X.

Yes it does look like windows :)

[tzot]

Planting Internet Explorer icons on Gnome desktops, even on purpose because of a /. post, is Windows emulation.

Re:Yes it does look like windows :)

[poofyhairguy82]

Planting Internet Explorer icons on Gnome desktops, even on purpose because of a /. post, is Windows emulation.

Actually, that is really IE...I need it for one site.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's worth upgrading for this alone - seriously!

KDE does this

[insomaniac]

I've just tested this and KDE does exactly what you want.

I don't know what's so great about gnome as opposed to KDE, last time I've tested GNOME I just couldn't feel comfortable in it on Ubuntu Hoary. What does GNOME have that KDE doesn't except the terminal emulator that lags your entire machine when it has to display a lot of output. Furthermore GNOME was more unstable than KDE and KDE seems a lot snappier too.

Sorry, don't mean to start a flame war but I'm genuinely curious what GNOME has to offer besides hard to find "advanced" settings.

Re:Good bye OSX

[FidelCatsro]

Like all those iPod killers I guess.
You can't really have a fair fight between a Desktop Enviroment and an Operating system : you can also use Gnome on OS X .

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[azi]

Why is it different to start applications from the terminal? I just tested it with KDE (version I use is 3.3.1 if anyone cares) by launching kate (text editor) from terminal and it didn't steal focus. Did I just miss some point?

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[eldacan]

With the current work on adding security support to testing, maybe you'll consider using that instead of stable...

a KDE Zealot comments

[salimfadhley]

As a mainly KDE user, it pains me to say this but the new Gnome work looks really awesome. As these two projects mature, we can see the very different directions they are pushing towards, and consequently why we need both KDE and Gnome. KDE rules in the domain of features: KDE is all singing and dancing and has such an enormous wealth of life enhancing dooh-dads. Gnome rules in it's simplicity and professionalism; It may not do as much as KDE but what it does is done very well and is more likely to appeal to a non-technical audience.

Re:a KDE Zealot comments

[Slashcrap]

As a mainly KDE user, it pains me to say this but the new Gnome work looks really awesome.

It may well look great but have you actually used it? Because in my experience that is where things usually start to go downhill, fast.

Nah, it's called for and accurate

[Colin Smith]

Lighter and faster are the top two entries in my wishlist for Gnome.

While Gnome looks cleaner and more integrated KDE is 30% faster for network operations, it makes an enormous difference when you have 100 people running applications on a machine. Far fewer support calls, a real financial difference in the business world.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Zoxed]

> but I'm really, really annoyed that applications steal back the focus when they finally appear. It's so unintiutive and annoying. Then again, all (or at least the ones I know of) OS:es and managers do this, so it's not specific to Gnome.

You need to get yourself a Real WindowManager (TM) :-)
Try FVWM and use "Style * OverrideGrabFocus".

(I do not use GNOME, but IIRC FVWM does support GNOME.)

The real deal with the menu editor

[Anonymous Coward]

It is very simple. GNOME releases every six months. Is something not ready to release? Well, hold it back until the next release then.

GNOME adopted a new menu standard from freedesktop.org, and the old menu editor code didn't work. The new menu editor wasn't ready. The GNOME guys shipped anyway; I guess they figured it's better to meet the standard, and any distro that wanted to could bundle an additional menu editor.

GNOME 2.10 did not come with an official GNOME menu editor, but non-official menu editors were available. GNOME 2.12 now has added menu editing back in as an official feature.

Thus, users of the current bleeding-edge GNOME version were six whole months without an official menu editor. Six whole months of having to use an un-official menu editor. The horror, the horror.

I, for one, am sick of hearing about the menu editor. It's not that big a deal. I went to the trouble to go get a menu editor for my GNOME 2.10 desktop... and then I never bothered to do anything with it, because the menus were fine by default. I just drag commonly-used icons to my panel, and that's that. (And dragging icons to the desktop or panel does work out-of-the-box with GNOME 2.10.)

Use enlightenment then

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a lot different.

Don't complain if the system is so different you don't know what to do.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Pentagram]

Any idea if it also ensures that the app is launched on the virtual desktop that you started from, rather than jumping up wherever you happen to be when it finally loads?

Great News!

[FishandChips]

This means that Gnome 2.12 may hit Debian Sid as early as 2008. In the meantime, I'd be really really pleased if they could

a) get together a decent CD/DVD burning app
b) add some amarokish bells and whistles to rhythmbox
c) do something drastic to improve the features and performance of nautilus
d) make over evolution, which is generally crash-prone and sucky.

Writing this on xfce 4.2 - all the goodness of gtk without the gnomish tendencies.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[Knuckles]

Gnome apps have in general been doing this since I think 2.10. Firefox unfortunately doesn't yet seem to implement the necessary hooks, and Evolution sometimes does, but more often does not work in this regard (this on Ubuntu Breezy for me)

Sabayon!

[miffo.swe]

Im currently trying to manage large amounts of different desktops on a linux terminal server. In for ex. icewm its a piece of cake but in Gnome i just hit the wall over and over. Tailoring gnome isnt an easy feat for a mortal admin.

Sabayon seems like a step in the right direction. I love to be able to login to a template desktop, alter wathever i want and be able to distribute that desktop to choosen users.

If anyone knows a good way of managing different desktops in Gnome please let med know. Im also curious about how i just alter the default desktop in a sane manner.

The music seen in the screenshot...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is Crowded House's album. Let me congratulate the author on his taste ;-)

Re:The music seen in the screenshot...

[Seehund]

Eh?

Crowded-what?

That's Kraftwerk's Radioaktivität!
I concur, let me congratulate the author on his taste! :D

Re:The music seen in the screenshot...

[serialXP]

Kraftwerk is way better!

High-level VFS does *not* belong in the kernel!

[ThinkingInBinary]

I'll bite...

Have GnomeVFS built into the underlying OS and not as a IO library wrapper/hack

Let's clarify what the "underlying OS" is... Are you considering the Finder to be part of it? Last time I checked, Mac OS didn't have the ability to treat URL's as filenames. Its VFS layer is a combination of an automounter and the Finder displaying network shares and volumes. What do you want, a kernel-level HTTP client? <sarcasm> There's a good way to enhance security! </sarcasm>

The kernel should handle filesystems, and a well-written, thin-as-possible VFS layer should handle the VFS stuff. It's much less prone to security flaws, easier to debug, and easier to modify--imagine having to patch your kernel when someone comes out with a new video streaming format, HTTP extension, or file-sharing protocol you want to add to your VFS layer! That would be a pain!

A good compromise, I think is LUFS (Linux Userland File System--I'll leave the link whoring to someone else, use Google to find it). It is essentially a filesystem in the Linux kernel that, when used, sends requests back to userspace programs. There are plugins (?) for it that implement HTTP and FTP (with write access--the Finder can't do that!), as well as exotic protocols like Gnutella and Freenet. By using userspace daemons to access the actual files, it puts network stuff where it can't do a lot of damage and has more flexibility.

Applications stop steaking focus a minute after I told them to start, gave up, and went on to do something else

I will admit, window focus under X is not always very refined. But, frankly, I find GNOME's window handling, in general, to be better than Mac OS X's. Two reasons:

1. Although Mac OS X simplifies application launching by rigging the Dock to either open or switch to an application, I prefer individually manipulating windows.
2. Although Mac OS X simplifies digging through windows with Expose, I prefer to be able to click one button (on the panel) to switch windows. This is the equivalent of, given a binder full of papers, spreading them out all over your desk to find the one you want instead of putting tabs in your binder. It's easy, but encourages you to be sloppy.

Maybe I am just saying these because I'm an experienced user, but there's a middle ground between underpowered toaster simplicity and confusing Unix efficiency.

Icons and windowing theme are standardized. By standardized, i mean "ship with clearlooks or don't call it Gnome"

Just because Mac OS X doesn't have themes doesn't mean every copy of GNOME has to look identical. In most cases, a distribution is pushing their entire distribution, and they theme the entire thing together: boot loader background, framebuffer splash background, login manager background/controls, GNOME theme, etc... I disagree that every desktop should look identical. As long as it is clear where and what everything is, and it is consistent throughout the theme and among GNOME apps, the exact size, shape, and color of, e.g., a button doesn't matter.

are possible for users to use, including installing and removing commercial applications, without learning such concepts as "compilers" or "administrative users"

You don't need to know what a compiler is unless you're running Gentoo or another source-based distro, and if you're already running it, you're already smart enough to do wget http://site/package-1.2.3.tar.bz2; tar -xvjf package-1.2.3.tar.bz2; cd package-1.2.3; ./configure; make; sudo make install; cd ..; rm -rf package-1-2-3*; package.

I can't speak authoritatively, but Ubuntu appears to solve this problem. At least on the LiveCD, everything works. It may ask for the root p

Re:High-level VFS does *not* belong in the kernel!

[MassacrE]

Let's clarify what the "underlying OS" is... Are you considering the Finder to be part of it? Last time I checked, Mac OS didn't have the ability to treat URL's as filenames. Its VFS layer is a combination of an automounter and the Finder displaying network shares and volumes. What do you want, a kernel-level HTTP client?

You cannot open arbitrary URLs like you can on windows (how do you save?), but you can deal with URLs backed by WebDav. This is done, of course, with a userspace filesystem driver, and not some odd library that only provides some applications in the system writing to the right APIs the ability to see and manipulate files.

And yes, I use ubuntu for my linux box, although it has been a while since I've even bothered to let gdm start. It is like debian with a release schedule and authorative leadership.

Thoughtful design.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a software engineer, and what you speak of, i.e. designing software that is easily and intuitively usable and meaningful, took me years to learn.

It's the little things that make all the difference in the world. If developers were half as consciencious as you, we won't have half the problems we have.

Re:Thoughtful design.

[Bastian]

It needs to be taught in schools.

I can't count the number of times I've gotten into discussions where another programmer made some boneheaded UI decision and wrote it into the program without consulting the people for whom he is writing the program, then comes and asks everyone what they think of it. He'll then proceed to whine about how long it will take to fix all the problems everyone has with simply figuring out how to work the damn thing, and tries to blame anyone but himself and make excuses.

Every programmer in the world needs to have a poster that says something to the effect of, "Are you writing this program to be used by people, or are you just banging on the keyboard aimlessly?"

Linux in college.

[Anonymous Coward]

"... when I buy a new machine and take the old one to college as the first Linux machine there..."

Umm, sorry to bust your bubble, but, a lot of us use Linux.

whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks man. At Mandriva's rate of including Gnome, this version of Gnome wouldn't be included until Mandriva 2007.

Re:whoa!

[G�tz]

Mandriva 2006 will ship with the previous stable release 2.10, as 2.12 was scheduled too shortly before the 2006 freeze, this was the decision of MandrivaSoft's official GNOME maintainer fcrozat.

Re:whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandriva 2006 will ship with the previous stable release 2.10, as 2.12 was scheduled too shortly before the 2006 freeze, this was the decision of MandrivaSoft's official GNOME maintainer fcrozat.

Pfft. Your silly "facts" aren't going to sway us here at /. from out position that Mandriva doesn't give a damn about including recent versions of Gnome!

GNOME for Windows?

[danFL-NERaves]

Hey, where can I get me some of this GNOME goodness for Windows?!?!?1

Re:GNOME for Windows?

[Phil John]

You can get IIRC 2.8 from:

http://www.cygwin.com

What I'd lile to see

[TractorBarry]

Well I use GNOME every day on my Ubuntu desktop and as this is a GNOME thread I'd like to have a small usability rant about Nautilus...

So, in the great Slashdot traditon, I've not read TFA, nor have I looked at the changelogs :) so who knows ? My gripes may have been fixed in this release ? But the things I would really like to see in Nautilus are:

1 The ability to switch off that utterly, utterly wretched spatial mode (which looks like a bad throwback to GUIs from the 1980s) from the apps preferences. It is totally unacceptable that you have to use a seperate preferences editor to do this. It's a setting of the app and should be adjustable from within the app itself. No excuses.

2 If I've used Ctr&C or Ctrl&V on a selection of files/directories in another Nautilus window pressing Ctrl&V or Ctrl&Ins on a second Nautilus window should paste the objects into the directory.

3 But now the thing that anooys me the most... When I press a key I expect Nautilus to move the focus to the first file or directory whose name starts with the key I've pressed (e.g. pressing "a" moves the focus to "a file"). When I press the same key again I expect the focus to move to the next file or directory whose name starts with the key I've pressed. Once I've reached the last file I expect another key press to return the focus to the first file or directory again etc. etc. To finish off this should also be case insensitive (with the option to make it case sensitive for those who wish it)

Windows Explorer has had this functionality since Windows 95 days (if I remember correctly Windows 3.1 "File Mangler" also behaved this way) Konqueror behaves this way. Every file manager under the sun EXCEPT NAUTILUS seems to behave this way.

I wish the GNOME developers would take notice of useful UI metaphors that have been in place for over 15 years. I like GNOME enough to (mostly) use it on my desktop but it doesn't half infuriate me when such basic functionality is missing...

P.S. And to those who will offer the inevitable "Go write it yourself", "If you don't like it don't use it" replies may I take this opportunity to say "Piss off" ?

Re:What I'd lile to see

[Phil John]

1 The ability to switch off that utterly, utterly wretched spatial mode (which looks like a bad throwback to GUIs from the 1980s) from the apps preferences. It is totally unacceptable that you have to use a seperate preferences editor to do this. It's a setting of the app and should be adjustable from within the app itself. No excuses.

Edit -> Preferences -> Behaviour -> []Always open in browser windows

Make sure that's checked and spatial mode is off, without having to rely on a seperate preferences editor

Re:What I'd lile to see

[juhaz]

1 The ability to switch off that utterly, utterly wretched spatial mode (which looks like a bad throwback to GUIs from the 1980s) from the apps preferences. It is totally unacceptable that you have to use a seperate preferences editor to do this. It's a setting of the app and should be adjustable from within the app itself. No excuses.

So what's your excuse for whining about something that's been fixed two stable releases ago? Really. Go look it up. Gnome _2.8_ has the option in nautilus preferences dialog.

2 If I've used Ctr&C or Ctrl&V on a selection of files/directories in another Nautilus window pressing Ctrl&V or Ctrl&Ins on a second Nautilus window should paste the objects into the directory.

Ctrl-C/V work as expected. Just because windows keeps danling another set of those because it used to be that way back in 3.0 doesn't mean they should be copied by others.

Re:What I'd lile to see

[Anonymous Coward]

The feature to type letters to go to a specific filename does work, I did it several times (I'm using 2.10 on Debian SID right now).

You just pointed out...

[diegocgteleline.es]

...one of the problems of debian according to some people: The fact that unstable is never "unstable".

Ubuntu "unstable" may be broken, but that is what unstable is about. Ubuntu did break things because some things can't be done without breaking other things. X.org's modularization is a new thing for everyone so it did break things because it was full of bugs (I've tried compiling it myself) and they had to work hard to fix them

When you switch back to Debian unstable and modularized X.org goes in, remember this: All the hard work and all the breaking was done first in ubuntu, because they actually developed its integration in a debian-like distro and debian will just use Ubuntu's work (they're more or less the same developers after all). If Debian sid had done that job instead of Ubuntu, it'd had been sid who would have been broken.

So, please think again the next time you tal about "Debian doing a decent job of providing late-model software that isn't broken.". Is not that Ubuntu is crap or Sid developers are much smarter than anyone at ubuntu.

Re:You just pointed out...

[dmaxwell]

The "technology" and "developers" underlying the two distros are largely identical. That is correct. The rules developers must follow to get packages accepted and the philosophy behind ARE different.

Ubuntu emphasises the x86 and PowerPC arches and for high profile pieces of software, changing over very very quickly. Debian insists where possible on code that is bit and endian clean that will work correctly on as many arches as possible. This incidently often results in better upstream projects for everyone. When frameworks, APIs, and compilers change they move a little slower and try to catch the interlocked dependencies simultaneously rather than piecemeal. This means that Ubuntu gets things like X.Org more quickly but you can count on things breaking.

I've run my personal workstations on Debian Unstable for years. I would update those machines at least once a week and only rarely would anything be broken. I had one major X hoseup and maybe 7 or 8 annoyances that didn't break anything major in all that time. We're talking years here. Tracking Ubuntu's Unstable is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, weeks or months of stability at best.

While they sometimes cause frustration, the plain fact of the matter is that Debian's policies result in less breakage and smoother transistions when frameworks and compilers change. There is some tension between having the latest and greatest and working systems. Debian's Unstable policies seems to manage that tension better.

I'm also not calling this a bad thing. The product Ubuntu stakes their reputation on the Stable release that sees a major update every 6 months or so. Their policies are intended to result in fairly up-to-date Stable releases. No arguments. I like having the most recent software as long as it is working at least fairly well...and I don't want to have recompile or fiddle with a source based distro. Debian's Unstable is often a better choice for the type of user I am.

Re:You just pointed out...

[Criterion]

"When you switch back to Debian unstable and modularized X.org goes in, remember this: All the hard work and all the breaking was done first in ubuntu, because they actually developed its integration in a debian-like distro and debian will just use Ubuntu's work (they're more or less the same developers after all). If Debian sid had done that job instead of Ubuntu, it'd had been sid who would have been broken."

Hmm, how strange it is, then, that Debian has had XOrg packages since July, and they are working fine, if the Ubuntu crew are doing all the work and it is still broken there. When Xorg went into Sid, it worked and didn't break anything that I saw, and it certainly is not broken atm.

Re:You just pointed out...

[diegocgteleline.es]

We are talkiong about MODULARIZED X.org, not X.org. Ubuntu already used x.org in the last stable version, if not sooner.

Who cares?

[Helvidius]

I mean, really? Business doesn't care. The general public doesn't care. Most Linux users do not care. I truly feel that Linux will not ever be a viable replacement for Windows until it unifies on one distribution and one desktop. Commercial {gasp} software designers are not going to create a program and then port it to every distribution and desktop manager. And to think that Linux will flourish on the desktop and replace Windows with only open source software is not being realistic.

I am no Microsoft fan, and I am not a big Linux fan either. I, like billions of other people, just want our computers to do what we want them to do--no tweaking, no compiling programs, no missing dependencies, no virii. We want them to do the work (or play) that we want them to do as inintrusively as possible. Of course there will always be the tweakers and the geeks, but catering to that croud is not going to put food on people's tables who create the software.

Personally, I would like to see Linux succeed on the desktop, but it never will. Not until the Linux advocates stop the forking and fracturing and unite. I see the hermits of the world uniting more likely than that happening.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I, like billions of other people, just want our computers to do what we want them to do--no tweaking, no compiling programs, no missing dependencies, no virii.

Well you, like billions of other people, are going to have to suck it up and deal with the fact that computers are fucking COMPLICATED machines, and that these problems you mentioned are next to intractible. We're working on it. Until it's better, just sit down and shut up if you don't have something more constructive to contribute.

I mean really, how is your comment supposed to be helping the situation here? You're just bitching.

Re:Who cares?

[Helvidius]

Though the HAL9000 had complicated emotional issues, interfacing with him wasn't complicated. And he was made back in 1997. So there!

Re:Who cares?

[Mo6eB]

virii

I say, old chap, it seems that you have been skipping on your English. This is evident from your blatant mispelling of the plural of the word "virus". If you weren't skipping, you'd jolly well know, that the plural of "virus" is "viruses". May I direct you to wikipedia, particularly the page, entitled "The plural of virus". If you were to look there, you'd notice that the correct spelling is "viruses" and not "virii". You may also wish to consult other sources, such as the Oxford English dictionary. Please do so and save me the horrible pain I feel when someone mutilates the fine British English beyond recognition. Thank you in advance.

Re:Ah, with Breezy I'm only an update (or two?) aw

[H3g3m0n]

Nice to know pac-man now dies although i think i will stick with the bouncing cow screensaver.
Anything with a bouncing cow in it is sure to be awsome.

MOD PARENT UP

[nutshell42]

n/t

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[zootm]

This feature wasn't in the Ubuntu distribution of GNOME (which was 2.10 - you could install a version with support for it from alternative repositories however), and is listed on the "new features" page of the 2.12 release notes, so I guess it was a transitional thing.

Thanks

[Makarakalax]

You live and you learn. It's a good theme, makes GNOME look lovely. I look forward to trying out the next Ubuntu liveCD

Re:Ah, with Breezy I'm only an update (or two?) aw

[bad_outlook]

UPDATE: yep, 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade' and now I have Gnome 2.12.0 - the little changes are nice enough to make it feel much more polished.

Re:Ah, with Breezy I'm only an update (or two?) aw

[bad_outlook]

>Anything with a bouncing cow in it is sure to be awsome. Correct, but for full bouncy effect you really need 3d accel drivers running. With my nVidia 6600GT it really flys! On the other hand pac-man works on any old machine. Just food for thought. ;)

Re:Good bye OSX

[labratuk]

...better part of a decade and they just added freakin' clipboard services.

I like the way you imply that gnome didn't have a clipboard until now. What they added was a very advanced way of handling many clipboard entries. Something which no other desktop does as well yet.

Have GnomeVFS built into the underlying OS and not as a IO library wrapper/hack

Well this shows me I shouldn't have bothered writing the above because you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[mrogers]

I take the opposite view - I started the app because I want to use it, so give it focus! Otherwise it would be pointless to use hotkeys for starting apps, because you'd have to pick up the mouse just to give them focus.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[I confirm I'm not a]

TweakUI has a "Prevent applications from stealing focus" option.... You can have Windows either flash the taskbar button X number of times or until it is clicked. Quite useful.

Second that. However, it doesn't always work, particularly with older apps - we use an archaic (well, a few years old at least) version of WS_FTP that insists that telling me it's uploading another file is more important than me reading Slashdot... it's wrong, I tell you! Wrong!

screenshots

[Skeezix]

Screenshots of Gnome 2.12 running on Ubuntu Breezy Badger:

nautilus spatial tree

I put up a few more screenshots here.

"Intuition" and the GUI

[drx]

All you guys using the word "intuitive" or "counter-intuitive" are on the wrong track i think. There is nothing intuitive in computer interfaces like it is in the real world, where you learn how objects behave as a child and this never changes. In the computer, everything can change all the time. There are many reasons why.

For people growing up with command lines or ANSI-kind of menus, drag&drop was never very important. Windows, cascading menus and icons in this view are just a way to shortcut to commands.

The idea behind drag&drop is that of spatiality and objects that have behaviours embedded -- more like the so called "real word" a bit. Combinations of objects should trigger special actions or should just be possible.

With the ongoing movement of GUIs i found out drag&drop becomes more and more crippled. The potential was never really used and the few things that worked are disappearing. The GUIs are moving into the push-button direction that try to make everything single-click. Probably the idea behind it is that the web was so successfull and there are only single clicks there.

The outcome of this tactic are largely overblown menus, because for every action there needs to be a description and a button and a menu. Just look at all the "context"-menus that come up with the right mouse button ...

Drag&drop and spaciality could save all this clutter and make the GUI worth its name. After all the idea behind the GUI is to introduce a two-dimensional space instead of one-dimensional text.

But it is more difficult to develop. People will drag and drop stuff from everywhere to anywhere and the software has to come up with a smart reaction to that. It is definitely more easy to put everything that is "allowed" into menus. This became the typical form to make interfaces now.

And if there is something else happening it is labelled counter-intuitive. I wish it would be much more "counter-intuitive" to really strike a difference and use the pixels i paid for, and not to go the way of MS Windows and X too far further ...

Re:"Intuition" and the GUI

[Mr. Underbridge]

I think there's a lot of truth there, but it's not a matter of just clicky vs typey. To me, there are only two things that matter: learning curve, and eventual productivity after I've climbed said curve. The goal of most modern GUIs - and indeed, the goal of the Gnome Foundation - is to lessen the learning curve by making things somehow obvious to users.

As you say, nothing is entirely intuitive in computers, because it isn't the real world. But we're not inventing computers for the first time, so to me doing things the way they've usually been done makes things the most intuitive. If you steer away from convention, do *something* to make it obvious how the user can do what he wants. This is basic interface design, GUI or not.

To me, this is where Gnome currently fails. It goes away from convention, but makes no effort to ensure that the new way of doing things will be discovered in a reasonable fashion.

Gnome for Warships

[stedo]

Nuclear launch initiated. (...) (Greenpeace finds out) (...) Are you sure you want to cancel the launch? Ok/Cancel

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[plj]

Mac OS Human Interface Guidelines have instructed against stealing focus for ages, and while I don't know whether there is any actual window manager level protection against it or not, in practice no application ever steals focus.

If a backround application suddenly presents a dialog box in OS X, it's icon usually starts bouncing up and down in dock. In OS 9 an application was able to flash it's icon in task list. At least old versions of Eudora used this to announce new mail.

Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing

[HuguesT]

Hello?

> To that I can add Windows, which hasn't done that
> since XP was released.

Then you are not using the same Windows XP as I. To Hell it does!

Under XP you can even be in a nice fullscreen 3D game trying to CTF, save the princess or sink that boat and at the worst possible moment you will be yanked out to the desktop because Norton Antivirus desperately wants to let you know your subscription is expiring in 2 weeks! Usually after that my game crashes and I'm not happy.

This is unbelievably rude behaviour from the O/S!

What is it with you people and the save dialog?

[e_xworm]

I happen to really like it.

It will first prompt you to save to a well known place (let's say Downloads).
If you don't like that you can choose a shortcut through the combobox.

If you don't want to go there you can "open" it and start browsing directories. Then and only then you can use the location (no need to display it beforehand)

Why on earth should i see a cluttered dialog full of information that at that point in time doesn't concern me?

Give them a break guys, that one is quite good

I happen to teach computer classes the past few years (Windows classes) and the save file dialog is allways (ALLWAYS) a full hour class just to get them to start to understand it.
I allways have to explain the process more than once.
Just once i showed the gnome dialog to a friend and she preferred it instantly.

nautilus, file browsers and other stuff

[e_xworm]

OK i see a lot of of talk here about nautilus so here my 1c.

I have seen many arguments as to why nautilus is bad, all of them being sth like "it's ugly", "it's spacial", "it can't make me coffee" and others like that.

As for one, Nautilus is far better than windows explorer, mimetype handling being one important thing here...
A file should be defined by it's content so WE has it allready wrong. Renaming it can lead you to make it unusable (for a sort while until you get that you got the extension wrong). MS's workaround here (hiding the extension) makes things even worse.

Apart from that i think that gnome has got it right here. A file browser is a file browser. You browse files with it (Duh). You don't go sightseeing with it, You don't surf the web, you don't manage your photographs with it, you don't hear music with it. So as for it's purpose it's doing a fine job.

About it's speed i hear you people say. Perhaps it's a distro thing, an installation thing, i don't know, but yes nautilus can take a while to display some folders (/usr/bin took about 20 secs here, whereas konqueror took about 6 secs) but really how many folders do you manage with a few thousand files laying there flat?
Hey now that i mention it, how long does it take WE to display a 2000 file folder?

Re:nautilus, file browsers and other stuff

[ardor]

Hey now that i mention it, how long does it take WE to display a 2000 file folder?

I answered that in my original post.

Try browsing a large directory with thousands of files with nautilus, konqueror and windows explorer. The latter ones scan the directory MUCH faster.

Re:Good bye OSX

[dbIII]

Have GnomeVFS built into the underlying OS

I think it's better to leave this stuff in userspace - it shouldn't have to matter whether the files are sitting in ext3, iso9660, udf, fat32, or coming in via nfs or smb/cifs. Also gnome is cross-platform now so you don't want to extend it into a paticular OS. Despite the name it isn't a file system anyway.

including installing and removing commercial applications

It's 2005, most things install without drama now.

Minor rephrase required on the "aiming" bit

[leonbrooks]

"If you're aiming to match the status quo, the best you're going to do is match it."

Put much more bluntly, "don't use the status quo as a ceiling".

Re:Good bye OSX

[MassacrE]

But thats part of my point. Gnome as a project stops far short of what someone like Apple tries to achieve - a complete user experience.

Creating a user-centric and not administrator-centric environment is not something that I've seen distributions tackle, as they generally either do integration work of the various components they want to ship, or work to attract enterprise customers (who want things to be even more administrator-centric). Distributions also have a tendancy to have NIH syndrome when it comes to bundling projects created by other distribution-makers.

To put it bluntly - if creating a user-centric environment is left up to the distributions, it will probably never catch on.

Re:Good bye OSX

[MassacrE]

I like the way you imply that gnome didn't have a clipboard until now. What they added was a very advanced way of handling many clipboard entries. Something which no other desktop does as well yet.

New clipboard management, based on the Freedesktop.org specification and tightly integrated with GNOME, allows for objects to persist in the clipboard longer than the lifetime of an application. This means that if you cut or copy an object and then exit that application, the item you put on the clipboard will remain until you replace it.

This sounds to me like up until now, the clipboard has never been centrally managed, but has relied on the original application being around to provide clipboard data. The concept of a clipboard that lives beyond the application data was cut/copied from has been around a long time in other desktops

Have GnomeVFS built into the underlying OS and not as a IO library wrapper/hack Well this shows me I shouldn't have bothered writing the above because you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

GnomeVFS is a nightmare for user experience because only some applications understand it. If you use regular X applications, KDE applications, gtk applications, or a shell, there is no compatibility - you just sometimes can see the files, and sometimes are unable to access them at all.

Re:Good bye OSX

[MassacrE]

I think it's better to leave this stuff in userspace - it shouldn't have to matter whether the files are sitting in ext3, iso9660, udf, fat32, or coming in via nfs or smb/cifs. Also gnome is cross-platform now so you don't want to extend it into a paticular OS. Despite the name it isn't a file system anyway.

My particular gripe is that gnome draws a line at being a desktop environment, then goes over it by faking userspace filesystems. Users of the system suffer because files which are accessible through gnome may not be accessible through kde/gtk/xlib/regular shell apps.

Re:Good bye OSX

[MassacrE]

Why would you want to tie any desktop code into the kernel? Should the kernel then include code for *all* desktop environments? KDE? XFCE? Blackbox? Enlightenment? WindowMaker? ... Talk aout bloat!

I'm not talking about desktop code to the kernel, I'm talking about using leveraging the kernel's vfs rather than creating your own.

1) You don't need to compile anything if you're using a distro that supports apt, yum, up2date, YaST, etc... 2) Not only is install-as-admin a security feature, but also 3) It's rather trivial in most distros to install "from" a non-admin account -- ie. in SuSE just click the RPM, enter the admin password, and it installs. If all fails, there's sudo.

1. apt/yum/up2date don't neccessarily support me installing from CD media
2. install-as-sudo-admin is not a security feature, it is a security checkpoint. Indeed, you have just given the installer scripts root access to your system
3. you just said use an admin password or sudo. How is this defeating my argument again?

Re:Good bye OSX

[MassacrE]

If it is their computer, why shouldn't they be able to install any software, anytime, anyplace? Why must I give an installer root access to my system in order to get an application on? With a macintosh, for example, most installers consist of 'drag this application wherever you want to run it from'.

The macintosh experience isn't even the best it could be, it would be very possible to one-up them and provide for native application sandboxing (basically, applications should never inherit permissions based on the user or parent process that executes them). The issue is that the developer-centric audience of open-source development prevents this from happening - the people who are writing code are not scratching these sorts of itches.

windows drive letters

[xpyr]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I wish Linux would do away with the unix style file system. If you take a look at the way windows nt worked, which went onto 2000 and xp, MS could have had the file system be just like unix. But instead they kept the partitions separated by drive letters, just like in windows 98 et al. Which made it so much easier to work with when it came to understanding where data was. Even when you go to the command prompt, you'd still get the drive letters. Where as even in mac os x, you'd still get the unix style file system format if you went to the command line by opening up terminal.

Separating it into drive letters showed the user exactly that one drive letter, unless it was a cd/dvd rom or removable drive, that it was one partition. And another drive letter meant that it was a separate partition. Where as in linux/unix you have everything under /. Which doesn't indicate to the user if a directory is a different partition or just another directory within the main booting partition.

Linux could do this if it wanted to. It would certainly ease the transition over to it. From someone that was using windows mainly.