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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."
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.
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make install -not war
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
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?
X~
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)
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!
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.
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
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.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
What's new for USERS?
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
> 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.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
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".
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.
I just downloaded from the torrent and booted it up and it's another disappointment.
.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.
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
And feel free to flame me. But these are my experiences.
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.
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).
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
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.
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.