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GNOME 2.12 Released

Posted by samzenpus on from the update dept.

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."

6 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. Hot off the presses by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  2. What Gnome needs by andrewman327 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
  3. Evince looks useful by dankelley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:Evince looks useful by Kristoffer+Lunden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

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  4. GNOME lags behind by ardor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

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    This sig does not contain any SCO code.
  5. What they should do next by Omega+Blue · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.