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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

[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

"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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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.

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)

Karma!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

[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

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.

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

[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

[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: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.

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

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

[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

[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

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.

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...

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...

[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.

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!

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"

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

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: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:Notes.

[ilyaaohell]

What's new for USERS?

Gnome and Nintendo

[Wylfing]

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

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.

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...

[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: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.

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:release notes app font

[davydmadeley]

The application font is Bitstream Vera Sans 9.

The window title font is Bitstream Vera Sans Bold 10.

Re:Notes.

[Matheus Villela]

What's New For Users

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:Blah.

[poofyhairguy82]

It looks like MS windows.

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

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:

[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.

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.

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

[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).

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.

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.

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.