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A Look at GNOME 2.14
An anonymous reader writes "Gnome has a nice preview of their newest version 2.14 posted which should be hitting the streets around the 15th of March. From the article: "As well as new features and more polish, developers have been working around the clock to squeeze more performance out of the most commonly used applications and libraries. This is a review of some of the most shiny work that has gone into the upcoming GNOME release."
It looks like I'm going to have to admin a lab of Linux boxes soon, and I'm pleased with the progress that is coming on the nebulous "Linux desktop".
Although, both Gnome and KDE are still 90'ish, at least Gnome is now knocking off OS X instead of Windows.
Now, for the confusing part. Why was their previous allocator so lame compared to malloc()? Its worth a read to check out this for an allocator. Being that multi-core/"threads"/CPUs are pretty common today, its worth using that to one's advantage.
The "File" menu has been disabled in all programs. GNOME proponents stated that the change is to ensure that end users "aren't confused by all of the big words, like 'exit' and 'print.'" The Edit menu has been removed in most programs.
Yes, that is funny!
However, who in their right mind would put 'exit' under the "File" menu? 'print' and 'close' makes sense, but 'exit' is to exit a program, not do anything with a file.
It's clear that you've never encountered users who "Click out of a file", which seems to be most of them. I'm still not quite sure how that one is supposed to work, but I've also known my share of users who "Exit a file", which they apparently took from File->Exit. Anyway...
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
GNOME has definately become a solid desktop with the recent releases (after 2.6 or 2.8). Now everything "works" perfectly (almost) out of the box. (USB sticks, iPods, DVD burners, all kinds of multimedia, SFTP/DAV/SMB/etc integration, openoffice, and many more).
It has replaced Windows XP as my current primary desktop, and I can finally recommend Linux to my friends without hesitation.
(btw You shouldn't have "DDOSed" the poor server. It contains really nice information.)
Ok, I give up. You two (Gnome & KDE) can just stop fighting over me. You have won.
...years later...
I started out (RedHat v5.2) hating Gnome with a passion. So I checked out what my choices were (thank-god for Linux) and moved on to KDE. I loved the options and the configurability.
Ok I can't stand XP anymore. I'm "grown-up" enough to stop playing games and doing something constructive with my PC so let's give Debian a try for a desktop.
Well I see that Gnome is still spoon-feeding me, that took 10 minutes, so let's give KDE a whirl.
Love the tools hate the wrapper.
Hello IRC, can sombody suggest a different WM/DE?
Wow IceWM now you are talking!!!!
Cool XFce even better...
Geez I wish Debian would hurry up and update the kernel, I NEED THOSE PATCHES OR I CRASH!
Hello Ubuntu!
Well I know that I hate Gnome, KDE isn't installing right... Where is IceWM? Hey look XFce.
Shit not working right.
---format---reinstall---etc
lather-rise-repeat
3 attempts later.
Fine! I'll try this default stuff.
woah, it works.
I hate this thing.
Geez it is working though.,
My solution: I mostly run KDE-based apps in the Gnome DE. (While wishing XFCe would work 100%.)
Gnome has won the "It just works" contest for me.
Congrats on the release guys. Good Job.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
NetworkManager is much improved, too. At least in Ubuntu 6.10 betas, you don't need bind do use it! Instead it finally uses the existing functionaly of the DHCP client to write /etc/resolv.conf. I don't think the VPN stuff from CVS is going to make it in though.
Rhythmbox 0.9.3.1 is pretty nice. It has [iTunes] playlist sharing built in (reportedly, don't anything to share with). I don't have an iPod but I think that should be supported practically out-of-box too. So you might wonder what improvements I actually do notice. You can finally specify a watch folder to sync your library with, import an audio cd, scan removable media, and queue songs from your current playlist. The queue is viewable as a sidebar pane like the cover art display in iTunes. No support for displaying the cover art yet, though.
Gstreamer 0.10 has cleaned up the plugin code, and reorganized their plugin classifications. Good plugins are open source and highly functional. Ugly plugins are legally questionable in some jurisdictions but are highly functional. Bad plugins are ones that may have bad implementations and I guess are more likely to not work. Unfortunately the faad/faac plugins are in the bad package, which currently has to built from source on Ubuntu 6.10. Hopefully that will be added to universe or multiverse by release. Everyone post from someone who has built it reports that AAC files play just fine (including me).
I am having some trouble with dbus/hald not showing desktop icons for hard drive partitions mounted under /media. I set the gconf key for volumes_visible, and that works for CDs and such. But I have to restart dbus/hald after logging in to get partitions to show a desktop icon.
Lastly, I haven't yet got xgl+compiz working yet. But compiz seems hard coded to use Mesa so far, so some people are reporting it's actually slower than plain old xorg with the Ati/Nvidia binary drivers.
I've encountered users who have not realised that applications could be closed. They called site support saying their system was slow. I walked in, saw their taskbar full of apps and just hit the power button. I would have said that on their double-layer taskbar there was only 5 or 6 pixels per active task.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
So GNOME continues to try to break out of the mold cast for them a generation or so ago. Never mind that we were only just starting to get to the point where real know-nothing users actually expected things that way, it's important to know that the spirit of gratuitous difference lives on...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Overall,I love gnome. It's well designed, and glib + Gtk+ is a very powerful use of C that makes relatively high-level code easy to make fairly lightweight... when the developers try.
Gstreamer is GPL
Wrong, GStreamer is LGPL only. The GStreamer website is adamant about denying developers the right to license contributed code under the GPL:
We require that all code going into our core package is LGPL. For the plugin code, we require the use of the LGPL for all plugins written from scratch or linking to external libraries.
Fluendo, the company that controls GStreamer, wants to link their DRM plugins to LGPL code contributed by the naive independent developers, who don't realize that by writing LGPL multimedia code, they might as well be working for the RIAA and MPAA.
Xine on the other hand is GPL, and any code that links to Xine must also be GPL. So even if someone decides to make DRM plugins or apps for Xine, they will have to give users the source code to those plugins. There will inevitably be some users who know how to extract the useful part of the codec while leaving out the DRM restrictions. As the KDE developer Aaron Seigo eloquently put it:
DRM + source code = no DRM
Now I realize why Richard Stallman warned against using LGPL for any code, including libraries. Too bad the makes of GTK and GNOME didn't listen. But thank God the makers of Qt and KDE did!
From the article:
Can someone put this into words that an average user can understand?
My mistake.
We require that all code going into our core package is LGPL. For the plugin code, we require the use of the LGPL for all plugins written from scratch or linking to external libraries.
Good job selectively quoting the site. What they're saying on their licensing page is that in order for a plugin to be part of gstreamer.org's distribution the plugin must be LGPL. The answer is simple, don't write a plugin for gstreamer.org to distribute. Write GPL licensed plugins for the Linux distribution maintainers to distribute. From the licensing page you linked to:To keep this policy viable, the GStreamer community has made a few licensing rules for code to be included in GStreamer's core or GStreamer's official modules, like our plugin packages
Fluendo, the company that controls GStreamer, wants to link their DRM plugins to LGPL code contributed by the naive independent developers,
As is their right under the licensing agreement. But we don't have to use those versions of the plugins if we don't want to. We can compile the non-DRM enabled LGPL code. That is also our right under the licensing agreement.
Xine on the other hand is GPL, and any code that links to Xine must also be GPL
And as a result xine can't legally be distributed in the United States with the ability to play a CSS encrypted DVD. Gstreamer was written with the licensing and framework to avoid that problem. Personally, I would like to see software that plays DVDs on desktop Linux and is legally distributable in the United States. To be honest I'd rather see the legallity not be an issue, but that is harder to get changed.
Althought I am not a developer for either project, it is my naive impression that iterative and incremental development is superior to irregular leaps. There is less opportunity to introduce defects, lose track of goals, or lose interest when cycles are small and regularly timed.
Which is not to say designs should never be radically improved. When incremental improvement hits a barrier the design defect should be quite evident and can be more accurately budgeted resources. In contrast, when design defects are predicted far in advance you could allocate resources to "chase ghosts."
While I have no doubt KDE will be a fine DE, I think GNOME, despite its technical deficiencies, might pull ahead in the long run.
Install the codec. Now it works. Hmmm...very similar.
No, not similar. Ignore for a moment the fact that joe sixpack probably bought a PC with windows pre-installed, and most OEMs include some sort of DVD player software these days. No, lets say Joe sticks a DVD in his computer and it won't play. Off he goes to best buy, to pick up a copy of Power DVD (or whatever). He brings it home, sticks it in the drive, and IT WORKS. No dependencies, it just works.
Compare that to Linux, where in order to get DVD playback working he will either have to manually resolve dependencies, or edit his repositories for whatever package management sytem he uses. Assuming of course he can find either a repository or an RPM download site that hosts them, and further assuming he even knows what the fuck he's looking for (CSS? LibDVDread?).
I'm typing this on a Suse box, and yes I can watch DVDs on it, but there is absolutly no way on gods earth my Dad could get DVD playback working on a bare Suse install. On windows, I expect he could.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks