Slashdot Mirror
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."
Before they get slashdotted: http://www.gnome.org.nyud.net:8080/~davyd/gnome-2- 14/
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.
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
Makes me want to fire up my linux box again. I particularly like the admin tools and the "save your search as a folder" feature. OS X admin tools are sometimes a little restricted for my taste.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
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.
I really hope they've got the xcompmgr debugged so it works without freezing on my Inspiron8000. Factoring all display rendering operations out of the CPU onto the GPU in OpenGL will really squeeze a lot more performance out of GNOME, across the board.
--
make install -not war
Congrats to the developers, I'm really looking forward to trying it out when it goes stable!
Just curious if anyone might know if Gnome 2.14 is making the cut for Fedora Core 5 or the next Ubuntu?
it's sexy
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
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.)
Why do so many linux programmers insist on such crazy naming conventions. Sabayon? Changing a perfectly servicable and pragmagic GNOME Meeting to "Ekiga"?
I use linux both at home and at work, so I'm not some anti-linux zealot or something- I think it's a legitimate question to raise. On my mac laptop, I have a handy app for browsing mDNS networks called Rendezvous Browser (since mDNS was once called Rendezvous). The name is simple and describes perfectly what the program does. On the other hand, 90% of the linux applications available have names that look like they were chosen by picking random letters and squishing them together. I'm sure that the programmers think they've very clever by choosing a name that means something in some obscure language- or they just thing the name sounds cool- but that simple lack of meaningful names is detrimental. If I start up a GNOME session and want to use network meeting functionality, how is there any possible way that I could guess that "Ekiga" is the application I'm looking for?
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
Untill they put a spot where you can type in a file path into the open and save dialogs, i wont go back to gnome.
You have Gnome and KDE - two very different approaches that manage to co-exist side by side. I'm a KDE guy myself, but I must say that Gnome's looking really polished and I can see Gnome and KDE standing beside, if not taller than Windows in the near future. I won't be switching because I like KDE's direction, but there are probbaly a lot of Gnome users who say the same and I can appreciate that. :)
We also do need to thank the artists that put in the time to create the icons and mouse cursors for us. You can put in all the anti-aliasing you want, but if something like the icons dont look good, people get put off. I'm just really happy for the Gnome guys and all I can say is, "keep it up, you're doing a great job!"
Linux is about choice. I wouldn't want either Gnome or KDE to wipe each other out. They need to co-exist simply to show Windows users that there is a choice available if not for anything else
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
I agree with the guy that is glad they are copying the OSX look rather than windows, but other than that..still looks like it is designed by a guy needing anti-depressants. Boooooorrriiiiiiiing...
Damn. That is probably the single most polite Gnome/KDE comment I've ever read on slashdot. I almost feel like I'm performing a disservice to this thread by replying to it without adding anything insightful. Good work. /me tips hat in your direction.
- Frank
I'm running Mandriva 2005, and although I've found the PalmPilot integration to be quite functional, Evolution is only hot-synching one of my task categories, which is a known bug.
GNOME 2.14?? I'm still using version 2.8!!
Thanks :) It is always nice to be appreciated :) Was simply directing credit to where the credit was due :)
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
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)
I'm thrilled that they led off the article by talking about performance improvements. For the last 5 years or so, I've been staying away from Gnome because of its poor performance. I still remember the first time I tried it, ca. 2001 -- after clicking on a folder, I literally had time to get up and get a cup of coffee before it would open. Although I've been pretty happy with fluxbox recently, there are times now and then when it might be handy to have more of a full-featured desktop environment. I'll have to try Gnome again.
Find free books.
Personally, I just love Gnome. But there is however one thing in Gnome that bothers me much and which KDE doesn't have.
Is there any way to make Gnome look a bit smaller and more compact? That is to say, to smallen the height of menus, the height of toolbars and so on. In my opinion, the only one annoying feature is that Gnome just takes too much space on the display.
Unfortunately, my laptop can't support higher than 1024x768 resolution so I lose lots of visible space. Any suggestions?
Didn't anyone tell them that this is a dangerous day for this?
Et tu, Bill?
I'd also love to know why they decided that the proper order for buttons is "No/Yes"
I really hope they implement some way to switch that... I come from Windows and this is the most irritating "feature" of GNOME. It's even more irritating if you have a dual boot, since you can't readapt your brain to get a specific order of clicking a dialog.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Kudos to the submitter for using Coral Cache, but remember that those behind corporate firewalls won't be able to read the page.
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
usually people read the dialog before blindly clicking it :-)
There is no comparison.
Why do the Linux GUIs always have the menu bar as part of the windows and the top 3 buttons on the right? Surely it makes more sense to only have one menu bar taking up space at a time, and the buttons near the menus where your mouse is.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
GStreamer, the official audio backend for GNOME, will include DRM plugins developed by a company called Fluendo, which hopes to make money by restricting the users' rights and turning GNOME/Linux/"the Free Desktop System" into a Vista-like nightmare controlled by the entertainment cartel. Why? Because Fluendo is on the GNOME Foundation's Advisory Board. I can't believe I've been so stupid to actually give them money, so that they can turn around and stab Free Software in the back! Never again will I trust the GNOME Foundation after they sold out the community like this.
I hope KDE is smart enough to avoid DRM by choosing a multimedia backend that is GPL. This will ensure that users can change the code of any plugin, remove the DRM, and be left with a functional product. Xine would be an excellent choice for a multimedia backend, since it is light-weight, works with more codecs that Gstreamer (not to mention better) and can be included as a library in any program, like Kaffeine and Amarok have already done.
Ekiga, formerly known as GNOME Meeting,
Oooh! Ekiga is a much more meaningful name than GNOME Meeting. GNOME naming just gets better and better. I know the last time I wanted to search for font information, overly sexually active monkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo was the very first thing that popped into my head.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
On the principle that users hate choices, here's the new Gnome with the fewest options ever. The entire UI has been stripped except for two huge, beautifully rendered buttons in the middle of the screen. The red one says "on|off", and the green says "DWIM".
Unfortunately the half terabyte of AI this requires also makes this the fattest gnome ever.
Yeah, the desktop I use on my main UN*X machines has the buttons for the "Do you want to save changes to this document before closing?" dialog in the order "Don't Save", "Cancel", and "Save", rather than "Yes" and "No" or "No" and "Yes". Similarly, the buttons for "Are you sure you want to remove the items in the Trash permanently?" are in the order "Cancel" and "OK", rather than "Yes" and "No" or "No" and "Yes".
usually people read the dialog before blindly clicking it :-)
:-)
And the BOFH linux-zealot award goes to...
Your post does not meet /. guidelines. To meet the guidelines you should either:
- Criticize GNOME, its developers and its users
- Criticize KDE, its developers and its users
- Bash Microsoft.
- Make obligatory jokes about russia, etc..
Thank you for attention.
While the improvements definitely seem interesting, I wonder if it's enough to make Pat include Gnome with Slack again.
Then again, the main reason he stopped including it was because it was hell to package, IIRC :)
I'd be interested to see more terminal benchmarks. I myself use RXVT religiously (in either Openbox, or my homebrewed WM, HactWM - currently not safe for public consumption :)).
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
But I can honestly say, that thanks to Ubuntu, they've sparked my love for Gnome again.. Its so freakin fast.. The Look and Feel is very appealing to my eyes and mouse.. the programs keep getting better and better.. tons of customization.. and its from our good ol' pals from GNU.. I'm very glad to witness the progression of Gnome.. they're doin' a hell of a job.. I noticed someone who was confused by the default positioning of the taskbar and menu.. Obviously, you can change it to whatever you want.. He said something about how he thought it was stupid to have two bars.. Well maybe, some of us are tired of just having one.. take your Windows style start menu, and shove it up your pretentious ass.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Don't feed the trolls ... don't feed the trolls ... must ... resist ... aaahhh
Gnome has taken the route of trying to pick decent defaults for as much as possible. This ranges from the trivial (like the Window List always being a reasonable size, rather than specifying a minimum and maximum size) to more entrenched settings like button order based on your language left-to-right or right-to-left settings. Beyond that, it has aimed to keep the configuration/preferences window to just the most common options and remove any esoteric settings from the display. This has two benefits:
This is a marked change from KDE which offers pretty much all the tweaks available in the GUI. This does mean that KDE preferences tend to be heavily tabbed to provide the options in a reasonable amount of screen space. While a user is learning to use a KDE application, they may take some time to find the option they need in the tabs available.
Because Gnome does not expose all the configuration options in the application preferences, it's easy to assume that the defaults can't be changed or that custom bindings can't be set. The Gnome power-user who wants to, for example, bind multi-media keys to a script rather than one of the potted commands, needs to know about the GConf schemas and the gconf-editor tool. In this respect, Gnome provides for the user who doesn't care about complex configurations well while still allowing the arch-tweaker access to a whole host of advanced options.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Um, "In Russia, people are being polite to you". No.
"I for one welcome our.. polite..." nah.
"All your politeness belongs " - argh, no.
This outburst of civility is killing slashdot, I tell you!
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
KDE is focused in revamping the whole KDE infrastructure with KDE 4, even during the kde 3.5 development some people said 3.5 would be unstable because too many developers where focusing in KDE 4 (kde 3.5.1 is great for me).
So you won't see any kde news for a while except for KDE 4. KDE 3.5 is everything what KDE 3.X has to offer. Of course people could continue developing 3.5, but they're focusing in kde 4....there'll be news in the kde 3.5 field - bugfix releases, updates from individual programs like koffice or kopete - but overall, you won't see any "earthbreaking" change in kde 3.5.
Some gnome developers think that there should not be a gnome 3 - at least, there's zero lines of "gnome 3 code" right now - and that the gnome 2 is OK and that it's much better to do small improvements to the current architecture. This is a big error IMO, but the fact is that until kde 4 is released it will be gnome who gets more attention and releases more attractive things.
In real world product design, the most often used controls are typically placed on the right, where the right-handed majority of users may more easily interact with them. Think microwave ovens, old-school TVs, even ATMs. Onscreen representations of interactive panels take their cues from real-world appliances like these, and thereby offer an immediate sense of familiarity, rewarding intuition.
Not that this revelation will change your attitude towards user friendliness, of course, nor convince you of the value of progressive disclosure.
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.
With Ubuntu Dapper Drake I have finally been exposed to gnome-screensaver, which doesn't let you select which screensavers you wish the random selector to choose from, doesn't let you set options for the screensavers (because a screensaver with options, according to the developers, is broken), and won't give you a full-screen preview (because, according to the developers, being able to do so doesn't really solve any problem).
The outcry over "spatial mode" nautilus at least caused changes to make it easy to select the former behavior. If gnome-screensaver doesn't regain some of the configurability xscreensaver had, I certainly won't use gnome-screensaver, and am liable to look for alternatives to GNOME period.
I've always enjoyed a little gnome (SORRY, couldn't resist!) [karma gets blown for really terrible joke]
For someone like me (very technical, but has a family and can't do all the hacking around I used to do), a digest like this is good. Thanks for posting...
I'm looking forward to the features. With two "cubs" in the house, the lockdown feature is a great idea. The kids are great, but sometimes machines won't boot if they're not in managed accounts. They enjoy tinkering with Linux, but sometimes can be tinking where they shouldn't be tinking... (To all you admins, I know that you can set up some pretty good stuff on the 'line, but, as I said, I just don't have the time).
Deskbar looks very interesting... I'd like to see it in action... Writing to remote files - a nice feature I've seen in some editors (Slick, Crimson, others). This is A Good Thing...
Preferred applications - cool!
Can one of you much smarter-than-me-folks please tell me, is Nautilus faster in this upcoming release? Also, is this going to be ported to SPARC boxes any time soon?
A Passionate Independent Musician
It's looking very polished. In the looks department it certainly is good enough for corporate users. It might not be 100% of where OSX is or have the fancy glass effects that Vista will have, but it's certainly light years ahead of what it was just 5 years ago.
I just wish for one thing, and that is that the Gnome and KDE people would cooperate on clipboard and drag and drop standards so that software from one would work in that department at least in the other.
First of all, I dont understand why the grandparent post is flamebait at the moment. Seems like a perfectly valid observation to me.
I disagree with your post. First of all, no one said modern appliances were intuitive. If GNOME wants to build sane and progressive user friendliness, they shouldn't be looking to microwave panels.
Second, I agree with the gp-post that the button ordering should be "Yes"/"No". I understand why often-used objects should be in the lower-right for the right-handed inclined. But at the same time GNOME attempts to do button layout according to language preference. When I read dialog boxes, I read from left to right (English). I find that when we read or speak of yes-no questions in English, the "yes" option usually comes up first.
For example:
"Want to get some pizza for lunch? Yes? No? Maybe?"
I very seldom hear people give the no option first.
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*beware the cute-bunny virus
The reason GNOME picked this particular order is because the GNOME project is where people who almost understand interaction design end up.
[1] In countries with right to left reading orders, this order is reversed.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's a good point. I think it'd apply really well to a situation where GUI elements weren't manipulated by pointing and touching, say, for instance, by speaking their names instead. But given that buttons are there to be clicked, it follows that you'll want the most frequently used buttons in the most accessible part of the dialog, and that's the lower-right (unless you want to always feel like you're reaching over the "no" button to reach "yes"--and given the right-handed pointer icon, that's exactly what you'll feel). Making "yes" stand out by placing it in the corner, instead of buried in the center underneath the dialog text, is another reason for this placement.
It's Kewl, but for me to answer would require five more sidebars and eight new checkboxes.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The new GNOME looks great, but it certainly doesn't match the effects of Vista. Check it out: 3d window stacking, hardware alpha blending with blurring, etc. It'll be a long time before the freedesktop guys get Cairo and XGL working to the compatibility, quality and speed of DirectX. Xorg composite still crashes for me frequently.
That's a brilliant argument from an engineering P.O.V. The myriad reasons it fails utterly from an aesthetic, creative, humanistic viewpoint is something I'd rather not waste time trying to explain to the likes of you.
Does Gnome actually even have action buttons labeled, literally, "Yes" and "No"? Seems a little Windowseque, if you ask me.
Get rid of the bitmaps on the buttons and i'll think about it
You never catch me alive
Fast user switching is a great feature to have... I wonder how it's implemented actually. The old way of starting a new X server was incredibly slow and annoying and switching back and forth wasn't intuitive.
Now I can make my girlfriend a separate account on my computer that won't be a pain to switch to. Woohoo!
My bicyles
1. The metacity "activation follows mouse" option is good except when the mouse moves from the center of the active window to, say, the panel. Any windows which show even a pixel in the way will get raised in turn as the mouse moves over them. This means that when the mouse reaches the panel, the window you were looking at is now longer the active window.
So what? Well, if you have 5x web browser windows, the window list distinguishes between the active one and the others by making it bold. So if you want to minimise the window which you've been viewing, suddenly it's not bold anymore, and you don't know which one it was, because one of the background windows has become active in the movement from screen center to panel.
This is quite unintuitive! The simple solution would be to add a small activation delay for "focus follows mouse". This works in other window managers that provide the same activation feature.
2. Metacity "edge stickyness" so you can easily line up windows to the screen edge, or other windows. The traditional problem with wm's implementing this, is the window can snap to the edge ok, but to un-snap the window then jumps a bit, meaning that you can't position the window anywhere within 10 pixels of said edge. The snap is good, but it shouldn't remove the fine pixel by pixel control you can have with positioning windows.
Even the window-menu "move", arrow up/down/left/right option snaps to the edge in some wm's (which is good) but often you still get a large "jump" when the window unsnaps with this method.
From the article:
Can someone put this into words that an average user can understand?
Perhaps because not everyone wants to use the command line for everything?
Oh yeah, and also keep in mind that it helps if your attention's drawn immediately to the default button, regardless of position. OS X does it with bright colors and a subtle animation. This way it doesn't matter that you read top to bottom, left to right--you see the default button immediately. (This won't work if it's named "Yes" instead of "Save" or "Copy" or "Detonate" or what have you.)
Also, re: your hypothetical pizza situation, I have long been of the opinion that Yes/No/Cancel dialogs could usually stand to benefit from a "Maybe" button.
whereas gnome just cripples your abililty to answer altogether... it was confusing users, you see?
"It's even more irritating if you have a dual boot, since you can't readapt your brain to get a specific order of clicking a dialog"
Me? Really?
I haven't noticed this problem on my dual-boot machine, or perhaps it is my brain's inability to adapt, as you said, that causes me to not adapt to your inability to use an "I" statement.
The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's own
Said every year on Slashdot since 1998. When will it be done coming into its own is what I want to know.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I'd call gcc a GNU utility.
Erik Dalén
After all, the first thing I want to do when I install a desktop environment is to spend an hour configuring it, instead of using it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Same with the desktop on my UN*X machine......you know, OSX.
I guess "NO ONE ELSE ON THE PLANET" is starting to mean more and more people.
Answer: http://blog.gnomemeeting.net/index.php?m=200512
Are you serious?? Windows hit version 3.0 in 1990, 95 in 1995 and 2003 a few years ago. MacOS is at X. The Linux kernel has been wallowing in version 2 for ages.
You're right, a good artist knows when to remove things instead of just adding
When I want a painting of a UI then, I'll talk to GNOME. Since I want to actually *USE* the UI, I'll stick with kde
I think you just won the award for the craziest question ever asked on Slashdot. Motif widgets are NOT interchangeable with Qt/Gtk.
m l
Not as crazy as you think. If you need to migrate a large Xt and Motif application to a modern toolkit, that's the most sensible solution. And the exact reason why the TT has developed the Qt Motif Extension. The Qt Motif Extension provides a complete and working solution for incremental migration. http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/motif-walkthrough.ht
Compiz requires a particular OpenGL extension that no hardware driver yet supports, so it is emulated in software by Xglx itself. NVIDIA helped define that extension, so it's safe to bet that future NVIDIA drivers will include the extension with full hardware acceleration. Likewise, the open source drivers are being updated to include the extension, though no official releases yet contain it. In a few years ATI might even include the extension in their official drivers, too.
For those who find KDE and Gnome to be a bit much: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/
Microsoft Excel ;)
Just an interesting point... on my TV, PS2, microwave, cooker and laptop (what I can see at the moment), the power button or control panel is on the right hand side of the device.
I heard Gnome 2.14 is supposed to improve on its already impressive (and immensely popular) window maximizing/minimizing frame animations. In 2.14, the entire desktop transforms into "frame mode" whenever a user moves the mouse pointer. Elegant large black frames outline everything, so the user can easily see where one application begins and another ends. Gnome developers have been pouring over ui interface designs from the early 90s, trying to determine the most effective way to display huge black frames on the desktop.
Bring on the frame-candy!
I love the performance comparison bar graphs in TFA. Anyone have any idea what application was used to generate them?
Ended up staying with IceWM which is basically like an enhanced version of Win98 interface. I like the speed and it stays out of my way. I sometimes use Rox-filer for a file manager, but prefer the power of bash shell to do my file manipulations.
Meh.
Maybe this is Gnome's problem. What are they doing putting any attention toward improving the terminal!? People using Gnome are doing so because they want a GUI interface, not to have fancy terminal features. That's what CTRL-ALT-F1 is for!
Meh.
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.
I am constantly stunned by statements like that.
As a technical person that has worked on just about half the environments that ever existed, and as a person that currently works in a heterogeneous environment (Sun, AS400, Windows), I can tell you the command line is just about the least effective way to work for MANY activities.
There are times when the command line is preferrable, but this is a very small percentage of the time if the UI is done properly.
Kde has had this for awhile now, so in kedit, konq, kchat whatever you have a spellcheck available to you. Simple idea but when integarted into the os, it's really handy to know it's always there.
Why hasn't gnome got on the ball with this?
How about every one of the binutils.. last time I checked there was more than 50.
How we know is more important than what we know.
- Correct a post's grammar or spelling
- Complain about multiple posts
- Assign random moderations
- Troll for suckers by praising Microsoft, its developers and its users
- Go off your lithium and write a 20 page paranoid rant (rare)
BSD distros use a LOT of GNU utilities and programs.
Tango) icons will be default in Gnome 2.16, they were supposed to get into 2.14 but they aren't complete yet. As for window drawing technologies - I'm using Xgl on my desktop right now and I'm in love with it. I think I'm going to marry Xgl. :)
Just fix the bugs first. I'd be happy if gconfd-2, clock-applet, and evolution didn't leak memory like it was going out of style. Even with a gig of memory, having to kill of these processes once or twice a day to keep the machine from crashing is a bit over the top.
After all, the first thing I want to do when I install a desktop environment is to spend an hour configuring it, instead of using it.
Actually that is the first thing I want to do. I know the keys I want to use to accomplish tasks, the style I want my widgets to look like, what colors and fonts are the most pleasing to my eyes, and which mouse cursors are the easiest for me to see. A control center that allows me to quickly set these preferences is a very handy thing to have indeed.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The button in my mail reader that sends a message - in particular, a message to the "report a bug/deficiency here" address for the application in question - or the button in my mail browser to submit such a bug; if it only offered "Yes" and "No", that'd be a deficiency.
"Yes", "No", and "Cancel" might be an improvement, but the human interface guidelines for the desktop I referred to suggest that "Button names should correspond to the action the user performs when pressing the button--for example, Erase, Save, or Delete", so "Don't Save", "Cancel", and "Save" are even more of an improvement.
The GNOME Human Interface Guidelines make a similar suggestion:
so "Yes" and "No" aren't the labels that should be used in most GNOME alert boxes. I'd say they aren't the labels that should be used in most alert boxes in any GUI; the KDE User Interface Guidelines make that suggestion:
One could debate which of the Macintosh/GNOME convention of "affirmative button on the right" and the Windows convention of "OK as the default button and default button on the left" is better (and perhaps the Windows convention is "better" by virtue of being the one familiar to more people), but neither of them are something done by "NO ONE ELSE ON THE PLANET".
What, to make it hard to learn dialogs?
I answer yes/no questions from other people all the time. I'm quite capable of doing so from my computer, and if it would use them every time it wants to ask a yes/no question, it would make it far easier for me to learn.
I am trolling
And when that day comes, if it ever does, there will be great rejoicing.
Or all of the above. For example: "In Soviet Russia, You track Microsoft and KDE clutters and bloats you, but don't worry, you're too user-friendly to have the features Gnome wants."
What annoys me most about OS X is that Apple still hasn't yanked that old NextStep NIS-light abomination netinfo for storing system configurations. It might seem neat - that is until you have to administer a heterogeneous UNIX environment and OS X (or NextStep) happens to be the only OS of the bunch using netinfo. Shared configuration scripts? HA! I really wish they would dump that and just go back to plain text config files.
Check out the text output performance improvement of gterm! http://www.gnome.org.nyud.net:8080/~davyd/gnome-2- 14/ Hallelujah!
I hope the startup speed gets a boost too.
You don't bitch about Skype, right? So what's wrong with Ekiga? At least it's not GMeeting.
And this is the point where I step back and say that's great... for you and KDE. But not everyone wants or needs that, and plenty of people prefer something that just lets them hit the ground running with well-chosen default settings. And for those people (and I'm one of them), there's GNOME. I find that, on average, there are exactly two things I need to do to GNOME to make it suit me perfectly:
And that's it. Since that's all I ever need, I stick with GNOME and get things done (plus, well, the GTK/GNOME-based applications tend to be more useful, but that's a whole different discussion). If you want to spend hours configuring everything to your heart's content, then stick with KDE or, better, switch to Enlightenment. I used it day in, day out for years, and got it exactly how I wanted it, but when I realized I could get an environment in GNOME that was just as useful with about thirty seconds of configuration, I switched.
When I say clipboard in this essay, I'm talking about the thing you communicate with when you use ctrl+c, ctrl+v (except in gnome-terminal where it's ctrl+shift).
:) )
The current clipboard design is broken in at least two significant ways:
- At the moment text that contains windows characters cannot be copied. I believe this is bad behaviour and that instead the text should strip the offending characters. Current behaviour is very confusing, particularly as clipboard operation is notoriously inconsistent in X - if it isn't working it could be any of several problems (ie: oh maybe this app doesn't talk to gnome and I need to mouse select)
- At the moment the clipboard data disappears if you close the application it came from. This is *very annoying* and should be unnecessary.
This is far and away my biggest grievance with the gnome de.
A couple of other things that annoy:
- You can't get rid of the quickbar
- Autohide the quickbar only mostly disappears it, not completely
- You can't configure the quickbar so that it doesn't behave as 'always on top'
- gnome-terminal is slow (looks like they're improving this - nice work!
Believe with me, my saplings.
I'm currently a gnome/e17 user and KDE 4 looking quite promissing, but I don't really see any reason why a gnome 3 is nessicarry at this point. There's no point in changing version numbers for the sake of changing version numbers and unless the gnome people have of serious deficiancies they want to solve, whats the point. Big version changes like that can introduce all sorts of problems, just look at all the gtk+ apps that are still trying to port to gtk2.
And this is the point where I step back and say that's great... for you and KDE. But not everyone wants or needs that, and plenty of people prefer something that just lets them hit the ground running with well-chosen default settings. And for those people (and I'm one of them), there's GNOME.
The question though is what is wrong with offering both well-chosen defaults to hit the ground running with AND advanced configuration options for those who like to twiddle? Oh, and please don't take any of this wrong. Most of us who question the direction Gnome has taken do so because we'd like to see Linux focus on a unified desktop that fills the needs of all users.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It has had the momentum and capabilities for quite some time, so the grandparent post is nothing revolutionary, like you said. The only problem in the past few years has to do with the markets, and with cities as well as countries adopting Linux in lieu of Windows, corporations are starting to believe that they may have some incentive to port some of their software over to Linux.
If yes: How are they useful? (Please enlighten me)
If no: Why are they there?
in soviet russian /. meets your post when winblows blows, kde gets eaten by a gnome who chokes on it and dies ...
just my 2 bytes
I've been waiting for Gedit to support function folding but even till 2.14, this is not there. On the other hand, Kwrite supports this. I wonder why this handy feature is missing from Gedit. :(
w00t
Just what is the command line not suited for? Drawing, photo retouching.... anything else?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Well, the command line can do almost anything as long as you're willing to turn your real work into the process of integrating a bunch of tiny commands into someting approaching what you need.
If I wanted to go to that much trouble, I'd just write a utility in C or C++ that did exactly what I wanted without messing around with shell commands.
Well, it's possible to simulate a non-deterministic finite automata deterministically, so I don't see why it's not possible to give "Maybe" options until a better decision can be reached later.
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*beware the cute-bunny virus
Hmm, I can spend half an hour writing a command line to string together the commands I need to do a task, then let the computer process the task until it's done while I do other work... or I can sit there all day clicking and dragging to do the same thing. Frankly, I'd much rather use the command line.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The average user should NOT use Xine, since you can be sued for using it to watch DRMed content like CSS-encrypted DVDs. So far GStreamer is the only system able to playback this stuff with no legal uncertainities.
Also, forget about people throwing away their DVDs. They'd rather throw the Linux distro away because "this junk does not play DVDs".
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Yes, Word sucks, but it sure beats writing a typical document from the command line. And Excel doesn't suck. In fact, it's by far and away the best piece of software ever written. I know I'll be flamed for saying that, but I kindly ask you all: Is there any other software out there that is in general use, that actually works, that is easily usable for novices and skilled users alike and that is as versatile?
The biggest problem with Excel is that almost all other software have serious flaws. Thus, people use Excel for purposes it is definitely not suited for, primarily "databases" (I use that term loosely here).
It's like if someone developed a 2005 VW Golf in 1920. All the other cars and trucks would be terrible by comparison, and everyone and his mother would use the Golf for all kinds of purposes. And it would take two minutes to complain that too little cargo will fit, even though the actual problem is a lack of a proper truck.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Save or Discard? [Yes/No]
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The year is 2006, and we still see effort being spent on memory allocation issues. While I do not disagree with improving performance through memory allocation, my point is that in the year 2006 we shouldn't have to cope with these things any more, because these advanced memory allocation libraries should have been there a lot time ago. Playing with memory allocators is so much 80s...
In fact, I think incremental development is the perfect way to loose focus of what is important. And, worse, to loose cohesion within your developer groups. A powerful "heads-up" in the form of fresh, new goals is important to keep everyone's drive and interest alive.
I also think that the Gnome desktop has lost much of its focus years ago. I RTFA, saw the screen-shots and wasn't really impressed by all those shiny new things. IE: "gedit, with a number of source files open, can save to remote servers". Now what madness is that? It is not the job of gedit at all to save files remotely. You want your DE to offer network transparency, not your apps, for cryin' out loud! (maybe I misunderstand, and maybe Gnome does offer network transparency like KDE does, I wouldn't want to miss stuff like that for the world however).
And to me, stuff like that is exactly why I find Gnome unworkable. Of course, I also think KDE is the best thing since sliced bread, so don't take it from me..
The one reason why itunes sells DRMed songs is because in 5-10 years, everyone who bought itunes songs will NEED to buy a ipod to listen those songs, no matter if by that time ipod is the worst and more expensive player of the galaxy. You're stuck with apple products
No, the one reason why iTMS sells DRMed songs is because that is absolutely the only way they would ever obtain a license from the record companies to sell the songs.
Bitching about iTMS selling DRMed songs to lock people into iPods is just that -- bitching. There are countless ways to convert the DRMed songs you buy from iTMS into a format that will work on anything, so if locking people in was the plan, it obviously isn't going to work in the long run.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Oh, and i would like you to explain again how Qt can be closed-source when everyone can download the sources.
1) Retarded
2) Retarded
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Slackware comes with XFCE as an option for your desktop. Zenwalk, which is based on Slackware, uses XFCE as the default (only?) desktop.
I've been using XFCE on Slackware for about a year and find that it's very functional - not quite so spartan as using just a window manager like Fluxbox or Blackbox, but still light enough to run on a 250MHz laptop.
Recently I've been tinkering with KDE and Mandriva on a PC I'm setting up for my computer-phobic dad, and KDE is quite user-friendly, but I prefer my desktop to get out of the way and let me get on with things, which XFCE does nicely.
Oh, not that STUN. Damn.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
My GNOME browser has a File menu too; whilst arguably a web page is a file, IMO it would make more sense to the user to have a Page menu instead - Page->Open, Save, Print, View Source etc.
e nus.html#the-file-menu
In fact everything seems to have a File menu, even my Terminal. I guess stuff like a Quit menu item should go in a Program or App menu.
For a group like GNOME, with their Human Interface Guidelines I'd have thought they would sort out the menus sensibly and intuitively, not design them for refugees of other UIs.
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/m
But anyway, 2.14 seems like they've focussed on good goals like improving performance, and even added a feature to Metacity, window edge resistance! Rejoice!
More configuration options = more possible bugs.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Well but then you should be writing small modular utilites in your "C or C++" that can easily be piped together to form new and interesting things you maybe didn't even know people would want to do with your utility. Don't write monolithic apps unless you are creating an enviornment rather than an app. Unless of course they are paying you very well and you don't care what people think.
Secretaries and accountants use Word and Excel. The *real* work is done in Mathematica by actuaries and finance majors ;-)
(Please note the wink.)
no.. its called Inductive Reasoning.. I've used every fuckin distro I could get my hands on since 1996.. its quite simple, in my personal opinion, in which an Anonymous Coward has no real right to question in the first place, Ubuntu is the best distro I've used.. and thats why i commented in the first place.. i'm sorry if your p100 can't run ubuntu.. ya gotta upgrade sometime.. You can't expect a great Linux Distro, with all the features of Ubuntu with Gnome, to run good on any system.. its plain and simple.. today's standards, today's equipment, bottom line, Ubuntu runs the greatest.. IMO..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
The notification framework is a set of notification widgets that have been sorely lacking from GNOME for some time. Many applications can already take advantage of the notification framework if it is present. Many people find notification popups in other desktop environments irritating, so to prevent this GNOME is working on clearcut recommendations for its Human Interface Guidelines before GNOME 2.16.
/data partition is being eaten by gremlins.
Never mind your HIG "recommendations". All I require from this new "notification framework" is the option to globally shut the fucker off with no way for any app to override my preference thankyou very much.
Sorry I do not want to see popups on my machine(s) ever - no matter how "important" the developer feels they are. I don't even want to see one if it's telling me that my CPU is on fire or that my precious
Irritating does not even begin to describe pop ups (of any description). If I've backgrounded a task I'll return to it when I feel like seeing how it's progressing. If I've received some new mail etc. etc. big deal. I'll check it when I feel like it. Popups are like having a hyper active kid suddenly appear screaming in your face.
Gnome devs: LEAVE THE CRAPPY WINDOWS XP "FEATURES" ALONE. They're crap in Windows and they'll be even crappier in Gnome.
Oh and did I mention I don't want f***** popups ? EVER.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Gnome does not have the right infrastructure to do that easily. Just the same reason why they've now only managed to access remote sites with Gedit while every KDE app has had this capability for ages. IMHO Gnome looks quite pretty on the outside but is very rotten on what matters most, its internals.
(Rolls eyes) Ah, I see. Well, you keep using KDE, then, if it makes you happy.
$ rpm -qi gnome-spell
[some content clipped to avoid lameness filter]
Description :
Gnome Spell is a GNOME/Bonobo component for spell checking. In the current
version, it contains a GNOME::Spell::Dictionary object, which provides
a spell checking dictionary (see Spell.idl for exact API definition).
It is based on pspell package, which is required to build gnome-spell.
Any other ways in which Gnome poisons your life?
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
The first thing any sane (read: emacs-using) user should do with screen is change the command key from ^A to ^O. Nobody I know that uses emacs uses ^O, but *everyone* needs ^A. That means adding:
escape "^O^O"
to your ~/.screenrc.
I do wish that GNU screen was a little easier to use. Because of its name, it's hard to search for help on it, and it's not the most intuitive software in the world. However, it is *incredibly* useful, especially once it becomes second nature to use, and anyone that does much console work (especially remotely) should absolutely learn GNU screen. The biggest obvious feature is the ability to detatch and reattach to sessions a la VMS, but it also does split screens, scrollback buffers (in a standardized way -- most remote consoles you use probably have some form of scrollback buffer), copy-paste, monitoring of daemons for activity or inactivity...
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
The GNOME plug-in architecture is named after monkeys that are known for constantly plugging into each other in all kinds of ways. I thought that it was hillarious when I first heard it, but maybe it's less obvious than I thought.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
A bad dialog using a particular convention proves nothing. A yes/no done properly is just as understandable and easier to learn.
I am trolling
Good old reliable uncyclopedia provides a nice screenshot with a bob like character?
The new release looks great!
http://saveie6.com/
For those who want to see more of the UI improvements with Gnome 2.14 check out scotty, the new AI help agent that is part of gnome. Here is it responding to me as billyG...
You can thank the reliable uncyclopedia for the pic.
http://saveie6.com/
It's easy to do a bad Yes/No dialog, but even if it's well done you have to read the question--you don't have to with many Gnome dialogs as they want an action not an answer.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Gnome and KDE are both unusable, ugly desktops, made by a shower of incompetent coders who still think VB is a real language, and anyone who uses either of these two pieces of crash-happy bloatware is a moronic cretin with the intelligence, foresight and aesthetic eye of a dead rat, who should never have been allowed near a computer in the first place. After all, in Soviet Russia, badly-designed pieces of useless software use YOU!
Hang on, I seem to be missing something. Oh, yeah...
MICRO$OFT IS TEH SUXX0RS!!!!!!!
I can already see my +5 Insightful...
When my entire network is Linux based would I concider using a desktop that requires the samba server stack to function?
I have zero use for windows connectivity.
a complete waste of resources to install gnome simply because of their use of the samba server stack.
J. Henager: If the average user can put a CD in and boot the system and follow the prompts, he can install and use Linux
And you win the /. Best Post of the Topic Award! Congrats!
Cripple? Nah. It streamlines everyday things, and allows you a nice terminal for advanced tasks. KDE cripples me by making my eyes hurt.
just look at all the gtk+ apps that are still trying to port to gtk2.
Like what? The only major one i'm aware of is Gnucash. Any others you wish to point out?
So I have to read the buttons instead. That's no less work. Besides, quite often I know what the question will be.
I am trolling
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The command line is not for writing documents, it is for issuing commands, one of which might be "word". Word doesn't issue commands, so using word is not an alternative to using a command line; every day I edit documents using commands like "[programname] [documentname]". In fact, it's what I should be doing now, instead of reading slashdot.
"Well but then you should be writing small modular utilites in your "C or C++" that can easily be piped together to form new and interesting things you maybe didn't even know people would want to do with your utility."
No!No!No! Unix's philosphy of stringing little programs together wasn't based on some brilliant general design concept, but rather on the limitations of computer systems of the time. Fully integrated applications weren't practical at that time because they wouldn't fit into memory.
In a way, you've answered your own question: you can't please all of the people all of the time. And, FWIW, GNOME does offer plenty of advanced configuration options, but critics tend to gloss over them by saying GConf shouldn't count because it reminds them too much of the Windows registry.
That's how X11 works. That's not a failing of GNOME or KDE to cooperate. X11 could have a new extension, but you can hardly blame GNOME or KDE over that.
From a *user* standpoint (not an Xlib developer), if you want Windows-like behavior (copying creates a duplicate of the data you're copying), use a clipboard manager. GNOME provides Gnome Clipboard Manager and KDE provides Klipper, (and since you're apparently having problems, I would assume they are not enabled by default).
Then you can demonstrate to your friends how when *they* copy something, their previous clipboard contents are irrevocably lost, but your clipboard manager can store up to N old copies of data.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Well, duh.
Next time, please try reading the thread before jumping right in and you may actually contribute to the discussion. GP asked if there was anything that command lines were not suited to do, not the opposite.
Well, if you're going to be like that the question could be simply "save?"
And I often know what action I will take.
But how do you know what the choice will be?
I am trolling
I can't find it, I probably misread it, altough I'm pretty sure Ubuntu will use Tango in the future.
When someone asks "Just what is the command line not suited for," the literal answer "anything other than running programs" misses the point. The question, in the context of "the command line sucks! no it doesn't!" discussions, is "what kinds of programs are not suited to being launched from a command line, that are suited to be launched by an alternative (such as a gui or dwim button)?" The flip side is the question "what kinds of programs are better suited to being called from a command line than from another kind of interface?"
Hmm. I wasn't aware of this GStreamer issue. Thanks for the heads-up. I guess I'll have to scratch GStreamer off my list of best Free Software efforts in that case, sad as I am to to it.
We really need a decent, well supported, Free Software multimedia framework along GStreamer lines though. It's long overdue. Any other options out there?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Instances of file operations for which a CLI interface is not suited:
Instances of file operations for which a GUI file manager is not suited:
Answer: both CLIs and file managers are useful in different ways. A real power-user knows how to use both, and when to use both
(One of the reasons I use ROX as my file manager is that it's got a built-in CLI, and a command to bring up a terminal in the specified directory - you get the best of both worlds
It dont looks very diferent than the last GNOME.. personaly I prefer KDE but it's a good new to the GONOME manhiacs... ;)
bye
What exactly do you consider a CLI file manager? If you mean strictly working at the command line, I suppose that's true, but if you just mean no GUI Environment, strictly text mode, there's no problem. Xtree, MC and the like are far better file managers than anything I've ever seen running under X, Windows, etc.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Xtree, MC and the like are far better file managers than anything I've ever seen running under X, Windows, etc.
... :)
Have you ever looked at ROX? Personally, I'd rather use a win32 shell than midnight-commander, but maybe that's just me
Haven't tried ROX, but thanks for the tip, it's going in my list of stuff to try the next time I have fiddle-time.
MC has some issues, though I'd still take it over explorer.exe any day. But unixtree is the bomb.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I don't know the names but when I was looking for a calendar app there was a couple. Also EasyTag is still gtk+. I've seen others too but I can't remember where.