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."

Comments

Coral Cache Link

[Breaker_1]

Before they get slashdotted: http://www.gnome.org.nyud.net:8080/~davyd/gnome-2- 14/

Re:Coral Cache Link

[47F0]

Gnope. Gnot doing it. Gnot today, Gnot tomorrow.

Kall me krazy, or just konfused, but I kan't konceive klicking to another desktop. Kount me out.

Biggest change:

[Musteval]

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.

Re:Biggest change:

[hackstraw]

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.

Re:Biggest change:

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

That NOT true!

The File menu has simply been integrated into the Edit menu. The Edit menu was then dropped.

Re:Biggest change:

[modecx]

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...

Re:Biggest change:

[timster]

Silly FUD. The Edit menu is still available if you edit your gnome.prefs to include the line "UseMenuThatShallNotBeNamedBecauseItHasBeenDeclare dBad=1" in the "StupidAnachronisms" section.

Re:Biggest change:

[jacksonj04]

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.

Re:Biggest change:

[dkf]

I think you'll find it was IBM that did that particular bit of ripping off as part of their CUA effort (and that's what both Windows and Motif derived from, explaining why things looked that way on so many platforms).

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...

Re:Biggest change:

[pomo monster]

You sure? I seem to remember the "Quit" menu item always being located under the "File" menu, at least as far back as System 4.0, and IIRC every System Software release prior to then. If I'm not mistaken, the application-specific menu was only introduced with OS X.

Re:Biggest change:

[TrancePhreak]

I think you mean the applecation menu. Huzzah!

Re:Biggest change:

[SavvyPlayer]

Yes, I do believe the metaphor Apple was striving to acheive is "the document is the application". Therefore, to edit a file, you double-click it. To quit editing it, you invoke file.quit().

Impressive

[the_rev_matt]

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.

Progress!

[hackstraw]

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.

Re:Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome is now knocking off OS X

Why not call it collaboration instead. OS X is using like 50 GNU programs straight off, source and everything. Gnome (Which is part of GNU) is borrowing some ideas, but not code from OS X. "Knocking off" seams like a bad thing when both GNU and Apple are using eachohers ideas and it's probably benifitial for both projects.

Re:Progress!

[be-fan]

Now, for the confusing part. Why was their previous allocator so lame compared to malloc()?

Because glibc's malloc() is actually a pretty fast and scalable piece of code for a general-purpose memory allocator. Even GNOME's new special-purpose allocator only gets about twice the performance of glibc's.

Re:Progress!

[xenocide2]

What I don't get is why they reinvented the wheel poorly. Did the old allocator work faster on scenarios not covered by the malloc-old-new benchmark?

Re:Progress!

[QuantumG]

Call me crazy, but why bother coding it then? Isn't the trusted stability and consistency of glibc malloc() worth more than a minor speed increase?

Re:Progress!

[someone300]

Well I think quite a lot of GNOME/GTK stuff uses the glib functions to allocate memory (including specialist functions like memory slices and memory chunks which malloc doesn't provide). Probably for abstraction/cross-OS-ness too.

I suppose they've rewritten the glib stuff to make it faster than it was before AND faster than malloc.

Re:Progress!

[pherthyl]

ioslaves in KDE. I don't know if it's an original idea (blah blah some company did it back in 1842) but it's damn useful. You can work on remote files in any KDE app as if they were local files. FTP/SSH/SFTP/Webdav, what have you.. No other OS does anything close. There are some lame attempts, but they are not nearly as seamless as in KDE.

Re:Progress!

[strider44]

Bullshit. Gnome isn't anything like OS-X - it's a complete copy of Windows XP! It's KDE that's a complete copy of OS-X. And it's a copy of Windows XP. Shit, I'm just confusing myself now. Lets just settle this by saying that Linux just copies everything, the arseholes.

Re:Progress!

[pchan-]

Call me crazy, but why bother coding it then? Isn't the trusted stability and consistency of glibc malloc() worth more than a minor speed increase?

Obviously, because malloc() doesn't start with a G. And to think, they could have easily sped up their allocator years ago just by doing:

    #define gWhateverTheirAllocatorIsCalled malloc

SW Dualprocessing

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:SW Dualprocessing

[tpgp]

How do I use that with Ubuntu instead of OpenSuSE?

Downoad the latest ubuntu CD, then:

1 .Enable the universe repository (see AddingRepositoriesHowto)
2. Make sure that you have the latest mesa, libglitz1 and libglitz-glx1, xserver-xgl

            sudo apt-get update
            sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa libglitz1 libglitz-glx1 xserver-xgl

3. Install compiz-kde and/or compiz-gnome depending on your desktop

            sudo apt-get install compiz-gnome

4. Replace /etc/X11/X with a symlink to /usr/bin/Xgl

            sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/Xgl /etc/X11/X

5. Close all applications and restart gdm (This will log you out!)

            sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

6. Log in, then in a terminal start compiz and the Gnome window decorator (do NOT use sudo here)

            compiz --replace gconf decoration wobbly fade minimize move place resize scale switcher cube rotate zoom
            gnome-window-decorator

            Leave out the gconf plugin if you don't have compiz-gnome installed

7. Add these commands to ~/.gnomerc if you want this on every login (which you probably do)

Taken from the Ubuntu xgl howto wiki

Re:SW Dualprocessing

[pyros]

There are Nvidia and Ati specific HOWTOs in the Dapper Development section of ubuntuforums.org. One key item that the wiki howto misses is that it's apparently important to run on display 1 for Ati, rather than display 0.

I think...

[sheepoo]

it's sexy

Re:I think...

[SpinJaunt]

foot fetishist?

Re:Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next?

[Philodoxx]

Every Ubuntu release is timed so that it arrives shortly after the release of gnome. This is done so that the Ubuntu release features the latest and greatest of what gnome has to offer.

Re:Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next?

[Sodki]

Yes, GNOME 2.14 will be in both Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu 6.04 aka Dapper Drake.

GNOME rocks (no offence to KDE)

[stikves]

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.)

Program Naming

[caerwyn]

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?

Re:Program Naming

[qbwiz]

Rendezvous Browser
Yes that name makes perfect sense. What exactly is Rendezvous, again?

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 menu will probably say "Internet Telephony" next to it. GNOME is pretty good about labeling the programs.

Re:Program Naming

[soupdevil]

Part of it is geek speak, but I think a large part of it is due to the cost and time involved in researching, registering and defending "traditional" names for companies and products. Odds are that no one will sue you for using the name "Ekiga," but it might take a large corporation to defend a sexy and often used word like "Rendezvous."

Re:Program Naming

[Yaztromo]

While I don't disagree that a lot of OSS software uses poor naming onventions, as an OSS developer myself, I can understand the reasons behind it.

Let's face it -- the obvious descriptive names are typically already taken. OSS developers want to write software -- they don't want to have to spend a lot of time doing name searches in order to ensure they aren't infringing on a trademark used by some tiny software house out in BF Nowhere, and they typically don't have the resources to fend off a legal attack. Thus, the tendancy these days is to pick (or make up) some sort of really obscure name that hopefully isn't going to attract negative attention from litigation-happy corporate lawyers, and then hopefully make a name for yourself.

Naming is difficult, even within the corporate world. But at least within the corporate world you have people who can do research on existing trademarks, and will hopefully come up with a suitable name for your new product -- and then have the lawyers to fight it as necessary. OSS projects don't have such resources.

Just take a look at your own example -- "Rendevous". Apple was forced to change the name to "Bonjour" due to trademark infringement with another company.

If Apple, with its bevy of lawyers and billions of dollars, can run into such a problem, what is the poor OSS developer to do? Picking some obscure name that nobody is likely to call their product is a good (but hardly guaranteed) way to avoid the problem in the first place.

Yaz.

Re:Program Naming

[fossa]

That's why I don't push Ubuntu or Kubuntu; I use the specific releases like Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger or Dapper Drake. Oops, that's The Dapper Drake.

Re:Program Naming

[Coryoth]

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?

Because if things have been installed and set up properly "Ekiga" will be under the "Internet" sub-menu of the "Applications" menu, and the entry itself will read something like "Ekiga video-conferencing" with a tooltip saying something like "Communicate with others using text, voice phone calls, or video conferencing". You hold up "Rendezvous Browser" as a well named application because it's clear what it does, but it really begs the question: what the hell is Rendezvous and what does it do? I think the GNOME approach - to choose a distinctive name and pair that with a concise description - is a very good one. You can't have everything named after what it does or else things quickly get pointlessly confused, so distinctive names are good - as long as you pair that with a description of what the app does so people can find it easily. You'll find GNOME conforms to that pretty well, and the result (always having descriptive menu entries and explanatory tooltips for those entries) actually makes for a system where it is easier to find what you want.

Jedidiah.

Re:Program Naming

[banditski]

I totally agree, but to be fair, how is a search engine called "Google" or an mp3 player called "iPod" any different??

A name should be descriptive, or a name should take on a life of its own. It's ones in between that cause the confusion, but very few products / apps are instantly successful to become their own identity.

Geeks like geek-speak. Urban kids like their slang. etc...

Re:Program Naming

[fossa]

My personal preference is a word, made up or no, followed by a descriptive subtitle. So, Ekiga Softphone, GIMP Image Editor (ignore the redundancy), Sabayon Administration Tools (or whatever it is), and so on. I really dislike the coopting of generic terms like "Windows" or "Word". Granted, they have the adjective "Microsoft" in front, but Microsoft also claims a trademark on "Windows" (and "Word" too?). I would prefer something like Microsoft So-and-so (or just so-so) Word Processor as the full name.

That said, "weird" sounding names are very off-putting, such as "kubuntu" (even though it's an actual word), "GIMP", KDE's "keverything", and other prefixes such as "x", "g", and "gtk", and many others I can't think of at the moment. Strangely enough, I don't dislike "Ogg Vorbis" in the least. I guess it's a matter of taste. The post mentioning trademark clashes had a good point though in favor of "weird" names.

So what to do? Well, not much but be an armchair program-name disapprover. Doesn't horse racing have a committe that approves names of horses? Not that I'd ever suggest that, but it's an interesting thought.

Re:Program Naming

[stikves]

So when I'm on the command line I have no idea what that package is.

Ok, I'll be lame here:

$ grep "User Profile Editor" /usr/share/applications/*
 
/usr/share/applicatio ns/gnome-sabayon.desktop:Name=User Profile Editor
/usr/share/applications/gnome-sabayon.desk top:Name[en_CA]=User Profile Editor
 
$ rpm -qi --whatprovides /usr/share/applications/gnome-sabayon.desktop
 
N ame : sabayon-admin Relocations: (not relocatable)
..bla bla.. lameness filter...
Description :
The sabayon-admin package contains the graphical tools which a
sysadmin should use to manage Sabayon profiles.

If I use the command line, I'd like to know all the package management related commands.

Re:Program Naming

[IamTheRealMike]

You're right. They should have called it something meaningful, like Skype.

Re:Program Naming

[Queer Boy]

Yes that name makes perfect sense. What exactly is Rendezvous, again?

The French word meaning "a meeting". Maybe in your attempt at making a point you meant Bonjour.

The point he was making was that a perfectly meaningful name was intentionally obscured for who knows why. Also I've never heard ZeroConf Networking Browser on any platform, but I know of Bonjour on Windows and Macintosh, as well as being listed on a lot of printer boxes lately.

The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's own

[carlmenezes]

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 :)

Beware the Ides of March!

[dumbnose]

Didn't anyone tell them that this is a dangerous day for this?

Et tu, Bill?

using 2.9.13.9x for a week in Ubuntu 6.10 betas

[pyros]

There are some nice improvements. Gnome-power-manager adds a slick interface to configuring stuff like hibernate on critically low battery, what actions are taken for closing your laptop lid, sleep/power buttons, and stuff like that.

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.

GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[billybob2]

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.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[billybob2]

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!

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[diegocgteleline.es]

Vista is much worse than just a plugin, they're planning to control via DRM absolutely all the path that the media content follows from your DVD to your screen.

DRM is just a propietary file format to keep people tied to a software just like CSS is a very succesful way to control the dvd-player market. It's not there to keep people away from seeing video. By implemeting DRM support you break the main purpose of DRM

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

The same goes for DRM'ed .doc documents. Has microsoft published the office stanrdard to let people steal market share from a product which is 30% of the total income of microsoft? Hell, no. Publishing standards in office 2003 looked nice to governments. In the real world, office 2003 also includes DRM. All documents DRM'ed with office will need...office to be opened again in the future. No other software will be able to open them if Microsoft doesn't let them. Office standards being "opened" is just a lie. DRM being "secure" is just a lie. I can do everything office DRM does with PGP - even allowing people to see documents remotely through a "DRM server"

So DRM is just a closed document format. But instead of being a standard closed format which can be reverse-ingeniereed, they use crypto to make the "perfect closed format": A closed format that can't be reverse-enginereed. By allowing people to use DRM in other systems you break the purpose of DRM. But yes, DRM should be avoided. It's ironic that DRM has been created in the country that is supposed to love capitalism - DRM keeps me away from choosing products from other companies which is what the capitalism is about.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[0racle]

restricting the users' rights As opposed to, oh I don't know, some random person advocating restricting users rights to run what they choose to on their system.

Some people are going to want to run and use DRM-ified content. You are trying to restrict their rights to do so by demonizing a technology that can not be evil so as to push forward your own agenda. Information does not want to be free, it can't want anything. Software does not have rights, computers do not have rights. People do have the right to use their system the way they want, and that includes choosing systems that use DRM.

A truly free system allows the user to choose how to use it, it is not one where the developers force their agenda.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[pyros]

Wrong, GStreamer is LGPL only.

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.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[Pecisk]

Yeah, yeah, right. What about DVDs I would like to see? What about DRM-enabled bought files from iTunes?

Lets be clear. DRM is not evil. Abuse of it's functionality and usage from RIAA/MPIAA is, well, it is close to stupid and shortsighted (at least so far - region coding for DVD for price fixing, requesting DRM for bough songs in Internet shops like iTunes). But there are lot of LEGAL and UNDERSTANDING uses of DRM in multimedia, even for small media companies.

I understand that music and movie cartel actions is something is should not taken lightly, however, such hyperbole which are claimed by RMS and other "wisle blowers" are too much. Fight companies which abuse DRM, don't fight DRM itself. Because by itself it is just one of technologies to allow copyright holders have their rights fullfilled. If it is abused to limit anything.

It is NOT a black/white situation. And claiming that Fluendo is doing just to give "control of Linux desktop media to cartels" are plainly overblown and childish claim. Fluendo actually created LEGAL mp3 plugin for you to use, freerly. you can download it at their webshop, put it in your home directory, and vola - no half-legal repositories, no endless searching. It is just works.

And by the way, Xine is illegal to distribute in US with mp3/divx/quicktime support. It is just by the way. Mplayer too.
Of course, there is "nothing wrong" with these apps in geeks view. But it totally wrong to think that any distro will get ANY kind of support for those prioritary formats out there with such attitude. Oh, you don't want prioritary formats? What about your XVID videos? What about divx movies? Mp3? Quicktime trailers which geeks love so much? Haven't got enough?

Be real. There is world out there which are seeking compromises not always screaming about something they don't like. And trolling (yes, such claims about Fluendo ARE trolls) won't help not your cause, nor KDE, nor Linux desktop overall.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[Dolda2000]

I may be ignorant, but I don't think I understand. Either that, or you don't understand the LGPL. The LGPL most definitely requires access to the source code of the library it governs. If the DRM'd plugins are licensed under the LGPL, it is perfectly possible to alter them like any other open source library or program.

What the LGPL does, is allow LGPL'd libraries to be used by non F/OSS programs. Even then, it requires access to the source code and build system, so that the LGPL'd parts of that program can be changed and then replaced to be used by the program, even if the program is compiled statically. The LGPL does not in any way permit hiding the source of those libraries themselves. Thus, it is perfectly possible to rip out the DRM parts of any LGPL licensed GST plugins.

Did you not know this, or did I miss your point? I can agree that it could have been wise to license GST under the GPL, but I don't see it being for the reasons that you describe. Also, as I see it, it is better if any proprietary programs can use GST, because that still gives a better user experience in the end (since the user won't have to maintain several plugin repositories).

External references: The LGPL and the GPL.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[VStrider]

Noone is forcing anything on you. DRM plugins will be in the "ugly" module. You don't have to install this module. GStreamer will still work perfectly fine with the rest of the plugins.

From gnomejournal:

Most distributions, for legal reasons, only ship a small subset of GStreamer 0.8 plugins. Because GStreamer's plugins are built from the same source module, each packager was forced to split it up to remove components that were illegal or unwise to use in their particular area of operation. The amount of custom code caused a number of problems for users. To solve this, 0.10 has five plugin modules called base, good, ugly, bad and ffmpeg. Base and good contain plugins that any distribution can ship without fear of potential legal issues. Ugly contains well-maintained plugins which may or may have legal issues of some form, generally patent or license issues. Bad is an incubation area where new plugins mature before moving to good or ugly. If a plugin never matures, it may remain in bad for the rest of its life. ffmpeg contains wrappers for all the codecs in the ffmpeg package. This new scheme will allow downstream packagers to have more consistent package naming and installation scripts, making it easier for users to discover and install the plugins that they need.

The base package is not intended to contain all the plugins required by a typical GStreamer setup. Instead, it contains one important example of each type of GStreamer plugin. The code and documentation for base plugins will remain current so developers will always be able to create new plugins from a known working code base.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[billybob2]

Noone is forcing anything on you. DRM plugins will be in the "ugly" module.

The whole reason why GStreamer started was to create a framework that would enable these "ugly" DRM plugins. GStreamer has hurt the multimedia effort on Linux and the Free Desktop because they stole talented developers from much more mature projects like Xine, MPlayer, and VLC. In other words, they further fragmented the developer base purely for the selfish, immoral purpose of ramming DRM down Linux users' throats.

Of course, they've tried to sugar coat this in order to attract developers (heck, their propaganda machine is quite good) but the fact remains that GStreamer is technologically inferior to Xine even now (Xine has a much cleaner, light-weight, robust API than GStreamer can hope to achieve in a long time).

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[ardor]

Xine is more stable, but GStreamer has the better design (it already surpassed Windows' DirectShow). Also, with Xine, VLC, and mplayer, it is impossible to play DVDs legally. Thus, GStreamer's closed-source modules are a good thing. No DVDs means no new Joe Averages for the Linux desktop, no increased market share and therefore no greater influence useful for fighting MS lock-ins by giving standards weight. Right now, Linux distros work out-of-the-box with standards like Ogg and OpenDocument, but MS can still push wmv/wma simply because the Linux bastion has no power to push their stuff.

Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM

[Toby_Tyke]

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.

Naming

[SnarfQuest]

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.

Re:Naming

[ScrewMaster]

I've been sick for the past five days and I need a good laugh. Thanks for that!

But yeah, naming is getting far out. For example, their new configuration manager is called "Pessulus". I don't know what that means and I'm afraid to find out.

Re:Naming

[gerardlt]

Tssk. What, do you know nothing?

"A delicate bar of cartilage connecting the dorsal and ventral extremities of the first pair of bronchial cartilages in the syrinx of birds."
From The Free Dictionary

Surely everyone knows that!

The most usable UI

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:How do we make it look more compact?

[UuCon]

right-click on your menubar, select properties and then
change the number in the 'Size' box. Done! This feature
has been there since 1.x days.

Toolbar size depends on your font size. Go into your
Preferences->Font and change 'Application Font' to
something smaller.

Re:Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu doesn't follow Gnome's releases on purpose, it has a standard 6 month release cycle of updates.

Yes, but the clever people at Ubuntu have managed to find a (patent-pending) way to keep their standard 6 month release cycle nicely in sync with the Gnome standard 6 month release cycle. I don't have time to explain to you how it works, though. Sorry.

Re:Why

[pyros]

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.

KDE can be configured with one global menubar. Both KDE and Gnome can have the buttons on the left, you just have to find a window manager theme that puts them there.

Re:The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's o

[brainnolo]

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.

Advanced GNOME configuration

[tjwhaynes]

..it can't hold a candle to KDE for configuration. I mean, why would I want all these Gnome developers making choices for me?

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:

• things behave reasonably
• preference windows are quick to navigate and find the most common options

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

Re:Advanced GNOME configuration

[fnj]

Well said.

I should be able to explore the majority of the useful functionality just by opening the application and clicking through it.

You should bloody well be able to explore ALL of the functionality, PERIOD. There is simply no excuse for ANY of the configuration options not to be exposed within easy/obvious reach and explorable in as much or as little detail as desired. Don't want to put off beginners? It's dead simple to cater to both beginners and in depth users. It's as simple as putting an "Advanced Preferences" line under the "Preferences" line in the "Edit" menu on the app. Hello? Gnome? Anybody home? How hard is that, damnit!?

Re:The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's o

[JanneM]

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!

Re:KDE?

[diegocgteleline.es]

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.

State of Gnome

[ajs]

There are a lot of good things about Gnome, but some bad. Circa the FC4 desktop that I use, here are some things (I'll assume all is improved in the latest version) that I either love or hate:

• Music and CD playing are primative, but work. XMMS doesn't play well with Gnome because it wants everything to be skinnable, so your window manager binding customizations don't affect it, it doesn't obey focus rules, etc. The default CD player is just kind of primative, but nicely behaved.
  
• Evolution is bloated. I love evolution, don't get me wrong, but it takes up a huge amount of RAM and it uses SpamAssassin for filtering spam, which is a terrible idea (I also love SA, but it's designed as a server-side tool, not as a background spam filter for client-side).
  
• Integration of P2P lacking. Most P2P clients these days have hooks for magnet, the URI sceme for P2P-shared entities. Gnome lacks any integration of this, sadly.
  
• gnome-terminal: best terminal since xterm. I love this thing, and it's the first terminal emulator that was able to do what xterm did without insisting that I put up with any extras (they're all there if I want them). Most of all, I love the fact that it handles arbitrary character sets.
  
• Firefox - Firefox is not a part of the gnome project, but it has hooks for gnome's desktop tools and does an excellent job. It's hard, these days, to think of firefox as the "lightweight mozilla", but it's still a damned good browser.
  
• CD writing - Not terrible, but KDE's K3B blows the doors off of gnome's CD writing capabilities. I use K3B all the time, now, and I'm very happy (before I used command-line tools because the GUI under gnome was so painful, now it's better).
  
• Movies - totem, gmplayer and all of the rest of the video tools are in a relatively sad state, usability-wise. They suffer from the XMMS problem of often not playing well with gnome (gmplayer), crash OFTEN (and aren't those SEGVs a bad thing?), and don't support many formats. I'm not sure that this is unique to Gnome, but it's a black eye on the Linux desktop.
  

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.

Re:State of Gnome

[stikves]

I have a similar setup of FC4, too. However I've upgraded GNOME from 2.10 to 2.12 using nrpms repositories, and I use several additional mono applications.

My situation is roughly the same, but I have to add several things:

• I currently use XMMS only for "testing" audio files. Rhytmbox or Muine does not have the problems you mention. (I actaully use BMP instead of XMMS, BMS is GTK2 port/fork of XMMS).
  
• Integration of P2P lacking. I cannot comment much, since I only use azureus and it works well. However "magnet" urls (and any other scheme) can be handled easily in gnome (see /desktop/gnome/url-handlers key in gconf for ideas)
  
• CD writing. Actually I installed k3b like you did, but have never used in the past several months. Nautilus burner is more than enough. (Yes no fancy options, however it's sufficent for me).
  
• Movies I'd recommend VLC for H264/HDTV and mplayer for anything else. There has never been any format I could not play lately (including VMW9, QuickTime, H264, AAC, etc). (Did you install win32codecs package?)
  

Anyways it's nice to see another fellow using a similar setup (OK, there are millions like us).

Congratulations

[theolein]

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.

Re:open and save dialogs

[i_should_be_working]

Actually, that has been implemented since at least 2.12. Choosing 'Open' starts you in whatever directory you were already in, not your home directory. Typing a "/" opens a path bar for you to type in a location. Typing a letter brings you to the first file in that directory that starts with that letter. The AC you responded to just doesn't know what he's talking about.

The l337 jargon has me confused . . .

[gcauthon]

From the article:

GNOME 2.14 should be called Searchable GNOME, with the addition of powerful new searching systems in Nautilus and Yelp. Both have a traditional search mode plus a fast, superhot mode for those of you who are Beagle-enabled!

Can someone put this into words that an average user can understand?

Re:Will I be able to configure the screensaver?

[davydmadeley]

The obvious solution is to install xscreensaver instead of gnome-screensaver. This was doable last time I checked. There are indeed more options in xscreensaver, a number of these I'd like to see available in gnome-screensaver through some method.

Re:KDE?

[BrainInAJar]

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

Re:Link KDE/GNOME applications w/ Motif library?

[Klivian]

I think you just won the award for the craziest question ever asked on Slashdot. Motif widgets are NOT interchangeable with Qt/Gtk.

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.htm l

Might I suggest. . .

[lord_nimula]

For those who find KDE and Gnome to be a bit much: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/

Re:It's no Vista though

[pherthyl]

Xorg composite still crashes for me frequently.

As opposed to Vista, which is running stable and polished on your desktop?

Where's an integrated spellcheck?

[Sark666]

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?

Re:BSD, not GNU

[QuantumG]

How about every one of the binutils.. last time I checked there was more than 50.

Re:Good old Linux

[miscz]

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. :)

Re:Performance bar graphs [generated by what app?]

[stalefries]

http://davyd.livejournal.com/166736.html

Re:Are You Serious? Seriously?

[Peter La Casse]

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.

And when that day comes, if it ever does, there will be great rejoicing.

Re:Ironic choice for app that has ...

[prockcore]

Maybe this is Gnome's problem. What are they doing putting any attention toward improving the terminal!

They're not. Gnome Terminal is a good indicator of how fast their font rendering is now. Don't confuse the benchmark programs with the actual technology.

They put attention towards font rendering.. gnome terminal can render anti-aliased fonts faster than an unanti-aliased xterm.

Re:Will I be able to configure the screensaver?

[jejones]

Give me a break. "According to developers".. bullshit. You didn't ask them.

From the gnome-screensaver FAQ:

Why doesn't the screensaver preferences tool allow me to change the settings for the theme?

We are trying to take a different approach. We would prefer for the themes to simply work.

From Bug 316654 - no ability to configure the different screensavers, which is resolved and marked WONTFIX:

I don't have any plans to support this. My view is that any screensaver theme that requires configuration is inherently broken.

From Bug 316655 - no ability to full screen preview individual screensavers, which is also resolved and marked WONTFIX:

There are no plans to implement this feature. I don't think this feature solves any real problems.

Res ipsa loquitur.