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A Look at GNOME 2.14
An anonymous reader writes "Gnome has a nice preview of their newest version 2.14 posted which should be hitting the streets around the 15th of March. From the article: "As well as new features and more polish, developers have been working around the clock to squeeze more performance out of the most commonly used applications and libraries. This is a review of some of the most shiny work that has gone into the upcoming GNOME release."
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.
it's sexy
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.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
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
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.
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.
How do I use that with Ubuntu instead of OpenSuSE?
.Enable the universe repository (see AddingRepositoriesHowto)
/etc/X11/X with a symlink to /usr/bin/Xgl
/usr/bin/Xgl /etc/X11/X
/etc/init.d/gdm restart
Downoad the latest ubuntu CD, then:
1
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
sudo ln -sf
5. Close all applications and restart gdm (This will log you out!)
sudo
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
My pics.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
.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"
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
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.
From the article:
Can someone put this into words that an average user can understand?
My mistake.
We require that all code going into our core package is LGPL. For the plugin code, we require the use of the LGPL for all plugins written from scratch or linking to external libraries.
Good job selectively quoting the site. What they're saying on their licensing page is that in order for a plugin to be part of gstreamer.org's distribution the plugin must be LGPL. The answer is simple, don't write a plugin for gstreamer.org to distribute. Write GPL licensed plugins for the Linux distribution maintainers to distribute. From the licensing page you linked to:To keep this policy viable, the GStreamer community has made a few licensing rules for code to be included in GStreamer's core or GStreamer's official modules, like our plugin packages
Fluendo, the company that controls GStreamer, wants to link their DRM plugins to LGPL code contributed by the naive independent developers,
As is their right under the licensing agreement. But we don't have to use those versions of the plugins if we don't want to. We can compile the non-DRM enabled LGPL code. That is also our right under the licensing agreement.
Xine on the other hand is GPL, and any code that links to Xine must also be GPL
And as a result xine can't legally be distributed in the United States with the ability to play a CSS encrypted DVD. Gstreamer was written with the licensing and framework to avoid that problem. Personally, I would like to see software that plays DVDs on desktop Linux and is legally distributable in the United States. To be honest I'd rather see the legallity not be an issue, but that is harder to get changed.
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.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
From gnomejournal:
VStrider.