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Gnome 2.14 Released
joe_bruin writes "Beware the Ides of March... the Gnome people have announced the release of Gnome 2.14, right on time to meet their 6 month release schedule. See what's new in this release, as well as the release notes. New features include many more searching options, fast user switching, and speed increases to all the apps you know and love." From the release notes: "Just as you would tune your car, our skilled engineers have strived to tune many parts of GNOME to be as fast as possible. Several important components of the GNOME desktop are now measurably faster, including text rendering, memory allocation, and numerous individual applications. Faster font rendering and memory allocation benefit all GNOME and GTK+ based applications without the need for recompilation. Some applications have received special attention to make sure they are performing at their peak."
Like the way wnck-applet ties up my system every few days.
Ah well, I guess I could always go back to icewm.
Yeah, but can I run it under Cygwin on XP on an Intel iMac?
This guy's the limit!
Dude, the Ides of March is, like, so yesterday.
The new Dapper Drake with Gnome 2.4 use 179 MB of RAM (Less than default Win XP) for the default system, which is way better than the previous versions and all the applications seem more responsive too.
I have really started to take a liking to GNOME. I only wish it would get a bit snappier. Sometimes, it seems that, graphically, it's slower than Windows XP...
Ride the skies
Is to grab an Ubuntu Dapper preview live CD (and best of all, it's not an install CD, so ubuntu won't email your cleartext password to world + dog [joke])
It's pretty nice! I've been using the pre-releases for a while....
My pics.
I really don't understand why people are so obsessed with a 3.0 release.
;-D
As many gnome devs have argued, changing to 3.0 and breaking compatability would only make sense if there are things that can't be done within the current code base.
Frankly, I have yet to see a reason why breaking compatability would be needed.
Oh, and from using gnome2.14 on dapper I'll have to say that this is a great release. Very polished and some exciting new things, like deskbar with beagle integration. Combine that with the new XGL and AIGLX eye-candy and you really have a winner.
A good overview:
http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-14/
If you're running ubuntu dapper, it updated to 2.14 wednesday. It isn't really immediately distinguishable from the previous version but then, if you are also running xgl/compiz, who the hell cares?
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=916
-rcmiv
HA! HA! I have the cube!
The 3x speed improvement along would be worth the upgrade. I still am using aterm because Gnome Terminal is SOOOOO SLOW!!! Besides that, its always had trouble displaying my mutt sessions.
Gnome's got a great library in GLib. I wrote a tutorial for IBM last year on the GLib collections; there are so many useful utilities and data structures in there. If you're writing a C app on Linux it's definitely worth a look, and if you're already using the GLib collections, take a look at that tutorial to see if you can optimize anything, like using g_list_prepend vs g_list_append.
And if it helps you, please buy my completely unrelated book!
The Army reading list
It looks like the biggest achievement in this release is their speed up of memory allocations. Looking at their charts, it appear that they have even outpace straight mallocs.
That should make things much snappier.
I am so glad to see that Gnome 2.14 has fixed menu editing, so that ordinary users can add applications to the Gnome menu rather than having to clutter up the desktop with icons that will inevitably be hidden by windows.
....
....
....
After all, such a simple feature being missing really made Gnome look bad compared to Windows
Wait, I am being handed a message....
Menu editing *hasn't* been fixed? Users still cannot edit the application menus in a sane, convenient fashion?
Never mind.
www.eFax.com are spammers
When is that going to be approved for Gentoo and be available in Portage?
I just upgraded to 2.12.2. I have to admit that I have noticed a significant performance improvement, especially when compared to KDE.
I look forward to this release.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You have to read this as well.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
So, does eye candy get any closer to Mac OS looks?
No.
1) You're thinking of the new gl effects in xorg x clients. This is a desktop environment release.
2) Gnome is not attempting to copy os x, but create a new desktop environment. So your metric (closer to Mac OS) is a false one.
My pics.
I'm glad they fixed some text rendering. Because after the last upgrade, my Ubuntu 5.10 renders text illegibly (some weird garbage font that does display properly after being selected with the cursor) in some apps, including Firefox and Evolution (but not Mozilla). I never even got a response to my discussions in the GNOME bug forums.
I'm hoping a reinstall of Ubuntu's next release, now delayed, will return the lost quality of the previous version with the promised speed of the next version.
And I'm hoping that biannual OS reinstalls aren't the price of a feature-complete OS, as Microsoft would have me believe.
--
make install -not war
but where's the tarball?
Gnome vs KDE flamewar starting in... 5...4...3...2...1...GO!!!
Will the new version move most rendering operations into the GL hardware on my Inspiron8000's GeForce2Go? Without crashing my desktop like CompMgr does?
--
make install -not war
What is so terrible about installing a menu editor like alacarte, which let's you do exactly what you want and is available for about every distribution and is even default in ubuntu?
/.
Really, I fail to see where the problem is and I'm really getting tired of people like you who act like the ability to add applications to the menu by default is really important for most users just to troll on sides like
Boring and irrelevant.
Read up on "Fitt's Law" and basic HCI design.
The menu bar is very important, so it deserves an edge of the screen, so that it's as fast as possible to use. Apple got it right back in 1984.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I always had one foot (*pun intended*) in Gnome and one in E17/Openbox/Xfce4 - but recently I've installed Ubuntu Dapper, and then Compwiz/XGL - holy cow! Yes, you need good graphics card, but my nVidia 6600GT is up to the task. The desktop is now totally snappy - even things like Firefox seem faster - feels like the graphics really fly on the screen now. As promised everything is faster, especially the startup of the main desktop. Apps are quicker, and even the menus just pop up (no annoying delay waiting for the icons to catch up on the menus). Oh and all of a sudden Gnome-terminal is just about as fast to launch and respond as Xterm! Woo-hoo! Considering that's what I use the most, this is a welcome improvement.
After reading the review from yesterday I tried out Epipany, and it's come a long way. There are only a couple of more config options I need, but if I get those I'll start running that in place of Firefox. For all of it's percieved 'heavy-ness' it feels nice and snappy now, and I think I'll be sticking more with Gnome for quite some time. Nice job.
fak3r.com
Large taskbar for my 12+ open windows at the bottom for when I stack windows so high that mouseover focus can no longer save me. Taskbar on the top for dictionary, weather and clock applets, along with the menu and my 20+ application launchers.
It's useful.
GNOME now features an integrated screensaver. GNOME Screensaver is compatible with the "hacks" popular in Xscreensaver, but also has lots of new features unavailable in Xscreensaver, like being essentially unconfigurable by the user, who can't be trusted not to put rude messages in GLtext.
Figure 16. Configuring the few GNOME Screensaver properties we deign to let the user control
Fedora Core 5 was supposed to have been released yesterday as well but for reasons having to do with the 64bit version, it was delayed. Perhaps, then the new GNOME package will be included in the release. Here's to hoping!
Well they're certainly doing a good job of copying stuff out of OS X, even if they're not trying to! ;)
There are also a lot of new things with Epiphany.
- should-try-epiphany-as-your-default-browser-with-g nome-214 (lot of screenshots) and http://raphael.slinckx.net/blog/2006-03-15/epiphan y-is-hype-get-over-it and http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/avahi-epip hany-2006-02-11-17-50
Read : http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?2006/03/15/100-why-you
Ploum.net.
Yah. If you want an OSX level of desktop bling, E17 is probably as close as you're going to get. Install one of the quietly animated background images and prepare to watch the Apple guys drool. Unfortunately they're still a bit behind Apple in actual usability, but I've got high hopes that I can ditch Gnome completely and have a desktop system that isn't completely put to shame by my powerbook once E17 comes out of beta.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, Metacity has an OpenGL compositor with libcm now- it's only really working on Fedora, but it has wobbly windows and a minimize effect and whatnot.
Will it be on by default or easily configurable in FC5?
Haven't managed to find any info on that...
OS X is in big parts a straight "code copy" from lots and lots of open source projects. It's hard to not be like OS X when OS X copied all the code in the first place. Bash on OS X feels very much like the Bash I use on Linux. So please, stop this "OSS is copying OS X" because there is way more code and ideas going in the other direction.
Go to
http://gnome.org/start/2.14/
in firefox type / Source Tarballs - pick your choice and download
OR
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/xxxxxx/2.14/
Replace xxxxxx with either of:
platform
desktop
bindings
admin
i live on an alternate planet
Well, to 2.14 is closer to 10.4 than 2.13. I wouldn't say the metric is false.
.\.\att Clare
Does it still have the menu on top and taskbar on the bottom?
Takes up too much screen real estate.
You wouldn't have ever right clicked on the panel and seen an items marked "New Panel" and "Delete this panel", would you? You can have as few (say, zero) or as many panels as you like, drag them to any edge you like, stack more than one on any edge too if you like.
I personally like to take advantage of my large 800x600 monitors and have panels stacked five deep on every edge of my two monitors, so I can have one widget per panel. BTW has anyone else noticed how unusable slashdot is when the browser window is 300x200? You'd think they'd be more careful to test it on typical configurations like mine.
...that's because bash on OS X is the bash on Linux, not a copy.
however, I believe the grandparent post was talking about the graphical user interface, not the command line interface...
Advanced users are users too!
Please do not take me wrong, I like GNOME very much and i see it as a superior Desktop for UNIX Systems and the most important competitor to KDE.
The problem I have is the button order on dialogboxes, which can - AFAIK - not be changed. GNOME adopts the same schema used by Apple. It is based on a study which says that the readers eye starts searching for a information on the lower right corner of the screen (I did not read the study, so my description may not be accurate). As a result, a typical button order looks like this:
(Cancel) (Save)
On KDE, Windows and many other Desktops, a "most important first" scheme is used. The promoters of this scheme state, that people (in the western world) read from left to right and expect the most important information to come first. therefore, the order looks like:
(Save) (Cancel)
In principle, the button order is not a problem, if all of the applications use the same schema. For example, if You use a Mac, you may expect consistent order. And there is no "right" or "wrong" order, there are just different philosophies.
The only problem I see is the consistency. If you are a GNOME user and also use KDE Apps (or vice versa), you may find the different order disturbing. Of course, if You use Firefox and Kate every day, you can get over this. As for me, I work with a swiss/german keyboard in the office and with a US-keyboard at home. After having problems in the first days, I now switch intuitively between the keyboard schemas.
But anyway, it would be nice to see GNOME and KDE apps adopt the sema Interface guidelines or let the user choose which one he likes.
Tha journal entry contains some excellent points that are well made.
But I am in a childish mood so must point out that you seem to be missing the entire raison d'etre of the GNOME desktop.
That is that a user should be able to control their entire computer simply by allowing a large drop of drool to fall from their mouth onto a special pressure sensitive pad. By allowing drool to fall from the left side of their mouth they will have "left drooled" on the selected object. Similarly by allowing drool to fall from the right side of their mouth they will have "right drooled" on the selected object
This will provide all the feature they need to work with the single file held in their home directory (further subdirectories and fiels having been banned as it "breaks the spatial paradigm" and "causes the user confusion")
Can you tell I'm not a fan?
What I noticed is GNOME 2.14 took a lot of features that are already in KDE, or got into one of the recent releases of KDE:
:-p
* the search bars in all applications, like Thunderbird also has.
* viewing man/info pages from the GUI.
* magnetic window borders.
* fast user switching menu.
* switch users from a locked session.
* editor with sftp/ftp/webdav support.
* editor plugins, for running "make" etc..
* preferred application defaults
* sound preferences.
* user lock-down editor for administrators
* terminal speed.. Konsole already knows how to speed up output like "ls -lR". Konsole with a transparent background beats a plain blank xterm.
So much for screaming how KDE suffers from the "not invented here" syndrome..
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81 m/s2
I, too, have been running the Dapper pre-release for some time now and have recently begun having severe problems with Nautilus over an smb connection: when a folder containing videos is open, Nautilus zooms to 100% CPU usage, even though preview is set to ignore remote files over 5MB. It cripples the machine and even logging out often hangs unresponsively, I asume waiting for Nautilus to be killed properly.
Put identity in the browser.
Well they're certainly doing a good job of copying stuff out of OS X, even if they're not trying to! ;)
I'm not too sure what you mean.
Do you mean a GUI on top of a unix kernel? (Gnome did that before os x)
Do you mean transparancy (existed in gnome before os x existed - even if it was an ugly hack)
Do you mean using common Open Source tools like apache & ssh? (These are tools that os x has copied from the open source community)
os x is cool, but much of what it does not particularly new or revolutionary, just polished. It would be more accurate to say gnome & os x share alot due to their common unix heritage.
My pics.
will G-Streamer be finally usable this time? When I tried Ubuntu 5.10 which defaulted to using G-Streamer, it was so horribly broken (skip, random crash, not playing even when plugins were installed) that after fooling around with it for 30 minutes, I just removed it and installed xine-backend instead.
If you read carefully the post talks about 2.13, the development version. The icon theme problem pointed out in that entry, for example, is fixed in 2.14.0.
Great except for gnome-screensaver has NO options at all, you cant disable screensavers that your card does not support, or enable only 2d screensavers
or change the text or change the picture folder, or preview
someone submitted a preview screensaver patch, but the maintainers will not accept it
So let's see...
How many options/preferences were cut in this release?
I've been an avid gnome supporter but lately I switched to KDE 3.5, something I would have never imagined doing.
Seems that lately the Gnome people think the fewer options a program has, the better. Something about how testing multiple code paths is difficult and bad for QA. While this may be true to a certain extent, Gnome people take it to ridiculous lengths. I mean, god forbid there be an if statement in the code!
I have actually had a few discussions with the devs on IRC about it and the option philosophy is pretty dang ridiculous.
Supposedly many options will confuse the user. Come on. These users are using Linux. They probably know what they are doing. And even to a newbie, an option on window behavior will not do any harm. Yes, the whole 'linux-on-the-desktop' camp will tell you that simplifying programs is a good thing, but radically cutting out options is not the way to do this.
oh no! Just when I got compiled Gentoo from stage1 on x86_64 and Gentoo current... 2.12, just my bad luck... Well I have to start compilers again and resolve the depencies... huoh...
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
Ever consider they were trying to give congrats to the people that helped in this release. Basically you are a KDE user who doesnt want anything to do with gnome (outside of bitching about it on slashdot) why ?
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Bullshit! The DRM plug-in is just that - a plug-in. GStreamer does not contain DRM in itself, you have to install the package to get it. It only gives you the ability to access DRMed files. If you have DRMed music, then install that plugin and listen to the songs you bought. If, like me, you avoid DRM crippled music, dont install the plug-in. Result - a DRM free GStreamer.
The "KDE, on the other hand, cures all diseases, ends war and farts kittens" speech is just the same tired fanboi ranting. KPDF has an option to enable reading DRMed files but I dont hear anyone complaining about that. Facts suck, dont they?
You don't have to use the Metacity window manager - you can use a WM that still does this. This is why Linux and BSD is different to Windows - you aren't stuck with a one size fits all desktop. You don't even have to use Gnome if you don't want to.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I mean things like "Fast User Switching" - they could at least have called that something different, and the "DeskBar" which is basically look identical to the Spotlight search bar on Mac. Like it or not, Gnome coders are taking the best of Windows and Mac OSX and putting it into Gnome
"Fast User Switching" is a terrible example to use. Microsoft beat OS X to that punch, and itself was only an incremental improvement over linux, where you could run multiple x servers concurrently and switch between them. Micsoft polished up this linux feature (alot) and os x improved on Microsoft's version even more.
there is little original in Gnome, as nice as it is.
There is little original in any windowing environment - if you got out a little more you'd realise that everyone's borrowing from everyone else. The only real innovation I can think of in windowing environments in the last 25 odd years is probably overlapping windows.
Also, don't start on the whole "OS X uses open source software so its OK to the OS X GUI". Open source software specifically grants a license to be used on operating systems. Just because Apple takes them up on that offer, doesn't mean its OK to rip Apple's UI off.
No, I think "It's OK to copy user interface paradigms as they're uncopyrightable."
Apple obviously thinks so too - or they wouldn't have "ripped off" (as you put it) tabbed browsing, fast user switching and a plethora of other features from other GUIs.
My pics.
As someone who has been using the latest builds of what is about to be Gnome 2.14, I can say with certainty that it is an awesome upgrade.
At first I wasn't sure if there was much difference, but after using it for an hour I started to realize I was enjoying it much more than ever before, without really being able to put my finger on what was different.
Basic speed increases give it a much more real-time feeling, and some minor graphical enhancements, while hardly noticable at first, make for a more enjoyable experience.
Also noticed alot fewer bugs and annoyances.
Give it a shot!
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
For whatever reason, every time I've tried to get menu editor running on a distro other than Ubuntu, it never works as expected. I've tried with SUSE and FC4. Whoever put together the Ubuntu package clearly has done something right that others have not.
Disclaimer: This is from a guy who has only has his first mac for a few weeks. (Core Duo Mini)
I don't understand why anyone would WANT something to behave like OSX Gui.
The OSX Window manager has got to be the least responsive system I've ever worked with. The machine itself seems very quick, and capable, but the GUI is very unresponsive. Just clicking to bring a window into focus has a large delay. Probably the #1 thing for productivity is a quickly responsive GUI, and OSX seems to be the worst.
I feel like i'm spending a significant portion of my day waiting on the Window Manager, which is just silly. I'm assuming this is becuase of all the pretty bloat on the screen, which I would happily sacrifice for more performance.
Gnome 2.14 has hugely increased in this area, and the latest builds I've tried feel real-time.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
gnome-terminal must have been the most inefficient terminal that has ever been made for Linux. Perhaps maybe that pig of a KDE's konsole might be even slower. I'm more of an icewm + xterm guy. aterm is missing the window title changes and has a really nasty bug, where you can't scroll up and down in vim too well if you set the keyboard repeat to around 90 cps. So I can't use aterm. So is gnome-terminal finally decent now? I'm totally not interested to see how fast it launches, I'm only interested in how fast it works once it's up. Second thing: Gnome's configurability. They kept on taking out feature after feature, in the interested to cater to the most common denominator: the average smuck user, or so it seems. It got stupider and stupider. One thing I totally and utterly hate: I want to move a window using the alt-mouse-button to stick out *above* the screen. But an idiot wouldn't know how to move the window back because then the window's title bar is outside the screen. I absolutely *HATE* this restriction, and I *HATE* to be treated that because the average idiot will get lost, *I* must not have that feature either.
I've been interested in this gl compositing business for some time, and was real excited when I read Davyd's preview of 2.14. But since then I've spent a bit of time trying to find out what I have to do to actually enable that functionality, without luck.
In the preview he somewhat cryptically says that you need "some features in unstable xorg" and "texture-from-pixmap" support. I'm not positive, but my reading suggests that the latter is a feature of the drivers, in my case meaning I have to wait for Nvidia to release new ones (Also, I think it means that Geforce2 and earlier cards are left out in the cold, as new Nvidia drivers no longer support them). As for the former, I couldn't tell whether "unstable xorg" at the time of his writing meant what would eventually become xorg 7.0, or something later than that which still hasn't been released.
If someone could enlighten me about this, I'd really appreciate it. What version of xorg does one need, what drivers, and about how much graphics horsepower?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
You didn't address my comment on the Spotlight rip off. Pursuade me that Gnome coders didn't see Spotlight and think, "That's great - we should reimplement it in Gnome". You can clearly see the origin of the idea there. You might argue that Gnome are copying Google Desktop as well if you like, I'd conceed that.
Fast user switching, my original comment was really meant to signal the fact that Gnome called it "Fast User Switching", rather than it being an original idea. Obviously features like this have been available for a long time (before Linux even).
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there's any thing wrong with Gnome taking ideas from other UIs, but I strongly dissagree with any assertion that Gnome ISN'T "ripping-off" the UI of Windows or Mac OS X, where clearly they are.
At least Gnome is taking ideas from OS X, and not being a total clone of Windows like KDE is.
So what, we have to read about it every time there is a story about OSS User interfaces. As if everybody have to point out in EVERY story about OS X how half the OS is a verbatim copy of OSS code. Great idea, why don't we do that...
When I saw the first post calling Gnome an OSX ripoff, I started thinking, "Gee, I wonder what parts of OSX this guy could possibly think were ripped off by Gnome? Particularly with the restriction that they weren't ripped off by OSX in the first place?"
But now it all makes sense. The poster obviously was under the impression that Apple invented multiuser environments and indexed searches.
So, he's just an idiot; nothing to see here.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
If you're asking about Xgl and compiz, it works with Xorg 7and the cvs version of Mesa for some of the opengl stuff. I've got it running nicely on an nvidia 6200 based card, I think it works with older cards as well.
wow the new gedit looks fantastic
it seems to be able to do almost everything that anjuta can do now.
Yeah, but my right mouse button is closer than desktop edges, so I guess I can just keep launching programs in WindowMaker, while MacOS newbies wonder how the heck to make the dashboard disappear when it appears so often by accident. =) I like the RMB menu. Too bad WindowMaker has problems with most of the KeWl GNOME desktop features, but I really like the applications. Nautilus + Beagle seems like a cool idea. Can't wait next Christmas when Debian gets GNOME 2.14. =)
Eh, at least I can ramble on-topic. =/
And by the way, regarding your signature - Google sees Slashdot with the eyes of an AC, and thus can't see that kind of commentary. =)
'xine' - I've been pronouncing it z-eye-n. No wonder I have been getting stange looks from the multimedia geeks around here.
I'm looking over the wall; and the're looking at me!
See if this can help:
So your metric (closer to Mac OS) is a false one.
;) )
Right. And KDE isn't trying to clone Windows 2000.
Trying to clone a well-designed GUI isn't exactly the worst thing in the world. It's probably better than trying to imitate NeXTStep since NeXTStep was designed in the Apple/Microsoft lawsuit era and had several features designed specifically to be original instead of good. (Or so it seemed to many outside observers.) Indeed one of the best design features of Mac OS (menubar at the top of the screen with effectively infinite target depth) has been eschewed by many OSes mainly to avoid lawsuits. (I don't want to start a flame war with people arguing that menus bound to windows are better... they're just wrong
BTW has anyone else noticed how unusable slashdot is when the browser window is 300x200? You'd think they'd be more careful to test it on typical configurations like mine.
Actually, Slashdot looks fine in a 300x200 window.
Put another way, the ability to limit text to narrow (immensely readable) margins in combination with the absence of a horizontal scrollbar is what distinguishes Slashdot from most sites that offer news-related material.
That, and the opportunity to inject off-topic comments about one's personal preferences.
You didn't address my comment on the Spotlight rip off. Pursuade me that Gnome coders didn't see Spotlight and think, "That's great - we should reimplement it in Gnome".
*sighs*
I think it would have been obvious from my previous comment what I think about "x is ripping off x" in GUI design. It just doens't happen.
Anyway, hard Drive indexing is not new. Web-style search interfaces are not new. Spotlight was not the first to combine the two. I think the gnome coders have been exposed to a hell of alot more software ideas & concepts then you have - just because os x is the first place you saw a particular concept doesn't mean its the first place that concept appeared.
At least Gnome is taking ideas from OS X, and not being a total clone of Windows like KDE is.
Uh huh. KDE is not a total (or even partial) clone of Windows. It is tremendously more useful.
You're thinking of xpde I think (note that project does not use anything copyrighted so isn't 'ripping off' either)
My pics.
As if everybody have to point out in EVERY story about OS X how half the OS is a verbatim copy of OSS code.
Apple took the great things from OSS, portions of stable kernel and userland, and then added their own awesome GUI onto it. I would really doubt that much of the OSX GUI is actually copied OSS code.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Aaron Seigo, a lead KDE developer, has written extensively on this: DRM + source code = no DRM
Seigo is wrong... as Fluendo know all too well, and are banking on for future business. Trusted Computing hardware in PCs will enforce the use of digital signatures on executables... if you don't have the key to sign the binary, the source means nothing. You can't modify it to remove the DRM... you can't even simply recompile it and have it work.
Christian Schaller, one of the developers at Fluendo, was bragging about this on his blog... claiming that "Linux distros" are working on a solution to stop people recompiling a kernel and saving out played back media that way. He was talking about Red Hat (and others) who are quietly working on Linux equivalents of Microsoft's Protected Media Path (a generalised version of their Secure Audio Path)-- which, as a first requirement, will prevent you from modifying the kernel, and use hardware (TC being one example) to enforce that.
I'm no fan of KDE and consider the licensing for Qt/KDE to be nasty and disingenuous... but what GNOME is allowing to happen with Gstreamer is disgraceful. Linux corporations (and I include IBM/HP in this) are railroading Free software down the Trusted Computing and DRM path with the intent of rendering the source code unimportant, and leaving them the only ones with the keys to make things work.
If you're asking about Xgl and compiz...
I'm not. I'm asking about Metacity's new compositing manager, which depends on the texture-from-pixmap extension in new xorg drivers. It accomplishes roughly the same thing, but is to my understanding somewhat less of a hack.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Thanks, but we are not talking about compiz.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Install one of the quietly animated background images and prepare to watch the Apple guys drool.
You can have animated desktops in OSX. You can also sometimes set a screensaver as your desktop image. Apparently the realistic looking fish tank screensaver looks incredible as a desktop background in OSX.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Now if they would just get around to copying klipper, I would finally no longer miss anything from KDE...
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
In FC5 it's a matter of installing the right packages; Metacity is built with support for the compositor by default (AFAIK), but you have to install the AIR server for it to work.
Spotlight debuted in Tiger, which was released April 2005, right? The initial release of deskbar-applet was December 2004. And the indexing and "rich search" backend, Beagle, saw it's first release in June 2004.
I suggest checking out http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/aig lx. Right now it doesn't look like Nvidia cards are supported by the AIGLX server- supposedly they should be coming along eventually, however.
I haven't tried it, but theoretically at least the Metacity compositor should work on Xgl, which is apparently supported on Nvidia. Your mileage may vary, of course; it probably requires some hacking at the code to get it working.
You'd be surprised. I certainly was. In fact, I had to test the various terminals I had installed after seeing the report.
/usr/share/dict/words
xterm is actually one of the slowest terminals. At least, when anti-aliased text is used.
(All configured similarly where possible, white text on black, aa'ed Bitstream Vera Sans Mono)
=Terminal Tests=
time cat
xterm 207 - got impatient
real >32s (was at the Ms when I stopped it)
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.048s
Eterm 0.9.3-r4 - unfair, doesn't do aa'ed fonts
real 0m18.319s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.148s
urxvt 5.3
real 0m15.000s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.236s
konsole 3.4.3
real 0m7.967s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.172s
gnome-terminal 2.12.0
real 0m4.222s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.180s
aterm 0.4.2-r11 - unfair, doesn't do aa'ed fonts
real 0m3.594s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.152s
mrxvt 0.4.1
real 0m0.472s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.168s
(I used to use xterm, now I use mrxvt though occassionaly urxvt due to mrxvt's lack of unicode support (which is on the author's TODO list.))
Although, mrxvt kind of cheats a bit. It caches stuff. You can tell by running rain (from bsd-games) with 0 delay. All terms will have the animation spit out really fast, except mrvxt will skip every hundred frames or so. I find the caching good though. It doesn't interfere with anything I run and prevents scrolling-text syndrome that annoys me a lot.
Your assertion that gstreamer is evil because it allows others to make linking proprietary software is zealous anti-user crap. You say the GPL nature of KPDF allows the user to remove the DRM and "be left with a fully-functional PDF viewer." But you miss something obvious to anyone who actually has to use the software: the PDF viewer is no longer "fully functional" when it can't read the DRMed file somebody sent you.
It's great to want everything to be free. But here in the real world, real users want to be able to work with everyone else, and some of those folks aren't willing to open up. Your response is to stoically ignore them and purposefully keep users from being able to properly interact with them. The Gnome team's response has been to do what they can to enable their users to work with the outside world.
You're never going to have a legal and free-as-in-speech mp3 plugin. You and the OSS-religious-crazies would thus force us to break the law or not use mp3s. That strikes me as downright ridiculous.
Oh, and about the FSF warning against the LGPL. Isn't Gnome part of the GNU project, and thus FSF-sponsored?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Is the fact that all 3 replies to my post suggest alternative projects an indication that the project I'm asking about isn't quite there yet? Or is it just that nobody has come by who's actually knowledgable about Metacity's compositing and texture-from-pixmap, etc.?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
You wouldn't have ever right clicked on the panel and seen an items marked "New Panel" and "Delete this panel", would you?
Wow, you're right! Having a screwed up defualt setup is a-OK as long as the user is able to find the controls to change it!
Until those "confusing" controls are taken out in the next GNOME release.
May the Maths Be with you!
I like Gnome, I like its style, I like its simpliness. But what I don't like, is that it's a bit cluttered. So far, I've noticed that Gnome looks really nice on monitors supporting resolutions higher than 1024x768, but since I'm forced to use the latter, I was always searching for something better. And I've finally found...
Now using XFCE and Gnome hybrid instead. I had really been a Gnome addict till I discovered XFCE. Why do I have to install Evolution when I don't use it and GStreamer which never works?
I'm definitely keeping this thing till I don't buy a better monitor. Or till there are some changes in Gnome itself.
It means that if you can't figure out how to do it, it's not ready for you yet.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
i apt-get install it, try for 10 minutes, conclude that it's still ugly by default and with no easy way to tune the look-n'feel, full of annoying, non-intuitive ways to do things, apt-get remove it and go back to WindowMaker with some KDE stuff thown in.
i hope they fixed that unbelivably stupid file dialog from the previous release. i simply don't know what Seamonkey devels were thinking when they introduced that thing in seamonkey 1.0 for linux.
What ? Me, worry ?
the PDF viewer is no longer "fully functional" when it can't read the DRMed file somebody sent you
:-)
Have you actually tried opening up a DRMed file with KPDF? Of course you can still read it after you've disabled the DRM.
You're never going to have a legal and free-as-in-speech mp3 plugin.
In most of the world it is legal to have a free-as-in-speech mp3 player. As for the US, just wait till some senator's grandkid gets hauled to jail for listening to music on his Linux desktop. Then we'll start seeing the laws change
Oh, and about the FSF warning against the LGPL. Isn't Gnome part of the GNU project, and thus FSF-sponsored?
How long do you think that sponsorship will last, given that the FSF is ready to release GPLv3, which contains anti-DRM provisions? It is the business interests that have taken over GNOME and that are currently advocating DRM and the LGPL. Sooner or later the FSF will have to distance itself from GNOME.
Well, shit...I could have told you that.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
For Nvidia, AIGLX isn't ready.
I have a 6800GT and nothing is snappy while runnning at this resolution with my dell 2005fpw. Maybe I can hope since it's just in alpha stages that it will get better with time.
I hope so. It seriously needs some complexity analysis, because if you end up visiting a directory with a few thousand entries, it takes a LONG time, and if it caches anything, it's not obvious from the time it takes.
Well, do you have an alternative that would work better?
It probably depends a lot on how often you switch applications. I expect that most people spend most of their time in two or three apps, and switch rarely.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
In 2.14, you *can* alt-drag a window with the titlebar offscreen. Try it.
The reason it took so long to get this was to make sure that alt-drag was the *only* way to get a window off screen... which is true now, thanks to edge snapping and advanced window placement algorithms in Metacity.
Well, that's the end of this discussion....your cognitive dissonance is far too serious for me to attempt to reason with you.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Having right mouse as an alternative is fine. Kensington software offers that. But I assume you also know why it's not good as the only way to access menus.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'm aware of that. I wasn't asking about AIGLX in the first place. I also wasn't asking about compiz or xgl.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Has anybody else been checking this guy's links? They don't even say what he says they do...like the link to the FSF "warn[ing] against using the LGPL for any project"....it contains this line:
Which license is best for a given library is a matter of strategy, and it depends on the details of the situation."
Not quite the damning of the LGPL that his link suggests. Not surprising, given that the FSF wrote the LGPL, but whatever. The real point here is that for users to have functionality that they want and need to interact with the rest of the world, we need to allow non-free plugins. The vast majority of users would rather have a system that is useful than one that's idealogically pure but functionally crippled. This religious zealotry that produces the opinion that we should stonewall everything that doesn't think our way and the user be damned is very dangerous to the future of OSS.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
You know, if you want an alternative to GNOME, you should really try KDE. Don't be put off if it doesn't look how you'd prefer it to (although personally, I don't get it when people dislike the looks of KDE 3.4+) -- the looks are configurable, as are the interactions like mouseclicks and hotkeys. The real difference though, is under the hood, in the design: KDE is much more integrated and object-oriented than GNOME, and it shows in how nicely everything works together, and in how much power is available to the user.
Umm... you're forgetting the extra ram for a firewall, decent anti-virus software, anti-spyware, etc. A well-configured windows XP system will barely run on 256 megs without swapping.
Metacity's compositor right now requires either AIGLX or (maybe) Xgl. If you're asking for something else, you're not being terribly clear.
I agree. One thing I'd want to know about the GNOME 2.14 speedups (if I wasn't a KDE user) would be whether all the debug messages that are dumped to stdout have been removed as well. Junk like that is bound to slow things down.
"On KDE, Windows and many other Desktops, a "most important first" scheme is used."
This is also the scheme that 96% of the world's GUI users have learned. Maybe I looked to the bottom-right first before I used computers for any appreciable length, but through Win3.1, OS/2 3.x, OS/2 4.x, Win95, Win98, Win2k, WinXP, Gnome 1.x, XFCE 3 and 4, IceWM, KDE 1.x, KDE 2.x, KDE 3.x, only MacOS X is the ugly duckling that acts totally differently -- oh, and Gnome 2.x.
Using a Gnome-friendly application like The Gimp on my KDE desktop is an exercise in frustration as my muscle memory is countered by every dialog. Firefox chooses to follow this now, which is why I still use the old Mozilla suite for my day-to-day webwork.
MacOS is tollerable because they have consistent keyboard shortcuts (*-w, *-s, *-q, *-h, *-tab, etc) which I use instead of the usual dialogs. When I do use dialogs, they don't have redundant buttons like cancel apparent (just save once I've picked a name) since I can just hit escape to clear the dialog if invoked by mistake. Gnome is both keyboard unfriendly and user experience unfriendly. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who has switched away, never to return, because of how things started to go after Gnome 1.2.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If you used a debian-based distro, you'd have had configurable menus in GNOME for years ;)
Not quite the damning of the LGPL that his link suggests.
...If we amass a collection of powerful GPL-covered libraries that have no parallel available to proprietary software, they will provide a range of useful modules to serve as building blocks in new free programs. This will be a significant advantage for further free software development, and some projects will decide to make software free in order to use these libraries.
Good job selectively quoting the FSF site, which is titled: Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library. How much more explicitly can it be stated than that?
To further quote from the Free Software Foundation website:
Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising "more users for this library" if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
But we should not listen to these temptations, because we can achieve much more if we stand together. We free software developers should support one another. By releasing libraries that are limited to free software only, we can help each other's free software packages outdo the proprietary alternatives. The whole free software movement will have more popularity, because free software as a whole will stack up better against the competition.
The GNOME Foundation didn't listen to Richard Stallman or the FSF and started to cater to the business interests that are pushing proprietary software infested with treacherous computing and DRM to handcuff users.
I'm sorry, I just don't understand what your reply has to do with my post, or the original post you replied to, or even this story.
In fact, I'm not sure I understand it at all...
Advanced users are users too!
You fucking jackass. The first time around you said:
the Free Software Foundation warns against using the LGPL [gnu.org] for any project.
Now anyone who actually read that article can tell you that the above statement is completely false. I already excerpted a quote from the article that completely contradicted your statement...here it is again:
Which license is best for a given library is a matter of strategy, and it depends on the details of the situation.
You say always, he says sometimes. But it gets better...I could have quoted this line instead:
Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library.
I mean, how much more black and white do you want it? Here, how about this?
This is why we used the Library GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another--no problem for them, only for us.
He just cited a specific example of a project which he feels should (and is) licensed under the LGPL rather than the GPL. You can't say "you shouldn't use the LGPL for any projects" and then say "the LGPL is a good license for one of our flagship projects." What the fuck is going on in your head?
Not a single word of the quotes you just provided supports your position; neither does the article taken as a whole. It's clear that RMS feels that in some cases it is better to use the GPL than the LGPL. But it is also clear from the article that he feels that in some other cases the LGPL is a better choice. After all, he does explicitly state that severall times.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Trackpads kinda suck, is the problem.
I much preferred the trackball on my first Mac laptop. Unfortunately, the market apparently disagreed.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's clear that RMS feels that in some cases it is better to use the GPL than the LGPL.
I think RMS would say the GPL is preferable in the vast majority of cases. Else why would he urge developers -- in bold letters -- to release their libraries under the GPL?
But getting back to the topic of this thread: should GNOME's multimedia backend be licensed under the weak LGPL, when we know that the entertainment cartel has been one of the most vocal advocates of Digital Restrictions Management and Treacherous Computing?
Preventing users from skipping computers
Controlling your computer over the internet with rootkits
Instilling fear by suing innocent people
Suing independent competitors out of business
Bullying witnesses into perjury
and the list goes on...
The answer is absolutely no, and I daresay the FSF is of the same opinion, since they will include anti-DRM provisions in the GPLv3.
Developers of Free and Open Source Software should use every legal tool at their disposal to protect the users' freedom. One of the best tools is to license music and video apps under the GPL, so that the entertainment cartel can't poison their hard work with draconian DRM. Otherwise, the developers might as well be working for the RIAA and MPAA!
Open Source developers who care about the users' freedom should help out multimedia projects that are licensed GPL (such as Xine, MPlayer, and VideoLAN).
Since there are infinitely man "next library"s and finitely many libraries already in existence, the Lebesgue measure of the set of libraries for which the FSF indicates approval of using the LGPL is 0. In this technical sense one may therefore legitimately say that the FSF opposes the use of the LGPL in all cases.
The gnome people... ha ha ha... I just got it
Man, you are so fucking ass backwards here it's absurd. The weakness here is KDE's, because it's core libraries' GPL nature means DRM, and licensed, proprietary technology in general, can't be implemented. Gnome gets to have functionality that can't/won't be built into KDE because of legal restrictions and/or the reluctance of the developers/owners of said technology to open up their code. Gstreamer will be able to employ licensed plugins which are non-free, which will benefit all Gnome users. KDE's GPL backend will never be able to play mp3's legally in the US, or DVD's in a much wider area. The mere suggestion that this gives the advantage to KDE is baffling to even consider.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Change the damn foot it's been four years! PLEASE!
I belive the Beagle project (i.e. the 'spotlight ripoff') was started before Apple announced Spotlight. Lucene, the Java based text indexer that Beagle is based on, is definitely older. So Gnome did not rip off Spotlight. Instead, they both ripped of BeOS that had this type of indexing years ago.
But that's beside the point - all GUIs are ripping off each other. There has been innovation in the Apple camp, in Redmond, in the proprietary Unix world _and_ in the open source world, and pretty much every single innovation is a modification of previos ideas, often ideas taken from one of the other camps.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
"..Gnome coders are taking the best of Windows and Mac OSX and putting it into Gnome..."
Good! That's what I like about Linux & Open source/Free Software!!
The ability to break free & come up with something new/better.
Honestly though you have to give credit to both KDE & Gnome for the work they are doing.
Run this then tell me how much memory it uses and how responsive it is.
/*printf("Comparing stored value to 1\n");
#include stdio.h
#include stdlib.h
#include unistd.h
#include sys/types.h
#include sys/stat.h
#include fcntl.h
#include math.h
long long int *x;
int main()
{
long long int i;
long long int *p;
long long int *q;
int bignum=1024+256;
p=x;
printf("mallocing alot\n");
p=malloc(1024*1024*bignum);
if(p == NULL) {
printf("error no more memory.\n");
exit(1);
}
printf("entering loop\n");
printf("Filling memory with 1's.\n");
for (i=0; i (1024*1024*bignum)/8; i++){
p[i] = 1;
}
for (i=0; i (1024*1024*bignum)/8; i++){
if (p[i] != 1) {
printf("compare error\n");
}
}*/
printf("exiting loop\n");
printf("malloc'd alot\n");
printf("Done\n");
sleep(5);
printf("freeing memory\n");
free(p);
return(1);
}
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
> At least Gnome is taking ideas from OS X, and not being a total clone of Windows like KDE is.
KDE is not, and has never been a clone of the Windows interface.
The only people who think so are people that have never used it, and that saw the use of the "Windows" QT widget style in screenshots of the original KDE 1. (which people only used because the alternative was the Motif style, and that's just ugly)
Exactly what makes it a clone of Windows? What behaviour that is specific to Windows, and is not a general UI idea used by many other UIs does KDE have?
The user experience offered by KDE is far more useful, consistent, integrated and intuitive than anything provided by Windows has ever been. It is in no way a clone of Windows, it's what windows can only ever dream of being.
That's not to say it's original, and frankly I don't care about originality. It's a working environment, not a piece of art. Whether or not someone else has had the ideas in the past doesn't stop them from being good ideas.
I just want something that stays out of my way when I don't want to know about it, but lets me do what I want to do when I want to do it, and KDE fulfills that more than anything else I have used so far. (I have not spent any significant time with OS X to know if it might be even better - though I do know that OS X + MS Office = badness)
Advanced users are users too!
I'm all excited and everything. GUH-NOME is so great and wonderful. ;) Oh, I jus' love GUH-NOME.
(it's a peace of crap)
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
There's more out there in the world and I'm not just talking about GNUstep or KDE.
GNOME sucks rocks, and you all know it.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
* viewing man/info pages from the GUI.
This was around in gnome 1.x but got removed as "unneccessary" at some point..
* preferred application defaults
I don't really get this, it's been in gnome for several releases now. There has been some improvements but it certainly not new.
* sound preferences.
Same for this one.
So they settled for one side of your sword. Someone would be complaining would it have been the other way round. :)
There's no need for insults. I never said ANYTHING anti-GNOME in that post, so there's nothing shill-ish or trollish about it.
I use Xubuntu (preferring Xfce to other, slower, DEs) and can't figure out how to edit the menu, either. There seems to be a large system-defined chunk that I can't touch, but that's the part I'd most want to configure.
I wish there were a single, simple menuing standard for all WMs to use. I hate not being able to port my menus from my slower machines running Blackbox to other faster machines where I run IceWM or Xfce or whatever. I want to configure them once and be done.
Constitutionally Correct
I don't like the term 'ripping-off' as a way to say using pre-existing ideas, ripping-off has negative conotations.
* magnetic window borders. Hasn't this just been the default behavior before? In any case this would be more of a metacity feature than a GNOME feature. * switch users from a locked session. This has been around for at least one release, and probably more than that. * preferred application defaults Yeah this isn't new. * sound preferences. Neither is this. * user lock-down editor for administrators This has been around for a while too. * terminal speed.. Konsole already knows how to speed up output like "ls -lR". Konsole with a transparent background beats a plain blank xterm. Konsole wasn't that fast last time I tried it (don't know which version it was... it was running of the latest knoppix cd).
I am using GStreamer right now. You will please show me which file on my computer contains the evil DRM code? Please also tell me what prevents me from removing such a file, and replacing it with a Free alternative.
Such an alternative may be illegal in unfree countries such as the United States of America; however this applies equally to any plugin that would be created for KDE's GPL-only multimedia framework.
Editing a file in vim in konsole is much slower than in xterm. With a keyboard repeat setting of 90 cps, editing a source file in vim in konsole, scrolls are fairly choppy. In xterm it's completely smooth. In aterm, because of its internal caching scheme, the screen doesn't refresh at all, freezes, until you let go of the cursor key, making aterm totally useless. Simplicity, and matureness, and people not mucking around with xterm wins over the constant tinkering, fooling, poking, peeking, horsing around with KDE. I don't like KDE, I like gnome only slightly better. Someone, somewhere, finally write a *decent* desktop - NO one has done it, so far - really - they all suck or are too primitive.