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Gnome 2.14 Review
An anonymous user writes "Linux.com (a Slashdot sister site) has up a review of Gnome 2.14. The piece touches on usability improvements, as well as the new administration and configuration tools included with this release." From the article: "GNOME 2.14 continues the steady improvement visible in the last few releases. It is an incremental upgrade, consisting largely of tweaks and the filling in of gaps in functionality. If few of these changes are major by themselves, the overall result is welcome. Perhaps the best way of looking at the release is not as an end in itself, but as a milestone on the road to desktop usability in free operation systems. From this perspective, GNOME 2.14 is a sign that much of the journey is already over -- and that the remaining distance is less than many observers think."
I think the Software Oscar this year should go to whoever took the time to fix the slowness that is Gnome Terminal. Maybe they even fixed it so that international characters in mutt don't screw up too. But maybe that's hoping for too much.
Here's to being one step closer to switching from aterm. Not that I don't like aterm. But, ya know. And don't anyone say Konsole damnit.
If few of these changes are major by themselves, the overall result is welcome. Perhaps the best way of looking at the release is not as an end in itself, but as a milestone on the road to desktop usability in free operation systems. From this perspective, GNOME 2.14 is a sign that much of the journey is already over -- and that the remaining distance is less than many observers think.
This statement is true, at least until Vista is released, at which point the bar goes up again and the "free operation systems" are again at a significant deficit. Luckily it is always quicker to copy than it is to innovate, so I have no doubt the gap will close again.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I can see it now. A Penguin that resembles Tux pops up in the lower right corner of the screen. A thought bubble appears above his head as he smiles and waves. The bubble reads, "So, it looks like you're trying to write a letter".
A review without screenshots ?!?!
Blashpemy!
If you want to see some follow the next link: http://www.gnome.org/start/2.14/notes/en/rnusers.h tml
!@#$ Somebody mod this down and make it go away. It got posted under the wrong topic.
Error between keyboard and chair.
Sig for hire.
I already know 2.14 removes almost all the options available in the GNOME version of XScreensaver, and it apparently removes many of the options that used to be available from the Sound preference dialog. So what else has GNOME removed with this next release, because allowing users to have choice is "too complicated"?
Unfortunately for GNOME, they can't remove all choice; I can still choose to use KDE, because KDE chooses to let me customize it any way I want instead of being forced into the defaults GNOME wants. And, please, don't point out GConf, unless you can point to a list of what every single key (at least for a given application) in GConf does.
I swear, every release of GNOME adds to the eye candy, and removes from the usability. And to think I once advocated GNOME over KDE.
Now I think Gnome and Kde are both good, and of course each have their fan base and its good to get things more mature a it will help people adopt Linux if they want to. However the one thing is that as they are both (very fancy) X11 Window Managers it means that if you don't like it you can just remove it and install it yourself. Personally I like WindowMaker as its blazing fast and for the way I work (where 95% of my things is console work) its great. Gnome / KDE can look nice but they do seem to just slow everything down a bit
SolarVPS - Quality Windows and Linux Virtual Servers
Seems the linked linux.com article is little more than a summary of the GNOME Release Notes linked from the yesterday's "story"... :(
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I just wanted to respond to a couple of things that the article mentioned in passing. Some are minor, some are things that I think may be suffering from a "Can't see the forest for the trees," problem.
Some of the interface changes in the new version, such as the addition of icons to dialog windows, are the equivalent of the gingerbread on the gables of Victorian houses -- decorations that do nothing for functionality.
Well, that may be somewhat true. Of course, there have been studies showing that people work more efficiently, with less strain, in an "attractive," work environment. This holds true in everything from adding plants to offices to adding "gingerbread," to a GUI. And in this case, it sounds as if they do provide functionality as well since I'd be very surprised if these icons weren't context-specific in some form or fashion. But even if they provided no direct benefit, they probably do something for functionality.
Two of the new tools, Pessulus and Sabayon, help administrators limit what users of everyday accounts can do on the system
Whoa. We're talking about usability, and we're not going to comment on "Pessulus" and "Sabayon"? Don't get me wrong, those are great project names. Really great. But as new tools (and therefore not projects like Apache that everyone is familiar with), those names stink.
From a security perspective, Sabayon and Pessulus are complementary tools, differing mainly in approach. They are joined by the Power Manager, used to control how a computer is suspended or hibernates when inactive.
Now, "Power Manager" is far from sexy, but without ever using it I could have guessed what it did. And I'd say that most people could have done as well. When software behaves as you expect it to, without changing your mental map from "solving a problem" to "using the software," that's usability.
A desktop tool for changing window managers would also be welcome.
Allowing the users to focus on their work or, failing that, their desktop environment, without ever having to stop and think about their choice of window manager, would be a welcome usability enhancement. The fact that, as evidenced by earlier comparisons of SawFish and Metacity, not only can the users not ignore their WM but are indeed actively encouraged to become involved, seems unfortunate.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this trend.
Within my local LUG over the last year or two opinions on GNOME vs KDE have become increasingly polarised. Personally I love GNOME and I think it's getting better every release. I have nothing bad to say about KDE but it just doesn't interest me.
Some of the KDE fans among us though seem to be starting to dislike GNOME more and more.
I don't know what it is but perhaps it's a good thing? A few years back it was my perception that both desktops were aiming for the same thing. Now though I think there is a clear and emerging idealogical difference between the two. While seen as bad by some (the desktops should be converging!), it at least presents more of a choice.
Anyone else noticed this or am I just going (even more) mad?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
But what I want to know is do you get an hourglass after you click an application shortcut on your desktop? Nothing confuses a n00b like clicking on something and having zero feedback (did I click it only once or is it just taking forever???)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
1. Gnome is not an operating system. (And, I mean, this isn't even CLOSE---like the whole ``Linux isn't by itself an OS" thing.)
2. The main Free OSes---GNU/Linux and *BSD---can run many different window managers under X, some of which are quite innovative indeed. (See sig for my particular favorite (which is trying to do away with WIMP interfaces altogether), but there are many others doing interesting things.)
I know, I know, this post isn't innovative, it is just a copy of hundreds like it on slashdot. . . .
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
GNOME menu (also known as freedesktop.org standard menu) is just a collection of text-based '*.desktop' files in a tree of directories, you can perfectly well edit it with Nautilus.
I thought the whole point of a GUI was to be intuitive and "discoverable" just by pointing at little pictures?
Once again, this just goes to show that nothing's perfect, not event GNOME or its developers.
Feel better, now? :)
Calm down dude. Ubuntu replace GNOME's menu editor with their own. GNOME's had a menu editor for two releases now.
I believe it's called SMEG or gmenu-simple-edit. But Ala Carte works well.
sri
Anyone know if the file browser dialog now allows you to enter in a path to choose a file? I refuse to go back to gnome till they fix that.
I've been using Ubuntu Dapper devel so I've been using the development versions of Gnome 2.14 for some time.- should-try-epiphany-as-your-default-browser-with-g nome-214n y-is-hype-get-over-it
:)
The biggest change for me is probably how much better Epiphany is getting. I was getting tired of Firefox freezing for few seconds every now and then so I switched and love it! There are few issues with it but overall, very nice!
There is an overview of Epiphany here: http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?2006/03/15/100-why-you
and here: http://raphael.slinckx.net/blog/2006-03-15/epipha
I also love Deskbar integrated with Beagle! I've just stopped hunting down directories. I search for folders, documents, tomboy notes, web history, bookmarks, applications etc. with Deskbar.
This plus Xgl and all the Mono stuff is making my desktop really good
Windows Vista has a really good competitor when it comes out.
While I know it has little to do with Gnome or any other WM, I was quite impressed with the XGL demo I saw the other day. I was so impressed that I Downloaded the live CD and ran it (http://getkororaa.com/). I actually think it is snapper than my Gentoo box (once the disk cache gets loaded on both systems).
I think this is where the GUI development needs to be headed. While it's good that Linux can run on a 486-SX/25 with 512K onboard video, no one is really running that any more. Most of us have at least some sort of NVidia graphics accelerator in our systems that sits idle while the 2D window manager is using our man processor to pop up windows that are designed to look 3D (shadows under the mouse and windows, buttons that "press" by changing bitmaps and so on). Why don't we free up our CPU and off load much of that processing to video card that would otherwise sit idle? Combine this with the other performance enhancements of GNOME and I think you could have an excellent desktop.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I think the Software Oscar this year should go to whoever took the time to fix the slowness that is Gnome Terminal.
So we should give a Oscar to anyone that fixes something? I'd rather give an "anti-oscar" at who designed the pieces of software which have make gnome-terminal slow for years.
So, duh. This release is pretty much "Gnome is starting to fix some of the crap which users have been suffering for years". Which is not bad, but don't get surprised that users are not jumping massively to linux with this kind of software QA.
There're already bugs filed to add to the gtk file chooser features like (dumroll....) ordering files by size! and a thumbnail view!. But it hasn't made its way into 2.14, so gnome users will have to wait (hopefully) until 2.16 to have a 90's file chooser. So, where's the QA process which stopped that file chooser from being merged in such crappy state and that has not forced developers to fix it in a reasonable timeframe?
Call me when Linux desktop stops fixing errors and starts adding solutions. What Gnome 2.14 tells to my mind is that gnome performance/memory usage has sucked for years and nobody fixed it until today.
The Gnome development process seems to be more top-down than KDE's. The devs integrate a collection of unintegrated components from the g-world, which are all pretty much independently developed, in constrast to KDE's QT libaries, which come from a single company. The rules of this integration are the Gnome frameworks, which are either literal code, as with the Gnome libraries themselves, or conceptual rules, like the HIG. From this top-down perspective, the devs assemble a variety of tools from the open source world into a desktop environment.
With KDE, a more bottom-up approach is taken: the integration has been done at the level of the core libraries, QT, as well as the core KDE libraries that build on top of that. Above this level, things build in a sporadic nature that some would argue is more healthy for open source development (such as Linus Torvalds opined a few months back).
All in all, I welcome both Gnome's top-down and KDE's bottom-up approach to integrating the components of a complete desktop environment. Since KDE's integration does come from the bottom, KDE feels more integrated to me on the architectural front, whereas since Gnome's integration comes from the top, it feels more integrated in the look & feel, menus, etc.
Both projects have a lot to learn from each other; therefore, a lot to share. But really, the big experiment is to see which way builds a more successful desktop, or if the different models just result in desktops that serve different needs or different kinds of users.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Okay, they've removed possibility to change the sounds of the gnomegames from the "sound preferences" dialog, but really who need that? Instead they've added possibility to change which soundcard you wanna use. To me that's much more useful.
You are also right, that the new screensaver dialog is not as advanced as the old one, but that's not because anything has been removed, that's simply because it is a whole new screensaver, native to gnome, enabling gnomeprogrammes to interact with it, and making it translatable. I'm sure more features will be added in later versions.
Personally I really look forward to use the innovative Deskbar Applet, which I think the review forgot to tell about.
Sensitivity to cultural and political issues is also an important consideration. Designing icons and sounds, and even choosing colors requires some understanding of the connotations they might have to a user from a different part of the world.
Examples of elements it is best to avoid for these reasons include:
[...]
Now, I wonder what is that small icon in the upper left corner of my screen?
Users be damned, they're going to do whatever the hell they want.
Actually, the problem appeared when the menu specification appeared on freedesktop.org. They had to change their way to do menus to the new specification and, due the timed released, there wasn't time to do the menu editor. That came on two releases, I believe: the first when the specification came in and the next, where all applications on the desktop released where reviewed to include their ".desktop" files (the ones used on menus).
Also, the menu specification allows applications to register themselves on the menus. New applications, this way, should have zero menu edits to appear. Since the menu specification came in, I never had to edit the menus, to be honest.
Revolutionary new features include:
* Removal of the mouse pointer in favor of the "spatial mouse", where the user determines
what they are pointing at by the location of the mouse itself on the user's desk.
A moving arrow on the screen was too distracting for the average user.
* The rollout of the new "one monitor, one application" paradigm, wherein the user can
only run as many apps as they have monitors. This avoids confusing the average user,
who needs each application to show up in its own unique monitor location in the user's office.
I kid, take it easy.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Hmm... it has been some 3 or 4 years since I used Linux, but I remember that at the time I thought KDE had a better "look" than Gnome. After reading this article I've searched for screenshots of the most recent versions of both desktop managers and it seems to me that KDE still looks better than Gnome.
I don't want to start a flamewar, after all I don't know how both compare in terms of usability, but I'm still curious: those of you who have used both Gnome and KDE but now prefer one over the other, do you do this based on looks or on other factors? In other words, if I were to start using a Linux distribution right now, and did not mind choosing Gnome or KDE, what would be the advantages of one over the other, looks aside?
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Although it's not available from the Preferences settings, you can turn it on using the Configuration Editor (usually found in the "System Tools" menu). In the configuration editor, go to /apps/nautilus/preferences, and check the box for 'always_use_location_entry'.
I felt that method of advanced configuration was lame at first, but I'm getting used to it. I kind of prefer it over having every configuration item listed in the preferences dialog.
Anyway, that's how you turn on the location bar.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I don't understand people who say that gnome-terminal is slow... I find that it is the fastest terminal emulator. The trick is to actually compare like with like.
Let's say we use 8 point Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, and a terminal size of 80x24. Prepare the test data:
$ dd bs=1M count=1 if=/dev/urandom | xxd > data
To run the test:
$ time cat data
The results:
xterm -fa mono -fs 8 (209)
The window is drawn very flickery. I couldn't use this for day to day use.
real 1m28.686s
user 0m4.370s
sys 0m0.371s
gnome-terminal (2.12.0)
The smoothest and fastest of the lot!
real 0m6.401s
user 0m3.425s
sys 0m0.208s
rxvt-unicode -fn xft:mono:size=8 (5.3)
Smooth but slowish
real 0m41.071s
user 0m0.871s
sys 0m0.182s
konsole (3.3)
Scrolling is jerky/stuttery, but not flickery.
real 0m10.337s
user 0m0.003s
sys 0m0.091s
Icons no longer display useful information, like file type or network protocol in mounted shares.
God, that was stupid. Please change it back!
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
the bar goes up again and the "free operation systems" are again at a significant deficit
How long do you think GNOME will remain a "free desktop", when members of the GNOME Foundation's advisory board, such as Fluendo, are advocating DRM in GNOME's audio/video backend?
If they have their way, GNOME will end up just as shackled by draconian DRM as as M$ Vista.
"Enhanced performance" yet "programs don't open any faster"? That doesn't sound like enhanced performance to me! I thought increased performance was one of the big things being touted for 2.14?
I think Pessulus is some bit of turkey anatomy, and Sabayon is an Italian dessert. So, like, is there an official dictionary of rarely words to consult for naming Gnome applications?
If you post it, they will read.
It was removed because it basically sucked. I'm glad to see it back though. Thanks to the freedesktop menu standards, though, I've have *yet* to need to edit my menu. Every app I installed put its icon in the proper place on the menu. No need to screw with the layout. With windows I'm constantly editing the start menu because it is layed out in such a horrible way. All gnome distros I've dealt with recently had sane and logical menu entries. All KDE and Gnome apps showed up in the proper place upon installation. Beats the heck out of installing your own crappy menu items only to have a bunch of stale links when you remove the program like in the old KDE days.
So basically as far as overall usability goes, menu editing is not quite dead last but definitely not a priority.
In short, these "gnome guys" as you call them actually are doing a great job. I'd rather have a feature implemented right than implemented poorly like Windows does. (Can't speak for KDE, but I haven't had to edit KDE menus in about 5 years either.)
And the printing dialogs! They are what ultimately made me switch from Gnome to KDE. They are just a bit too crippled for daily use. I can't blame Linus for his latest outburst against the gnome devs.
Now, I wonder what is that small icon in the upper left corner of my screen?
;-)
If your screen is the same as my screen then its a pizza stain
Don't worry... even I JUST found out its not an icon...
Somehow that doesn't seem right. This will depend on whether you have stuff like transparency turned on. I just took gnome-terminal and aterm head to head using your same data file and got these results:
gnome-terminal (no transparency)
real 0m2.756s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.105s
aterm (no transparency)
real 0m0.861s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.105s
gnome-terminal (with transparency)
real 0m2.954s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.109s
aterm (with transparency)
real 0m3.027s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.105s
Aterm is generally considered one of the fastest terms available. Actually, I think gnome-terminal has improved their transparency handling in recent versions because when it first came out, it was slower than it is now. I remember seeing a more detailed comparison of term speeds done a few years back, but I can't find it right now. It showed clearly that gnome-terminal was 3+ times slower than most terminals.
I find that I like Gnome overall better than KDE, for productivity... While I think that KDE looks better, and has more "features" I get much much more work done in Gnome. Whenever I decide to try KDE, I always find myself messing around with the settings, trying to get that certain look, seeing if I can make it do this or that. (Same problem with E16/17) With gnome, I tend to login and work...
Have you ever tried gmenu-simple-editor? It's amazingly useless.
It lets you hide existing menu items. That's it.
You can't create new menu items, and you can't edit existing ones. It's essentially worthless as a menu editor. Ala Carte does allow you to add, delete, and edit menu items, which is what most people would want. gmenu-simple-editor doesn't.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
"Shit, looks like you tryin' to write some damn letter again."
I've seen plenty of cases of people switching away from GNOME to other DEs (including myself, I now use KDE even though I used to utterly hate it.) due to GNOME becoming crippleware in the name of "usability", is there anyone who has gone the other way due to the changes?
Between KDE and GNOME, GNOME has always (and still is) more polished and less buggy, but at this point GNOME is so crippled that given a choice between all of the missing functionality that was removed from GNOME and KDE's minor annoyances, I now prefer KDE.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I laughed, therefore it was a good comment.
It looks like a footprint of some non-human thing.
That's interesting. At the time that 2.10 came out with no menu editor, us normal users (from what I heard) weren't told of any time constraints or plans of implementing a menu editor. All I heard was that the developers (occasionally from an actual developer) felt that menu-editing was unecessary. This despite all the objections from users that we do need a menu editor*.
If the devs had just admitted that it was a time constraint which kept them from giving us a menu-editor, there would have been less complaints and accusations of devs being interface-nazis.
*I, for example, have an entire section dedicated to scientific applications which are an assortment of old and proprietary apps which never show up in the menu on their own without me adding them. The default GNOME menu-editor still doesn't solve this problem, as it doesn't let you add items. Thankfully the Ubuntu version does.
The first link in the parent post is to one of the author's former posts, an anti-GNOME rant which was (accurately) modded -1, Flamebait. I don't think he's a troll -- just a KDE zealot.
I'm on Ubuntu right now, and when I right-click the GNOME menu and click "edit menus", it brings up a "Menu Editor", which is... ba dum! SMEG.
So Ubuntu is using GNOME's menu editor, and it is fine. I just wish I could select it from anywhere in the menu, not just the menu button. Oh well.
Gnome 2.14 eh? Makes me wish Impulse Tracker were still being developed. :(
You left out the part about how Gnome would have died if it wasn't for Red Hat. Back in the day all of the major linux distros all used KDE. It was simply more advanced and stable and as a result it become the most widely used. Frankly for many many years Gnome was a total pile of crap. They stuck to that "GNOME must be WM independant" crap all the while decrying KDE for "taking away choice" for years. We all know how well that turned out :rollseyes:.
.002 and kept pushing Gnome all along,it would probably be about as popular as Afterstep these days. I don't know whether to thank or curse them.
Anyway back to my point, there is a million other facets to the whole GNOME v KDE thing but most interesting and least thought about IMHO is that if Red Hat hadn't pushed out Gnome
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Smeg isn't GNOME's menu editor. Smeg is just the version prior to the Alacarte Menu Editor developed by an Ubuntu user.
It's a fancy "G" - that stands for Gnome. Yeah, seriously. 'Course, I agree, we could probably use something a little bit better.
All your sig are belong to us.
10 lines of code. I am impressed.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There's a reason you find that text dense, it's because it's not aimed at you. It's aimed at those that want to live on the bleeding edge, and your not one of them. Gnome 2.14 has been released by the Gnome development team, but that doesn't mean that it is ready for general consumption, it means that it is now available for distribution developers to integrate it into their distributions. Only after that is done will it be truly ready for the main stream. You can expect that process to take between two and six months, and during that period the bleeding edge adopters will have uncovered a few bugs which will be fixed by the time you get to play with the new release, and there will me more documentation or help available. By the time you (or I) want to install Gnome 2.14 the process will be much simpler than that described in the article.
What the smeg were those smegheads thinking when they came up with that name?
I have to second that. There are a LOT of linux apps that aren't 'gnome certified and approved' and do not appear in the menu by default. Without Alacarte, there is NO WAY to add them without editing the XML by hand (which can be done, but isn't much fun).
Thank God (or Shuttleworth, or whoever) for Ubuntu.
Dunno about you, but for me (and most others) it's the logo of my distribution.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
I have been running beta versions of 2.14 as part of Fedora FC5 test3 for a while, and I'm very impressed by its speed, and increased pollish compared to previous Gnome versions.
/etc, /proc, /dev, /usr, /lib, /boot, /sbin, /selinux,... by default for ordinary users. These folders are mainly of interest for system administrators and developers, but this group most certainly know how to show hidden files. By hiding these directories folders containing business oriented stuff becomes easier to find.
.hidden file in your / directory containing the names of the directories you want to hide. Unfortunately .hidden only works in the Nautilus windows and not in filedialogs, where the disadvantage of having too many choises are a much bigger problem.
However, there are still a lot of things missing before it is ready for the Enterprise desktop.
For one thing, usermanagement seam to be for local users only. There is no way to manage users over LDAP. The same thing is true for sabayonne.
Another problem is the tools in the System->Administration menu. They all requires you to enter a root password to be used. This makes it impossible to have many people perform limited adminstrative functions. They should really use sudo for this. (I think Ubuntu allready do that).
Yet another thing I would have like to see, is hiding of files like
You can test this for yourself by createing a
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
It is already at ubuntus bugzilla, and is confirmed (not rejected): https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome -screensaver/+bug/22007/+viewstatus
We may have to stay with xscreensaver until gnome 2.16, but well, it has served us well until now anyways.
Where's the "-1, Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepleaseohpleaseohp leasepleasepleasedon'tgivethemideas" moderation option when you need it?