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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.
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".
If you want to see some follow the next link: http://www.gnome.org/start/2.14/notes/en/rnusers.h tml
I think that's partly true, but I think the free software desktop evolves faster. If you think about how much was new in WinXP, it wasn't much, and that was out in 2001/2002(?). So, the current W32 desktop is pretty old in computer terms. If you think how far GNOME has come in that time, it's a huge leap.
If they maintain the current pace, sure Vista might be superficially nicer when it comes out. In a couple of releases or so GNOME will have caught up in the areas Vista is ahead, but there won't be a new W32 UI to catch up where GNOME is ahead.
I think the current GNOME pace is about right. There aren't huge advances each release, but each release does bring stuff worth having.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
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
First of all, you assume that Vista will be the pinnicle of desktop features. As if OS X isn't already implementing most of the new features that Vista touts. And even still, you assume that all those new features are what users want or need. The (my) problem with Windows has always been that it tries to do everything for everyone. Mac OS has always been good about keeping feature creep down and just doing the core things very well. What is nice about a Linux desktop is choice. Believe it or not, many people choose fewer bells and whistles. I hope the GNOME developers can stay focused on doing the most important things very well rather than going off an trying to copy every feature that the "big guys" decide is important.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
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
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.
Hum.
Usability. Clearly it means something different to you than it does to me. Usable software is not software that requires drilling through hundreds of contradictory, confused or utterly irrelevant options before one can get anything done.
And note, here, I'm not pointing an accusing finger at KDE here; the problems with KControl are well known and have been dealt with.
The point I'm trying to make is that we here utter so much gibberish about usability because we're not users, we're computer experts. We're used to thinking like computers.
You don't really appreciate what usability really is until you observe somebody who isn't a propellerhead, struggling over your code, confused and baffled by your lovingly hand-crafted user interface, in all its customizable glory.
Usability isn't about too many or two few options, it's about several things.
1) Do What I mean, having sure I have the capability to express what I mean.
2) Know your target audience. No software can be all things to all people, and it is foolish to try. Pick sensible defaults for your target audience. Provide user interfaces to allow that audience to configure that which they might reasonably be expected to need to change.
3) Don't add complexity for the sake of Geek Machismo.
4) Don't remove useful functionality for the sake of keeping it simple. As simple as possible and no simpler
5) Have a consistent set of guidelines for your user interface, in pursuance of the needs of your target audience.
6) Challenge your assumptions; WATCH THEM. See what your target audience doesn't understand that you thought was obvious. Fix it.
7) Don't sneer at KDE or GNOME or Ion because they have different target audiences, different philosophies. Praise them when they are consistent with their goals, guidelines and audience, politely suggest improvements or proffer patches where they fall short.
Have KDE got it entirely right? No, but they're getting there.
Have GNOME got it entirely right? No, but they're getting there.
I guess what I'm saying is, usability doesn't mean what you think it does. Not all software is targetted at geeks, not all people think like geeks.
And frankly, we should thank the Lord Xenu that this is the case.
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.
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.
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
I used to be a firm KDE kamp member, but lately I've started to swing towards gnome.
;-) Take a look at Novell's Linux Desktop 10.1 Preview. You can search for OpenSuSE 10.1 beta screenshots. Gnome is the default, the default "look" is very, very clear and usable. It's not terribly sexy, but the icons are goregous, and the clean lines are a welcome change from KDE's proliferation of settings and dialogues.
Why?
1. Looks
2. Now, Gnome's loosing in the raw "theme" eye candy category, but they have KDE crushed in eye candy. How? Some neat new features. For one, SVG themeing on GNOME is a lot further along than KDE. For two, Cairo-GTK. This means that your SVG themes become DPI indepedant, as well as antialiased. This is a vast visibility improvement. Three, XGL integration. XGL is beautiful. XGL makes your linux desktop feel greater. A double buffered openGL desktop really makes everything feel more tactile.
3. Search. Beagle works, Kat doesn't. Kat, in its current iterations, exhibits horrifying memory leaks. My 2 GB desktop system slows to a crawl after 8 hours of indexing. Beagle works perfectly. Maybe it's cause I'm used to spotlight, but good, real-time fulltext search of your system is an incredible thing. It really makes it far less necessary to organize your files, you can spend less time on maintenance and more time working, and that's a good thing.
4. Fit and Finish. Some of this is in themeing (Gnome's interface exhibits less 'mis-alignment' of icons/images in interfaces, and other little uglies), and some of this is in userspace utilities. Gnome's networking is more reliable than KDEs. For whatever reason, all kinds of browsing on my KDE setup are semi-broken. SMB doesn't always work, nor does a variety of other kio:// interfaces.
Of course, I'm happy about this stuff, and I can't say that I've switched to Gnome for good. The last time I experimented with Gnome, the printing interface, the file browser, the (lack of) a menu editor, and nautilus were all vastly inferior to their KDE counterparts. Now, Gnome's various dialogues and interfaces are pretty functionally similar to KDE and more reliable. Gnome's also got the eye candy factor going for it.
I will say, however, that if KDE 4.0 is 1/2 as good as it currently is specc'd for I'll be moving back. As it is, KDE 3.5 is looking awful long in the tooth compared to Gnome.
Really, though, its not a huge deal. Install both (you'll want the libraries anyways), and they interoperate just fine. Switch back and forth as needed, and as long as your distro implements the freedesktop specifications you'll get the same entries everywhere.
Gnome has come a long way, and I think it can finally satisfy it's goals: A simple, defaults-are-correct, easy to use Linux environment. It's not necessarily a powerusers environment, but come on, how many average users are going to be using KIO and the like. Gnome aims for the Mac OS X goals (which are _very_ good goals when you are going after Joe Blow) and does it WITHOUT ripping off OS X part and parcel. Sure, there's some duplication, but that's to be expected: Sometimes the other guys just "get it right". But Gnome definitely has it's own identity, and is now feature complete for "the average user".
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I'm sure more features will be added [to gnome-screensaver] in later versions.
I take it you've not read the comments from the developer in bugzilla, where requests for the ability to set options and for full-screen preview are marked WONTFIX. Quotes:
"My view is that any screensaver theme that requires configuration is inherently broken."
"I don't think [full-screen preview] solves any real problems."
Yes, there are valid concerns about random people setting GLtext to display [insert obscenity here] or pointing the slideshow screensaver at their pr0n collection on a computer in a government office or business. That said, that problem has been "solved" in a manner inconsistent with the rest of GNOME. pessulus and sabayon (or however those are spelled) is supposed to be able to set limits of that sort, but the author of gnome-screensaver has unilaterally hard-wired it into police state mode, regardless of how the system administrator (who, for most of us, is us) wants it.
How much $$$ do you suppose one would have to put up to get a reasonable version of gnome-screensaver forked that allows, under pessulus control, the system administrator to either allow or deny option setting on an individual screensaver basis, allows full-screen previews, and allows the individual user to indicate for each screensaver whether it should be in the pool for random selection for that user? gnome-screensaver is, IMHO, sufficiently fundamentally WRONG that I'd contribute to a fund for a version that does it right.
Sorry to go on repeatedly and at length about what is perhaps a trivial issue, but for me it's the proverbial last straw.
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...
That's not true. The change was done in the development cycle but it was reverted way before the final release.