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GNOME 2.16 Released
Kethinov writes "The GNOME Project has just released version 2.16 of their popular *nix desktop environment. Among many snazzy new features, is lots of new eye candy, including an experimental compositer in Metacity, feature enhancements, usability improvements, and much, much more. Ars Technica has a review."
I really wish they wouldn't use JPEGs for computer screenshots -- the lossy compression makes straight lines and text look terrible. PNG (or possibly GIF, depending on the number of colors used) is much more reasonable.
Other than that, I don't understand why the --enable-compositor compile-time option isn't included by default. Logically, if the support is there, but the hardware isn't up-to-par or the X composite extention is not loaded, then the compositor just won't do anything. If everything is A-OK, then the compositor works as expected. For example, I compile support for my sound card directly into my kernel. One day, if I suddenly remove the sound card, my kernel will still work. So why not just turn stuff on by default?
On the other hand, I can understand why some things aren't compiled in sometimes, due to size, but a compositor can't be more than, what, 100k of actual code? Anyway, I'm sure someone's gonna fire back at me.
KDE has many things going well for it. This'll sound weird, I'm sure, but I like Gnome better because it feels better. KDE has a weird feel to it that I can't get over. It's the same feeling I get when I use Opera, I don't quite like it.
KDE also seems very thrown-together, and there are icons for almost every single menu item in almost every single menu -- it makes the entire desktop look extremely cluttered. Some lines and shapes (in some dialogs, some programs) are off by just a single pixel from where they should be, but because of that small error, it makes the desktop look slightly askew, and adds to the screen clutter appearance.
Other than appearance and "feel" I have no problem using KDE.
I remember years ago when Gnome was the eye-candy window manager all the kids were showing off. In looking through the screenshots, the most surprising thing is to see that nobody involved with the Tango interface has ever seen what an actual shadow looks like.
If you want to do flat shadows, cool, do them, they're easy and effective. If you want to do three-dimensional shadows, cool, they look even better but take a bit more work. But don't drop the same blurry ellipse at the bottom of every object and think that you're making a three-dimensional shadow, you just make everything look like it's standing on a blurry gray oval, and users really do recognize the less professional look, consciously or not.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I basically agree with this, but think the developers should find some real designer talent to bring it about. For example, the screenshots are horrible. They took window shots, then faded the borders to white, then added a drop shadow. If you can't tell that this doesn't look right, you're in the wrong league.
Don't fade borders if you're compositing a complete window. Faded borders are the graphical equivalent of an ellipsis.
And definitely don't add a drop shadow to something you've already faded to white. It looks ridiculous.
Despite your negativity, I myself (as a Windows lead developer) am really looking forward to developing for Linux. Our current client/server software is currently only compatible with Windows and MS SQL Server, however over the next couple of years I am hoping to slowly move our codebase to compile under Mono and support MySQL/PostgreSQL under Linux. We have already tendered a Mono alternative to a large company where a Microsoft solution wasnt an option. Mono is a good thing. It might not be perfect, but is definitely a step in the right direction and will help to bridge the gap between worlds.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Mod parent insightful. This is absolutely not a troll. I, for one, whole heartedly agree with these comments.
Why has it taken this long to be able to set recursieve file permissions ?
Why has it taken until now to be able to edit the menu (smeg notwithstanding) ?
These features should have been in from release 1.0
Sorry but GNOME really does suffer from some pretty basic usability problem which, as the parent posints out, could mostly be fixed by taking note of some of the good aspects of GUI design that have been put into place over the last 20 years, and especially by allowing users to set options as they want - not what the designers think is "best for them".
The "we know best" attitude is condescending and hinders usability. The "proper" way to do it is to have everytthing come "out of the box" with basic defaults but let the user "open up" the interface as they learn it. If you're really worried about your poor users provide a "reset to defaults" option.
The parent post simply points out some obvious problems with GNOME, the fact it got modded Troll points out some problems with blinkered moderation.
And yes I am a GNOME user - I have an Ubuntu desktop at home. I mostly like GNOME but it always, always sends me into a swearing frenzy due to basic usability problems.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
STILL we gnome faithful are saddled with having only one desktop picture for all workspaces. This became ridiculous at gnome 2.10, IMO. Gnome devs still say they are all for the spatial paradigm (which I like, btw), yet they miss the opportunity to use different desktop pics for each workspace, which would make each workspace...different (wait for it) spatially.
;-)
(I still use gnome every day.)
The only other point I'd want to add to this discussion is that Metacity was also a huge step backwards from Sawfish, IMHO. This announcement seems akin to "Hey everybody! We're coming real close to getting all the visual capabilities that Sawfish had!"
I'm with you. Sure, there might have been issues with maintenance of the Sawfish code, amongst other things, but metacity still has a couple of glaring holes they refuse to fill in.
My own pet peeve is Metacity's refusal to remember the size or positioning of windows. I know the developers claim it's the application's job to do this, but I don't agree. Seems obvious to me, but who am I to insist that a window manager's job is to manage windows?
I stared at the first several screenshots trying to figure out what you were talking about, then I ran into the ones you mention. It made me wonder: why were some screenshots given this treatment, and others not?
I think one visual design principle is this: if visual differences carry information, then pointless visual differences convey spurious information.
The screenshots in question also seem to me to be a bit of a mixed metaphor. The drop shadow makes the things stand out from the page. This, I think, is an OK idea; it's not so much that the drop shadows tend to draw the eye to the screenshots (which they do), but it also conveys the messaage that these are concrete examples we are discussing; that is to say if we're looking at a screenshot of a graph, it's the window we are paying attention to, not the graph inside. By contrast, if there a graph that showed something like the lines of code in Gnome vs. time, you wouldn't expect it to get the drop shadow treatment.
The mixed metaphor comes in this way: by fading the borders, the windows become less solid, yet they are still casting a shadow. The shadow appears to be cast by a sharp edge from a diffuse light source, but there is no sharp edge.
What does it mean? It means nothing. Therefore it's poor communication because, unlike the drop shadows, it detracts from what is being said.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Documentation is what always sucks in Linux desktop. Check out for once M$Windows one.
I loved GNOME 1.x for it was lean and clean - with most of the little bits been documented. I hated KDE1 precisely because it had only dummy automatically generated documentations. Many years have passed and situation reversed 180 degrees: KDE is documented and GNOME documentation is dumb-down to complete unusability level.
I'm given myself a word to not use GNOME until its developers would not document all the magic behind .gtkrc and .gnomerc files - and how the two are interconnected. It was safe bet - no documentation in last 3-4 years emerged and I do not use GNOME anymore ;)
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Gnome drags an absurd number of dependencies into the distributions I use. It seems like you can't load Gnome without also loading several development libraries, a panoply of sound and video support (for hardware you don't physically have and software you have no desire to use) and various other fooferaw. I realize some of this is because of inept packaging on the part of certain distributions, but even when you take that into account Gnome's still a dependency nightmare reminiscient of Windows "DLL hell".
When the number of dependencies required to run Gnome on mainstream distributions DECREASES, that'll impress me. Until then I am unlikely to care what new eye-candy it's sporting.