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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 hope that they got rid of the awful, childish default "X" (for cancel buttons) icon. It just screamed "zonk".
Ugh, who wants to use a desktop environment that has a stinky foot as its logo/mascot?
As someone who is currently running 2.14.2; what does this mean to me?
Bring on the eye candy! There'll be heaps of complainers who say its unnecessary... but sorry, its necessary to bring linux gradually mainstream.
I know I'm going to get modded Troll for this, but looking over the feature list, it really sounds like it's gained a lot of KDE 3 features. The GNOME webbrowser can now spellcheck. (Big deal, Konqueror has done this for ages.) There's now a method for visually displaying disk use in GNOME. (Again, Konqueror has done this for ages.)
You can now add items to the programs menu (this is NEW?!), you can now set file permissions on multiple files (again, this is NEW?!). All in all it sounds like stuff that should have been there for ages.
And, as always, I can't help but wonder what options got removed and now are permentantly set to "sensible defaults" because, as everyone knows, customizability is "confusing". Really an underwhelming release based on the articles. (Yes, I did read them!)
So the question becomes ... when will this be an Ubuntu automatic upgrade and will it be for Drake or Eft or even later?
Nice logo :)
This all sounds very exciting!
I use Windows 95 and I'm finding it quite difficult to use. Can somebody please instruct me on how to install this GNOME on Windows 95?
I don't know, maybe it's because I'm a visual person, but those screenshots look kinda unimaginative and dull. I realize eye-candy wouldn't make it a better desktop, but it really looks a decade old and gray. But then, I don't use Gnome, so...
Is there any chance that Sony will build and sell such a dream system?
I use gnome regularly, but am always momentarily confused by the file-save dialogue no matter how many times I see it. Gnome is very nice in a lot of ways, but I think in terms of decent interface design, it needs a lot of work.
That's probably because of regressions or other bugs in the Freetype library. See, for instance, Debian bug #367593.
I've reverted back to 2.1.10-1 on my system for now, in order to avoid those issues. I can only hope that the API doesn't change before they fix the rendering issues...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Just emerging 2.14 now.
You know, I once heard a wise man tell a parable:
... are you religious or atheist?"
;)
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off.
I immediately ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!"
"Why shouldn't I?" he said.
I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"
"Like what?"
"Well
"Religious."
"Me too! Are you Christian or Jewish?"
"Christian."
"Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"
"Protestant."
"Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"
"Baptist."
"Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"
"Baptist Church of God."
"Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"
"Reformed Baptist Church of God."
"Wow! Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed
Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?"
"Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!"
To which I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off.
Incidentally, I use KDE
DYWYPI?
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.
>Is it just me, or does the default binding and replacement of standard apps with C# apps a concern?
Not at all. I think this is a good strategy for GNU. First they embrace c#, after that they should extend it and then extinguish it!
This release is very important because Mono is now a dependency! This single move pretty much moves Mono from an interesting project into mainstream OSS.
As a C# fan, and knowing how much of a pain GTK was in C, I think this is a very good move. KDE has always had a better API, official Mono support with GTK reverses that! This could really clear up GNOME, and the Linux desktop generally.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
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 may be incorrect about either of these points, so someone please say so if I am wrong, but I can think of two reasons to prefer gnome over kde:
1) gtk is written in C, whereas QT is C++, making it less easy to use from C programs.
2) gtk is licensed as lgpl, whereas qt is gpl. This means that a non-gpled program (such as a commercial application) can be linked with gtk with no problems, but with qt the developers must pay licensing fees.
While I prefer KDE it seems Gnome could be gaining ground as it has recently become the default desktop for SUSE 10.1. Many new users go with the defaults and people tend to stick with what they know.
Like Windows, for example. It's just another case of "Shit wins not because it smells nice, but because everyone sees it." So much for the meritocracy of geekhood...
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I don't think it'd be wise to mess with it at all. If there's one thing Microsoft is good at it's treachery, not technology. Rather than attempting to beat them at their own game (treachery), it'd be best to overcome them with merit (technology). In terms of ease-of-use and speed, C++ with STL and BOOSt, Ruby, or Python have C# whipped -- and they're totally free.
Looks as bad as ever. Is there a single 'power' user that likes Nautilus?
It is not customizeable -can't change single thing on the toolbar.
Default view is useful for home directory only.
Location bar (can be changed) is annoying with buttons instead of link.
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.
Well, to be fair, it's a GTK thing not a GNOME thing. (If it was only a GNOME problem we could have happily ignored it
It was a shockingly stupid omission in the first place - I'm glad it's back! Let's hope real tab completion is back too (but I bet it won't be - I mean, who uses tab completion in these heady GUI days?? *sarcastic grimace*)
On arstechnica, in the thread http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f /174096756/m/298008880831?r=298008880831 segphault is your hero... (post Posted September 06, 2006 13:16)
http://www.cixar.com/~segphault/tmp/drafts/img/ -> contains PNG screenshots.
Dude... you can turn off the icons! You can configure most of the defaults away and end up with quite an uncluttered look and feel. Try it out, run KDE and play a couple of hours with the settings. I'm sure something interesting to you will emerge.
Somewhere, in Texas, A moderator is missing it's funnybone.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Usability improvements on the desktop are nice but when do people realize that usability improvements are desperately needed on the application level and only marginally on the desktop. What does it help if you have a perfect desktop but many of the applications one uses have a rather rubbish usability!
y .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613 at the bottom) and everybody knows the easyness of MacOSX.
5 .pdf).
Usability is always measured in a greater context, a context which goes far beyond the Gnome desktop but spans any desktop used. Just think how an American driver feels when he drives in England or vice versa. You might interrupt that's rather seldom the case but not with computer desktops. Almost each Gnome users uses a KDE application and even 60% use a Windows application (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/surve
Sure application developers don't want to lose much time with usability they want to concentrate on functionality. So they can't follow multiple separate usability guidelines they simply don't have the time. Yet usability is a very important part in the acceptance of an application. To circumvent this, application developers should follow cross-desktop or cross-platform guidelines (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).
Yet Gnome might still follow the MacOSX way sticking to there own perfect way and be happy with a rather insignificant market share. Or they help working on fighting off the first "Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption" (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov200
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
GP is trolling...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Nothing says "sexy" like paragraph breaks.
Its not hard. No, no, that's not what I meant.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Now with more KDE!
No, we just have to wait for the AIGLX and DRI project to complete adding the required bits to the drivers. It's not GNOME's fault.
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
You've always been able to type a location with the Ctrl+L shortcut. With this new version you can have a location bar always enabled (check the release notes for a screenshot). I'm not sure about the always saving to ~/Desktop thing, as I never had that problem. It's completely application specific though, not GTK+ related.
I read your post several times thinking it was a joke post...
Slashdot, the only place where intellectuals can act like idiots... and still sound intellectual.
Let's hope real tab completion is back too (but I bet it won't be - I mean, who uses tab completion in these heady GUI days?? *sarcastic grimace*) You don't need tab completion to provide completion, which is what you want after all. Accessibility is very important to GNOME, and a consistent use of the tab key is an important part of that.
No he's not; I feel the same way. There is something odd about the way Opera & KDE feel.
You are correct. The main problem is with the GTK+ theme engine. Put simply, it doesn't offer the features nor functionality necessary to easily and effectively render crisp, aesthetic GUIs.
One of the main causes is their use of C. It doesn't promote a solid rendering class hierary, as is offered by GUI toolkits that are written a language like C++ (eg. Qt, wxWidgets), Objective-C (eg. Cocoa), Java (eg. Swing, SWT), or Smalltalk (eg. Squeak). This in turn makes it quite difficult for anyone who wants to develop a theme of any complexity.
Like you mention, just changing the colors (which is easy enough) is not enough. You need to be able to render button and text fields with shadows. You need to have certain corners be sharp, while others rounded. The toolkit engine of GTK+ allows for both, but doens't easily allow for both to be used concurrently.
That's just a small example of the problems that exist when writing a GTK+ theme engine. What needs to be done is an analysis of what successful GUI toolkits, like Qt, have done. Adopting the techniques of their engine is perhaps the best thing that the GTK+ developers can do at this point.
So you would say then, for the sake of usability, that people accustomed to using the Tab key for completion should suddenly retrain themselves? Tell me again how this makes Gnome any more usable? If the question is accessability, then by golly make it a pref that's enabled by default. Don't expect people to be happy with this, or button re-ordering, "spatial" browsing(implemented totally half-assed, just to add insult to injury), or any of the myriad of other changes Gnome UI has jammed down the throats of the unwilling. Expect us to use something else, and publicly deride Gnome for what they've become.
Amazing how many replies a -1:Troll post can generate, neh? I suspect I've got the Gnome fanbois in a big lather. Well, let 'em mod me down. They need something to do in between emerging this update and putting new taillight inserts on their yugos.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Indeed, im also one of those that thinks "kde feels funny". Ofcourse i know i can tweak the shit out of it but, mm. why should i ?
I'll just use gnome or instal xfce (gtk widgets just do look better to me)
yush
That sounds fine, but if you're used to using a shell for most of your work and very rarely branching into GUI filemanagers, you'd realise just how ineffective the GNOME implementation of filename completion is. The sad thing is that GTK 2.4 and below had a fantastic implementation of tab completion, and it was a joy to use
I do realise that accessibility is important, but consider how much more accessible the following setup would be: keyboard enters the path, tab auto-completes, [return] accepts, [esc] cancels. That's the smart way of doing things - there's absolutely no need to tab and shift-tab to focus different widgets, because there's no need to even use the widgets. I don't think the file chooser in GTK >= 2.6 is very accessible at all.
Don't get me wrong - I think GTK is a great toolkit for the most part, and I enjoy writing for it. Certainly, the file chooser dialogue needed updating from the 2.4 implementation
... left-handed scrollbars?
*ducks*
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I think the old Gnome's file save dialog (plain and simple) was much better. The worst part, is that I can't write the full path anywhere! This also applies to Nautilus.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Same here. For me it's more of a feeling that everything has a function, or that every glyph or image is clickable. (or in the case of Opera an AD, although it was removed in newer versions i still have that fear of clicking on ADs) This leads me to be very uncomfortable when clicking around, especially dragging windows. Probably not enough visual cues for what is and what is not clickable. It's just that kind of feeling. But on the other hand, KDE still does it for me. The icons aren't too big. (A 1024x768 screen in Gnome has has as much useful real estate as a 640x480 KDE screen. Even windows apps make better use of real estate.) Yeah, it's kind of a Windowsy philosophy on screen real estate, but i think everyone needs all the screen real-estate they can get. I guess the only thing going for GNOME for me i guess is Ubuntu. I'm a KDE fanboy, but I still think Ubuntu on GNOME rocks.
To be precise, it is GTK's file dialog, and you can either type ctrl-l or just start typing. Why, yes, it is completely non-discoverable. Actually, I think that GTK 2.10 (used in Gnome 1.16) adds a button for this.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
This release in time schedule has really rocket in gnome.
FTFA : "Menu editing just got even more easier."
Woot! Sounds like a lot! I also heard it was even more betterly eye-candier!
You just got troll'd!
Emo Phillips.
"My parents told me never to go through the cellar door because horrible things lay on the other side. But one day, curiosity got the better of me, and I went through the cellar door. On the other side, I saw strange and wonderful things, things I'd never seen before, like trees... and clouds..."
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
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 !
P.S. And before y'all think I'm just having a rant one thing I forgot to mention is how excellent the new keyboardable "Find filestore objects by pressing keys" function is in Nautilus.
The fact it was missing in previous releases was a real usability problem. This new feature, where you can type the letters of a directory/file and the focus will move to the object "whose name starts with the letters you've just typed" is a truly splendid thing.
Much better than the simple "move to next object whose name starts with the letter you've just pressed" in Windows Explorer. This is one area that the GNOME devs have got round to adding a feature that really should have been in from day one but have at least done so in a new and superior manner.
I just wish the GNOME developers would put more effort into this sort of thing and less into eye candy...
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
That's not really true, considering the nvidia open source drivers do not even support 3d acceleration. The ati open source drivers are alot further along but only support older cards.
If you have a newer card or a nvidia card, the only option is XGL/compiz which has the same effects (and more) than the new Metacity. If you still want to use Metacity you will have to wait until Nvidia/ATI releases their drivers with texture from pixmap support which could be 6 months to a year from now. XGL has tfp already built into its server which allows one to use accelerated 3d effects even if their driver does not support it.
Also I should note that one could use compiz with AIGLX (not sure if you can right out of the box or requires a patch).
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
What you are looking for is Vista. It will be so current as to have the next year's video accelerators as its requirement.
Ya, if next year's cards are AGP 4x and have 64mb of RAM and support the 3 year old Pixel Shader 2.0, then sure, that is a next year video card, and we are only talking about the high end Glass.(sic)
Or you can use your old 1Mb Video Card from 1995 and run Vista just like you would WindowsXP, themes and all...
Either way, not really a 'requirement' nor something requiring next year's Video Cards.
I will say though, when ATI and NVidia move to multi-processing concepts and cores, Vista will already be able to utilize this technology with the WDDM specifications. Just like it can already mutli-process 3D applications and even virtualize GPU RAM on the 3 year old cards.
(BTW I think a lot of the 3D rendering concepts in development in the open source world are quite good, it is just strange the one GNOME is playing around with at this stage is a 'dated' concept to give 'wiggle' to windows.)
But how fast is it? How fast over a LAN, snappy or sluggish?
Deleted
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.
Is it that same feeling you get when you see two men kissing?
My opinion has always been that between the feature-rich and overly-colourful KDE approach, and dumbed-down (almost to the point of stupidity) but subdued Gnome approach, there should be a compromise of some sort. I don't think it exists, but for those relying on a graphical interface to use their computers, it shouldn't be surprising to see such contradictory opinions.
You see? That's why open-vented lead-acid batteries are still the best battery technology bar none. They're damn nigh indestructible in normal use. A lead-acid battery will burn out a short-circuit with almost no noticeable voltage drop. Try to overcharge them, and they gas a bit ..... but no worries, you can just top them up with air conditioner runoff. In an emergency, if they're not holding a charge as well as they used to, you can actually physically scrape the shite off the plates with a knife. And what with containing so much lead, they're (1) hard to steal and (2) well worth recycling.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The menu opens fine on a 450MHz Celeron with 256MB of RAM.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Well, you could turn off the over-the-top settings in KDE, anything that's too much for you. Or you could try XFCE, maybe that's what you're looking for...
Maybe you'll luck out and your batteries are included in the recall. I lucked out that way with the tires on my pickup - they were recalled just as they wore out.
What is the one thing both Opera[*] & KDE have in common?
QT.
[*] Not sure about the Windows version though.
/. is good for you.
I'm sorry, but did you really just say that Python and Ruby run faster than C#?
I was actually going to mention that, but I didn't want to start a QT/GTK flamewar. I do think QT/KDE has some cool features, but GTK/GNOME feels cleaner and more elegant.
FWIW, I think that Opera on win32 feels weird too.
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.)
I hear Ubuntu researchers are hard at work trying find the most depressing shades of brown to use in the default themes for their Gnome 2.16 based release.
but Alacarte is horrible. I mean, the interface is okayish, but the app is slow as molasses! (I presume that's because it's written using PyGTK.) I've had about two second delay while typing on Celeron 2.6GHz with 512M of memory with no other apps open!
I used to think so too. Then I started looking at some C# projects for Mono. It's really a nice language and you get in CLR support for Boo (small scripting language) and Python, not sure about Ruby (yet).
Seriously, there is no point in using C++ for UI driven programs anymore. If you really need to have minimal CPU and memory requirements then sure, but otherwise you're just making things hard for yourself.
Possibly the most important thing about moving to C# is that the level of entry is a lot lower than for C++. OOTB you have a functional language with a bunch of libraries. GNOME is also moving towards being really i18n compatible. Unicode support is NOT FUN in most languages. You really need to have it built in from the start (like with C#/Mono).
Personally I think most people that go on and on about how you need C++ for UI programs are either too comfy to learn a new (possibly better) language. Or they just repeat what other people say.
For the record I think C++ is a kludgy language. But it has it's uses.
Yes, you can use AIGLX with Compiz. I'm using it right now on a laptop with an Intel i855GM graphics chip, with excellent speed. Feels snappier than normal GNOME, actually, and with nice things like Exposé clone. As for the Metacity stuff, if you're using Quinn's CVS, which has the latest and nicest and fastest bits of Compiz, it comes with a nice window decorator called cgwd (compiz-generic-window-decorator?) which is light-years ahead of Metacity. Quinn has also produced a properly transparent gnome-terminal, which is very handy for coding (i.e., text stays fully opaque, but the black background becomes transparent (on a sliding scale of opacity), so you can look at a PDF file with whatever in it and keep typing without alt-tabbing all the time).
Despite the effects being built-in, I can't really see the Metacity compositing effects becoming too popular, because of said driver issues, and Compiz seems to be getting a good head of steam up (the amount of development, and the pace of it, is truly astonishing). Compiz also happens to be portable -- you can use it in KDE too if you swing that way. And isn't Compiz included by default (or at least AIGLX) with Edgy Eft?
The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers
I've yet to see a better cross-platform solution than Qt. It can be used with great languages like Ruby, Python, C++, and more... and it's worth every penny. Runs beautifully on Windows, Mac, and Linux with no modification to source.
I don't criticize QT since I haven't developed any code with it. Yet I really like to see an OSS sample code written with QT, building and running unchanged on all the mentioned platforms.
If you want to look at OSS cross-platform code which truly builds and runs unchanged, go to wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) and try out the demo sample. It works out of the box on Linux and Windows and as others tell on MacOSX albeit it uses wxWidgets instead of QT. Besides this sample is a fully featured application which can be used as a starting base code for your own project. And there are may more OSS cross-platform applications listed which easily fulfill the cross-platform requirement.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Tomboy, Notes application
Alacarte, Menu Editor
Baobab, Disk usage analyzer
Totem, Video player
WTF???
Why not call the Notes application "Gnome Notes", the menu editor "Gnome Menu Editor", the Disk usage analyzer "Gnome Disk Usage Analyzer" and the video player, you've guessed it, "Gnome Video Player".
I know developers like to give their applications noteworthy and unique names, but to a user this is only confusing and unnecessary. Especially considering all these are part of Gnome and will most likely not be used outside the Gnome environment.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
On a machine with 256 Mb RAM and GNOME loaded there is almost no free RAM left. Almost any application that you launch is going to use swap space. Amiga (whose Workbench would run OK on a 256 Kb machine) would turn in its grave! Seriously, I think that user interfaces we have on Linux are sucking more and more resources in the course of time and I still don't see a real breakthrough in usability. And if there is no difference in usability I prefer a user interface that runs faster and consumes less memory. I think it is more important than eyecandy. Maybe the developers of widgetsets/window managers/... should stop running for eyecandy and launch a profiler?
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.
I couldn't agree with you more. Lead acid batteries rock for every conceivable purpose. When my iPod nano's battery needed replacement, I just cracked that puppy open and slipped in a 12v deep discharge. Works like a dream and I never leave home without it.
Which is great because I can transfer iPod tunes with SWiK in GNOME . . . which can also run on a lead acid battery . . .
Possibly the most important thing about moving to C# is that the level of entry is a lot lower
...
Remind me why this is a good thing?
So are they going to put vertical and horizontal toggling back in?
Or was it never gone?
It would be helpful if the desktop authors simply wrote for KDE instead of having all this duplication of effort.
Two things:
C++ sucks in all ways imaginable. It is an abomination. Even Jesus hates it. I don't like being forced to write in C++ just to write a GUI-based app. Makes me angry. You wouldn't like to see me when I'm angry.
Second: having more than one desktop is known as "competition." It's probably the most important thing about capitalism (and the one thing that is most often circumvented in capitalist economies). I believe it is a good thing. It is good for KDE, and it is good for GNOME, and it is good for Enlightenment, and all the other window managers / desktops.
Plus, and even more importantly, KDE and GNOME take different approaches to things. That is *very* good, as it allows two different things to be tried, and compared against each other (SEE: competition). GNOME borrowing from KDE, and KDE from GNOME, is a good thing, as we all win.
I don't like KDE that much. I fire it up every few months just to see if it is better than last time, and it usually is (the KDE folks are doing a great job), but I don't really care for the PlayMobile feel of it.
That's a matter of taste, though. To each his own. I prefer GNOME. You may prefer KDE. Either is a good choice. It's a matter of taste.
C++ sucking? That's a matter of fact. It sucks. Sucks, sucks, sucks.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I used KDE for years, and while the power was nice, and the code was clean, the UI sucked. I'd spend days getting rid of all the brain-damage in the UI (20-line context menus, 3-toolbar windows, etc), and eventually just gave up and switched to GNOME.
The KDE interface needs to be burned, and redone by someone sane.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Just what I need. Another GUI based system that works differently than all other GUI base systems and creates more confusion for my users. This is one thing that M$ does do consistantly and right.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
I prefer the simplicity, I dont like KDE because I dont want to mess with a dozen different settings to get it to feel simple. I have personally outgrown my days of fiddling with everything to get it to work just right. Simple interface with a few annoyances is better than wasting my time trying to get it 100% right instead of 90%
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
We've got gnome 2.16 in the latest nightly buildes (rawhide) of Fedora Core 6, and it will ship in the final FC6 bits when we release in October
This release does not really have many interesting user-visible features, but parts of Gnome are starting to utilize some of the new infrastructure like mono, compositing, cairo, etc. So I think we'll see some much more interesting visible features using that stuff in the next release or maybe the one after that.
Reed
BSD is dead!
"OOTB you have a functional language with a bunch of libraries."
Because everyone knows that after 30 years of being the industry's top dog, C++ doesn't have any libraries yet...
"Personally I think most people that go on and on about how you need C++ for UI programs are either too comfy to learn a new (possibly better) language. Or they just repeat what other people say."
Or they actually understand its power. Heaven forbid. But that's neither here or there: I'm talking to a person that actually advocates the use of a Microsoft standard (C#). Like they'll never abuse that power to further backstab competition. I mean, let's look at their track record here... Yeah, I've stopped expecting people to look at the long run anymore. Whatever.
... and Trolltech are currently previewing Java binding for Qt (with work going towards making them gcj compatible) would this mean that KDE would end up embrasing Java?
Now that would be interesting...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
From what I've gathered (and I admit I may be wrong here), Miguel de Icaza started the Gnome project because he had concerns about licensing with the KDE desktop's use of Qt's widgets. That's fine but what the bloody hell I do not understand is why he has now chosen to integrate the .NET API in to the GNOME desktop and thereby leading everyone in to a potential patent mine field..?!
Little bit of hypocrisy there maybe..?
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I don't see what good having different desktop backgrounds does. I for one never really see my desktop background except for maybe when I first login.
/etc.) associating them with hotkeys is better both in terms of efficiency and mental identification.
The workspace switcher is far more useful because it shows me immediately the content (in an abbreviated form) of all of all the workspaces without my having to switch. And I can even *manage* the content without having to switch. Perhaps it's changed, but not being able to drag-and-drop windows between workspaces from the workspace-switcher was one of the reasons I went with gnome over kde.
And as far as "categorizing" the workspaces (web browsing / programming / music
Not that it isn't cool to have different desktops available, but in my mind it mostly just amounts to a clever gimmick.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Be like that other desktop and call them
Notes application: Gnotes
Menu editor: Megnu editor
Disk usage analyzer: Disk Gnusage Analyzer
video player: Gnideo Player
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Used KDE.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I hate and love Gnome in equal parts. For example - http://www.gnome.org/start/2.16/notes/C/rnusabilit y.html - how the hell can the new permissions dialog be seen as an improvement. It's been made much worse, and I now take more clicks and thought to change permissions. This is plain wrong.
To be fair though, this is probably an isolated case, but they do make at least one blatant cock up per release.
You can either have different wallpapers loading as you switch workspaces (as KDE does) and suffer the delay as it loads. Or you can have them all loaded at login time and watch your memory usage go through the roof if you have more than a handful of workspaces. Seriously, is there a way to implement this that doesn't suck ?
A single wallpaper might be a bit boring. But it's loads more efficient than the alternative.
I just finally gave in and switched from KDE to GNOME.
If Mono is really going to be a requirement for GNOME in the future, I'll switch back to KDE.
And no, I'm not joking.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
For edge flipping and other "positional" controls at the corners of the screen, I assume you are talking about Brightside. It works alongside GNOME 2.14. What more did you need it to do?
For window matching, I assume you are referring to the curiously named Devil's Pie. I did laugh when you mentioned the "overly complex text configurations ... I gave up and just went back to Sawfish." because the configuration files for Devil's Pie are a lisp syntax and Sawfish is entirely configurable with, ummm, oh yes, LISP!
Maybe it's just me but I'd rather be given a full featured language to configure things with first and hope for a neat GUI later. The configs for Devil's Pie aren't really cryptic - here's an example that pins every GAIM window (makes it appear on every workspace) and hides the GAIM windows from the pager to avoid clutter.
Stick that in a file - say ~/.devilspie/matchGaim.ds - and start devilspie. It's that hard :-)
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
still completely dumbed down unusable...
Disclaimer: I used to *heart* gnome and hate KDE. Now, I find Gnome to be more of a PITA than it is worth. I despise Gnome because they have dumbed it down more and more over the years, to the point where it's annoying. I'm surprised they haven't stated "we will now support only one-button mice"
:-p
Does Nautilus still suck? (Windows Explorer sucks. Copying Explorer functionality leads to an Explorer clone that also sucks. Ergo, Nautilus sucks.) I *heart* konqueror because of the zillion extensions I can install, I can tab AND split views, change the view as desired, etc. - in other words, if you need simple, you don't have to worry about it, but if you need advanced functionality to get work done quickly (in other words, your IQ is higher than 70 and you dislike dumbed-down interfaces) you can simply load a different view profile and expose the functionality.
File properties: "simplification" of permissions = hiding advanced permissions? Idiots. The KDE folks got it right a LONG time ago. A Simple view is presented initially, but, if you have half a clue and aren't totally frightened of more options, you can click "Advanced Permissions" and actually get to the advanced view. In their infinite(simal) wisdom, the Gnome folks have decided that everyone is a novice and NO one should have access to a view which is not dumbed down.
File open dialog: Are we still stuck with one single view, along PAINFUL navigation? Can I still not view size and sort by size? No, because having configurable views can confuse some people, so exposing alternate views is made available to NO one. It's like liberal's "tolerance" - promote tolerance by bringing everyone to the LCD, rather than admitting that "tolerance" really just means being mature enough to agree to disagree. Same thing here - Gnome folks are "simplifying" the environment by removing functionality and providing no advanced views.
And Metacity? It is the MacOS of the new millennium. You can have it any way you like, so long as it's dumbed-down, grey and not customizable. OK, you can skin it, but it'll still be dumbed-down and not very configurable.
Of course, some Gnome fanboi will mod this post down anyway so I'll just summarize here: Gnome Sucks (that's sucks with a capital S).
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I don't know how anybody could ever say that KDE is cleaner than GNOME; it's simply not true. I try KDE every 6 months or so, to see if is usuable, but I always end up going back to something else.
GNOME may not have as many features, but I like that. I would be using Xfce, but I like the level of integration the GNOME gives me.
There are two reasons I still use Gnome (2.10 currently):
Themes are easy to handle. Installing a theme in KDE requires actual installation: ./configure, make, make install -- the whole mess. And it frequently doesn't work. In Gnome, it's true drag-and-drop.
To then actually use a theme is also a pain in KDE. There are a million different places to change all the different things, and it's quite difficult to find what I actually want to change.
It's also far, far easier to edit themes myself in Gnome. I just go into the file, find the appropriate image file and change it in GIMP or whatever. In KDE, this is again a huge pain. I don't want to have to recompile a theme in order to change the scroll bar colors!
Non-English fonts are handled far better in Gnome. I run Linux in Traditional Chinese, so this is quite important to me. No matter which font settings I try in KDE, some characters show up as little black circles. This means I can't even read all my menu selections. In Gnome, they all show up quite nicely.
There may be a place to change these fonts in KDE, but I've never seen it, and so I'm stuck with poor Chinese handling. This problem also seems to spill over into the Mandriva menus, where some titles are completely illegible, but at least I don't have to deal with those all the time.
> Much better than the simple "move to next object whose name starts with the letter you've just pressed" in Windows Explorer.
... but since Explorer doesn't do it, I don't expect to see it in Gnome either. God forbid a preference is offered to change between behaviors (selecting vs narrowing), as that would give the user a choice.
I use select-by-typing all the time in Windows Explorer, and it simply does not behave like this at all, at least in Windows XP. When I type the first several letters of a filename, it in fact selects that file. Only after a timeout has passed does it revert to treating the next key as the first letter. This seems like sensible behavior.
I for one would like Nautilus to be able to actually narrow the displayed files as I type or select a pattern of files, perhaps based on a prefix key
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Did I ask what you did to circumvent the problem?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Please let discuss the features.
I see some improovments and drawbacks, but not too much.
Looking forward to:
- Alt+3 shortcut for Deskbar (much needed)
- Improved virtual desktop features (good enough already)
- The new evolution
- And totem.
Dispointed by:
- The new permissions change interface:
This is GNOME using a BAAAD idea just to copycat apple. Although KDE had this layout since before OS X, i always prefered GNOME's permision grid, it was sooo much more intuitive *because* it provided all the information there and you could change it with a single click. Now it takes the whole screen to fit this huge dialog where the permissions are spread and is difficult to quickly guess (abd later change) what permission should the file have.
- C# tainting core GNOME:
Correct me if I'm wrong but, MS has yet to publicy declare that it will never use C# pattents to hurt free sofware. What's a compromised framework doing in the official GNOME distribution?
With news of a MS guy getting into Mozilla, Mozilla guys gettion into MS offices, and C# getting into GNOME, the possibility that we are seeing an organized trojan operation is becoming more and more plausible.
But... the future refused to change.
This is entirely personal preference, of course - many people hate KDE and prefer GNOME. But I find it easier to tolerate sKillions of irritatinK shiny rotatingK iKons (in SVG of course) than GNOME's attitude of "We know where you're going today. Stop trying to reach the straps."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
An X window manager does not have enough information to do this sensibly and reliably. Yes, you can do crude stuff like matching on window titles, but then what happens if you start multiple instances, or if windows have the same titles, or what if the app contains "embedded" windows (MDI style)? Hell, IIRC it's even impossible for a window manager to reliably determine if a window that has just popped up belongs to an application which has other open windows.
HAND.
The difference between C# and C++ with respect to parsing is that in C++ you can generate the full parser code at compile time (see Boost.Spirit) and have that code be optimized by the compiler; in C# the best you can hope for is to generate parsing tables at runtime and using a small static parser kernel for actually interpreting those tables. That is, in C++ you can get static guarantees whereas you cannot in C#. Furthermore, performance is likely better if you generate parser code instead of generating tables and using a small kernel of code to traverse/interpret those tables. (Disclaimer: I'm not familiar enough with C# to know whether one could generate 'custom' parser code at runtime using reflection. However, that would definitely not be for the faint of heart.)
;).
That's not say C++ doesn't have problems: The template syntax is horrible, the standard library is... lacking if you "just want to get things done". However, the generic programming approach used by the STL is pure genius. Yes, it's verbose, but if you use iterators properly you can make all your code almost completely container-agnostic -- thus making tuning much easier. Unless you have _very_ tight constraints, Boost is also a must for any serious C++ project. In particular, shared_ptr, weak_ptr, function, bind() and boost::variant make C++ programming much more painless and safe. In my experience generic programming is also far superior to the OOP approach so blindly accepted by Java/C# users. And who knows, maybe we'll finally even get sane error messages for generic programs with C++0x
HAND.
Because everyone is a newbie in the beginning and some turn out allright?
If you get someone submitting patches which suck either tell them what's wrong (so they get better faster) or just don't use the patches.
Of course C++ has libraries. It has a ton of them and a lot of them do the same things but slightly differently.
That makes it a daunting task for a newcomer as you have a lot of APIs to sort through. There is also a very real chance that you just can't find a library that's out there which you need.
No, it's not a "Microsoft standard" it's A standard. And let's look at their track record, how many of the things they have submitted to ECMA have they later tried to remove? Seriously, it's people like you that are spraying FUD all over the place in this case.
Naturally C#/Mono will not be identical to C#/.Net as the
No, it means that people will use C# expecting it to be cross platform and find out otherwise. Just like the stuff Microsoft pulled with their JVM. It's the standard "embrace and extend" stuff all over again. "It's cross platform... but you can't do this unless it's on windows..."
Hey, I have no problem spreading FUD about Microsoft as long as it's factual which this is. Microsoft's track record grants them no credibility when it comes to standards even if it's out of their control. Put a standard in their control (like C#... ) and it's completely nieve to believe they'll be trustworthy with it.