Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Gnome 2.18 Released

Posted by samzenpus on from the brand-spanking-new dept.

xdancergirlx writes "Gnome 2.18 was released today (on time as usual). Detailed release notes are available. Nothing revolutionary in this release but definitely some nice new features, bug fixes, and improvements."

35 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Gnome by xaositects · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gnome 2.18: Nothing special really, just somewhat improved infravision, an extra +10 bonus to detect uneven grades, worked out some bugs in the "failure to run from big scary trolls due to lack of common sense" department. Should be a somewhat more usable gnome.

  2. Gnome 2.18 with performance improvements! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks to those I got first post!

    1. Re:Gnome 2.18 with performance improvements! by Mikachu · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hah, first post. Bet you wish you were using KDE now, don't you. ;)

  3. Did they include... by Daemonik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Linus' usability patches?

    http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/16/19372 37

    1. Re:Did they include... by muszek · · Score: 5, Informative

      AFAIR they haven't, because they were submitted after the feature freeze (or some other kind of a freeze). Don't quote me on that, my memory is a tricy thing.

    2. Re:Did they include... by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How do I know? I've looked. Yesterday I even fixed it. I sent the patches off to add the capabilities. It's a shame he didn't, ya know, attach the patches to his email.. this whole "contribute it to the maintainer" crap is the problem with open source. If you see something you don't like, sure, contribute it to the maintainer to get fixed.. but if the maintainer drops your patch on the floor, don't go cry on the mailing lists, just make your patch publically available so other people who want the same feature as you don't have to recode it themselves. Jesus, Linus should know better.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    3. Re:Did they include... by macshit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Linus' patches don't "fix" anything.

      They remove an unnecessary and artificial restriction -- and also apparently simplify the code, which is always a good thing.

      they add one feature.. in particular, the ability to configure left, right and middle click to do what you like. Which, ya know, is useful to like 3 people.

      It sounds pretty useful to me... Obviously the MS-raised proles will never use it, but many more clueful people use Gnome too ("like, ya know").

      --
      We live, as we dream -- alone....
    4. Re:Did they include... by Wdomburg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. But some variant of the patches are in trunk for the next release. It really just adds a config option though. Not as big a deal as the brouhaha would suggest. :)

    5. Re:Did they include... by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 4, Funny

      The Gnome file dialog can turn anyone into a jackass.

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
  4. Priorities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Personal security is now fully integrated into the desktop, allowing digitally signed communications, encryption of emails and local files, and user-friendly management of personal keys. Internationalization records progress in all directions, with support for vertical text layout and a full Arabic localization matching the quality standards. The official release incorporates essential tools for developers, which hopefully will contribute to get more and better software for the GNOME users.

    What's more important, for the first time we ship online games, chess with a 3D look, and endless Sudoku entertainment.

    Good thing we've got our priorities straight.

    1. Re:Priorities by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Obviously they're being facetious.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
  5. I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I use both KDE and GNOME on a regular basis. I really don't have a preference either way; both allow me to get my work done well enough. But what I've noticed is that with each KDE release, it feels significantly more responsive than the previous releases. I can't say the same with GNOME. If anything, it seems to be getting slower as time goes on. I use OpenBSD, so I end up compiling all of the packages myself. I use the optimal C and C++ compiler flags for my particular system. It's not a matter of my using KDE packages built with a more recent version of GCC, or something like that.

    In any case, earlier today I built GNOME 2.18 on my system. I've been using it for a few hours now. And compared to the KDE 3.5.6 installation I was using earlier today, I think it's significantly slower. Evolution is far more heavy-weight than KMail. Nautilus takes longer to display directories. I have one directory with about 15000 photos in it. Nautilus crashes when viewing it, while with Konqueror I can easily scroll through the thumbnails within about a second.

    Maybe it's just a quality control problem with GNOME. While I don't follow the development mailing lists very closely, I've heard from co-workers that GNOME is suffering from some pretty serious organizational issues. Low-quality code is being accepted into GTK+ and GNOME itself, and many people are noticing a decrease in its quality as of late. Maybe somebody can shed more light on whether or not these rumors are true?

    1. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bug reports welcome. :-)

    2. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by yoyhed · · Score: 3, Funny

      And on top of all that, KDE is more configurable!

      --
      WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
    3. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by thephotoman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The biggest problem I have with GNOME as a user is Evolution. Simply put, Evolution needs to be scrapped in favor of something else. Its Exchange functionality is non-functional, and its calendar could be easily replaced by something else. Why not just do what they did with the default browser and fork from Mozilla? Surely, it'd suck less.

      Nautilus is in dire need of a code audit, just to ensure that everything in there is up to par. Hells, if I were in charge at GNOME, I'd probably stop developing new features in Nautilus and work on the audit for the next cycle.

      Honestly, though, the one thing that hurts GNOME the most is the six month release cycle. If they'd even just use a single one-year release cycle, just to clean things up, they'd be in much better shape.

      All that said, though, GNOME is my desktop. It's what I learned first, and honestly, KDE's configurability just scares me. Also, I remember too well a time when KDE looked like shit out of the box. Thankfully, that's no longer a problem.

      --
      Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
    4. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and honestly, KDE's configurability just scares me
      I used to be the exact same way. However, a few years ago I decided to sit down and configure KDE to my liking. Now that I've done so, I wouldn't even consider going back to Gnome. If you use your computer for hours every day, I would strongly suggest spending a bit of time to configure KDE. The relatively small amount of time it takes to configure everything to your liking is well worth it. In my opinion, it's a much better desktop environment and practically every KDE application is far beyond its Gnome counterpart.

      Also, with the focus on Mono applications, Gnome seems to be getting slower and even more bloated with every release.
    5. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by phrasebook · · Score: 5, Funny

      KDE's configurability just scares me

      I know what you mean. I had to configure my background in KDE once. Christ, it gave me THREE options! 'No picture', 'Picture' and 'Slide show'. I mean, WTF? I'm not a rocket surgeon.

      Then I wanted Konqueror to open links in tabs. People are right when they say KDE has a cluttered interface. It dragged me into Settings, then into something called Web Behaviour, and then forced me to click the box saying 'Open links in new tab'. After that I had to rest with 2 hours of TV.

    6. Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements. by mr_sas · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's one mono program in the default install (tomboy) and it's not running by default.

  6. Knome skin by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The big change is they went to a Knome skin that makes it look like KDE.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  7. Re:Yawn by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Riiiiight.. cause that summary really screamed hype to me. I see you got modded up too, moderators can't even be bothered reading the summary now?

    Fuckin' Slashdot.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  8. Nothing revolutionary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    As usual too ;)

    1. Re:Nothing revolutionary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, I'm disappointed, too. From other software projects we've gotten used to 2.17 -> 2.18 transitions to be cataclysmic, jaw dropping and quite simply awe inspiring. The GNOME project has really let us down here...

  9. Re:I wonder if they took Linus's patches? by Monkey_Genius · · Score: 3, Funny

    Does he have a problem quitting?

    --
    I've got your sig, right here.
  10. Re:Yawn by radarsat1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nothing revolutionary in this release but definitely some nice new features, bug fixes, and improvements.


    Yeah, god, I just can't STAND all this hype.
  11. Re:Underpants gnome? by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was wondering where my tidy-whities went...

    It's 'tighty'. Those things definitely aren't 'tidy' after you leave that nice racing stripe in them.

  12. That's Nice by dduardo · · Score: 3, Insightful
    So, when are we going to see smart and innovative desktops that dramatically improve user friendliness?

    Just as some examples:
    • As an end-user why can't I extend applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another? i.e. Dragging a search box from one app to another.
    • I have 1000s of photographs. How can these images be automatically categorized and displayed most effectively without having to manually add meta-data. It should be sorting images by looking at similarities between pictures, date taken and other automatically generated information
    • I have 1000s of mp3s. How can these songs be automatically categorized by mood, tempo, etc without manually entering in meta-data? Think of it as Pandora with your own music collection.
    These are some of the type of things that would make using a computer easier to use.

    Are open source desktop developers so focused on trying to make it "easy" for Windows user to convert they get Microsoft tunnel vision and can't innovate?

    It's the year 2007 and we have desktops with the same intelligence as those back in the early 80's.
    1. Re:That's Nice by imboboage0 · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's the year 2007 and we have desktops with the same intelligence as those back in the early 80's.
      Yeah, but the people got worse.


      *ducks*
      --
      Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
    2. Re:That's Nice by module0000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your suggestions such as "extending applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another" is unfortunately not possible with our current(or dreamed-about) tech. Great concept, kudos for that, but the "frame" all desktop computing operates from just does not allow for this. You are not suggesting improvements to "desktop linux", but you are speaking of changes to desktop computing as a whole, across all platforms; it's not that 'easy', I wish it was. Concerning your suggestion about organizing photographs by similarities...this is not so impossible. It's not particularly easy once again, but a very rudimentary sorting algorithm could be conceived from light conditions, hard lines(etc a persons profile), this could be worked on. As far as the mp3's...I'm afraid that entirely too subjective to the person listening to them. My mood and tempo desires may differ and most likely do, from yours, and yours from your neighbors. This is a question of personal preference, and I don't see mp3 players administering a standardized personality test to guess at your flavor of mood, out of the X number of popular mood categories. Last but not least...I'm afraid there were no desktop os's HOME users even had access to in the *early 80's*. You could go banging over Xerox's door for their machine, or maybe even dear Mr. Gates'. However, in the early 80's, such hardware would cost you [somewhere near] $30,000? More?

      --
      Trackball users will be first against the wall.
  13. Re:Yawn by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    The way the post hyped it up, I was expecting something actually exciting.

    WTF? The post even says "Nothing revolutionary in this release".

    If that's hype, you must suffer from spontaneous ejeculation at a repubrocrats/demican rally.

    --
    There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
  14. Re:Scroll Wheel by muszek · · Score: 3, Informative

    System -> Preferences -> Mouse
    I'm using Ubuntu 6.10 with Gnome 2.16

  15. 3D Chess is everywhere! by pizzach · · Score: 5, Funny

    With the release of GNOME 2.18, it appears there has been a change in the playing field. In order to be considered to a full fledged modern OS, a Three-Dee Chess program must be included with every new operating system. The Release of Mac OS X seems to have started this trend. Microsoft soon followed suit with Windows Vista. Now there is Gnome. Will KDE be pulled into this madness, or will it fall behind into oblivion?!

    Apple Chess

    Windows Chess

    GNOME Chess

    Feel free to flog me now.

    --
    Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
  16. GNOME, Ubuntu, and the colour green... by babbling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm looking at this screenshot and thinking that it looks quite good. People often complain about the brown in Ubuntu being "ugly", and Ubuntu has stated that they don't want to be "just like Windows" by going for blue. Well, based on that screenshot, I think green would be a good choice.

  17. Re:It has nearly caught up to KDE......... by thule · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the thing they were going for in gnome is to start integrating, not just password management, but identity management. Thus, Gnome's new feature manages both gpg and ssh keys.

  18. That's Not Release Notes by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's not "detailed release notes", that's marketing spin. Release notes would mention specific apps, like evolution, and specific fixes, not just buzzwords and superficial brags about how the experience is better.

    Such marketsprach has its place. But the release notes are even more important. And even more important is not pretending that marketsprach is release notes.

    If GNOME release managers don't release that by themselves, then the project is in serious trouble.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  19. Gnome 2.18 Released by baomike · · Score: 3, Funny

    and with any luck it wont come back.