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GNOME 2.20 Released
Gimli writes "GNOME 2.20 has been officially released. There are a number of enhancements and improvements to things such as power management, Evince (the GNOME document view), Totem (the video player), and note-taking application Tomboy. There are also some changes to GNOME's configuration utilities with an eye towards streamlining them. The timing is impeccable, too: 'This release coincides with the tenth anniversary of GNOME's existence. The project has evolved considerably since its earliest incarnation and has become a global phenomenon. Used as the default environment in popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, GNOME is widely used by Linux desktop users and is supported by a growing community of companies and independent developers. GNOME 2.20 will be included in the next major releases of many mainstream Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 7.10, which is scheduled for release next month. Users who wish to try it now can use the latest Ubuntu 7.10 live CD images, or the latest build of Foresight Linux. You can also check out the release notes."
Gnome 2.20 has better power management? I never thought that was the job of the desktop environment. I thought it was just to supply some form of UI for the user. I understand that GNOME would have to give some details, to either the kernel, or some module about user activity, and the like but wouldn't think the the desktop environment just dealt with power management itself. Can someone clue me into how this works?
Including a minor tool for a trivial task which takes as much memory as the rest of core Gnome together is something I can't really understand. It's the only part of Gnome proper which uses mono -- so why do they bother shipping it?
Of course, asking whether major annoyances like new windows opening on whatever workspace you're currently on instead of the one they were started have been fixed is kind of pointless...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
See, that's why I put the parenthetical in there, I am a programmer, but I'd prefer 2 features that both work right to 1,000 that half work. To me, the latter is morally equivalent to lying. Although Gnome absolutely has its share of problems, it's well ahead of KDE as far as actually working. I keep an updated KDE installed on my desktop and check it out at least every 6 months--mostly because Gnome isn't good enough either, but it's the best I can find. The thing is, I jump into KDE, and within a half hour I've found four things that don't work, cause crashes, silently fail, or just suck (by just suck I mean unresponsiveness, the crappy menu transparency and shadows that are off by a couple pixels that's completely different from the crappy window transparency, which isn't even consistent in itself!).
As for the list of junk I rattled off for Gnome, yeah, you got me, that's just what I remember from when I was going to help out with the project a few years ago. After realizing that I'd have to learn 40 different, sometimes incompatible, often redundant frameworks, I decided my time would be better spent elsewhere. And yeah, I do have something that will be coming out Real Soon Now (had to take a break from programming due to tendinitis in the wrist that's still bothering me to this day) but the point is, Gnome looks like it does not because all that crap actually helps out, but because 50 different people had a Great Idea.
No, wait, there is no point. Oh! Here's one: A project as big as a desktop environment that needs to be extremely consistent throughout, needs a Linus. It needs one guy to be the benevolent dictator, because right now it looks like anyone can get any old thing in there. Tomboy a C# app? wtf? It's not complicated, it's an applet, a couple borderless windows, and a simple WebDAV client, all of which I'd bet lots of money Gnome already has libraries for. It could be just as easily implemented in C, and a halfway experienced Gnome developer could implement it, with all of its current features, in probably a week or less. I'm halfway tempted to take a week of vacation and do it myself just to prove a point.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
off topic: On my via epia xfce is actually slower than KDE.
The problem with xfce or gnome is not the choice they made per se, but the fact that you can't actually get out of them. If you happen to be a person that don't fit what they see as a regular user and what is good for you, you just can't have a good experience with their desktop.
So yes, the KDE control center is crammed with features, but I only know and use those that I need and I have turned the desktop into a wonderfull, simple and sane experience for me. A thing that I can't do with GNOME, XFCE or any Windows.
And before you actually dismisses me as a KDE fanboy: I was a GNOME user prior to their stance on "forced down your throat" usability. I had also all "regular users" I knows of try the GNOME desktop so that I don't force my choice on them and they all prefer KDE. So this is not a representative panel, it's just a familym but they are supposedly the target of this usability choice, but either because its defaults are windows like (wife used windows at work before they switched to Linux), either because they can turn it into a strange unbearable carnival of colors (youngsters), either because they can drag and drop all their heart between applications (grand parents) or because I can heavily customise it to suit my day to day work, everybody chose to use KDE.
I'm sorry, but when I use the console it doesnt force me to use that command to another because it's "THE right way to do it", I can choose whichever I see fit for the job and pipe them into an unthought of combination.
That's the part I like about the unix philosophy.
To me the GNOME usability choice were not made to suit the users, but to suit the helpdesks. Users are versatile, I dislike and I'm even worried by this computer behavior which asks the user to fits the system and not the other way around.
However, I also have the flexibility to customise it to be productive for me.
KDE is also more functional than Gnome. Genuinely useful panel applets, preview, tabbing and split window functionality in Konqueror, etc. are actually very useful.
I like the elegance of Gnome, so I have tried it several times. I find it less functional, and a lot of functionality works less well (compare opening a directory over sftp in Konqueror and Nautilus, for example).