Gnome 2.22 Released

kie writes "The latest version of the Gnome Desktop is being released today. New features in 2.22 include Cheese (an application for webcam photos and videos), window compositing, PolicyKit integration and much more. The full details are in the Release Notes."

Comments

Well now we know

[garett_spencley]

It was Gnome who cut the Cheese.

Sorry.

That explains it.

[pushing-robot]

Gnome 2.22 Released

I was wondering where it came from.

Re:That explains it.

[wanderingknight]

LOLOLOLOL! That's old news, buddy! The "green midget", as it was called by the sensationalistic local press, hasn't been talked about here since 2000 or so.

Re:Window Compositing?

[calebt3]

Nevermind - Drop shadows and transparency, for now.

Evolution actually working?

[BlackCreek]

BTW, does Gnome now allows switching the spelling language of an application during the use of it?

Like switching the spell checker of a chat session during the chat session? Or the assumption is still that everybody only ever uses one language at a time.

Seriously. I'm not flaming, I mean to ask the question. One of the reasons I stopped using Gnome, after many years using it, was that in order to use a Dutch spell checker in Gaim, I had to restart Gaim using a dutch locale environment (and be stuck with a Dutch spell checker for the rest of that Gaim instance).

Re:Evolution actually working?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution can switch spelling on-the-fly, and even do multiple language spelling.

pidgin however still has the problems you describe, the FAQ/help has the following to say about that
----
How do I change the language for the Highlight Misspelled words option?

Pidgin currently only supports spell checking in your locale language. This is because gtkspell 2 does not offer a good way for us to know which dictionaries are available or to switch between them. This functionality has long been promised for gtkspell version 3, which has been delayed somewhat indefinitely. See gtkspell.sf.net.

There is, however a simple plugin called switchspell that can change the spell check language on a per-buddy basis.
----
http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Pidgin

Re:Evolution actually working?

[erroneus]

Another responder has posted the same response I was about to offer.

You can use a variety of methods, but often I just open a terminal, type "export LANG=en_US.UTF-8" or whatever locale you want to switch to and then run the program from there by typing the program's name.

If only there were a property to allow setting the locale in the shortcut/launcher thing...

I too find it annoying that only one language may be used at a time, but you know it's worse with Apple and MacOS X... I recently set up a Mac Mini with OS X.5. I selected Japanese as the language and when it came to registering the product, it would not let me enter a U.S. address for my home! Apple, for whatever reason, assumes that since I want to use Japanese as the language interface that I must live in Japan. What a preposterous assumption?!

Re:Evolution actually working?

[JanneM]

BTW, does Gnome now allows switching the spelling language of an application during the use of it? I don't think spellchecking functionality is a desktop-wide feature by itself; I think it will depend on the application how exactly it is implemented. I do know that Gedit, the standard editor, does allow you to set the language on a per-document basis at runtime. No idea on Gaim.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

If only there were a property to allow setting the locale in the shortcut/launcher thing...

You should be able to do this with a tiny script. Not quite as simple as the launcher GUI, but not bad. Simply create in your home directory (or wherever you like):

#!/bin/sh

LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pidgin

And call it "pidgin-en_US". Make it executable and set the launcher to use that script to launch pidgin and you should be good to go.

Better still, if the launcher config lets you give arguments to the program you tell it to execute (I think you can), you can make just one script:

#!/bin/sh

LANG=$1 pidgin

Call it "pidgin-lang" and in the launcher, set it to execute "/home/foo/pidgin-lang en_US.UTF-8" or whatever other language you want.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[qwer_tea]

Pidgin (formerly known as Gaim) uses your locale language for spell checking.

There is, however, a third-party plugin called switchspell that allows you to switch the spell checking language on a contact-by-contact basis.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[Daengbo]

Not trying to flame here, but Pidgin/GAIM is not a Gnome app, so the question you asked can't really be answered. In fact, Empathy (based on the Telepathy framework) was set to be the default chat client for 2.22, but it didn't make the final cut. It's still slated for 2.24. When that happens, we'll have well-integrated text, voice, and video chat. Yipee!!

Re:Evolution actually working?

[BlackCreek]

Not trying to flame here, but Pidgin/GAIM is not a Gnome app, so the question you asked can't really be answered. In fact, Empathy (based on the Telepathy framework) was set to be the default chat client for 2.22, but it didn't make the final cut. It's still slated for 2.24. When that happens, we'll have well-integrated text, voice, and video chat. Yipee!!

And my question probably got marked "off-topic" by some Gnome zealot because of that.

I understand your point that Gaim/Pidgin is not a official Gnome app, but you should reckon that for years, what everyone (using Gnome) had for IM was Gaim/Pidgin. As you mention yourself, Empathy still doesn't exist (from the perspective of a user). I mean which IM client do I get if I install the most popular Gnome distribution (Ubuntu), I get Pidgin. Is there any major distribution, installing a IM client with Gnome, which is not installing Pidgin?

So honestly, I think that asking about the state of what in practice is what people get for IM client when using Gnome, to be pretty "on-topic". Otherwise the honest answer would be along the lines of "We expect to have a great IM client on Gnome 2.24 but, for various reasons, Gnome 2.22 doesn't even have a IM client" (Or there is a default IM client set on 2.22, and nobody is telling me?)

Re:Evolution actually working?

[erroneus]

Awesome. I didn't know you could do that from such a line. I have always thought in terms of one line, one command or function. The idea that it would move on to execute whatever came behind it would have never occurred to me. I went ahead to create a short launch script rather like your second example, but rather than set the LANG variable, I specified the locale and use $* as the argument so I can specify the program and parameters to run. Now I can just modify any and every launcher I wish to run in an alternate language by pre-pending the launcher script name. Sweet.

Love learning new useful stuff like that.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[petermgreen]

you could but with many protocols you can't use the same account from multiple clients at once and even with protocols where you can getting duplicates of every message would get annoying rather quickly.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[Constantine XVI]

On the topic of Evolution, does it have IMAP-IDLE push support yet? If it does, I'm moving to Hardy this instant, regardless of driver breakage

Re:Evolution actually working?

[pizzach]

I personally realized that was possible when I saw the Gentoo example of 'USE="-esd" emerge gnome'. But still this is a hack to a larger problem. What is the point of having your local in a different language if you have to change it back to get the appropriate dictionaries?

Re:Evolution actually working?

[Just Some Guy]

I don't think spellchecking functionality is a desktop-wide feature by itself; I think it will depend on the application how exactly it is implemented.

That isn't right, is it? Please tell me that's not right. KDE has Kspell (KDE3) and Sonnet (KDE4) for implementing system-wide spellchecking in every app that cares to link it. OS X has system-wide spellchecking. I'm reasonably sure that Windows has system-wide spellchecking. Surely Gnome has also managed this, hasn't it?

Re:Evolution actually working?

[MSG]

Or you can set up a launcher that executes:

"env LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pidgin" ...and skip the ridiculous shell script entirely.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[psmears]

Better still, can't you just have something like:

/bin/env LANG=en_US.UTF-8 pidgin

as the command to launch, and not use a shell script at all?

Re:Evolution actually working?

[immcintosh]

Why would it need to when there are perfectly good, widely used, third party spell checkers available (aspell)? Tell me, exactly, what the point would be in integrating it with a desktop environment, where this functionality is clearly not specific to that environment (many console programs use spell checking as well), other than to bloat that environment.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[Just Some Guy]

Tell me, exactly, what the point would be in integrating it with a desktop environment, where this functionality is clearly not specific to that environment (many console programs use spell checking as well), other than to bloat that environment.

The point would be to avoid bloat. Why should 20 programs have 20 different wrappers around aspell instead of having one common wrapper that each of the programs call? In OS X, a program installs itself as a service, and you can run that service on any highlighted text in any program on the system. Each program gets speech synthesis, language translation, formatting, and other goodies "for free" without any additional overhead or programming. In what way is that not a worthy ideal?

Re:Evolution actually working?

[RAMMS EIN]

``BTW, does Gnome now allows switching the spelling language of an application during the use of it?''

WTF?! You mean that this has not been working? I'm amazed...

Re:Evolution actually working?

[immcintosh]

I'm not really sure what you mean by "wrapper" in this context. To use aspell, all an application needs to do is link to libaspell.so, which provides spell checking services and already is the one common wrapper that every application calls. Beyond that, I guess you could automatically spell check common GTK widgets (check out the gtk-spell package for that), but any custom built text interfaces will have to have some kind of custom wrapper around whatever library they use anyway.

Re:Evolution actually working?

[ta bu shi da yu]

Um, no. The standard editor is ed, as any fule kno.

Evidently uses the default editor.

Yeah, but...

[iknownuttin]

does it run Linux? Oh, wait, ummmm, shit! I really suck at karma whoring....

Re:Yeah, but...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

you both suck at karma whoring... wait ... why am I karma whoring too?

Re:Yeah, but...

[cptnapalm]

...and I for one welcome our new karma whoring overlords!

Will there be ponies?

Re:Yeah, but...

[RuBLed]

Yes... and cakes.

Re:Yeah, but...

[LingNoi]

The cake was a lie you insensitive clod!

Re:Yeah, but...

[joaommp]

In soviet russia, lies cake you.

KISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Fitting with GNOME's "keeping it simple" policy

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Re:KISS

[ReinoutS]

What you mean I cannot have a preview when selecting an image to attach?!) You can, but it's up to the app to enable this. As a matter of fact, Epiphany 2.22 just gained an image preview in the file chooser.

Re:Not faster...

[baadger]

GNOME (Or more accurately GTK+, glib, Cairo and X) has got faster steadily since the GNOME 2.12 days. GTK+s UI's are just as snappy for me as Qt equivalents. I noticed significant improvements after several video/X driver updates and updates to Cairo 1.4.x (from 1.2.x).

Try this:

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw, but I just got done compiling Gnome 2.20!

love, a Gentoo user

Gnome & KDE

[RiotingPacifist]

suxxors, wind... i cant do this anymore...*bang*

Re:Gnome & KDE

[fireman sam]

One down, now if only we can get the "vi versus emacs" folks to do the same.

Re:Gnome & KDE

[jcast]

Maybe we should shoot for more realistic goals. Like acceptance of Emacs' superiority.

Re:Gnome & KDE

[Mad Merlin]

Maybe we should shoot for more realistic goals. Like acceptance of Emacs' superiority.

Well, Emacs is a nice OS and all, but what it really needs is a good text editor.

Re:Gnome & KDE

[Constantine XVI]

I hear viper-mode's coming along nicely. Haven't checked recently since I don't dual-boot much.

Re:Gnome & KDE

[jcast]

Emacs is the only OS more systematically mis-used than Linux. I think if most VI users tried using Emacs properly, they'd be surprised; in VIM, you end up hitting ESC every time you'd hit Ctrl in Emacs.

Re:Gnome & KDE

[Archwyrm]

When I am using vi(m), I press ctrl+[ which produces the same key code as escape. =)

Re:Gnome & KDE

[jcast]

Sure, I have a co-worker who does that. I still don't see how C-[ j i is easier than C-n, though.

Gnome 2 for 22

[ross.w]

Also known as the Richie Benaud release

Re:At least it's a real release! *cough* KDE4 *cou

[Erik Hensema]

Yes, we all know gnome 2.0 was a marvel of engineering.

Huzzah!

[IBBoard]

Now to wait for Fedora 9 so I can more easily update :) I tried pointing Smart at the Development repos for the Gnome RC but there isn't a way to say "upgrade all Gnome" - no meta package or anything that I saw - so I didn't feel like doing it package by package.

I've yet to see the point of Cheese as a 'main Gnome' app, though.

Re:Huzzah!

[RAMMS EIN]

``I tried pointing Smart at the Development repos for the Gnome RC but there isn't a way to say "upgrade all Gnome" - no meta package or anything that I saw - so I didn't feel like doing it package by package.''

Maybe you should file a feature request for that. On Debian, I have "gnome" and "gnome-desktop-environment". I suppose installing either one of those would give me a complete Gnome installation.

Re:Huzzah!

[IBBoard]

Yum has the option to do it by package group like that, so it is possible, just not from Smart. Unfortunately the Fedora team have set the dependencies up in such a way that you can't just get the new Gnome from Fedora 9 dev and install it on Fedora 8, it ends up updating a huge swathe of other stuff as well that effectively leaves you with a Fedora 9 install.

Re:At least it's a real release! *cough* KDE4 *cou

[MrHanky]

At least it was feature complete.

Re:Window Compositing?

[petermgreen]

the traditional way to do a windowed gui was to limit each apps drawing area so that it could only draw within it's own window and force the app to redraw stuff when it's visibility changed. This system has the advantage of being light on ram and being low on CPU when windows aren't moving. However moving windows is a relatively expensive process both because of the need to ask apps to redraw and the need to actually move data arround in the screen buffer (this is why many older systems use a dotted box drawn with XOR to indicate window moving and only move the window when the user has chosen the final location). Also it is virtually impossible to support any kind of partial transparency or rotozooming under this system and even non rectangular windows are a pain.

3D games work in a totally different way. They work with a (large) set of textures and the scene is redrawn every frame building up from the back to the front and rotozooming everything into place. This makes transparency, drop shadows etc fairly easy and of course rotozooming is a fundamental requirement of a 3D game.

A compositing window system (afaict under X this requires support from both X itself and the window manager) draws each window into it's own buffer and then treats that as a texture. Then a frame for the screen is built up in much the same way a 3D game builds up a frame. This enables all sorts of effects from simple stuff like drop shadows and inverted colors to advanced stuff like a window selector that shows a thumbnail of each window or a desktop selector that puts the different desktops on the surface of a cube. Different window managers will obviously choose to use theese capabilities to different extents and in different ways.

Growing to like it

[free space]

In general, I agree with the camp that hates making GUI's too simple and limited. Yet I'm using Gnome now because it's the default in Ubuntu and because of I work with Mono which uses Gtk, and spending some time with Gnome made me gradually like it.

It could be because I was lucky enough to find the features I want in place so that I wasn't bitten by the "too much minimalism" problem. I don't have much need for sound, printing or the like and 90% of my time are spent in either firefox, monodevelop or a text editor.

Also, the Tomboy note taker rules. I wish something like it was in Windows. This must be a milestone where a user begins to dislike working on Windows and prefers Linux because of an application.

Re:Growing to like it

[LWATCDR]

I used to be a KDE fan but I too have really grown to like Gimp on Ubuntu.
It really is getting to the mythical Apple "Just works". So far the things that tick me off have all be legal and not technical. The stupid command line step that you have to do to get Decss working so you can watch DVDs is the big one.
I really like FSpot and hope that they get it to be a little more stable soon. I am thinking about adding a feature to it when I have some spare time.
The one application that keeps me going back to Windows right now is Microsoft Flight Simulator.
I can honestly say that Ubuntu seems to be very usable for most people right now. The only issues are with stupid leagal foulup and a lack in some software categories. I would love TurboCad or Solidworks for Linux as well as FSX. OpenOffice is good enough for what I do and Quicken on-line has solved one of the road blocks for my wife..

Re:Growing to like it

[mechsoph]

I would love TurboCad or Solidworks for Linux as well as FSX.

Pro/E supports Linux

Re:Growing to like it

[LWATCDR]

That is great.
Hope they do well. Now if I could just get a version for under $200 for home use I would be all set :)

Re:Growing to like it

[RAMMS EIN]

I don't hate Gnome anymore. The beauty of unices is that you can choose the GUI that best suits you. It seems that more developers realize that, too, and don't require you to install large parts of Gnome just to run a simple GUI. I don't know if Gnome is still as much of a resource hog as it used to be, but I don't care anymore: my applications work without it, so I don't have to use it. It's there for those who want it, and those who don't want it can do without it. It doesn't get any better than that.

I also think Gnome developers are doing a lot of cool things.

Re:Growing to like it

[RAMMS EIN]

``I can honestly say that Ubuntu seems to be very usable for most people right now. The only issues are with stupid leagal foulup''

Perhaps there should be a "free world" edition of Ubuntu, aimed at parts of the world where the legal restrictions on the "existing, but not provided by default for legal reasons" pieces do not apply.

So that, say, people outside the USA can play MP3s out of the box.

Re:At least it's a real release! *cough* KDE4 *cou

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for 'remove everything in the name of usability' values of feature complete, anyway. :P

Re:Window Compositing?

[AvitarX]

The biggest thing (from a basic user perspective) is that when you drag one window over another you don't get a nasty dragging/bluring problem. It will pave the way for more advanced stuff later on (semi-transparent window dragging for example).

I imagine metacity will be lighter weight than compiz too.

Black screen

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Hmmm, this would explain why I just got a black screen with a mouse pointer when I logged in this morning. :/

Latest GNOME

[marco75]

Will there finally be a way to give my user account admin privileges? I mean, like in Windows XP, so I don't have to type in the fucking password every time I do anything? This is easily the most aggravating feature of Linux, since the first month I spent on an new distro I am doing nothing but config stuff. On a related note, what's the point of the keyring applet -- it stores your passwords... but every time it is used, it makes you type in yet another password. What's the point of that?

Re:Latest GNOME

[niteice]

I mean, like in Windows XP, so I don't have to type in the fucking password every time I do anything?

Now explain to me why Windows is the biggest malware target.

Re:Latest GNOME

[BrianGKUAC]

I'm having a hard time telling if you're joking. If not, get back to me, and I'll answer anything you like.

Re:Latest GNOME

[F-3582]

There you go. But as already mentioned, be warned. Working as root all day is a thing most distros prevent you from for a reason.

Re:Latest GNOME

[RAMMS EIN]

``Will there finally be a way to give my user account admin privileges? I mean, like in Windows XP, so I don't have to type in the fucking password every time I do anything?''

You have to type your password every time? I use sudo, which asks for my password once, and then allows me to either get a root shell (with the -s option) or doesn't ask my password again for the next 5 minutes or so. But that's from the command line. Still, I would think Gnome would use that functionality, so that you get the same behavior in the GUI. Perhaps that was naive of me, though.

Re:Latest GNOME

[marco75]

I know about sudo bash, but this is GNOME we are talking about. It's a graphical environment, you know, the kind that was invented at Xerox PARC in the 80's. Yes, there are plenty of Linux users who prefer the command line and think anyone who uses a GUI is a drooling moron. I used to have a friend like that, but we don't speak much anymore.

Re:Latest GNOME

[marco75]

No, that's not what I wanted. Isn't there some middle ground between A "user account that has to ask the almighty OS for permission to go to the bathroom" and B "root account with total power to wreck everything"? I just want to enter the password once, on the login screen, and then be able to use the GUI tools to configure my system, like device drivers, software packages, mount partitions, network shares. The GUI tools should be designed with some competence so I am protected from making stupid mistakes like erasing the system partition or leaving my system without a video driver.

Re:Latest GNOME

[marco75]

I am not joking.

I want to enter exactly one password to use my computer. ONCE. PER. SESSION.

Currently the Linux security offers me the choice between A and B:

A "user account that has to ask the almighty OS for permission to go to the bathroom" and

B "root account with total power to wreck everything"

I would like my account (type: "admin") to occupy a sensible middle ground between A and B.
I would use GUI tools to configure my system, like device drivers, software packages, mount partitions, network shares. The GUI tools should be designed with some competence so I am protected from making stupid mistakes like erasing critical system files or leaving my system without a working /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Scoff all you want about GUI tools -- Xerox PARC invented them in the 80's. There is really no justification to force the command line on anyone in this day and age, unless you are determined to make your system unpopular and inelegant.

My question is: Is it possible to make GNOME stop asking for my password whenever I click on a System Config tool?

Re:Latest GNOME

[F-3582]

It depends on where you work. If an operation only affects your home directory (GConf or all those ~/.something folders and files), you won't have to enter your password, anyway. However, all the things you describe modify your OS on a low-level basis by modifying, adding and removing files from your root directory and sub-directories which can break your installation and might be hard to fix while most GConf-related things are pretty easy to revert. It is the way Unix-like OSes work. Even Mac users have to enter passwords for such tasks.

But: Look forward to the next release of Ubuntu (and/or Gnome 2.22) which finally integrates the PolicyKit. There you can set how you want to authenticate certain tasks.

Re:Latest GNOME

[marco75]

Windows is the biggest malware target because it is the most popular OS used by the majority of computer users.

From the point of view of a virus coder or cracker, Linux doesn't have much appeal; There are so many different versions used by -- comparatively -- few people that going to all the trouble of writing an exploit for, say, Ubuntu 7.04, is hardly worth the time.

Interestingly, it's the same reason little commercial software exists for Linux -- small return on investment -- and too many OS variations to support. Why bother?

That's why platform-independent solutions, like Web-based apps, are so popular in the industry, since they don't require clients with Windows... the compatibility issue is offloaded to the browser. This is done despite the enormous speed loss associated with Web-based apps.

Re:Latest GNOME

[marco75]

> all the things you describe modify your OS on a low-level basis by modifying, adding and removing files from your root directory and sub-directories which can break your installation

I don't see how annoying me with a password prompt PREVENTS me from breaking my installation. It could only DELAY the breaking. (It also prevents someone else from walking to my computer and breaking it, but for that situation, there's a "ask for password on resume" option in the Screensaver.)

What does effectively prevent breakage of the system are utilities that are well-designed and work correctly. And in that department, Ubuntu 7.10 does its job well. I could set up dual screen and 3D acceleration without reading a manual or editing config files.

> It is the way Unix-like OSes work

'The way it has always worked' is the number 1 excuse for continuing bad interaction design, to the detriment of computer users the world over. What goes on behind the scenes (the engineering domain) and what happens between the human and the keyboard/screen/mouse are two different things, and there is no reason the latter has to accommodate the former. In fact, since computers are supposed to make our lives easier, shouldn't it be the other way around?

PolicyKit? That's the answer I was looking for! Now I've got something to look forward to in the next release!

Re:Latest GNOME

[ta bu shi da yu]

Interestingly, Microsoft changed their user interface to prompt users when they try to do something that gains elevated privileges. Seems to me that they have done this because of fundamental problems with security. Pity they did it in such a brain dead fashion!

Re:Latest GNOME

[ta bu shi da yu]

I think it would be useful to have a graphical app that dealt with setting up gksudo.

However, I thought that PolicyKit was meant to deal with this sort of shenanigans?

New! Cheesier!

[Kelson]

It's been a standard joke in my family to describe anything "new and improved" as "with extra cheese!"

Odd that it's actually appropriate in this case.

Nice job

[ceswiedler]

I have to admit I like Gnome a lot. But even if I were a KDE user I would have to give Gnome credit for their release schedule and process. They come out with a good set of reasonably stable features every 6 months, reliably enough that Ubuntu (and Fedora?) base their distro releases on the Gnome schedule. They've guaranteed core ABI compatibility through the 2.x series, which has been out for 5+ years by my count. They're conservative in what they add and take away. And every release has a nice set of release notes which tells me exactly what to look for in terms of new features.

Software development ain't easy, especially not in the decentralized volunteer world of free software, but the Gnome guys seem to have it down pretty well. Kudos to them.

Re:At least it's a real release! *cough* KDE4 *cou

[deepclutch]

well said buddy! :-O still I am a Gnome user(debian sid fyi) most of the times.just tried archlinux with kdemod (kde-3.5.9) which is modular kde which rocks without the full kde bloat installed! kudos to Gnome developers and community for this release!guess I will try GARNOME or jhbuild to compile Gnome sometimes soon.

Re:At least it's a real release! *cough* KDE4 *cou

[ta bu shi da yu]

GNOME 2.0? Isn't this ancient history?