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Release Team Proposes Gnome 3.0 Plans
benuski writes "Today at GUADEC, the Gnome User and Developer European Conference, the gtk+ team announced their plans for gtk+ 3.0; immediately after, the Gnome release team announced their plans for Gnome 2.30 to be changed into Gnome 3.0. This would mean a release date a year and a half to a year in the future. Details are short at the moment, but the Gnome team seems to be following in KDE's footsteps, but hopefully will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release."
The link leads to a tersely worded page which captures the entire essence of the plans for GTK+3.0 :) which in turn leads to another blog with a color scheme that threatens my corneal legerdemain.
"but hopefully will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release."
instead they're gonna have all sorts of their own problems. it happened before, it'll happen again.
all major projects have this kind of stuff when major releases come out the door. examples ?
MacOS X 10.0
Windows Vista
Gnome 2.0
Netscape 4.0
.
.
.
maybe it'll be a set of completely diferent problems. but they'll be there. murphy is unforgiven.
What ? Me, worry ?
Gnome draws the desktop+icons on the root window. If you want to draw something else there, you need to disable this (there's a gconf key somewhere).
I made the folly of installing KDE-4 on my mom's new computer (she had KDE-3.5.x before). There were no "problems". There was a total disaster.
The amount of features available in KDE-3 for years, that did not make it into KDE-4 is staggering... Add bugs to that.
And I was not entirely unprepared — I knew better, than to try KDE-4.0, when it came out with the enormous (and Google-sponsored) hoopla. I waited for 4.0.2... You can't even move widgets around on your task-bar yet — that's "scheduled" for version 4.1!
The all-new "plasma"-desktop can't show you the contents of files in ~/Desktop/ — that's still "in the works". Showing the list of files themselves is buggy — every time you login, a new set of icons (one for each of your files) is added to the desktop.
And to think, that I was getting impatient with FreeBSD KDE-team for not upgrading the KDE-ports! These guys were simply protecting me, but no, I wouldn't listen... I installed the much tauted Kubuntu and paid the price (don't even get me started on Ubuntu itself)...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There are many great advantages of KDE, such as platform independence and SVG rendering like you mentioned.
Again, I suggested the problem isn't the features.
As for making KDE 4 operate or look like OS X or Vista, that depends how much control we have over the interface. My fear/concern is that given recent discussions and posts with Aaron suggest we will have less control.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
On top of that you have Aaron Segio now suggesting that users should have less control over configuration, fewer choices, and saying that end users are dumb. He also has suggested repeatedly lately that if you're not a coder, then you can't comment on UI issues.
Can you prove those 2 statements? Can you provide links to statements where he says that?
From my use of KDE 4.1, I, a user, have the exact same configuration menu in konqueror that I used to have, and I now have dolphin, with simpler configuration, that has been added which I can use standalone, or along konqueror or not.
As a user, it seems I now have more choice.
Plasmoid seems a little raw right now, but I have the feeling they are the equivalent of firefox extensions.
Basically, they are putting the desktop in the hand of the users. You will have extension, sorry, plasmoid, whith little or no configuration, and some some with heavy configuration and you will just choose and build your own personnal desktop. Just like firefox with its extensions.
So your comment about them dumbing down the desktop or removing it from the users hand is pretty much out of the picture, it's quite the opposite.
As for aseigo, I follow his blog and I can't remember him saying users can't comment on UI issues. If you'd give links to that than I might find your comment informative, right now, it seems mostly flamebait.
(My bet is that he said that as long as the underlying technology is not ready, the discussion about with or without 'insert your preferred desktop item or usability issue' are irrelevant.)
this is one reason why I continue to use gnome or xfce instead of the new KDE. Of all things they removed one feature most important to me:
the ability to change tabs in konsole by pressing alt-# (ie, alt-1 = go to tab 1, alt-2 to tab 2 etc.)
I asked in the #kde-devel channel if it was removed intentionally or just hadn't been re-added. Aaron's first response was to claim I must not use a terminal much (I'm a systems admin and programmer, I spend nearly all day in a terminal.) He then said that terminal programs should bind as few keys as possible because terminal programs have already assumed nearly all possibly combinations.
I offered a patch that would re-insert them as an option -- not enabled by default but there for people that decided they wanted to set it. It was turned down.
Fuck it all, KDE is going the same way GNOME did. I'll stick with vim, mutt, and move back to freaking wmaker or fvwm if it's the only way to have a system that doesn't treat me like I'm five years old.
Community software should mean that people can easily post bug reports and get issues like these addressed.
Open a bug for each issue and hopefully they will be addressed.
I think it is beneficial to the entire community when people report these things.
Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:
Comment #1 from William Jon McCann (gnome-screensaver developer, points: 22)
2005-09-19 13:32 UTC [reply]
I don't have any plans to support this. My view is that any screensaver theme
that requires configuration is inherently broken.
Is developer arrogance a bug or a feature?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Probably /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Except that the Gnome apps aren't built on top of gtk, but on top of Gnome libs. And porting the Gnome libs to QT4 is what would be the pain.
Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:
Is this a troll or do you suffer from short attention span? This was his first comment, but the discussion on bugzilla was very long, and further down he identified technical issues that prevent this from being done sanely atm, wrote an FAQ on the matter, asked for help from those who see this feature, and so on. Anyone interest in the issue is well-advised not to rely on the parent but read the discussion themselves.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
His blog was unavailable for a while but it came back online several days ago.
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/
Kubuntu defaults to KDE 3.5 last time I checked. Yup, running Kubuntu 8.04 right here, using KDE 3.5. The remix is KDE4, but hey, they're experimenting with it. You can OPTIONALLY install it, but you don't have to run with it if you don't want to. But they can't get feedback if no one uses it.
What was it you were bitching about again?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
KDE 4 with plasma is going to have more features, no less, they are just going to be added in a different way than what you seem to expect.
For example a lot of people have complained about the toolbox and its inability to hide and Aaron has said that he will reject any patch that changes this behavior. however you can still have this option, the only thing that you need to do is to write a different containment where the toolbox is not shown, add this containment to your desktop, drop the default containment and you are done. By 4.2 it may even be possible to have a containment with traditional desktop icons and no toolbox if someone steps up and writes it.
The bottom line here is that in plasma the "Desktop" is a plugin (called containment) and you are free to choose the containment that you like the most. The only problem right now is that there is only one containment available, but if you carefully read Aaron's comments you will notice that he actually encourage people to write and use different desktop containments.
With the way Aaron is running the show, every one will have to wait for 4.5 for it to be as good as 3.5.
snip
Aaron is a hell of a developer, but he is no project manager. He can't see the forest through the trees. Anyone who is in charge of a project like he is should not be coding.
Aaron is not in charge of KDE. No one person is anyways but although Aaron is a core developer he does not run KDE or choose its direction.
What he does do is a lot of interaction with the press and presentations at events and such so in that regard he has acted as the face of KDE in person.
He also maintains the Plasma program (he does not run the whole show though, there's more people than just him working on Plasma). Many people see it as the "face" of KDE 4 in that it is the most-prominent GUI in KDE.
But he does not choose when we release, what goes in KDE, who works on what, or any of that. KDE has its own Release Team for handling releases (and the Release Team chose to delay 4.0 for 2 months and then after the final RC series to release). Aaron certainly puts in a lot of work to KDE but even if you think the release was a disaster he's not the one to blame. You can blame me if you want, I argued for releasing 4.0 after the first delay in addition to Aaron. ;)
As for aseigo, I follow his blog and I can't remember him saying users can't comment on UI issues. If you'd give links to that than I might find your comment informative, right now, it seems mostly flamebait.
Bug 154535 is a user request for the ability to optionally remove the toolbox "cashew". 154535 has the second highest number of votes of any plasma bug. Aaron marked it as WONTFIX ("that is the final resolution of this issue as per the maintainer of the project"). Here are two examples of his attitude:
#53
it would be nice, however, if in situations like this you refrained from commenting ... i don't particularly need to open my inbox, go through the bug reports and read this kind of stuff.
#84
please, please, please people: don't try and get involved in discussions of design. if you are technically capable of doing so, read the code and jump on panel-devel and discuss things with the rest of the team in a reasoned and well-informed manner.