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."

Comments

Content free article

[sundarvenkata]

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.

let's wait and see

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

"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.

Re:Background

[jwkfs]

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).

Problems with KDE4? What problems?..

[mi]

will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release.

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)...

Re:Problems with KDE4? What problems?..

[draugdel]

As far as I know KDE4.0 was never meant for the end user but for developers. I tried it once and told myself: "Looks promising but is not ready to use for me.[0]"

So I waited and at times looked a bit a the latest progress with packages from the svn trunk for my distribution. My impression is that the progress, that KDE4.0 to now made, is just amazing. I am currently using the svn packages more often than my old KDE3.5.9 install, simply because it is a very pleasant experience. I would have switched already, if it was not a "unstable"[1] version and I will definitly switch when 4.1 sees the light of the day.

So let's go on to your issues: Moving widgets in the panel (the task bar is only for displaying your applications) should have been added yesterday or so (according to a blog post at planetkde.org).

Showing the contents of ~/Desktop: The folderview can do that, but not only that. It can also display any folder (for instance on a remote machine as well). It will be able to show the results of nepomuk searches, but this is not ready yet. I for my part had never any icons on my old desktop, because, I think, it looks like I still have lot of work to do. Now I can easily display the folder(s) that I am currently working on and hide them when I am done. I must say, it is way better than the old system for me.

For launching applications, I never used icons (Keyboard > mouse for me) but used the old "Run command". Now there is krunner which is way better than the old system.

As another developer to the KDE team: I love what you are doing with KDE4 and I hope that you can keep the good work up.

[0] I am a developer as well.
[1] unstable as in not finished. I have not experienced lots of bugs, but instead it almost never crashes, which is quite impressive for this kind of packages (compiled directly from the latest source code).

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[tminos]

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.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[ArcherB]

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?

Re:Background

[burner]

Probably /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop.

Re:All hail letter "g"

[harry666t]

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.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Knuckles]

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.