Slashdot Mirror
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."
Worthless without pics ;)
Is there any anticipated changelist for 3 yet?
Just re-name 2.2 to 3.0 and you've released ahead of schedule!
It gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's how I likes it.
Can Gnome 3.0 allow programs to render to the root window? Try running xplanet in gnome - you might catch a glimpse of something when you shut down. Try playing video on root with VLC - no uh uh. There are hacks to get screen savers and things to run on the background. This seems to be a fundamental design "feature" of gnome - the kind of thing you'd want to change in a major version bump. Or are they calling it 3.0 because 2.30 sounds too much like some really old software being patched over and over?
In other words, at this stage this is about the development team, not about the technical issues.
Gwow, this is Great Gnews! Let's Ghope they are Gstill Going to Geep Gusing the Gletter "G".
A kbit klike kthe kpeople kthen ksince kthey kdo kthis kfar ktoo koften. kmuch kmore koften kthan kthe kGNOME kpeople
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 ?
Luckily for Gnome, when 3.0 ships missing a lot of features, nobody will notice.
I don't want to upgrade to Web 3.0 yet.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
KDE 4 is clearly the most future-proof desktop environment out there.
In terms of graphic capabilities, it can natively suppport every feature available on OSX and in Vista, besides a few new features that are unique to KDE 4. In theory, it would be possible to create a desktop that looks-and-feels EXACTLY like OSX or Vista.
However, the best features are not those, but rather the platform independence with native API support. This means that, unlike JAVA, you can create one piece of software that compiles in Linux, OSX and Windows, using the OS-specific APIs. So, the same software compiled in OSX and in Windows look completely different and they didn't have a single line of code changed. The platform independence is not available for everything... for now, you can only compile things like Openoffice. However, the multimedia API, as well as other APIs are being developed.
The other thing great about KDE4 is that it is done with SVG instead of bitmaps. This means that scaling to very small devices like smartphones is quite simple to achieve.
Fear is the mind-killer.
I know people will think I'm crazy, but I have a vision for kGnome.
QT 4 actually has a Clearlooks engine designed to look like Gnome. Dolphin can be configured to operate largely like Natilus (except it works better these days).
If QT 4 actully really does use less memory and runs faster, why not do a test and port a small Gnome app or two over to QT 4?
The app can run with the QT 4 Clearlooks engine, and look largely like Gnome apps, except they can take advantage of many of the KDE features like Phonon, Solid, Sonnet, etc.
As for the people who prefer C to C++, aren't there language bindings for both for QT and GTK?
I'd love to see just a few small apps as a proof of concept. It could demonstrate the feasibility of a Gnome desktop built upon QT, especially considering the annoucement of Gnome 3, and the decision to break API.
If you're going to build anew, shouldn't this concept at least be considered for a moment? Both projects can have their seperate apps, desktops, defaults, window decorations, features, etc. But more common libraries and toolkits are a win for everyone.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I see your $0.02 and raise you a nickel.
My problem with KDE 4 is that I can't drag a box over several desktop to select multiple desktop icons. That drives me nuts!
My problem with Gnome is the fact that I can't adjust the screen saver properties without some ugly hack.
I know, these are minor issues, but annoying nonetheless. And your post was probably the nickel's worth anyway.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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.)
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.
The problem is that these don't appear to be bugs, but design choices. I believe that the gnome developers intentionally removed the option to configure each of the different screen savers and that the KDE dev's set up their horrid desktop icon system by design.
What's to file?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
GNOME HCI guidelines are one of the best I know of. Following the HCI leads to surprisingly good physical and mental health. 1) Navigating the GNOME dialog box with just the keyboard provides a rejuvenating and rigorous finger and mental exercise at the same time. 2) The font choices make pupil dilation effortless 3) The occlusion of "OK/Cancel" in elongated dialog boxes make accepting/rejecting dialog boxes into a fun hideAndSeek activity.
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.
Of course, we are dumb... We want KMail to preserve the HTML-layout of the original, when we are replying to or forwarding it. The enlightened developers have been telling us for years, how stupid it is, but we continue to foolishly insist.
If that's not valid grounds for contempt towards users, I don't know, what is.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
What I would really like to see from the GNOME team is a pledge to keep the framework free of unencumbered technology. Specifically, this means we need them to promise that both the framework itself, and its core applications, will not be built with .NET (Mono).
Miguel de Icaza may enjoy appeasing Microsoft, but most of the Free World does not.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
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.
I have yet to figure out what the Apple fascination with the prefix i- on absolutely everything is supposed to signify?
The only person that matters to Steve, course.
If that isn't enough, Trolltech will also provide QGtkStyle which will draw using native GTK widgets in the same way it uses native Cocoa/Carbon on OS X to make all Qt/KDE 4 applications have a Gnome look and feel, including things like the order of the dialog buttons.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I have two problems with KDE4, only one of which is due to the KDE people.
First, I believe the development team should have kept it in Beta until it was feature-complete. Feature complete, in my mind, is at minimum the feature set of 3.x. It shouldn't even be a release candidate until "done" and stable.
Second, distros should avoid including immature projects like KDE 4 until they *are* feature complete and stable. Yeah, Kubuntu, I'm looking at you!
Hopefully, the Gnome folks (and Ubuntu) will wait until everything's ready for prime time before releasing 3.0
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I believe KDE uses a bitmap cache of pre-scaled SVG icons.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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
Can you prove those 2 statements? Can you provide links to statements where he says that?
You didn't ask that from me but what kind impression I have had from what Aaron has told, is that KDE4 is coming smarter, so there is no need for configurations, because KDE will notice what user wants and leave more easier working enviroment for user when.
Feature and Configuration are two different things.
KDE has lots of features and lots of configurations. Gnome has few features and even less configurations. Now KDE4 will move kde to direction that there will be lots of features but much less configurations. Default look will be very simple and clean so all "dumb" gnome users can use kde easily but power user who knows what wants, can turn things ON and customize whole enviroment.
His blog was unavailable for a while but it came back online several days ago.
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/
You know, maybe he chose to be the maintainer because nobody else stepped up and it needed one. He was (is?) a volunteer who donated his own time. You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I hear this kind of complaint all the time from linux peeps. They want two very different, conflicting things to happen at once. First of all, they want linux to evolve while maintaining all the flexibility that it is known for, while also wanting so desperately for each year to be the "year of the Linux desktop." This is an either/or situation. Gnome and KDE are both aiming to be user-friendly desktops, and therefore shouldn't be criticized because they don't meet the productivity needs of a sysadmin. Like you said, vim, mutt, and wmaker are still around and kickin'.
Similes are like metaphors
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.
> I asked in the #kde-devel channel if it
> was removed intentionally or just hadn't
> been re-added.
It just hasn't been re-implemented.
You should have been pointed at me rather than Aaron. Terminal related queries will reach me if they are sent to konsole-devel@kde.org , robertknight on #kde-devel or be filed as bugs against Konsole at http://bugs.kde.org/ . Your patch hasn't crossed my path yet and I cannot comment on it until I see it.
All we have is some article that says Gnome 2.30 = Gnome 3. Nothing else. No details, nothing. No details on GTK 3, which will have to happen before Gnome 3, and I'm not sure what problems did affect KDE 4.0's release. .0 releases are what they are, and it was the same story when Gnome 2.0 came along.
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.
Yet no one knows what the long term design plans for Plasma are. The users keep getting surprised, and they feel that Plasma over-promised and under-delivered.
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.
Why don't you ask the Plasma developer*s* (i.e. more than just Aaron)? In addition the KDE feature plans are linked to from the front page of the KDE TechBase. For things not covered there you could add Planet KDE to your news reader or subscribe to the panel-devel mailing list. Want to see all commits made just to plasma? Use the KDE commit filter.
As far as Aaron he's been under a constant heap of criticism lately because Plasma in KDE 4 is not *exactly like* kicker+kdesktop in KDE 3 so perhaps you can excuse him for being irritable. Perhaps you have examples that are not taken out of context however, instead of just claiming that he hates users? On that note was there an announcement that KDE made that you felt over-promised what Plasma would do? If that's happened we at KDE need to get that rectified.
Gnome already has a few of those problems (removing choice, treating users like they're dumb)
Have you ever thought that taking the trouble to make a program easier to use doesn't necessarily imply that the user is dumb? I'd respond to your specific comment except that you have mentioned none.
For corporate environments, or people who can't be troubled to configure things, they just want working defaults and simplicity. That isn't a flame, but rather the way things are.
A system that just works and is simple to use? Oh heavens, no! If GNOME has already achieved that (I haven't used it in awhile) then that is something to be congratulated for. Defaults that work are a good idea in general and are separate from features. Adding more checkboxes doesn't make a program more powerful.
Some people suggested removing the animation, which was a problem because it interfered with maximized windows, and he said no.
The "cashew" would cover up a window whether it's animated or not. :P
Some people suggested allowing people to move or relocate the cashew because it interfered with panels at the top, and he said no.
Not according to this email. Looks to me is that Aaron disagrees with the various methods of removing the cashew that have been proposed so far, and that ways to do so that don't suck haven't been proposed in time for KDE 4.1.
Some people suggested having the cashew disappear when the panel is locked, and he said no.
The panel cashew does disappear when the panel is locked but locking the widgets onto the desktop doesn't get rid of other activities. The way I would think to do that is to have the cashew disappear automatically if the one and only activity has its widgets locked but I don't care enough (I mean seriously, a cashew?) to submit a patch.
The worst thing is he repeatedly said everyone was too stupid to understand his design, which he had no intention of explaining. He said users can't comment on design or UI issues. That is a problem.
In all fairness I think this happened after like the third time he tried to explain the same thing and got the same comments back. You can only answer the same question to X number of different people before you too turn into an asshole. ;)
And besides (this came up later I think) I'm pretty sure the exact perjorative term used was not "stupid" but the email thread gives me emotional baggage so I'm not going to dig it up to double-check.
Anyways KDE appreciates and needs user feedback but what we don't need are personal attacks on our developers from users, which is what led to Aaron-hates-assholes-ivus. Really KDE the project kind of let Aaron down on this because he eventually came to receive quite virulent attacks even about software he doesn't write or maintain just because he's the highest profile KDE developer and no one stepped in to get it from getting out of hand.
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. ;)
Also a recent comment of his was that non-coders on the whole shouldn't be allowed to comment on design issues.
Well this is not going to make it feel any better but those who do not have experience coding often do not understand why their proposed design change does not or cannot work. Not always, but if you're good enough to design it you're typically good enough to code it. Code is just transferring a design into a language syntax. Designing it in the first place to work correctly (or not... ;) is hard.
He also repeatedly said that if you don't read the code, you can't understand the UI. That itself is a problem.
Again, this is probably actually true. Of course you can *see* the UI and point out what sucks about it but sometimes a "trivial" UI change involves a large code change. This is easier to see if you understand how the UI is actually formed from the code in question (i.e. Containments, Applets, Activities, etc. in Plasma-land).
Frankly, end users should be able to pick things up and learn them intuitively. Suggesting that if you don't read the source code, you can't understand the project means there is a serious usability issue.
Sure, but there's also the type of user (and I don't know if this is true in the case you're talking about but bear with me) that does something to the effect of:
User: Hey I noticed this is going on and it sucks, fix it!
Dev: One of:
User: Why don't you just do something like integrate the frobnitz?
Dev: Because it doesn't work like that.
User: No seriously, just integrate here and you're done.
Dev: No you don't get it. The code does not work like that. It cannot work because of reason foo
Now most bug reports we get are good reports and if the dev is actually here to work on it even get resolved to everyone's satisfaction. But we do get reports like these and when it turns into a pissing match between the user and the developer politeness is usually the first thing to go out the window. I've seen Aaron be ganged up on by multiple users in this fashion and it's really disheartening to see as a developer.
Hey, sometimes the developer is even wrong and it can be implemented somehow but that typically happens with a patch (oh, maybe it does work...), which you're not going to get from the same developers by pissing in his Cheerios and acting like a jerk. And in the end (at least in KDE) those who actually do the work get to decide so if Aaron is holding off on changing something because no one has presented a satisfactory technical solution (i.e. no "evil hacks" for bug fixes) then that's how it'll be.
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.