GNOME 2.24 Released

thhamm writes "The GNOME community hopes to make our users happy with many new features and improvements, as well as the huge number of bug fixes that are shipped in this latest GNOME release! Well. What else to say. I am happy." Notably, this release is also the occasion for the announcement of videoconferencing app Ekiga's 3.0 release.

Comments

Huge number of bugs?

[Cthefuture]

Isn't it weird how developers (myself included) consider it a good thing that they fixed a whole bunch of bugs?

Personally I know it feels good to fix bugs because it feels like you're making the product perfect and somehow that feels like "development". However, the reality is that it would be better to have no bugs in the first place.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[fractic]

However, the reality is that it would be better to have no bugs in the first place.

Sadly the reality is that it's just too hard to write such complicated software without bugs.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[wanderingknight]

Or downright impossible. I believe that's one of the things FOSS is based on ;-)

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wish GNOME would fix the damn panels to keep them from rearranging the applets. That bug has been there since pretty much the very beginning of the GNOME project and they have "fixed" it many times but it is never really fixed. They have done things like introduce the "lock" feature that locks an applet into place. All that does is make it even more annoying because you then have to unlock them to put them back where they were before the panel mangled them.

Especially if you get a crash, freeze, or X otherwise terminates... but sometimes if you just logout and back on, it will rearrange the applets and icons on your panels. So annoying.

I mean this is simple basic functionality that has been broken for years. Whoever wrote the GNOME panel code deserves a cockpunch and some lessons in programming.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[HTH NE1]

Well, there's the theory that every program contains at least one bug and can therefore be reduced in size by at least one instruction. Iteratively then, every program can be reduced to a single instruction which doesn't work.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[knothead99]

It's just not feasible to write software without bugs. In fact, Jeff Atwood would claim you're an amateur developer until you realize that everything you write sucks. Go read his post on the subject: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001020.html

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[Kjella]

Not impossible, but quite likely you'd maybe hit Gnome 1.0 in these days after 10+ years of development. And everybody else would be using the betas/unstable versions because they're soooo much faster and more featureful despite the odd bug. In fact, the FLOSS market seems to be going after exactly its own pace - live on the bleeding edge? You can do that. Stay with the ultra-stabile? You can do that and so the bug level is pretty much what you want it to be. In short, most people wouldn't want the bugfree version if one existed. It's too extreme in the "of these three things, pick any two" department.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[MojoMagic]

As a software developer I feel confident in saying this:

If your software "doesn't have bugs", it either doesn't do much or you just aren't looking hard enough.

(I'm not pointing any fingers...)

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[lennier]

Yes, I'm pissed because I spent the better part of last night reinstalling Wordpress because 2.0 got rooted. Nice going, open-source movement.

I've used computers since the mid-80s and I'm just losing patience with security exploits and especially with this slapdash attitude of 'it'll happen'. No. It does not need to happen. It should not happen. Real people may die when computers malfunction; it is not enough to say 'that's okay, we'll patch it afterwards'. We had the tools and the methods in the 1950s to make it stop happening, but the industry again and again refuses to apply them. And by industry I mean you and me right here. We keep picking cheap shoddy crap (and sometimes expensive shoddy crap) over correctness.

We have the same kind of quality crisis going on in software as exists in governance and finance and energy and the food industry. Like the other crises, it has the potential to crash us back to the stone age one day soon, and is already stealing real people's real money today. We've got to wake up and realise that we cannot afford to tolerate security mistakes, and then write tools and methods that allow us to work in a zero-tolerance environment.

Anything less, and we have to realise that we hand the keys to all our users' identities and life savings to the Russian Mafia the moment we release our buggy 0.1.

Seriously. Get it right to start with. Don't rely on patching.

Re:timothy

[Anonymous Coward]

He's referring to Ekiga's tendency to fire little bits of rock and gravel at people. It's a feature.

Good!

[Sasayaki]

Excellent!

Now when can I expect this in my Intrepid Ibex repositories, mmm?

Mandatory puns:

"Glad to see Linux really putting it's best foot forward in the GUI department."

"The new Gnome is a feet of software engineering."

"Maybe I'll revert from Kubuntu to Ubuntu, dip my toe in and see what it's like."

"I hope the new version doesn't have a much bigger footprint."

Re:Good!

[Trelane]

Now when can I expect this in my Intrepid Ibex repositories, mmm?

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/+source/gnome-utils/2.24.0-0ubuntu1 the day before yesterday.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Hatta]

I'd like to see Windows pick up some features that any UNIX desktop had 10 years ago. How about virtual desktops that actually work? Window shading? The ability to keep a window on top of the others? Can I even add something like a CPU usage graph to my panel in Windows? If so, it's not clear how, but it's trivial in my desktop environment of choice.

UNIX has had a superior GUI than Windows for a long time. The only thing it's really missing is wizards to help the less savvy configure it.

Caveat: this is coming from an XP perspective. I've not used Vista, so I don't know if these features are available there.

Re:Is this feature available?

[ReinoutS]

Just press Alt+F2 and paste in the URL. Evince, Gnome's document viewer, will open it nicely for you.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Daengbo]

BS.

Comparing Gnome 2.24 to Win2000 is a joke. Heck, comparing it to WinXP is a joke. Gnome 2.24 is a modern desktop just like Windows Vista is, only faster. Same bling available. Better consistency. Better features than WinXP (though probably not Vista). In fact, using Windows XP makes my ears bleed after only a few minutes.

X (not Gnome) has handled multiple monitor setups since before I started using it in 1997.

Gnome has strict accessibility and localization requirements and has since 2.2. Windows wasn't even localized in Thai until Gnome adoption there forced it to be, and even then they just half-assed the "start menu" and nothing else. A generation of Thais learned to do computing in a language they didn't understand.

ESD never had a problem with mixing stuff if you used it instead of OSS or ALSA. It even mixes stuff locally and outputs it to another computer if you want it to. Maybe your problem is that you didn't know what you were doing ....

Gnome configures everything for Gnome and always has. Since Gnome runs on a large number of operating systems, it doesn't deal withthe underlying system, and you'll have to be specific about which one isn't configurable and take that up with the OS vendor. That's not the job of a cross-platform desktop.

Since we're playing this game, these are the places Windows doesn't live up to Gnome:

1. UI consistency
2. Context menus
3. Window management
4. Virtual desktops
5. Select and middle-click to paste
6. Deskbar applet (pre-Vista)
7. User filesystem layout
8. Menu layout
9. System messages
10. Mime handling
11. Panel layout
12. See them all

Gnome vs. Win95 or Win2000? Pshaw!

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Daengbo]

No, I call it trolling for being misinformation. 95%? Let's look at the details:

• 2.1. Stay in Touch
  This is about voice / video and the new IM client in Gnome. Has Windows had integrated AOL or Yahoo! Chat since Win98? No? Does it now? I didn't think so.
• 2.2. Track Your Time Better
  Did Windows 98 have an integrated time-tracker? No?
• 2.3. Ekiga 3.0
  Has Windows had an integrated Voice / Video / Text SIP client since Win98? Hmmm ....
• 2.4. File Management
  Complex Asian characters in Win98? Tabbed file browser? Tab completion in the file browser?
• 2.5. Do More With Deskbar
  Calculator, Google search, Yahoo suggestions, Twitter updates, and indexed search from a key press? Not even to this day.
• 2.6. New Screen Resolution Controls
  Windows has had this one for a while.
• 2.7. New Sound Theme Support
  Windows, annoyingly, has had this one since like Win95. I think it says a lot about Microsoft's priorities.
• 2.8. Better Digital TV
  I'd be really surprised if Win98 had DVB capability.
• 2.9. Extra Pretty
  Desktop backgrounds. Again, Windows has had numerous wallpapers for years, but it says something about what they think is important when they still haven't gotten window management to work correctly.

Two out of nine. 22%. Not quite 95%, eh? I give you a D+.

Let's talk about localization. Windows XP3 offers retail installs for Chinese Simplified, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish [1] (that's eight), while Gnome offers forty-five languages.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Daengbo]

The graphics sussytem is not a part of Gnome, or Gnome wouldn't run on so many systems. Heck, you can almost get Gnome to run on Windows.

Gnome can hide panel icons that you don't use. You put them in a "drawer."

Managing the network is the job of the operating system, not a desktop environment.

I'll quote myself, since you obviously didn't read my post the first time:

Gnome configures everything for Gnome and always has. Since Gnome runs on a large number of operating systems, it doesn't deal withthe underlying system, and you'll have to be specific about which one isn't configurable and take that up with the OS vendor. That's not the job of a cross-platform desktop.

Getting slow icons is certainly annoying, and has been improved in recent versions, but it's not more annoying than clicking on the Start menu and waiting for five seconds to have it show up. You can turn off icons in the menu, too, if you want that.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[mhall119]

Why is it that windows can actually hide taskbar icons that I don't use.

I assume you mean the system tray. My question is, if you don't use them why would you even want them in the system tray? The very fact that Windows needs a "hide" option is a problem.

Re:I thought they were skipping this release?

[Randle_Revar]

2.24 -> 2.26 -> 2.28 -> 3.0

Re:Did the "people picker" in GDM ever get fixed?

[donscarletti]

It always was optional, just open up gdmsetup and turn it off.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Draek]

By the time Windows 2000 came around, there was nothing in the OS that I could not configure using the GUI.

I'm sorry, but most of us don't consider "regedit.exe" a GUI, at least not anymore than "gedit /etc/httpd.conf" is. And without considering the registry, then yes, there's plenty of stuff in Windows that you can't configure from within the GUI.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Kjella]

Comparing Gnome 2.24 to Win2000 is a joke. Heck, comparing it to WinXP is a joke. Gnome 2.24 is a modern desktop just like Windows Vista

That bad, huh? Well, I think I'll stick to something that's at least an upgrade from XP like KDE.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Daengbo]

Are you implying that Gnome doesn't hide panels or have a consistent appearance?

Compare

1. Abiword to
2. Epiphany to
3. Totem.

Next, compare

1. Internet Explorer 7, released on October 18, 2006 to
2. Microsoft Word, released in December, 2007, to
3. Windows Media Player 11, by the same company for the same platform.

Now tell me with a straight face that Windows knows how to look like Windows.

Re:Did the "people picker" in GDM ever get fixed?

[J.Y.Kelly]

It always was optional, just open up gdmsetup and turn it off.

gdmsetup has gone from recent releases. GDM is undergoing some fairly major changes and the developers haven't got round to reimplementing the preferences. You can make some changes by directly editing custom.conf, but the documentation is a bit sparse right now. Things which used to be easy (like turning off the people picker are currently difficult or not possible. Things are likely to improve soon but I don't know if they're sorted in the 2.24 release.

Not available for u

[Yfrwlf]

Too bad they don't support some standardization with packages, so that any normal user can easily download and install the new software. That would require them helping out the Burgdorf Packaging API perhaps, or some other system which worked to standardize packages. We're tired of being tied up, waiting for our distro of choice to compile it for us, we want cross-distro binary packages. kthnx.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[DaveWick79]

2.1 AOL instant messenger was available for free in 1997 for windows. ICQ was also available for free. There was nothing else, you needed nothing else. Windows messenger was available in 2001 with XP. It did voice, text, video and file transfers. Irregardless, this isn't an "integrated" OS feature anyways, it's a bundled app.
2.2 Track your time? Hello, this is just a applet for which there has been software available to do pretty much ever since there was multitasking. No, it wasn't built into the OS, but what does it have to do with the OS? Just another bundled app.
2.3 Hello AOL IM and MSN. Just another bundled app.
2.4 Finally an OS feature!! And the one that I mentioned I would love to see in Windows. Also, Asian language support has been available as a download from MS since windows 98, and starting in 2002 they started putting it in a package called Global IME - available in several flavors of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
2.5 Deskbar. MS has implemented a taskbar, that since Windows 98 has been able to perform these functions - however they chose to leave it to 3rd party developers to develop apps for it, which, by the way is what Gnome does too. They also made the entire desktop available for these lovely 3rd party apps. For some wierd reason MS took the ability to float toolbars and dock toolbars out of Vista, but it was available in every version of XP.
2.6,2.7,2.9 well you already pointed those out.
2.8 DVB? More 3rd party software, has nothing to do with OS operation. ATI's All-in-wonder has brought TV to the Windows OS since 1996.

Talk about localization. SP3 may only be available as of yet in 8 languages, but MS standardized on 24 localized languages starting with Windows 2000. In 03-04 they added the Language Interface Pack (LIP) for 27 more languages. That's 51 for those who are counting. And that's not 80% translated like Gnome, MS made sure things were finished.

By my count we've only identified one OS feature that Windows does not have or is not capable of doing. Just because 3rd party developers haven't created specific functionality doesn't mean that Windows can't do it. I don't really want most of these "features" anyways, like IM clients, TV broadcasting, and time tracking.
OK so that's 8 out of 9 user features that windows has done or was capable of going with 3rd party addons since Windows 98. There is also 3 accessibility features, all of which MS has done well since Windows 95. All total we're at 11 of 12, which is darn close to my original estimate at 92%. I give YOU a D+ also.
So maybe I misspoke. I really only saw 8 total OS features really listed there, the rest were 3rd party apps, which MS would typically get sued over including. So I'll give you just 7 of 8, so I really meant 88%. Sorry.