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GNOME 2.24 Released

Posted by timothy on from the ekiga-has-the-best-screenshots dept.

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.

9 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Huge number of bugs? by Cthefuture · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The ratio of people to cake is too big
    1. Re:Huge number of bugs? by fractic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Huge number of bugs? by wanderingknight · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    3. Re:Huge number of bugs? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    4. Re:Huge number of bugs? by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:Huge number of bugs? by MojoMagic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...)

  2. Good! by Sasayaki · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."

    --
    Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
  3. Re:Catching up ever so slowly by Hatta · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  4. Re:Catching up ever so slowly by Daengbo · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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!

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