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Review of GNOME 2.26 and GTK+ 2.16

Posted by timothy on from the small-improvements-add-up dept.

devg writes "The GNOME development community recently announced the official release GNOME 2.26, the latest version of the open source desktop environment for Linux. It adds the Brasero disc burning software, UPnP support in the Totem media player, and basic support for video chat in the Empathy instant messaging client. GNOME 2.26 will be shipped in upcoming Linux distributions, including Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04. Some early reviews show that it is an incremental improvement with some good additions. GNOME 2.26 is accompanied by the release of GTK+ 2.16, a new version of the widget toolkit that is used to build the desktop environment. Ars Technica has published a detailed programming tutorial with code examples that demonstrate how developers can use the new features of GTK+ 2.16 in their own applications. Users can test GNOME 2.26 by downloading one of the official Foresight-based VM or ISO images via BitTorrent."

22 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Exchange support? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the changelog:

    Second is support for Microsoft Exchange's MAPI protocol. This is the protocol that Microsoft Outlook uses to communicate with Exchange. Previously, Evolution only supported Exchange's SOAP protocol, which is not available on all Exchange servers. This support significantly improves Evolution's integration with Exchange servers.

    That sounds like a big deal. Anyone knows how well it actually works in practice?

    1. Re:Exchange support? by romi · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not well at all.

      The official 2.26.0 "release" of evolution-mapi had a small bug whereby it would crash immediately upon trying to connect to anything.

      2.26.0.1 fixes one of the various issues contributing to that, but there are other changes needed in other libraries and Ubuntu has yet to pick those changes up.

      It's quite amusing to see this trumpeted everywhere though given that anyone who actually tries to use it is in for a world of hurt.

  2. Re:Wait... by erikina · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're nice. Especially as someone who use KDE, it allows me to easily see what's happening in that part of the world.

  3. awesome bar by jeffstar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the gnome file manager also has an awesome bar like firefox now!

    1. Re:awesome bar by RepugnantJohn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What exactly is wrong with the awesomebar? I'm a safari/webkit/chrome user, but I use Firefox to check website designs, and the bar doesn't seem that much different than the one in in Firefox 2.

    2. Re:awesome bar by compro01 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You likely wouldn't notice it unless you use it as your fulltime browser. It searches the history and displays results, but in a more indepth manner (searches page titles AND urls and doesn't just search from the front) than a "normal" address bar. It also sorts said results "smartly" based on usage. (lots of people hate it for this reason).

      It really has a love-it-or-hate-it quality. I personally liked it once I got used to it (and vice versa).

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    3. Re:awesome bar by DavoMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And that pron that all your friends find when using your computer.

      --
      Whats the harm in yelling 'Computer, end program!'? You could be living in Star Trek! Go on.. give it a try.
    4. Re:awesome bar by Coryoth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the gnome file manager also has an awesome bar like firefox now!

      Since this was modded Interesting/Informative instead of funny, let's be clear: the GNOME web browser (Epiphany) now has an "awesome bar" like firefox -- which isn't a huge change since the old version of the epiphany address bar searched bookmarks etc., mostly it just means more advanced history searches. The GNOME file manager (Nautilus) does not have an "awesome bar".

      --
      Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
  4. Just not interested by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I left gnome when they removed all the options from the screen-savers because they decided that configuring the screen-savers was to complicated for users. Surely not all gnome users are retards!

    1. Re:Just not interested by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Having used both KDE and GNOME (along with Xfce and fvwm-crystal) I don't really feel like GNOME is lacking in customization options. While it obviously has less than KDE does, it doesn't feel like it, and everything I felt like customizing either had a pre-made theme or I could do it with the GUI. People always seem to criticize GNOME on its customization, but I don't feel like it is any less configurable than KDE, Xfce, fvwm and even Windows. What features did the old screen saver menu have that the new one does not? Because having just taken a look on it (Using Ubuntu 8.10) I can't find an option that isn't there that I would use.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  5. New Audio - Major Win by AvitarX · · Score: 5, Informative

    Per application volume control is a MAJOR feature. Listening to music, while not having web pages blast out your ear drums is a major win. This is my favorite feature of Vista, and I am happy to see it integrated into Gnome.

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    1. Re:New Audio - Major Win by pembo13 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Windows has this. It's a cool feature. But this one is not provided by Gnome as far as I know, but by PulseAudio, correct me if I am wrong.

      --
      "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
    2. Re:New Audio - Major Win by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's a cool feature. But this one is not provided by Gnome as far as I know, but by PulseAudio, correct me if I am wrong.

      It's a PulseAudio feature, but this latest version of GNOME integrates support for it. So, you can set the volumes using the standard GNOME volume control applet.

    3. Re:New Audio - Major Win by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Pulse only eats up a 'shitload' of CPU if you have it set up to resample (hint... use your card's native rate and don't resample)... especially if you use a CPU intensive resample algorithm.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  6. Re:Wait... by lordtoran · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I'm anticipating similar functionality appearing in Kontact really soon... this sort of friendly competition makes Open Source progress so fast.

    --
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  7. different wallpaper on different desktops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can I put a different wallpaper on different desktops yet? That's the main feature I miss from KDE when I use Gnome (I tend to have different versions of the same code open on different desktops, so a visual queue as to which one I'm looking at really helps).

    1. Re:different wallpaper on different desktops by InfiniteLoopCounter · · Score: 2, Informative

      Can I put a different wallpaper on different desktops yet? That's the main feature I miss from KDE when I use Gnome (I tend to have different versions of the same code open on different desktops, so a visual queue as to which one I'm looking at really helps).

      What I've done (just yesterday) is concatenate 2 pictures together using GIMP. To do this I doubled the horizontal canvas size, offset the 1st picture to the right and pasted in the picture on the left. Takes about half a minute, although I do see why it would be better to have it done properly.

      As a related aside -- shouldn't GNOME support transparent backgrounds by now for wallpaper with icons, so that other programs can make use of the background as well?

      I'll try not to make a habit of replying to my own posts, but I was talking about a multi-monitor setup whilst the GP was probably refering to virtual desktops.

      Compiz's wallpaper plugin can put different wallpapers on different virtual desktops, but currently needs nautilus to not draw the background. However, this means that you won't have any icons on the desktop! All that need be done by GNOME developers (specifically nautilus/eel people) is add an alpha channel to the background wallpaper pixmap -- which they may one day do.

  8. sound support not always problematic in Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Things went downhill the moment the first sound server became common. The first popular one was "esd" or "esound", the Enlightenment Sound Daemon.

    With that came sound libraries by the dozen, because sound was no longer simple for app programmers. This in turn was an enabler for the evils of ALSA, which is totally unusable without the ALSA library. As the years went by, everybody and their dog wrote a sound server. We got sound servers feeding into sound servers. You could even connect them to each other in a loop, something easy to do with all the confusing config problems. We lost the "Just Works" feature long ago.

    And for what? I certainly don't want sounds from different apps mixed into an ear-assaulting mess. I want one thing at a time. I'm totally fine with having one thing monopolize the hardware, with my audio stream unmolested by mixers of dubious quality and high latency. If you want to be fancy, a stack-based design that plays the most recent app (going back to the previous one when the recent one finishes) would be kind of nice. That assumes I want stuff interrupted, which is a big maybe.

  9. Could some elaborate on the multimon fix? by melted · · Score: 2, Informative

    I had to edit config files to get my laptop to recognize and bring up the second screen after docking. Editing config files should not be required for one of the core mobility scenarios.

    Does this release fix the issue? I.e. if I just connect the monitor, will it get recognized automatically?

  10. Re:Can someone tell me why Gnome has such huge ico by Mprx · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can disable the labels from the "Interface" tab of the "Appearance Preferences".

  11. Re:Why brasero? by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you had read T linked FA - fat chance on /., but still - or even if you knew a thing or two about Qt, it would have saved you from making a lame comment.

    First: Qt is not just a widget library. It's a full framework that goes well beyond putting things on screens.

    Second: What he did modify had nothing to do with widgets. K3b used a KProcess class that employed piping of I/O. In KDE4, that wraps QProcess, which is too high-level for the kind of data-passing throughput required by dvd burning, so he had the class re-written. Yes, the article title is lame (as is its rehashing by the GP post) - forking a class is nothing nearly like forking a framework - but its absurdity should have triggered curiosity instead of look-at-me-I'm-smart comments missing the point.

  12. Re:Wait... by danieltdp · · Score: 2, Funny

    Friendly!? Haven't you seen any KDE-gnome flame war? Ok, ok, just kidding. It's lively discussion, but I guess it could be tagged as friendly

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    -- dnl