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State of the Gnome Address
Booker writes "Miguel has posted a status report of the Gnome project to the Gnome mailing list. A good summary of what's been done, and what remains. And an admission that Gnome 1.0 might have been a leeeetle bit premature. Many packages are up to 1.0.8, and in my experience, they are vastly improved since the 1.0.0 days. Also, RHLabs has released a full set of Gnome RPMS for RH 5.2 systems, with all the latest stuff. "
Slightly off topic, but does anyone know whether the new gnome versions, or the cvs versions still have this error? It's the one bug that's still killing alot of my programs.
Thanks
isnt it about time the gnome ppl made some debs too? i mean there are so many packages its kinda annoying downloading and compiling them all.
Way to go. You have shown excellent skill in
killing your own argument. I give you a 10.
The BSD Daemon is the coolest mascot of all time. Here is some info on him. A penguin just doesn't do it for me, seems too laid back, not enough spunk.
While open sources is a good thing. You must have a lets have a pice of software working before you give it out. Then maybe people can help. If you give it out to early then your get help but you'll get help in all differnt places. People will try and take the product this way or that way. And not the way you want it to go
After months of compiling, I finally got gnome-core 1.0.4 and gnome-libs 1.0.5 up and running. And damn is it buggy! And whoa damn is it slow! Its not as painfully slow as KDE on my poor 166, but its still damn slow. Of course I am sure as the release numbers go up, the speed will go down as more crap is added in. Oh well Gnome is still better than KDE. Also Gnome forces me to use Enlightenment (blech) because if I select "Window Maker" in the gnome control center, X and everything crashes.
Shortly after it hit 1.0 status, I thought I'd download it and give it another whirl. /usr/local/gnome (because I like to easily uninstall things which aren't RPM'ed), and du'd the directory, it took up nearly twice the disk space as /usr/local/kde with all it's dependant libraries, and to add insult to injury, it wouldn't work. Grrrr. A day and a half of downloadign and compiling shot in the ass.
When I installed it into
I'll wait for less bloat.
Debs are almost ready to be copied into potato. If you *really* want to live on the bleeding edge, add this to your sources.list:
deb http://www.debian.org/~jules/gnome-stage-2/ unstable main
But don't complain if it isn't too stable yet! HTH.
man, you are seriously flamey
Are all the binaries stripped? Can make a huuuge difference :)
Don't you think that some people have better things to do with their time than fuck around installing software? Maybe we have been-there-done-that WRT compiling apps, and would rather not waste 1/2 hr every time we want a new app! For all the people that compile their own software all the time, you need to get a life. Are your lives so empty that, given an hour of time you would choose to install crap on your computer? Do you use your computer to save time or to use time?
I don't think it's just you, dood. I think Rob figured that it wasn't really worth it, as vast quantities of people were reaching the "3" and "4" levels already.
:)
which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it also means there will be a posse of 'good' posters that everyone reads and make moderators lazy
of course, this is just me speculating..
to use time :) lighten up
haha
> I really hope people that write GTK-based apps in the future will stop naming their creations "GTKwidget" or "Gthing", etc.
> It's about as silly as "Kfoo" or "QtBar". Prefixes are rather unnecessary
Perhaps, but UNIX is based on silliness. One doesn't have to look far to see this. Where there's "more" there has to be "less". Linux and BSD both have cute mascots (name another OS with a mascot). I won't even go into all the humourous error messages I've seen from Unix systems that I'd never see on other OSes (okay, "guru mediation error" on the Amiga was cute, bit it was eventually replaced).
I hope Unix never loses it's ability to make fun of itself.
> There are so many toolkits available for X that we are *NOT* going to have a common look and feel standard, period. Linux is about diversity
> - we don't have to reinvent the wheel once for every toolkit.
Agreed. Unless making toolkit specific versions actually adds some functionality, there's no point in doing all that extra work.
> I really hope people that write GTK-based apps in the future will stop naming their creations "GTKwidget" or "Gthing", etc.
> It's about as silly as "Kfoo" or "QtBar". Prefixes are rather unnecessary
Perhaps, but UNIX is based on silliness. One doesn't have to look far to see this. Where there's "more" there has to be "less". Linux and BSD both have cute mascots (name another OS with a mascot). I won't even go into all the humourous error messages I've seen from Unix systems that I'd never see on other OSes (okay, "guru mediation error" on the Amiga was cute, bit it was eventually replaced).
I hope Unix never loses it's ability to make fun of itself.
> There are so many toolkits available for X that we are *NOT* going to have a common look and feel standard, period. Linux is about diversity
> - we don't have to reinvent the wheel once for every toolkit.
Agreed. Unless making toolkit specific versions actually adds some functionality, there's no point in doing all that extra work.
I'm only using GNOME 0.99.3 on my Debian (potato) system. It's VERY usable. I haven't had it crash on me yet, no strange panel disappearances to speak of, and its been a huge improvement over the GNOME stuff in slink.
E, no matter how related to GNOME, is not an integral part of GNOME. GNOME has been pretty good at documentation, I guess (can't really say for sure, I haven't had a need to read any yet
RPMS are a pain for something as complicated as GNOME, AFAICT. With .debs, on the other hand... :)
Peace out.
surak@my-dejanews.com
Not sure about WM, but icewm works fine with GNOME. So you don't have to use E.
I haven't had this panel bug since 0.30.
My most obvious problem has been with session management that likes to restart every application I ever ran since the installation of gnome along with numerous terminal windows. Of course I turned off session management because I think it's a misfeature anyway.
Maybe KDE, but either way it seems it was also because of LinuxWorld.
I don't know the penguin is cool, maybe it's because I'm too laid back in front of a computer.
TRy KDE 1.1 instead of 1.0, and you'll notice a big speed improvement.
KDE 1.1 was faster for me than Gnome.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the upcoming KDE 1.1.1 release!
...because that's the nature of hyped (wannabe) mainstream products.
:-(
And that's what RedHat/Gnome -unfortunately- has become
You have encountered by the (M's law)^(-1).
;-)
"Anything that can possibly (but improbably) work right, does so."
That's the only explanation for getting GNOME to work correctly
Yes, now it's official! The release WAS premature, and not just a bit!
At least Miguel admits that GNOME (i.e. RedHat) uses Microsoft strategies when it comes to releasing:
Hyping unfinished software as the best thing since sliced bread to harm competitors.
Whatever one might think of GNOME technically, adopting those MS habits is just despisable!
You can have gtk-1.0.* and gtk-1.2.* running at
the same time
wayout> ls *gtk*
libgtk.so -> libgtk-1.2.so.0.1.0
libgtk.so.1 -> libgtk.so.1.0.6
libgtk-1.2.so -> libgtk-1.2.so.0.1.0
There you see it. Libgtk-1.2 is considered a different lib. It surely looks like a mess and it
is a dumb and stupid naming police (It *should* have been called libgtk.so.2!), but you *can* run both together.
And, indeed, as the poster above states, gimp-1.0.4 does work with libgtk-1.2
way-out
As far as i can tell it just runs ppp-on and ppp-off, under Debian I had to make links from pon and poff to those files. It is rather cool though.
Intead of starting with OLE2, wouldn't it have been better to start from "what is needed", and then pick & choose from what OLE2, OpenDoc, OS/2 SOM, etc. did well? There could potentially be so much more to a GUI than the compound documents/object linking & embedding that OLE2 provides...
Exactly that's what KDE (especially Torben Weis) did. He designed an Object model based on OpenDoc with some nice additional features. But the gnomes had the NIH syndrome and developed their OLE2 clone.
Yes, I've upgraded 3 times since the 1.0.0 release (easy... start download before bed, rpm -Uvh *.rpm in the morning)
I've been VERY pleased by the stability and improvements of each new release. I use it w/ E, and like it a lot. The previous MS analogy is STOOPID. GNOME is usable, and responsive to problems. Good work!
First, lets get one thing straight: Gnome is a Good Thing. OK, now that I've set the tone: Gnome is *not* version 1.xx caliber yet. Be objective and look at Gnome. It is a pain in the ass to install initially. Until RedHat did something about it, the documentation was slim to none, especially Enlightenment. (Rasterman, you must be able to write the docs along with the code to be considered a "complete" programmer) To be able to claim the version 1.xx status, a program should not only work well without big whammy-type bugs (gnome would occasionally open 50 or more term windows, half a dozen Netscapes, and whatever else i'd run, when I'd load it) but it should have a bit of spit-and-polish to it and a halfway friendly install. (i don't consider getting and installing over 30 rpms a very friendly install)
Maybe when they decide it's 2.0 I'll try it again...it really does look like it will be a great window manager!
Fancy desktops are only cpu-intensive window-dressing unless a significant number of apps are integrated with that desktop and there is some really useful functionality that didn't exist before. This added functionality should manifest itself through a number of apps (a la drag n drop).
KDE and Gnome only support a few token apps that offer no real productivity gains. Hence, they are a waste of time. If you really want to see an interface that truly increases productivity, watch an experienced Mac user for a bit. Its the graphical equivalent of watching a shell master work the keyboard.
What the heck are you talking about?
I use kwrite for all my Perl coding, I use kfm for file management and web browsing. Kuickshow for imageviewing. The kterms, of course. knotes for sticky notes (thought it was gay at first, but I use it daily now for quick reminders). kmail for email, krn for news, kppp for connecting to my ISP... kmp3 for mp3s...
I could use StarOffice for wordprocessing, as it integrates well with QT and KDE, if I wanted/needed too, but I'm happy with WordPerfect.
Plenty of apps for me, thanks.
Before KDE I was stuck with CLI and pico, ugh. Since KDE my productivity has gone up.
You can stick with your vanilla WM or just a bunch of xterms if you want... I'm going to go get more work done.
uselinux@email.com
I'm using the latest release now installed with unrpm'ed rpm binaries or a non-rpm system. Everything worked right off. Well - all of the core apps and most of the applets. Wanda the Fish
seems to have gone belly up, though. Can't get her to appear on the panel, but that doesn't cause the panel to crash.
The neatest applet is the ppp connector. Somehow it auto-configured and worked just by clicking the button. Perhaps it read the ppp config files I had during installation.
With Enlightenment, I'm starting to feel once again what I felt when first using an Amiga ca. 1989. It has the right feeling - and I haven't even downloaded and tried any of the far-out themes yet. Using the E WMaker look alike and the default Gtk theme for now.
Gnome Midnite Cmdr seems very stable - but I haven't tried all the customization as I have with the Kde fmgr yet. So far, none of the crashes reported with 1.0 version using gmc.
This comes after being very critical of Gnome and RedHat's investment in Gnome. I guess that was because I felt Gnome was getting too much publicity which was unwarranted. It was, but that has changed with a more stable release that one can actually use to do work on a Linux box!
Stuff that seems missing or very inconvenient:
1. Most Gnome appls use Netscape for on-line help. The should use the Gnome Help browser. Why
load a 25 meg. application just to read a help file?
2. Netscape - period. It's so ugly it makes me want to cry. Please, Mozilla, get something usable out soon. Even though the Kde integrated web browser doesn't read all pages as well as scape, it's prettier and faster and more convenient. There is no way that a Windows user who has used IE4 or 5 will be happy with Netscape 4.5 with Linux - even though it has been remarkable stable on my system.
3. Over-reliance on panel. I wish Gnome (and E) relied more on customizable root menus to handle desktops and tasks. This is much more convenient.
The panel is not bad with auto-hide, but with lots of appls + pager several panels are needed. This is not the case with root menus and submenus. Well, that is something I could work on as a coding project. Menus can also contain the same
images used for panel icons to make them more interesting. It should be fairly easy to add to the root menu something that pops up the main "foot" meny on panel anywhere on screen.
The main point is that Gnome has the right flavor.
I find it very different from Windows. Of course some things are common to almost all desktop systems - Windows, Mac, OS2. Can't say exactly what that quality is, but it's definitely there.
Thanks.
There are so many toolkits available for X that we are *NOT* going to have a common look and feel standard, period. Linux is about diversity - we don't have to reinvent the wheel once for every toolkit.
I think you are wrong about this. However, I think it will be a good 5 years before the majority of the users use the same desktop and 15 years before nearly everybody uses the same desktop.
There is no reason that you wouldn't have a "standard" desktop available that is infinitely customizable. This I think will be the end result.
Its unbelievable how much better gnome is since the 1.0 release. I been using it for a couple of days now and the panel and gmc much more stable. gmc hasn't crashed yet...... Heres the problems I've had so far;
3 icons are missing from the gftp rpm.....keeps gftp from starting up. start it from a term window you'll see which ones are missing-- fire up the gimp and make some replacements
Some times gnome and e pause while they're starting and or shutting down.....but if you give it a few minutes it takes off again.
I highly reccommend all those that had problems with 1.0 give it a try.
Also alot of people complained about gnome being released too early. True that alot of people ended up with a bad impression of gnome but on the other hand it enabled alot more bugs to found and killed. Although not still perfect, the difference between 1.0 and 1.05 will show others just how fast people in the linux community can fix bugs.
i have a lots of friend who want to try it but cant figure out how to make it work! thats great news...:)
---
The GNOME people are producing the tarballs. Red Hat Software is building RPMS for their distribution. Likewise, Debian volunteers are building debs for their distribution.
Check out the entry in the GNOME FAQ.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Posted by OGL:
:0.1, and since you can't have the panel running on more than one monitor at the same time, I can't use the pager on the monitor where I keep all my windows. The file manager is also rather annoying since the mime type capplet doesn't let you create new mime types. Also would it be so hard to have any file type which isn't recognized be opened by a text editor? In case you people haven't noticed (durr...) most *nix people don't store text files with a .txt extension. Has anyone else experienced the panel bug and do they know if this release has fixed it?
..is that the panel crashes almost all the time when you right click and select "properties" anywhere in the panel. The first time is usually OK, then the second or third time, when you close the properties dialog down it goes, taking X with it. Also, and this one applies to the KDe team as well...remember people with multi-head setups!!! The panel doesn't work when I try to start it on display
-W.W.
Posted by OGL:
Alright! I installed the latest version and the panel-crashing bug seems to be gone. Hooray. Now all you people need to do is address the multi-head concerns and make double clicking on files open them in a text editor by default. I once hacked the gnome mime types file to do this, but unfortunetly lost the changes I made and have been unable to manage it since. However, I can live without a file manager for now, and since my desktop no longer crashes, I would consider this release a positive step forward. Good work GNOME team!
-W.W.
I'm pretty sure you are using some sort of pixmap theme. There is a bug in Imlib which causes the panel to crash with the pixmap theme (some thing about the icon loading as far as I remember). They had to write the code another way to get it to work ok, but it's slower. Let's hope rasterman will fix Imlib soon.
Diversity is good, as long as it means that I can make decisions, eg about the look&feel of widgets. It's not good if the developer decides for me and I have to use applications with differently behaving widgets.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
I really hope people that write GTK-based apps in the future will stop naming their creations "GTKwidget" or "Gthing", etc. It's about as silly as "Kfoo" or "QtBar". Prefixes are rather unnecessary.
There are so many toolkits available for X that we are *NOT* going to have a common look and feel standard, period. Linux is about diversity - we don't have to reinvent the wheel once for every toolkit.
-Stu
this also tends to lead to attitudes like "Oh, it has a 'K' in it - it must be evil!" ... etc :)
nothing really is "meant" for gnome or kde, imho. KDE is just Qt, drag'n'drop, WM hints & mime types right now, Gnome is similar.
of course, when the component model for each environment because usable, sure then we'll see some dissimilarities. but for now, it's just a bunch of libraries.. it's easy to have both sets on your system.
-Stu
Yeah, I figured that's what OpenParts was about. I'll have to look deeper into it.
-Stu
within 5 years, desktops (hopefully) will be a lot more advanced than what gnome & kde are architected for.
within 15 years, desktops will be irrelevant.
Furthermore, with all of the philosophical wars about vi vs. emacs, bsd vs. linux, and kde vs. gnome, I think you're being a little optimistic about the "one desktop utopia". the Linux crowd wants diversity - and mainstreamers aren't going to change that because the Linux crowd *develops* this stuff. Gnome isn't going to take over unless all the KDE people jump off a cliff - not going to happen.
-Stu
Remember how the Halloween documents from microsoft talked about the potential "lack of innovation" coming out of the open source community?
Isn't it a twing ironic that the Gnome component model is based upon OLE2?
OLE2 is a decent piece of technology, though it is/was rather complicated to use. The thing is - it was developed over 6 years ago.
Wouldn't it be nice if people went back to the drawing board to think about what _fundamentally_ should be done with regards to how software components & user interfaces interrelate?
The only stabs at advanced UI software integration have been OpenDoc, and Taligent CommonPoint. Both were technically sound, but both failed.
OpenDoc for business/political reasons (Java killed it - ask IBM & Apple) and asthetic reasons [not EVERYTHING in this world is a document].
Taligent failed because it was ahead of its team (it was fat & slow) and it was released in 1995, coincidentally the same time as another OS that we all know about.
Why hasn't anyone tried to learn from the failure of these models? OpenDoc is a free download from IBM's site, with some source code (none of the internals yet i don't think).
Intead of starting with OLE2, wouldn't it have been better to start from "what is needed", and then pick & choose from what OLE2, OpenDoc, OS/2 SOM, etc. did well? There could potentially be so much more to a GUI than the compound documents/object linking & embedding that OLE2 provides...
Now, I know talk is cheap & actions are where its at. (I do intend to act on this eventually. ) I just think it would be great if the open source model came out with something as lucrative as a next-gen GUI, instead of a commercial company.
But, for whatever reasons, open source mavens seem to have difficulties with understanding how the common user "thinks" with regards to a GUI. This isn't a flame, it's an observation. For this reason, my bets are on the company, for now.
-Stu
I can help though. Have a look at this page I put together a few months back. You'll find the means to add Gnome panel menus that ape the KDE and the CDE menu systems, as menu buttons on the Gnome Panel.
I think this is what you're trying to do? Since the screenshots on there were done, I've started using the KDE image from /. for that Menu =O)
Huh? Why are you thinking GNOME is cloning OLE2? AFAICS, it's exactly following the process you wanted to see, i.e. comb the best out of all object models, while keeping in mind that GNOME wants to be cross-platform, based on CORBA, etc.
On the other hand, there is the XPCOM project going on heavily at Mozilla, which might even provide something really close to MS things, ignoring how valuable is that :) Of course, licensing issues between GPL/LGPL/MPL/NPL are to be sorted out by the project that wants to use both...
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
I think you should seek therapy. Seriously.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
!ease of use = total world domination....
hmmmm...
not ease of use = total world domination
??????
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Releasing early and often is good, but the problem is that it was advertised as release 1, which it was not. It was release .9something...
On the other hand, it does encourage people to try it out and gets a lot more eyes on it.
On the third hand (I grew it just for you, baby), if people are anticipating the release, and it's not up to snuff, your project can lose face, and keep people away from it, long-term.
I'm still waiting to be able to run Gimp and Gnome with the same version of GTK... stupid interface changes. Now don't change the INTERFACE of a library after version 1, unless it's backwards compatible, or you have a good ORB setup going...
Or is all this fixed, now? I'm not as up to date on all this as I should be.
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Do you know if there are any plans to upgrade them past 1.0.3? I've considered dropping CVS for .debs from time to time but the fact that the snapshots seem to be rather static put me off (thus putting more load on the poor CVS servers. :-) OTOH, it means that my hack to make the life applet randomize every 15 minutes stays in...)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I upgraded my Debian system to 2.1, .xinitrc file, and everything worked.
installed the GNOME stuff,
added "gnome-session" to the end of
my
The upgrade itself was all of
"apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade".
Pretty cool stuff.
Emacs (IMHO) or even vi (Again IMHO) are more useful productivity tools than kwrite for me, so no gain there, I don't require a file manager as bash suffices me quite well, gimp/xv will do what kuickshow can. The things that are missing if we want to make Linux mainstream instead of just for "geeks" like myself are proper office apps such as StarOffice et al. Last time I checked these didn't integrate as seamlessly as they should with either Gnome or KDE so there has been no net gain as yet, but I do agree things are getting there ... Now as soon as those RPM's are done we can see how stable Gnome is now since last time I tried it was completely unusable :(
Um..if you optimize it to hell, and set things up to use a competant system of package management (no rpms don't count) which reduces problems, it's not a big deal. Compile in the background, get other stuff done. Lighten up.
we see that the concepts underlying the new GNOME document object model for object linking and
embedding are based on Microsoft's OLE2; cleaned of "historical problems" of course. I would say "maybe Microsoft is not all bad?" but I don't want to be flame broiled.
Hey, the smart learn when not to totally reinvent the wheel. And a great many smart people put many smart ideas into Microsoft products. Unfortunetly, with Microsoft product quality control, they never got seperated from the bad stuff, and they never got their bugs knocked out.
ssia.
DNA just wants to be free...
...but don't call it 1.0.
That's my philosophy.
DNA just wants to be free...
I can't help but feeling that a major reason for the unreadiness of early 1.0 GNOME packages was due to the fact that they were so hard to get. Maybe if more people were able to get the packages and test them then bugs could have been identified and corrected earlier. Faster and more updated mirrors would have helped a lot.
On the contrary, I like the prefixes people add to their programs. That way I know right away if it is meant to work with KDE or Gnome or whatever right off the bat.
I've considered having Gnome and KDE running at the same time so I can run everything that appears on Freshmeat, but I think my head would explode.
My panel was crashing every time I sneezed for a while. Then I compiled gnome-core 1.0.5 and gnome-libs 1.0.8, and everything has been peachy for me ever since. I'm pretty sure it was gnome-lib giving me the problems, because before I installed it the panel was spewing error messages like nobody's business. Now it is quiet. And it is good.
This is under WindowMaker, but I doubt that has any relevance.
You could add them to your user menu on the panel. Or, if you're running Debian and the packages have standard Debian menu entries, they should appear on the Debian menu in the panel.
You may want to try the latest RH build (assuming your running RedHat).
I liked the 1.0.0 release well enough to start using it full time. I was willing to live with all the problems you mentioned. I followed each supplemental release and the problems never really went away.
Until now.
Session mangement alone makes this a worthwile improvement (it won't open tons of windows). I've also noticed a big speed improvement while switchng desktops ( and each desktop has it's own background image).
I'm sure 2.0 will be a much better product, but this latest build seems to be a *HUGE* improvement over 1.0.0. It's really pretty amazing.
-Alan
The RPMs did come out prematurely. I'm pretty sure it was because of pressure from KDE. That really suprised me because open source has a history of only being released "when it's done". Witness the linux kernel - how many prepatches did we need again? Anyway, I use gnome here at home, the only problem I've seen is that it periodically "eats" my config files. Other than that, rock stable, easy to use.. and of course, fast (once you modify the defaults to get rid of the stylish 3d stuff).
Keep up the good work gnome dev guys, you've got an excellent model, and a good product. But don't rush it. I waited a long time for Quake to be released, I'm sure (atleast I can) we can wait until it's really ready for prime-time.
--
I would be very interested to know how you managed
that miracle. I installed RedHat 5.9 with the
latest Gnome that comes with the CD (1.03).
I thought it was the greatest thing until I
realize that it would bomb out every time
I would try to play a Gnome game. The KDE games
loaded OK. I also found out that any sound
program would do the same.
After zillions of core dumps I checked to see
if the sound worked correctly under the console.
It did. I use 4-front software by the way.
I then installed Mandrake 5.3 which works
rock solid with KDE. Gnome may be neat but is
not ready for release.
http://www.netonecom.net/~bbcat
Hey there. I use KDE and GNOME. In fact, I use KWM with the GNOME Panel.
I'd love to try JUST GNOME again, but find it annoying to run Kapps by the command line.
I already found a perl script to convert GNOME apps into the Kpanel, and ther is an option on the GNOME panel to include KDE apps, but it doesn't seem to work. Does anyone know how I can have my Kapps converted in to the GNOME menu?
Thanks,
Ben
BTW, GMC 4.5.30 DOES seem very stable, and GNOME actually closes when I end my session. Way to go guys!!
Thanks! That looks like exactly what I was trying to accomplish!!
I downloaded the sources not three nights ago.
On the other hand, the improvement is more than noticeable, and the less than instant gratification of compiling it all was worth it.
My box provides KDE for my housemate, because I didn't want her to deal with GNOME 1.0's less-than-stellar performance. I was using GNOME for myself. I won't put GNOME in front of her quite yet, but jeepers it's much better from what I can see over the last three days.
In particular the session management is less buggy, GNOME mc doesn't core every time I start a new X session, and the panel doesn't mysteriously "lose" applets every now and then.
Having finally gone out and compiled the thing for myself, I feel like I can also finally address the comments people made about how hard it is to install:
There are handy instructions on which order to build the source packages in. Even if you don't read them, a notepad (or vi in an open xterm, for that matter) is more than adequate to document what each ./configure script throws up on. There's no rocket science involved here. With the RPM's out for the improved stuff GNOME's definitely a competitor again.
In terms of "ease of installation," though, I'd note that KDE ships RPM's in a giant tarball with accompanying scripts for installation. Maybe that will be GNOME's next step, though there comes a point where you're just pandering to the truly mule-headed and willfully obtuse.
All that aside, anyone who saw the promise but walked away from 1.0 disappointed ought to take a look at the newest releases. They've cleaned up a lot in very little time.
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
I've never seen the panel bug, but I just added "Add Mime-type" to the mime-type capplet this weekend. It is checked into CVS now, and will probably propagate out to the RPMS eventually.
Multi-head is a little tricky. GNOME 1.0 won't do it all that cleanly now. There is a mechanism (sort of) in place involving sessions, but it will require some work. I expect it to be under control by the next major release.
-Jonathan (jrb@redhat.com) (this is not my account)
Actually, I find that, when the spec file works out of the package, rpm -ta [tarball] works quite well. :-) It builds the rpms and srpms, and even cleans up after itself.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
What version of gtk are you using?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Gnome, as of 1.0.5 (gnome-core) defaults to the KDE menu being in /usr/share/apps. Very odd, as that is also the location of gnomes apps in the RPMS, and I doubt many people have kde installed in /usr.
If you compile gnome-core from source, configure it like "./configure --with-kde-datadir=/opt/share" (I think thats the flag, something like that.)
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
These DE's would improve linux's usability. It is simple for them to add an app to the menu (if it is done automaticly). They get a nice file manager, with D&D. And configuration of the desktop's appearence is easy as well. Though I agree the improvement isn't much above a WM with a lot of support tools (like a simple WindowMaker with WMconf), it's something.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
The most common situation for this happening was when using a pixmap based theme. It was caused by a bad interaction between the GnomePixmap widget and imlib while pixmap caching was turned on.
This problem has been fixed with this release.
It is true that there were bugs in GNOME 1.0.0, but the increased user base also increased the number of bug reports that were comming in. The latest versions have a minimal number of bugs (lets face it -- every project has its bugs and problems), and we wouldn't have found them as quickly without the larger user base and good bug tracking system.
Your analogy to microsoft falls down since 1.0.0 is no longer the latest version -- we fixed many of the bugs (rather than denying their existance or calling them features, which MS seems to do). If projects didn't release new versions till they were completely bug free, you wouldn't see linux 2.2 yet (and many of the subsequent bugs would not have been found and fixed, because the user base would be an order of magnitude smaller).
Microsoft sinks heaps of money into software development. In all their years, they must have come up with something good right? So why not use that (and ignore all the crud).
As for document model interaction between KDE and GNOME, Miguel is planning on writing Qt/KDE bindings for bonobo, the GNOME document model. It is concievable that this could then be wrapped in KDE's OpenParts thing allowing interaction.
I would not recommend writing an app to either doc model yet, as they will both probably change more (bonobo is still being coded, and has yet to be integrated into any GNOME apps) before stabilising.
You KDE and FreeBSD people keep complaining about how your DE/OS never gets the media attention that their counterparts (GNOME/Linux) get. I figured out why that is!
No adorable mascots. I'm not really talking about actual mascots, because that little devil guy is pretty cute (he can't touch Tux, though). GNOME doesn't even have anything but that foot, which isn't better than the K.
But anyway, think about it. Linux has adorable Linus Torvalds. The media love him, because he is the quintessential hacker (well, I guess RMS is the other kind of quintessential hacker). He's cute. Everyone thinks so. What does FreeBSD have? They don't have Linus Torvalds. So they lose the media fight.
Then there's GNOME. They have Miguel. Do reporters actually know what GNOME is? No, they don't. It runs on something called X, they reason, so it must be porn. But Miguel is so darn adorable! I don't know the name of anybody working on KDE, because they're not as adorable, so they don't get in the paper. Besides, they're mostly in Europe, and while Miguel is in Mexico, at least he's closer.
There. QED.
Putting the FreeBSD maintainers into USA Today will not make them muppets. I'm sorry you were offended by my logic. Have a lollipop.
They're pretty slow putting out the RPMs (it's a different "they", actually). Fortunately, all the tarballs have spec files in them, so here's what I do.
/usr/src/redhat/SPECS
/usr/src/redhat/SOURCES
/usr/src/redhat/SPECS/gnome-libs.spec
Untar the sources. Say it's gnome-libs. Get gnome-lib.spec, put it in
Put gnome-libs-whatever.tar.gz in
Then rpm -bb --rmsource --clean
Yay, I have an RPM now, compiled with pgcc, optimized for my K6-2, weeks before there would be an official RPM.
Well, this is what I changed my /etc/rpmrc file to say:
/usr/src/redhat
/tmp
/usr/bin/gcc /usr/bin/gcc.bak; ln /opt/pgcc/bin/pgcc /usr/bin/gcc (you need to do this or nothing will compile; regular gcc doesn't understand optimizing for the k6). Using these settings it _really_ optimizes everything. And I haven't noticed anything being unstable.
require_vendor: 0
distribution: Red Hat 5.2
require_distribution: 0
topdir:
vendor: None
packager: Andrew Chatham
optflags: i386 -O6 -mamdk6 -march=amdk6
tmppath:
I then did mv
1.0.8 is much better than 1.0.4. I've been struggling with GNOME compiles since the original 1.0, and my experience is that the rough spots are gone, and it's really 1.0 caliber now.
Make sure you upgrade gnome-libs to 1.0.8 and mc to 4.5.30.
Kudos to RHAD labs for getting the RPMs out so fast. Since I've already got everything I want compiled now with egcs, I won't be grabbing the RPMs, but since I'm one of the folks who've been complaining on the GNOME lists about the lack of RPM support, it's great to see these RPMs go up so fast now that Miguel and team believe they have GNOME 1.0 stabilized.
As for WindowMaker -- GNOME and WindowMaker are supposed to play nice together. I've done it myself, although I haven't tried swithing window managers from the control center. Make sure you have the latest GNOME-enabled WindowMaker (0.51.2, IIRC). Also, you'd do everyone a favor by reporting this to the GNOME bug list. As a workaround, try putting
wmaker &panel
in your .xinitrc, then starting X. GNOME should then Do The Right Thing via session management from now on (and you can replace those lines in .xinitrc with gnome-session instead).
This is totally off topic, btw, but it's still a small forum and i didn't know who to contact, though I've sent email to CmdrTaco, this seemed... reasonable.
Is there something about the alignment system I missed? This morning I was set at 3 or so, and now all my posts are at 1. Is there some sort of decay system or reset system I didn't catch in all the changes Slashdot went through?
Emailing me is fine. I check often enough that a reply in Slashdot will also be caught. My score is also low enough that this post shouldn't clutter the Gnome article/thread too much
Sorry for the spam, as it were...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Truly awe inspiring. I must try it!
Gimp 1.0.4 compiles fine with gtk 1.2.x
I'm using gnome+gimp together with no problems (and a consistent theme throughout (BrushedMetal)
gimp 1.0.4 also has a few other bugfixes. It's worth upgrading.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Whenever the file manager looses focus on my system, it freezes up. This makes me angry...
Would this work on SuSE? Obviously, I wouldn't put it in the redhat/SPEC directory, but would it work, and optimize it for my K6-2? Doesn't compiling optimize it automatically?
- Free tabletop fantasy gaming! Grey Lotus
While I'm downloading the new set of GNOME RPMs, I'll give you my take on the GNOME status report. I'd consider myself a totally partial observer here, since I use both GNOME and KDE.
I'm glad that Miguel is admitting that GNOME 1.0 was a little premature. When your stated goal is addressing the user-friendly/GUI side of Linux, your 1.0 release should be rock solid and as easy-to-install and configure as possible. They released too early. A nice script to automate the install of the RPMs (like KDE has) would have helped too.
With the level of Microsoft bashing that you encounter here and around Linux folks in general, it is interesting to see the Microsoft influences in GNOME and KDE. KDE sure looks and feels like Windows, that Display Properties dialog is practically a clone. And now, in the GNOME status report, we see that the concepts underlying the new GNOME document object model for object linking and embedding are based on Microsoft's OLE2; cleaned of "historical problems" of course. I would say "maybe Microsoft is not all bad?" but I don't want to be flame broiled.
The status report mentions that the GNOME document object model is being implemented using GTK objects. This sure would be a nice place for some KDE/GNOME collaboration. As a component developer, I would like to be able to write a component that could be distributed as a binary that would work in both a KDE or a GNOME application. Since KDE and GNOME are both based, at the lower levels on X and CORBA this does not seem impossible. Difficult maybe, but not impossible.
Thats all for now...- Dave
I don't know if EsounD works with the 4front sound modules or not. I'll bet there's an incompatibility there. I would try using redhat's sndconfig tool instead. I dunno if Esound is more stable with this release. I hope so. Most of my sound problems are of the "can't allocate DMA buffer" variety. :( This isn't Esound's fault but rather that of the kernel and outmoded ISA hardware.
Yep, I do that too. Of course, you'll need to do it in the right order (libs first, etc), and install your devel and lib rpms as you go. One problem is that the spec files are often slightly broken in the tarballs. Sometimes a file is missing or misplaced or it gets the version info wrong on the tarball. Pretty easy to fix, though.
With the current untimely binary compatibility breakage between EGCS compiled libs and some other combinations I'm getting rather leery of contributed RPM's anyway. I'll prefer the compile from source thing until these problems are worked out rather than spend another couple of hours trying to figure out where that unresolved __register_frame_info symbol came from.
The GNOME desktop manger has greatly improved sinces it's first 1.0 relase. I had great trouble getting the 1.0 relase to complie and run. I wasn't abile to get it to work as adverticed. Until the newest relase. But aren't a lot of programs relased for linux relased a bit early. Before offical 1.00 It's the leting them out early and allowing programmers all over the world help to fix problems that allow them to grow and mature at a much faster rate than if they were delayed and relase a slightly more stable verion. I don't think you can realse a funcation program to early if your relaseing it open sources. It's just the best all around. It gets the end users intamintly knowlage of the program.
No, the title say MATuration...
sick...
Anyway, I am so glad to see Gnome maturing. This is the pre-eminent (No flames, KDE folks) easy to use GUI. I've been using it for about six months now and am in love. With the 1.08, it finally and officially passed the "Mom Test" (Well, dad, but mom ain't around) when he was able to access several files and get on the internet with it. Not bad for a 60 year old Micrso~1 user!
With the "Mom Test" passed, I am very pleased with Gnome and the new users it can attract!
!Ease of use = Total World Domination
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
Ok, yes first releases were buggy I was said. Well, I waited until they had 'official' redhat rpms. (That's the distro I am using and happy with!)
Anyway, this thing is awesome. I like gdm, enlightenment choice, but will get any decent windowmaker rpm that works with gnome!
Still, there are things that don't work like misplaced windows on the pager or like when it sends you to the wrong part of desktop when clicking on an app that is already there! Paging is not that solid yet! Is it gnome's fault or enlightenment's one, that nukes unused desktops out of memory from time to time?
Anywway, these are details. I haven't had a "general protection fault", nor did I have to hard reset my machine.
Plus, this thing is far superior to Windows95/98 GUI, and unix's CDE.
Now for KDE, it's hard to tell. I still like gnome better but it's a matter of taste (NOT LIC.). I also noted it ate less memory than KDE or CDE!
Great job, gnome people, and rhlabs people and whoever worked on this.
I would offer you beer if I had the cash!
Kill Microsoft? No! Just hire their GUI guys!