Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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.
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
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.
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 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
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
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
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!