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