GTK 2 will have a different default look; to get an idea what it will be like, try the "Raleigh" theme Owen released for GTK 1.2, which is sort
of a prototype for the GTK 2 look. It removes some of the Motif-esque ugliness and looks cleaner. Still a simple, fast theme, no MacOS-X snazziness, but of course the point of themes is that you can switch them.;-) For the default we want something that will be fast over a remote X display (and fast in general), not use too much memory, and reasonably conservative overall.
I think it's fair to say that the primary focus of GTK 2, aside from a few major features (Unicode/Pango, text/tree widgets) was API usability. GTK 2 should be a good bit easier to program. Basically as soon as we notice a FAQ or a question with no good answer on the support mailing lists, we file a Bugzilla bug and try to fix that problem via API enhancements. Better to eliminate the need to ask a question than to add it to the FAQ.
There are also various end-user usability enhancements, such as improved focus handling, etc.
I don't know who started this dumb dev kernel rumor. In 7 it's a "preview/beta" thing you can
optionally install manually if you want to do some testing or get an idea what 2.4 will be like.
The installer won't ever install it. It's just
an RPM sitting on the CD for people that know about it and know what they're getting into.
It installs kernel 2.2 and X 3.3 normally; 2.4prewhatever is an optional "preview"
and X 4 servers get installed if X 3 doesn't support your card.
Re:What Miguel doesn't want you to know about GNOM
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 2
I'm not aware of this code, but if you post (or email me) the
modules or files it's found in I'll be sure it has the proper credits on it. Unless you post specifics though I'm guessing this is a troll.
Some factual corrections: the GNOME Foundation does not write code (and in fact is not yet legally incorporated), so it certainly should not be the subject of your sentence there. We also do not consider KDE a "bitter rival."
Also, the reason was not to fork proprietary
versions, that would probably be forbidden by
the assignment papers just as it is for the
FSF assignment papers. It was just to change
license between LGPL/GPL/etc. and be able to
defend copyrights in court.
Although most responses have been positive, some articles and comments
about our recent GNOME Foundation announcement have been
disappointingly inaccurate.
In particular, two mistakes are common. The first is referring to the
Foundation as "consortium"; the Foundation is not a consortium, but an
organization of individual contributors to the GNOME Project. The
companies joining the Foundation join an advisory board which has no
decision-making function; decisions are made by a board of GNOME
contributors elected by the membership. At this time, around
two-thirds of the members of the Foundation are independent volunteers
not employed by one of the advisory board companies. The Foundation is
simply a legal entity that can act on behalf of the preexisting GNOME
Project. The GNOME Foundation is comparable to the SPI/Debian and the
Apache Software Foundation. For more details, see the press release:
http://www.gnome.org/pr-foundation.html
The second mistake is that this represents some kind of flareup or
resurgence of a "war" with KDE. At our press conference, we took pains
to discourage this interpretation of the announcement when members of
the press asked about it. We are interested in healthy and friendly
cooperation with the KDE project and other free software
projects. Interoperability efforts such as http://www.freedesktop.org
continue and will not be affected by the GNOME Foundation.
Both GNOME and KDE have valuable contributions to make. We're creating
a foundation to help us run GNOME well, and we're excited about the
recent commercial acceptance of GNOME, but these things are advances
for GNOME, not attacks on anyone else. Our primary focus is to expand
the userbase of free software; competing with other free software is
not the point.
Well, many many hackers are paid to work on the kernel (among other projects I could choose as an example) and the kernel still has lots of volunteers. So I don't think there's any inherent deterrent to volunteer contribution in the fact that some people are paid; after all, even now the majority of contributors to GNOME are not paid. The motivations to contribute won't change; you can still get fame and glory making the desktop the best it can be. And there's even a new motivation, that you have a decent chance of getting a fun job out of it if you turn out to be good at it.
Time will tell, I guess. I'm hoping though that this announcement will make GNOME more exciting to work on, and encourage people to join the project.
This article seems to imply that Sun, HP, etc.
will be controlling the foundation; however, the
only decision-making body in the foundation is
a board of 9-15 contributors elected by the membership. As of now, over 2/3 of the members
are not employed by a "GNOME company." Also, no company is allowed to have a majority on the board. Since 2/3 of the membership consists of
volunteers, there's little danger of corporate control.
(Of course, the board won't be telling people
what to hack on anyway, since that wouldn't be very productive, as anyone who's in a free software project knows. It's just a way to organize our efforts and enhance communication within the project and with outsiders such as companies.)
Companies that join the foundation join an "advisory board" with no decision-making powers.
The advisory board also has nonprofit members such as the FSF.
I think it was also misleading to mention only
Red Hat among the Linux distributions; at least
TurboLinux and Debian are also shipping GNOME
as the default (or only in Debian's case) desktop.
In any case, there's no cause for FUD; it's exciting to see large formerly-all-proprietary companies contributing to free software alongside traditional open source supporters. That's the way I look at it anyway. All the code is GPL, it's not like we can lose anything; they can't steal our code.
What are you talking about "vaporware"? Inti is mostly written, you can download the code from the web site and see for yourself.
Re:I don't want to start a WM flame-war, but...
on
Gnome On Your PDA?
·
· Score: 2
I want to know how you can call this a "configuration language";-) I'm not sure what it is but "language" isn't the word that comes to mind... 1001 0 11 999 100 KEYBINDINGS 102 7 427 Home 428 4 101 910 104 8 size 105 427 v 428 4 101 910 104 43 105 427 End
I suppose my point is that all the developers, translators, and documenters (anyone doing work in CVS) are on the list. So it only excludes people who aren't doing any work. And of course that's the point of the list. (Seen the signal-to-noise ratio of the public lists lately? Point made.)
If you think the Linux kernel developers or any other large project's developers make all decisions on a public list, you're just mistaken.
However most discussions of a technical nature (such as new gnome-libs features) are encouraged to be held on gnome-devel-list.
It certainly isn't a publicity stunt, we tried to get Rob to change the headline from "New Desktop Project" to "Eazel contributes GNOME 2.0 desktop shell" or something, but it didn't get changed. The "new desktop" thing is entirely an artifact of Slashdot.
Note that gnome-core (panel, session manager, some other desktop components) will have a 1.2 release, but gnome-libs, control-center, and some other components will be jumping straight to 2.0 and will come out some months after gnome-core does. gnome-core will also get a 2.0 update. So this is not GNOME 1.2 but "Half of GNOME 1.2" the other half of GNOME will go straight to 2.0 over a longer timeframe.
The GNU standard is that configure defaults to/usr/local. It is broken to install over the top of your RPMs via source compile; normally if you build from source you want to remove the RPMs and install to/usr/local or some other prefix. So the GNU configure defaults actually protected you here.
The idea is that distribution vendors instal to/usr, and you are supposed to use/usr/local or/opt for third-party or self-installed packages so you don't have conflicts with the RPMs.
This has been widely accepted as correct for years and years on UNIX, so don't expect it to change.
An abstracted configuration repository for applications (ODBC style connectivity to a back-end, either decentralized or centralized, much like Microsoft's Registry, but w/o all the brain-damaged stupidity and a GOOD SET OF DOCUMENTED RULES to follow for developers)
The GConf library in GNOME 2.0 is exactly this. I think the hardware inventory and application installation stuff is outside the scope of GNOME though, distribution vendors need to work on those things.
If you hate the Registry and want this problem solved well, then open source is your friend. GConf is still in flux; you can make sure it's exactly what you're looking for as a sysadmin by reading the docs and sending comments and patches. Right now the latest GConf is in GNOME CVS as module 'gconf', but there will be a release eventually.
Re:Successful books using the Open Content License
on
GPL for Books?
·
· Score: 1
Note that my book is actually under the Open Publication License (which is what your link points to). The Open Content License is different. However I think there is an effort in progress to merge the OPL and OCL.
It's important to use the OPL without the optional clause that forbids modification of distributed works, by the way. Otherwise it is a non-free license.
CodeWarrior on Mac is fairly nice; if you've ever tried their CodeWarrior for Linux though, it was the biggest piece of non-working junk I've ever seen. Totally unusable; if I'd bought a copy I would have returned it immediately along with a long and angry letter. The thing was released several months too soon and was a sort of mutant combination of Motif and Mac widgets.
If they didn't sell any copies of this, it's not surprising. No one who evaluated the product could possibly have decided to purchase it.
Slashdot Mirror
GTK 2 will have a different default look; to get an idea what it will be like, try the "Raleigh" theme Owen released for GTK 1.2, which is sort of a prototype for the GTK 2 look. It removes some of the Motif-esque ugliness and looks cleaner. Still a simple, fast theme, no MacOS-X snazziness, but of course the point of themes is that you can switch them. ;-) For the default we want something that will be fast over a remote X display (and fast in general), not use too much memory, and reasonably conservative overall.
I think it's fair to say that the primary focus of GTK 2, aside from a few major features (Unicode/Pango, text/tree widgets) was API usability. GTK 2 should be a good bit easier to program. Basically as soon as we notice a FAQ or a question with no good answer on the support mailing lists, we file a Bugzilla bug and try to fix that problem via API enhancements. Better to eliminate the need to ask a question than to add it to the FAQ.
There are also various end-user usability enhancements, such as improved focus handling, etc.
Specific suggestions are welcome in Bugzilla.
I don't know who started this dumb dev kernel rumor. In 7 it's a "preview/beta" thing you can optionally install manually if you want to do some testing or get an idea what 2.4 will be like. The installer won't ever install it. It's just an RPM sitting on the CD for people that know about it and know what they're getting into.
It installs kernel 2.2 and X 3.3 normally; 2.4prewhatever is an optional "preview" and X 4 servers get installed if X 3 doesn't support your card.
I'm not aware of this code, but if you post (or email me) the modules or files it's found in I'll be sure it has the proper credits on it. Unless you post specifics though I'm guessing this is a troll.
Some factual corrections: the GNOME Foundation does not write code (and in fact is not yet legally incorporated), so it certainly should not be the subject of your sentence there. We also do not consider KDE a "bitter rival."
Also, the reason was not to fork proprietary versions, that would probably be forbidden by the assignment papers just as it is for the FSF assignment papers. It was just to change license between LGPL/GPL/etc. and be able to defend copyrights in court.
Helix was going to do this for one project, and they decided not to do it. It is not a requirement for any project at this time.
Although most responses have been positive, some articles and comments about our recent GNOME Foundation announcement have been disappointingly inaccurate.
In particular, two mistakes are common. The first is referring to the Foundation as "consortium"; the Foundation is not a consortium, but an organization of individual contributors to the GNOME Project. The companies joining the Foundation join an advisory board which has no decision-making function; decisions are made by a board of GNOME contributors elected by the membership. At this time, around two-thirds of the members of the Foundation are independent volunteers not employed by one of the advisory board companies. The Foundation is simply a legal entity that can act on behalf of the preexisting GNOME Project. The GNOME Foundation is comparable to the SPI/Debian and the Apache Software Foundation. For more details, see the press release: http://www.gnome.org/pr-foundation.html
The second mistake is that this represents some kind of flareup or resurgence of a "war" with KDE. At our press conference, we took pains to discourage this interpretation of the announcement when members of the press asked about it. We are interested in healthy and friendly cooperation with the KDE project and other free software projects. Interoperability efforts such as http://www.freedesktop.org continue and will not be affected by the GNOME Foundation.
Both GNOME and KDE have valuable contributions to make. We're creating a foundation to help us run GNOME well, and we're excited about the recent commercial acceptance of GNOME, but these things are advances for GNOME, not attacks on anyone else. Our primary focus is to expand the userbase of free software; competing with other free software is not the point.
Well, many many hackers are paid to work on the kernel (among other projects I could choose as an example) and the kernel still has lots of volunteers. So I don't think there's any inherent deterrent to volunteer contribution in the fact that some people are paid; after all, even now the majority of contributors to GNOME are not paid. The motivations to contribute won't change; you can still get fame and glory making the desktop the best it can be. And there's even a new motivation, that you have a decent chance of getting a fun job out of it if you turn out to be good at it.
Time will tell, I guess. I'm hoping though that this announcement will make GNOME more exciting to work on, and encourage people to join the project.
This article seems to imply that Sun, HP, etc. will be controlling the foundation; however, the only decision-making body in the foundation is a board of 9-15 contributors elected by the membership. As of now, over 2/3 of the members are not employed by a "GNOME company." Also, no company is allowed to have a majority on the board. Since 2/3 of the membership consists of volunteers, there's little danger of corporate control.
(Of course, the board won't be telling people what to hack on anyway, since that wouldn't be very productive, as anyone who's in a free software project knows. It's just a way to organize our efforts and enhance communication within the project and with outsiders such as companies.)
Companies that join the foundation join an "advisory board" with no decision-making powers. The advisory board also has nonprofit members such as the FSF.
I think it was also misleading to mention only Red Hat among the Linux distributions; at least TurboLinux and Debian are also shipping GNOME as the default (or only in Debian's case) desktop.
In any case, there's no cause for FUD; it's exciting to see large formerly-all-proprietary companies contributing to free software alongside traditional open source supporters. That's the way I look at it anyway. All the code is GPL, it's not like we can lose anything; they can't steal our code.
Not the case, Inti will integrate fully with GNOME. It doesn't use GNOME now because it uses unstable GTK and gnome-libs uses stable GTK.
What are you talking about "vaporware"? Inti is mostly written, you can download the code from the web site and see for yourself.
I want to know how you can call this a "configuration language" ;-) I'm not sure what it is but "language" isn't the word that comes to mind...
1001 0
11 999
100 KEYBINDINGS
102 7
427 Home
428 4
101 910
104 8 size
105
427 v
428 4
101 910
104 43
105
427 End
TurboLinux also comes with GNOME now.
I suppose my point is that all the developers, translators, and documenters (anyone doing work in CVS) are on the list. So it only excludes people who aren't doing any work. And of course that's the point of the list. (Seen the signal-to-noise ratio of the public lists lately? Point made.)
If you think the Linux kernel developers or any other large project's developers make all decisions on a public list, you're just mistaken.
However most discussions of a technical nature (such as new gnome-libs features) are encouraged to be held on gnome-devel-list.
yeah a private exclusive list with more than 400 people on it
They already have some of the original Mac UI designers working there.
It certainly isn't a publicity stunt, we tried to get Rob to change the headline from "New Desktop Project" to "Eazel contributes GNOME 2.0 desktop shell" or something, but it didn't get changed. The "new desktop" thing is entirely an artifact of Slashdot.
It isn't a new project, they are simply working on the GNOME 2.0 desktop.
Eazel is working on GNOME, it's not a new desktop project.
Eazel is indeed working on GNOME itself, it is not a new desktop project.
Note that gnome-core (panel, session manager, some other desktop components) will have a 1.2 release, but gnome-libs, control-center, and some other components will be jumping straight to 2.0 and will come out some months after gnome-core does. gnome-core will also get a 2.0 update. So this is not GNOME 1.2 but "Half of GNOME 1.2" the other half of GNOME will go straight to 2.0 over a longer timeframe.
The GNU standard is that configure defaults to /usr/local. It is broken to install over the top of your RPMs via source compile; normally if you build from source you want to remove the RPMs and install to /usr/local or some other prefix. So the GNU configure defaults actually protected you here.
The idea is that distribution vendors instal to /usr, and you are supposed to use /usr/local or /opt for third-party or self-installed packages so you don't have conflicts with the RPMs.
This has been widely accepted as correct for years and years on UNIX, so don't expect it to change.
An abstracted configuration repository for applications (ODBC style connectivity to a back-end, either decentralized or centralized, much like Microsoft's Registry, but w/o all the brain-damaged stupidity and a GOOD SET OF DOCUMENTED RULES to follow for developers)
The GConf library in GNOME 2.0 is exactly this. I think the hardware inventory and application installation stuff is outside the scope of GNOME though, distribution vendors need to work on those things.
If you hate the Registry and want this problem solved well, then open source is your friend. GConf is still in flux; you can make sure it's exactly what you're looking for as a sysadmin by reading the docs and sending comments and patches. Right now the latest GConf is in GNOME CVS as module 'gconf', but there will be a release eventually.
Note that my book is actually under the Open Publication License (which is what your link points to). The Open Content License is different. However I think there is an effort in progress to merge the OPL and OCL.
It's important to use the OPL without the optional clause that forbids modification of distributed works, by the way. Otherwise it is a non-free license.
CodeWarrior on Mac is fairly nice; if you've ever tried their CodeWarrior for Linux though, it was the biggest piece of non-working junk I've ever seen. Totally unusable; if I'd bought a copy I would have returned it immediately along with a long and angry letter. The thing was released several months too soon and was a sort of mutant combination of Motif and Mac widgets.
If they didn't sell any copies of this, it's not surprising. No one who evaluated the product could possibly have decided to purchase it.