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Gnome 2.4 Release(d)
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Sep 10, 2003 07:03 AM
from the seldon-plan dept.
from the seldon-plan dept.
chendo writes "Gnome 2.4 will be released today. Here is the link to the article on Ars Technica. GNOME 2.4 is the result of quite a bit of work toward complying with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which mainly focus on user interface consistency and predictability. This release has also undergone some general polish, and it can finally be said that the GNOME 2 platform has achieved maturity with this release. The Epiphany web browser, a major new component of GNOME, also makes its debut with this release. (From Footnotes)"
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To keep this topic readable... (Score:5, Funny)
All KDE and Gnome Zealots please board this thread, forsaking all other threads within this topic.
;)
To make this new guideline more comfortable for the really and truly devoted:
- KDE had all of the new features three releases ago. Please get Gnome development out of the way of The One Real GUI(tm)
- KDE whiners: eat our dust! (Gnome, The True Gui for Real People)
A Console/Lynx user... (Yeah, right...
Re:To keep this topic readable... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:To keep this topic readable... (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you for the tip, but I'd rather just telnet in and parse the HTML myself, thank you.
(That damn w3c is making life ever harder for us hard-core wankers though. Every new revision of the standards I have to 'update' my parser through a long and painfull flashing process called learning.)
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Re:To keep this topic readable... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:To keep this topic readable... (Score:4, Funny)
(Took me a while to figure out how to see the images, though. Give it a while and you'll eventually pick up the skill.)
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Re:KDE had all of the new features three releases (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks for the tip. You're a bit late though, lieutenant. My original post is already modded -1 Troll. *grin*
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Still major usability issues... (Score:4, Informative)
2) Taskbar doesn't reflect order that programs were started in. It inserts new buttons at random positions.
GNOME rules, but these two things (among the Metacity wireframe and animation niggles) are real problems. For all the UI work, it's a shame they can't get such elementary stuff right.
Still, I'll be downloading it tonight
Re:Still major usability issues... (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: Haven't used pure Gnome in quite a while, perhaps some of the points below have been handled by now.
I hate the fact that the Windows taskbar reflects the order in which the apps are launched and then cannot be changed. If you're going to have a taskbar interface, then fair enough chronological order seems a sensible default. However once launched, I really want to be able to drag that indication to whatever position I want in the taskbar.
For example, at work on my NT4 box I have a standard set of apps open most times. They are Notes (ugh), two Firebird windows, Putty and a Remote desktop connection. Apps after that can come and go, but I want those apps always in the same place so I don't have to hunt for them later.
I'm also an OS X user, and although I'm aware of criticism of the dock there's certainly one thing to be said for it - your most frequenctly used applications always appear in the same place, both for launching and for bringing to the front.
As a quick aside - anyone else remember the Apple Human Interface Guidlines circa System 7-era, incorporating the Principle of Muscular Remembrance? The idea is that important stuff is always in the same place, every time, so that the user doesn't even have to conciously think about where to find things. It's the reason Macs have a single menu bar, at the top of the screen. It seems to me to also be a key thought behind the dock.
Cheers,
Ian
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Re:Still major usability issues... (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't insert them at random. It inserts them beside similar buttons. At least, Debian testing's Gnome (version 2.2) does.
If you open a Galeon window, then a terminal window, then a FreeCell window, then open a second Galeon window, the button for the second Galeon window will appear in the taskbar beside the first Galeon button. That way, you don't have to go searching through 14 buttons to find the similar ones.
Windows XP does this, too, if I remember rightly. Of course, every time I see a default Windows XP install, I want to gouge my eyes out in horror.....
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Re:Still major usability issues... (Score:3, Insightful)
I normally have a great number of windows open. As most start their entry in the taskbar with the application name and then the content of the application I normally can't read which specific instance of an application that button means (the entry would look something like this: "Galeo...") Therefore I think it's better for instances of the same program to be as far apart as possible because that way it's easier to remember which one you wanted. (a
Re:Still major usability issues... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the great thing about multiple desktops. It took me a little while to get used to, but I can't stand going to a Win* machine and having only one desktop now after using "Linux" for 5 or 6 years.
I usually use 4 desktops. 1 and 2 are my "working" desktops (work, web browsing, games, etc.). Desktop 3 I leave my mail app open (kmail). Desktop 4 I usually have Pan open or minimized, and also keep a few network monitoring apps open (etherape, ethereal, tailing
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It's not out yet. (Score:5, Informative)
Write GnomeVFS modules: (Score:4, Informative)
current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening?). (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus no d'n'd windows across desktops. Pager sucks for this at 16x12.
Gnome-panel regularly poops out at shutdown.
Metacity? Feh. Bring back sawfish (and I mean updated!). The introduction of predictability has led to a sharp decrease in customisability.
I have on average 20 terminals open. If one dies (e.g. because it's a shell window on a machine not available from my current location at start-up), down go the others. This is wholly unacceptable. Because of this, I almost switched to KDE - but it only supports 16 desktops which is Fucking Lame. Excuse me.
Other than those few issues, Gnome (2.x) is very stable, reliable, and well-featured. Keep up the good work (and please attend to that terminal problem).
Re:current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening? (Score:5, Informative)
Sawfish: Just run it. There are some people hacking on it, I believe, so it should be maintained. And tell the sawfish devels if there is something you miss.
The terminal: They are all the same application with multiple windows; cuts down on resource use. Of course, if it dies, so do they all - that's the downside. You can, however, start a new terminal, explicitly stating that it should not be another instance in an existing gnome-terminal application:
gnome-terminal --disable-factory
That will give you an independent terminal instance that will not be affected. Of course, you pay by a bit higher total resource use, but that is probably worth it for you.
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You want more desktops, you got it (Score:4, Informative)
edit ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals
change:
[Desktops]
Number=4
into
[Desktops]
Number=32
restart KDE, voila.
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Re:You want more desktops, you got it (Score:5, Informative)
Done.....
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Re:current gnome 2.x issues (any devels listening? (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to think the same way as you did, hated the lack of features, bitched on the lists, etc. But at some point I forgot to switch from Metacity to sawfish and grudgingly used it, and after a while, found I didn't miss the features I fought so hard to have. Pageflip is nice, but do I use it? Nope. Maybe it's just me as a user adapting to the lack of features, or maybe it's the fact that as a user I didn't really use that feature enough.
Try this: Make a list of all the things that MC is missing vs sawfish (or The Ultimate Window Manager) and then work as you do normally and tick the times you miss each feature. I'd be willing to bet that in an honest test you'll find that you don't use them nearly as often as you think you do.
I'm no fan of the HIG and the cutting and slashing of features in the latest GNOME, but I'm also finding that a lot of it's not all that bad, because a lot of times It Just Works.
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Wrong logo (Score:4, Informative)
GNOME section icon (Score:5, Interesting)
GNOME 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike some other browsers, in Epiphany you will not find half a dozen ways to use tabs and manage cookies and bookmarks, as Epiphany is targeted towards the average user.
And IMHO that's the wrong approach. *Especially* for the less technically inclined it would be better to have as many different ways as possible to do something. If you look at usability studies they always say how the test persons all tried different things to do the required task and how half of them got stuck on the way and didn't know what to do. One thing Windows gets right is that there is always more than one way to reach your goal. (e.g. you can adjust the time by double clicking on the clock, by using the context menu of the clock, by using the control panel etc.)
Having one elegant solution is nice and appeals to the mathematician in us all but if you look at speech there are many different ways to express a thought, perhaps one is more elegant than the others but all may be correct and logical. (to go back to the clock example: user A thinks "I want to change the time, that should be possible by doing something with the clock thingy" but in user B's opinion it's "I want to change a setting, it should be in the control panel")
IMHO, GUIs should try to enable users to do things their way and therefore it's better to have as many approaches as possible for a task
jm2c
Re:GNOME 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
That may be applicable to your example of setting the system time, but the behavior of fundamental interface elements should be consistent across installations. The problem with flexibility and customization on that level is t
Re:GNOME 2 (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing Windows gets right is that there is always more than one way to reach your goal.
Is 'tabbed browsing' a goal or a method? I'd suggest it's the latter. And methods should always be logical and consistent. By offering various unecessary preferences on how your tabs behave, you provide the user with a means to confuse themselves. However, if the most logical default method is used, then there is no confusion available to occur and the user finds it intuitive. If the method is not intuitive, then a different setting should be used.
As for multiple paths to reach all goals; it depends on the goal. The clock example is a good example of multiple logical paths to the one goal. Double clicking to activate, right clicking to bring up the contextual menu, and an appropriate entry in the control panel. These are all routes that a user might try to take to configure the time on their computer.
All logical routes should be available to any goal, but sometimes there is only one logical route. For instance, you would not want multiple ways to disable popups in Epiphany, just a simple entry in the preferences for Epiphany.
Do not confuse methods with goals, nor assume all goals have multiple intuitive pathways.
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Gnome 2.4 Review (Score:4, Informative)
Now we're innovating..! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have Windows XP, and quite a few of the things in the latest Gnome are better than Windows XP. For instance, the fantastic way Pango deals with multilingual issues. And scalable desktop icons are a great addition. Some of the desktop accessability stuff is great too.
I bet that Mi
Slashdot's GNOME Logo (Score:4, Informative)
Great discussion of GUIs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great discussion of GUIs (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac may be better. I haven't really used one in years.
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One thing I'd love to see in KDE that was added... (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll be surprised how much cleaner your home dir stays if it's your desktop!
Right now I have three folders on my desktop that I don't want to see: evolution, mail and News. Short of recompiling evolution to use
Re:That's great! Accessibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, GNOME has already won awards [gnomedesktop.org] for its accessibility work, and it has a mature framework for dealing with this (disclaimer: I've never tried it, just heard people praising it).
The article itself points this out in two [arstechnica.com] places [arstechnica.com].
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Re:That's great! Accessibility? (Score:5, Informative)
Gnome 2.4 ships with GOK, an award-winning dynamic onscreen keyboard. It supports Direct Selection, Dwell Selection, Automatic Scanning and Inverse Scanning, and includes word completion. A detailed overview can be found on the GOK website.
Gnopernicus, the second accessibility application to ship with GNOME, provides a number of assistive technologies for people suffering from visual impairment. Most notably, it includes a screen reader, a screen magnifier and a Braille writer.
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Re:That's great! Accessibility? (Score:4, Funny)
How can you provide accessibility functionality thru an unpronouncable application ?
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Re:That's great! Accessibility? (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually not true. The X-Windowing-System has come with xmag virtually for ever. High contrast themes are not hard to create. You can make icons and fonts whatever size you want. We've even got sticky keys. The only thing X is missing as far as accessibility is keyboard control of the mouse cursor. Then again, you can always run ratpoison [sourceforge.net] and be rid of the rodent forever.
You've been lied to my friend.
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Re:That's great! Accessibility? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:simulating clicks (Score:5, Informative)
-N
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Re:That's great! Accessibility? (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe this one of the areas where free software really has a hard time catching up: small market, highly sophisticated software, small "coolness" factor, and very smooth desktop-integration a requirement...
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Not Really (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe if the WM's would design some sort of common application interface so things would look right on all the WM's that confirmed to the standard then we'd see a lot more x-compatibility in those applications.
And why does each WM have a seperate browser/file explorer? Just keep the explorer seperate from web browsing (Besides it's a MicroSoft idiocy) and we can all use Mozilla/Opera or whatever else.
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Re:Gnome development outpacing KDE? (Score:5, Informative)
I lurk on the kde dev mailing lists and the number of changes upcoming in 3.2 is pretty impressive: A lot of new PIM features, the Safari changes to KHTML, speed improvements. KDE is at the stage where new releases are really adding polish rather than making major changes, but there are still a lot of good new things going in.
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Re:Gnome development outpacing KDE? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would love to hear your rationale for saying that. How has Gnome surpassed KDE? How has KDE's interface grown stagnant? I agree with the SVG comment part, but that's not KDE's "fault" (not that it's anyones "fault", but...). I can be 100% honest when I say: There is nothing major not offered in KDE that makes me even think of it as growing stagnant, and certainly not with the 3.2 release in the works.
(I'm not trying to start a war, there's good things about Gnome as well, I just prefer KDE and would like to hear why you feel that it's getting "left in Gnomes dust right now")
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Re:Browsers... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Browsers... (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, only two 'desktops' have their own 'integrated' browser; Gnome (Epiphany) and KDE (Konqueror).
The purpose of the integrated web browser is to provide a default for users, and to provide extra functionality through tight integration with the desktop. Think Internet Explorer in Windows.
- Imagine if you installed your new Gnome and tried to browse the web, only to find no browser available
- Epiphany views can be embedded in Nautilus
- Epiphany strictly follows the HIG and other Gnome2 standards (GConf etc)
In a decent desktop, every basic task should be accomplishable through a default suite of applications; playing media, writing documents, browsing the web, checking your email. And each of these components should be substitutable so those requiring extra functionality (or with a simple preference) can drop-in their preferred application. This is part the Utopia the Gnome project is working towards.
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Re:Browsers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmmm... maybe this is why Microsoft does exactly the same thing with Windows..... Nah. It must be because they are "evil".
Because you can't get rid of Internet Explorer in Windows. If you don't like Epiphany, you can delete it and use Firebird or Konqueror or whatever instead, and Gnome will keep working.
Try to install XP without IE.
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Re:...because they predate Firebird... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Mandrake (Score:3, Informative)
su
emerge sync
emerge world/gnome
And you get gnome, all nicely compiled for your system, not a fucking 386 from nineteendicketytwo.
Although I love Gentoo (I got my 1.4 CDs yesterday!!), You are so wrong about MDK. MDK is compiled for pentiums and up. You're thinking of Red Hat. It's compiled for a 386.
Please think before you post.
P.S.
Yes, I'm aware there's a 486 release of MDK (or at least used to be, anyway), but the "default" MDK distro is compiled for the 586.
Re:Mandrake (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Mandrake is compiled for i686 but only using the i586 instruction set, while Red Hat is compiled for i686 utilising the i486 instruction set for compatibility. Why it's still called 'i386' is anyone's guess.
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Re:Mandrake (Score:5, Informative)
nano -w
Advanced Masking
# ================
#
# Gentoo is using a new masking system to allow for easier stability testing
# on packages. KEYWORDS are used in ebuilds to mask and unmask packages based
# on the platform they are set for. A special form has been added that
# indicates packages and revisions that are expected to work, but have not yet
# been approved for the stable set. '~arch' is a superset of 'arch' which
# includes the unstable, in testing, packages. Users of the 'x86' architecture
# would add '~x86' to ACCEPT_KEYWORDS to enable unstable/testing packages.
# '~ppc', '~sparc', '~sparc64' are the unstable KEYWORDS for their respective
# platforms. DO NOT PUT ANYTHING BUT YOUR SPECIFIC ~ARCHITECTURE IN THE LIST.
# IF YOU ARE UNSURE OF YOUR ARCH, OR THE IMPLICATIONS, DO NOT MODIFY THIS.
#
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"
You'll get stuff a LOT faster. I've been using that "unstable branch" (if you will) for a year and a half or so with zero show-stopper problems on 5 or so machines. OK, OK, there's a bad realease from some developer from time to time, but Portage will down-grade it next emerge -u world if there's something really bonked with a package or ebuild.
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Re:hopefully (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Another freaking browser? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla, Firebird and Galleon are all good browsers, but none of them currently conform with GNOME's HIG, and none want to.
To be a usable desktop environment, GNOME needs a browser that will integrate well with it, and so Epiphany fills this gap.
Honestly, does the user care if there are five different Mozilla derivatives, each for a different desktop environment, when they have the one they want installed? It won't confuse anyone, and it will provide choice to those who might want it.
Go back to your troll cave.
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Got that right (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just chic. The problem is that everybody (being Gnome and KDE) won't be satisfied with a good operating environment. No, they have to do an entire user experience. In other words, they each want to be responsible for 95% of the graphical software used by any linux user. And that's just not rational. Case in point: KOffice, KDE's abominable attempt at an Office suite. As you say, why spend so much time making something that sucks so bad?
For what it's worth, never let it be said that open source developers are above reinventing the wheel. When profit is not a consideration, there's no boss to point you toward making things that have a market. We definitely need a greater degree of specialization.
I want to get the KDE and Gnome devs in two separate rooms, and lock them there until they swear never to make another browser, office suite, or useless widget again until they have the basic environment rock-solid.
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Re:hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day, I was a major lightweight system zealot. I used Ratpoison or Ion at work (if you though fvwm was lightweight, you ain't seen nothing yet). Then I realised that saving 0.5 seconds on launching a terminal window didn't make me any more productive, but having excellent integrated apps like kmail and konqueror did.
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