Gnome 2.18 Released

xdancergirlx writes "Gnome 2.18 was released today (on time as usual). Detailed release notes are available. Nothing revolutionary in this release but definitely some nice new features, bug fixes, and improvements."

Gnome

[xaositects (786749)]

Gnome 2.18: Nothing special really, just somewhat improved infravision, an extra +10 bonus to detect uneven grades, worked out some bugs in the "failure to run from big scary trolls due to lack of common sense" department. Should be a somewhat more usable gnome.

I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.

[by Anonymous Coward]

I use both KDE and GNOME on a regular basis. I really don't have a preference either way; both allow me to get my work done well enough. But what I've noticed is that with each KDE release, it feels significantly more responsive than the previous releases. I can't say the same with GNOME. If anything, it seems to be getting slower as time goes on. I use OpenBSD, so I end up compiling all of the packages myself. I use the optimal C and C++ compiler flags for my particular system. It's not a matter of my using KDE packages built with a more recent version of GCC, or something like that.

In any case, earlier today I built GNOME 2.18 on my system. I've been using it for a few hours now. And compared to the KDE 3.5.6 installation I was using earlier today, I think it's significantly slower. Evolution is far more heavy-weight than KMail. Nautilus takes longer to display directories. I have one directory with about 15000 photos in it. Nautilus crashes when viewing it, while with Konqueror I can easily scroll through the thumbnails within about a second.

Maybe it's just a quality control problem with GNOME. While I don't follow the development mailing lists very closely, I've heard from co-workers that GNOME is suffering from some pretty serious organizational issues. Low-quality code is being accepted into GTK+ and GNOME itself, and many people are noticing a decrease in its quality as of late. Maybe somebody can shed more light on whether or not these rumors are true?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Bug reports welcome. :-)

Re:

[yoyhed (651244)]

And on top of all that, KDE is more configurable!

Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.

[thephotoman (791574)]

The biggest problem I have with GNOME as a user is Evolution. Simply put, Evolution needs to be scrapped in favor of something else. Its Exchange functionality is non-functional, and its calendar could be easily replaced by something else. Why not just do what they did with the default browser and fork from Mozilla? Surely, it'd suck less.

Nautilus is in dire need of a code audit, just to ensure that everything in there is up to par. Hells, if I were in charge at GNOME, I'd probably stop developing new features in Nautilus and work on the audit for the next cycle.

Honestly, though, the one thing that hurts GNOME the most is the six month release cycle. If they'd even just use a single one-year release cycle, just to clean things up, they'd be in much better shape.

All that said, though, GNOME is my desktop. It's what I learned first, and honestly, KDE's configurability just scares me. Also, I remember too well a time when KDE looked like shit out of the box. Thankfully, that's no longer a problem.

Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.

[by Anonymous Coward]

and honestly, KDE's configurability just scares me

I used to be the exact same way. However, a few years ago I decided to sit down and configure KDE to my liking. Now that I've done so, I wouldn't even consider going back to Gnome. If you use your computer for hours every day, I would strongly suggest spending a bit of time to configure KDE. The relatively small amount of time it takes to configure everything to your liking is well worth it. In my opinion, it's a much better desktop environment and practically every KDE application is far beyond its Gnome counterpart.

Also, with the focus on Mono applications, Gnome seems to be getting slower and even more bloated with every release.

Re:I can't feel any responsiveness improvements.

[phrasebook (740834)]

KDE's configurability just scares me

I know what you mean. I had to configure my background in KDE once. Christ, it gave me THREE options! 'No picture', 'Picture' and 'Slide show'. I mean, WTF? I'm not a rocket surgeon.

Then I wanted Konqueror to open links in tabs. People are right when they say KDE has a cluttered interface. It dragged me into Settings, then into something called Web Behaviour, and then forced me to click the box saying 'Open links in new tab'. After that I had to rest with 2 hours of TV.

Re:

[electrosoccertux (874415)]

AMEN! I just want to affirm what the parent is saying, I've heard people say "I've never noticed that" or "works fine for me" etc...it definitely feels slow.

I've found KDE to feel simply -less- slow. Could some of this "slowness" be due to a lack of threading? I don't understand how it all works but my intuition was: if lots of services are working in serial and each has to send up a flag for the next to do something, and then nothing happens until the next service refreshes and checks up on the previous se

Knome skin

[goombah99 (560566)]

The big change is they went to a Knome skin that makes it look like KDE.

Is GNOME stagnating?

[10Ghz (453478)]

Well, there were no major new features in 2.16 either. Is it just me or is GNOME.... stagnating? How about continuous versioning backup-tool? Infrastructure already exists, someone just has to create a GUI and tie it to the desktop. How about something like OS X's Expose? How about being able to re-arrange items in the Taskbar? How about looking in to Gimmie as a Taskbar-replacement? There are tons of useful features they could add to the desktop, but no. What do we get instead? "Using Tomboy to create list

Gnome 2.18 with performance improvements!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to those I got first post!

Re:Gnome 2.18 with performance improvements!

[Mikachu (972457)]

Hah, first post. Bet you wish you were using KDE now, don't you. ;)

Did they include...

[Daemonik (171801)]

Linus' usability patches?

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/16/19372 37 [linux.com]

Re:Did they include...

[QuantumG (50515)]

How do I know? I've looked. Yesterday I even fixed it. I sent the patches off to add the capabilities.

It's a shame he didn't, ya know, attach the patches to his email.. this whole "contribute it to the maintainer" crap is the problem with open source. If you see something you don't like, sure, contribute it to the maintainer to get fixed.. but if the maintainer drops your patch on the floor, don't go cry on the mailing lists, just make your patch publically available so other people who want the same feature as you don't have to recode it themselves. Jesus, Linus should know better.

Re:Did they include...

[Wdomburg (141264)]

No. But some variant of the patches are in trunk for the next release. It really just adds a config option though. Not as big a deal as the brouhaha would suggest. :)

Re:Did they include...

[muszek (882567)]

AFAIR they haven't, because they were submitted after the feature freeze (or some other kind of a freeze). Don't quote me on that, my memory is a tricy thing.

Re:Did they include...

[macshit (157376)]

Linus' patches don't "fix" anything.

They remove an unnecessary and artificial restriction -- and also apparently simplify the code, which is always a good thing.

they add one feature.. in particular, the ability to configure left, right and middle click to do what you like. Which, ya know, is useful to like 3 people.

It sounds pretty useful to me... Obviously the MS-raised proles will never use it, but many more clueful people use Gnome too ("like, ya know").

Re:Did they include...

[Breakfast Pants (323698)]

The Gnome file dialog can turn anyone into a jackass.

Priorities

[by Anonymous Coward]

Personal security is now fully integrated into the desktop, allowing digitally signed communications, encryption of emails and local files, and user-friendly management of personal keys. Internationalization records progress in all directions, with support for vertical text layout and a full Arabic localization matching the quality standards. The official release incorporates essential tools for developers, which hopefully will contribute to get more and better software for the GNOME users.

What's more important, for the first time we ship online games, chess with a 3D look, and endless Sudoku entertainment.

Good thing we've got our priorities straight.

Re:Priorities

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

Obviously they're being facetious.

Re:

[thule (9041)]

KDE's KWallet has offered similar support for years. In combination with other KDE programs, such as the KMail mail client and the Kopete instant messenging software, KDE users have had access to such features for ages.

I did not see in the KWallet docs (http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdeutils/kwallet/in dex.html) anything about it being a frontend to gpg. KWallet appears to be closer to the gnome password manager than the newer gpg management feature. Since I removed KDE from my system a year and a half a

Re:

[SirTalon42 (751509)]

"KWallet appears to be closer to the gnome password manager than the newer gpg management feature. Since I removed KDE from my system a year and a half ago, I cannot verify this."

Sounds like you're looking for KGpg then.

Re:It has nearly caught up to KDE.........

[thule (9041)]

I think the thing they were going for in gnome is to start integrating, not just password management, but identity management. Thus, Gnome's new feature manages both gpg and ssh keys.

Nothing revolutionary

[by Anonymous Coward]

As usual too ;)

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm disappointed, too. From other software projects we've gotten used to 2.17 -> 2.18 transitions to be cataclysmic, jaw dropping and quite simply awe inspiring. The GNOME project has really let us down here...

That's Nice

[dduardo (592868)]

So, when are we going to see smart and innovative desktops that dramatically improve user friendliness?

Just as some examples:

• As an end-user why can't I extend applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another? i.e. Dragging a search box from one app to another.
• I have 1000s of photographs. How can these images be automatically categorized and displayed most effectively without having to manually add meta-data. It should be sorting images by looking at similarities between pictures, date taken and other automatically generated information
• I have 1000s of mp3s. How can these songs be automatically categorized by mood, tempo, etc without manually entering in meta-data? Think of it as Pandora with your own music collection.

These are some of the type of things that would make using a computer easier to use.

Are open source desktop developers so focused on trying to make it "easy" for Windows user to convert they get Microsoft tunnel vision and can't innovate?

It's the year 2007 and we have desktops with the same intelligence as those back in the early 80's.

Re:That's Nice

[imboboage0 (876812)]

It's the year 2007 and we have desktops with the same intelligence as those back in the early 80's.

Yeah, but the people got worse.


*ducks*

Re:

[petrus4 (213815)]

I have 1000s of mp3s. How can these songs be automatically categorized by mood, tempo, etc without manually entering in meta-data? Think of it as Pandora with your own music collection.

Do you have any idea how difficult something like that would be to code?

Re:

[SnprBoB86 (576143)]

Yes, so you better get started soon :-)

Actually, in a roundabout way..

[Junta (36770)]

Not fully automated, but we live in the internet world where an encyclopedia written by Wiki is among the most used references in the world...

Namely, I'm talking about MusicBrainz. Programs will analyze and produce a fingerprint, and MusicBrainz will do a fairly good job of matching that fingerprint to the track. From there, tempo, mood, etc could all be community stored info. More esoteric tracks suffer, but as Wikipedia shows, things that don't work well in theory can sometimes work surprisingly well i

Re:

[module0000 (882745)]

Your suggestions such as "extending applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another" is unfortunately not possible with our current(or dreamed-about) tech. Great concept, kudos for that, but the "frame" all desktop computing operates from just does not allow for this. You are not suggesting improvements to "desktop linux", but you are speaking of changes to desktop computing as a whole, across all platforms; it's not that 'easy', I wish it was. Concerning your sugges

Re:

[dbIII (701233)]

Your suggestions such as "extending applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another"

That's why we always keep going back to the command line shell where you can do a grep on the output of just about anything. The GUI has a place but I'd rather send an entire file through sed with a short command than move the mouse to the first character of every line, right click, and scroll down to delete, then left click as I have seen some purely bound to the GUI do.

The biggest pr

Re:

[massysett (910130)]

Tagging MP3s: Musicbrainz [musicbrainz.org] has projects to automatically tag MP3s with metadata on track name, album, etc. As for tagging them with mood: good luck; however All Music Guide has been working on this sort of thing for years; see also Last.fm [last.fm]. Integrating these into a desktop would be nice, though your comparison to "Microsoft tunnel vision" is quite harsh seeing as open source desktops have long had features that Windows sorely lacks, such as transparent SSH file transfers, thumbnailing of PDFs and other non-p

Re:

[Blakey Rat (99501)]

As an end-user why can't I extend applications by simply dragging and dropping features from one application to another? i.e. Dragging a search box from one app to another.

Sounds like Apple's OpenDoc?

It didn't work because:
1) They released it too early and it quickly gained a reputation for being too buggy.
2) The only application that really embraced it was ClarisWorks. Oh, there was some lame web browser Apple made that used it too called Cyberdog, IIRC.

The idea isn't *bad*, but it really needs a killer ap

Re:

[AaronW (33736)]

KDE offers some of this, though nothing like dropping Blender into Gaim. In KDE, most applications are also components and can be easily embedded inside other applications. For example, Konqueror is not so much a web and file browser as a container. I.e. I click on a Word document and it opens it in the browser using kword, or I click on a MP3 and it can use Amarok, or a photo brings up my preferred photo viewer inside the browser.

As far as not requiring metadata for MP3s, Amarok already supports this (a

Re:

[dduardo (592868)]

1983: Apple Lisa [wikipedia.org]

3D Chess is everywhere!

[pizzach (1011925)]

With the release of GNOME 2.18, it appears there has been a change in the playing field. In order to be considered to a full fledged modern OS, a Three-Dee [wikipedia.org] Chess program must be included with every new operating system. The Release of Mac OS X seems to have started this trend. Microsoft soon followed suit with Windows Vista. Now there is Gnome. Will KDE be pulled into this madness, or will it fall behind into oblivion?!

Apple Chess [gete.net]

Windows Chess [kotaku.com]

GNOME Chess [sourceforge.net]

Feel free to flog me now.

GNOME, Ubuntu, and the colour green...

[babbling (952366)]

I'm looking at this screenshot [gnome.org] and thinking that it looks quite good. People often complain about the brown in Ubuntu being "ugly", and Ubuntu has stated that they don't want to be "just like Windows" by going for blue. Well, based on that screenshot, I think green would be a good choice.

Re:

[Max Littlemore (1001285)]

I will stick with blue because it sooths, calms and refreshes me so that I don't smash my monitor in uncontrollable rages.

I thought green was better at soothing psychopathic behaviour. It's also suppoosed to be easier for people with various types of dyslexia to read and absorb information, so yeah, go green

That's Not Release Notes

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

That's not "detailed release notes", that's marketing spin. Release notes would mention specific apps, like evolution, and specific fixes, not just buzzwords and superficial brags about how the experience is better.

Such marketsprach has its place. But the release notes are even more important. And even more important is not pretending that marketsprach is release notes.

If GNOME release managers don't release that by themselves, then the project is in serious trouble.

Gnome 2.18 Released

[baomike (143457)]

and with any luck it wont come back.

Re:

[QuantumG (50515)]

Riiiiight.. cause that summary really screamed hype to me. I see you got modded up too, moderators can't even be bothered reading the summary now?

Fuckin' Slashdot.

Re:Yawn

[radarsat1 (786772)]

Nothing revolutionary in this release but definitely some nice new features, bug fixes, and improvements.

Yeah, god, I just can't STAND all this hype.

Slow news day

[ari_j (90255)]

You have to love it when things get so slow around here that we post story blurbs that explicitly say they aren't news.

Re:Yawn

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

The way the post hyped it up, I was expecting something actually exciting.

WTF? The post even says "Nothing revolutionary in this release".

If that's hype, you must suffer from spontaneous ejeculation at a repubrocrats/demican rally.

Re:

[Monkey_Genius (669908)]

Does he have a problem quitting [nicorette.com]?

Re:Underpants gnome?

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

I was wondering where my tidy-whities went...

It's 'tighty'. Those things definitely aren't 'tidy' after you leave that nice racing stripe in them.

Re:Scroll Wheel

[muszek (882567)]

System -> Preferences -> Mouse
I'm using Ubuntu 6.10 with Gnome 2.16

Re:

[big_groo (237634)]

Right. Check that to see if you can change your scroll wheel sensitivity. Google it too. Good luck.

Re:

[gardyloo (512791)]

Christ. Not only did that squirrel give the gnome an entire basketful of red, painful-looking chancres, but it also ate off his left hand. And he's *smiling*. That's one badass gnome.