Gnome 2.2 Released

heydrick writes "This message confirms that Gnome 2.2 is officially released. And a month ahead of the originally planned six-month release cycle. Check out the Gnome 2.2 Start Page and use a mirror to download."

Startup notification

[ultrabot]

Yet again, perfectly in time to be included in the next Red Hat.

GNOME can now show that an application is starting, so you don't feel the need to click a second time. For instance, if the application supports it, the cursor may change to a clock while the application starts if the application supports startup notification. Unlike some past attempts at UNIX startup notification, the new standard is reliable and robust, in keeping with the GNOME philosophy of things that "just work."

Does anyone know whether the KDE equivalent is a past attempt they are talking about?

Bitstream Fonts?

[Kaypro]

Looks like the Bitstream Vera font family didn't make it in this release. Anyone know an ETA on it?

Enlightenment vs. Metacity?

[VoidEngineer]

Does anybody know what's going on between Gnome and Enlightenment? It seems like Gnome is developing it's own window-manager-which-pretends-its-not-a-window-man ager (Metacity); meanwhile, Enlightenment is developing it's own desktop shell... kind of like two ships passing each other in the dark...

I'm going to hate the day when I'm forced to make a choice between Gnome and Enlightenment 0.17... I'll miss those footprints...

Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE?

[Alan]

In general, gnome2 is going for the "minimulistic, things just work" approach, while KDE is going the "ultra configurable, complete user control" approach.

I'm not up on KDE that much, other than playing with (and quite enjoying so far) 3.1 in the last while, but gnome has been hacking off options and reducing the ability for the user to mess thing up, or reduce the amount of clutter the user has to deal with to get things done, depending on who you talk to :) There have been no end of flame wars within gnome itself about this (see the desktop-devel and galeon-devel list archives for lovely examples of these).

Personally, well, like the other guy said, it really doesn't matter what I think, there are two different ways of getting things done, two different look and feels, and two different paths for you to try out and see if you like them :)

(Of course there are more than 2, but that's not the issue here).

Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE?

[falonaj]

Is there anything I can read that gives a non-biased look at the differences and similarities between the two?

Whether to use KDE or Gnome depends very much on your personal taste. Every person needs different applications and uses other functions within these applications, so there simply cannot be a neutral perspective. Another problem for comparisions is that both projects have their own style that is liked by different people.

KDE, for example, tends to have more configurality, which is loved by a lot of people, but others think it is just code bloat and confusing to have so many options.

Some of the differences in style might have their reason in the fact that Gnome is backed by big companies like Sun. While companies aim for a desktop that doesn't confuse sysadmins with too many unneccessary options, hobby developers have more interest in adding new features and new options. But this is just my way of explaining differences, you will find all kinds of other opinions around as well.

I've noticed however that Gnome seems to have a pretty good following and I'm wondering why.

Well, I have an explanation for that, but being a KDE member, I will not give you my biased opinion on this.

BTW, I think the flame wars are mainly a problem of the past. Cooperations with KDE and Gnome are flourishing, KDE and Gnome already share a number of libraries, and most members of both projects seem to believe that choice is good. After all, KDE apps run under Gnome and vice versa, so you can decide on a per app basis which software to use.

Competition works

[AirLace]

I really have to congratulate the GNOME team. I'm one of those desktop skeptics who has formerly been sorely unimpressed by the state of GNOME and KDE, but both have been forging ahead. As I've become more involved with GNOME development, I've come to recognise the relationship between the two projects: they do compete but the beautiful thing is that they cover two separate niches. Namely, KDE forges ahead with the latest features (Xft, KHTML) and has a nippier release schedule, while GNOME tends to integrate more external technologies and tends to adopt features when they're more mature.

GNOME 2.2 has caught up not just visually, but also feature-wise with nifty features like the SSH and SMB backends, but has also been getting rid of visual artefacs leftover from the era of CDE and Motif -- sometimes, a flat look is more appropriate than 3D buttons, for example. I think the 2.2 release puts GNOME back in the game in a big way.

Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the user's perspective, the key difference is that GNOME tries to use good defaults instead of cluttering up the UI with rarely used options. These options are still available, but you have to use the registry-type GConf tool to enable it. GNOME is a lot more willing to embrace and integrate crossplatform projects like OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Abiword. GNOME themes tend to be more subdued and tend to use more earth tones.

KDE, OTOH, tries to give the user all the options even if it causes clutter. KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser. KDE themes tend to be more bright and tend to use more neon colour.

Other than that, there's not much difference. It's mostly a matter of taste. I definitely prefer GNOME, but I do like some KDE apps (e.g. Umbrello is great). Despite what the purists say, mixing desktops is not a sin.

What's Ximian Up To?

[alkini]

It seems to me that I just read that a new Ximian Gnome is going to be based on Gnome 2.2, but I don't recall where I saw that. Is there any truth to that? Is there a published timeline for such a release? The current Ximian Gnome was great when it came out, but it's starting to feel a little stale, especially after looking at Gnome 2.2 screenshots.

Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE?

[fault0]

Your post is right in a lot of things, and a bit off in others. I want to elaborate on it a bit.

> From the user's perspective, the key difference is that GNOME tries to use good defaults instead of cluttering up the UI with rarely used options. These options are still available, but you have to use the registry-type GConf tool to enable it.

Yep, this is a basic design goal of GNOME 2.x. However, I'm not sure if a registry-type tool is the best way to fix this problem. This is a case in which I think *both* KDE and GNOME are off. Configuration should be handled by the application that needs it (except for system and desktop settings.) A "basic" config dialog should be shown first, and the user should be able to access "advanced settings" as well. In MacOS 7.0, for example, in the General Control Panel, you click on a triangle to show advanced settings. This is intuative for new users who occaisionally want to see "power user" settings.

> GNOME is a lot more willing to embrace and integrate crossplatform projects like OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Abiword. KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser.

KHTML (and khtmlw) were started at a time when Mozilla and Gecko were just a pipedream (re: very, extremely, pre-alpha state). KOffice (and abiword) were started before StarOffice opened up.

> KDE themes tend to be more bright and tend to use more neon colour.

Uhm, almost all KDE widget styles and window decorations allow the user to set the colors. This has been a basic tenent of all styles included in kdebase/kdeartwork since KDE 2.0.

> From the user's perspective, the key difference is that GNOME tries to use good defaults instead of cluttering up the UI with rarely used options. These options are still available, but you have to use the registry-type GConf tool to enable it. GNOME is a lot more willing to embrace and integrate crossplatform projects like OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Abiword. GNOME themes tend to be more subdued and tend to use more earth tones.

KDE, OTOH, tries to give the user all the options even if it causes clutter. KDE is a lot more willing to recreate non-KDE projects and replace them with native KDE projects like KOffice and the Konqueror web browser. KDE themes tend to be more bright and tend to use more neon colour.

> Other than that, there's not much difference. It's mostly a matter of taste. I definitely prefer GNOME, but I do like some KDE apps (e.g. Umbrello is great). Despite what the purists say, mixing desktops is not a sin.

I totally agree.

Re:Startup notification

[IamTheRealMike]

Are you lying? Have you last used KDE in 1997? You are wrong. The (configurable) throbber will quit no matter what happens after 30 seconds.

Not really, I'm just inaccurate. I realised about a minute after I posted it that my wording was sloppy there.

I have yet to find an application that does not "SUPPORT" KDE startup notification.

That's because it gave you startup notification regardless of whether the app "supported" it or not. Hence for many apps, the throbber would hang there until it was killed by a timeout (yes, 30 seconds, i remember now).

Support in this sense means that the app signals the startup notifier when it's done loading (the notification is also cancelled when the first window opens, but that's unreliable iirc). You add the line StartupNotify=true to the .desktop file to signal support.

Are you telling me that the GNOME startup notification will work only with GNOME apps and that it is more "robust and useful" because of this? I can't believe it.

No. Again, sloppy wording, the startup notification is a freedesktop.org spec that both KDE and GNOME are using (or will be using), as well as 3rd parties. That means that eventually hopefully all apps will support it. In fact, any app linked with GTK2.2 gets supports for it semi-automatically I think.

Bit of trivia: so far there have been > 250k hits in the screenshots dir!

Re:Gnome Logo

[mindriot]

Maybe this one [gnome.org] is a little nicer.

Re:Honest comparison between Gnome and KDE?

[fredrik70]

mind you, QT is GPL'ed for GPL'ed apps to use. If Trolltech went down the drain or withdraw their licence you could always fork the latest GPL'ed QT and take over the development of it. From what I know Trolltech the KDE ppl work very closely when it comes to KDE. After all KDE is a proof and a very good showcase for Trolltech of what you can do with QT.

Gnome 2.2 Menus

[fidget]

Yes, but the important question is...
Have they fixed the gnome2 menu [bluethingy.com] customization issues yet?

Re:Tons of choice

[Capsaicin]

Maybe it's time for something different.

Excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression that in terms of Desktop Managers the choice at present is realistically limited to Gnome or KDE. Moreover, my impression was that Gnome, by its association with GNU, GTK etc, had pretentions of being the 'standard' desktop in a GNU/Linux environment, not merely "something different."

If people want to work on developing it, who are you to tell them how to spend their time?

Who am I? I'm nobody, I'm only a regular user who couldn't develop it themselves. Yeah sure, I shouldn't tell someone how to spend their free time, but what are you saying? That any adverse user feedback is unwelcome? Is the policy of ignoring user feedback part of the official Gnome developement guidelines, or is it just a bad habit that you have slipped into lately?

You are free to work on developing your own "advanced user environment E" if you don't have enough options in that area yet. Or free to create add-ons or partial replacement apps for any existing environment. Isn't open source great?

Free sure, but maybe not technically skilled enough. Gimme a break, I'm just one of your 'regular' gumbo users, you know the one of the ones you are trying to protect from concepts such as 'Window Managers' and all that stuff. We are your target audience, we don't create add-ons, the only thing useful you'll get out of us is feedback! Besides which, didn't you just tell me developing E, when ABC and D can already look like E, was a waste of effort?

I'd suggest some good books ...

If these books are truely telling you to design exclusively for imaginary users, to tell real users what they need and what they don't need and to ignore, insult or chase them away, I suggest you throw those books away. Something you haven't learnt from those books is that you are writing for a specific set of users, not some generic imaginary user. Moreover the set of users of one type of app will differ from that using a different app. The 'regular' user of a word processor will need to have different needs to a 'regular' user of a terminal emulator. Sure, there is also a need for consistency, which adds another level of difficulty. But to resolve this difficulty by simply ignoring the needs of the user is not the way to go.

"The Inmates are Running the Asylum,"

Ignore user feedback, give the users only what the developers imagine, or have read, they want ... Maybe you should read that book again.

Technical users are so quick to assume that all software should be written for them,

Clearly not all software, but what about technical softwarer? Surely terminal users have the right to the expectation that the terminal is being written for them. Besides which, I'm not a 'technical' user, I'm a 'regular' user.

it should be exactly like the GUI I got used to in 1992, darnit! must... not... learn... new... things...

Especially not new things like the term 'Window Manager' :) Look the mistake Gnome2 made was not in making users learn new things. It was taking away features which users had grown accustomed to. Users expect 'more' features when upgrading, not to have many feature they rely on removed. As I said, cleaning out the cruft is nice, but not even giving the option to put useful stuff back in ... No wonder so many Gnome users are unhappy at the moment.

It's not like there's any danger that there won't be enough hyper-configurable advanced user features and environments available.

I've not actually seen anyone asking for "hyper-configurable advanced user features." What people seem to be asking for is the newer version of Gnome to be able to do at least what the older one could. For myself, being able to add menus to the panel, and being able to complete text selection in a terminal with my right mouse button is all I'm asking for. Look I'm sorry to sound completely negative, as though there is nothing about Gnome2 that is good or better than before. Tabbed terminal looks very cool, for example. But I can live without tabbed terminals, I can't without X cut and paste. Sad fact of human nature is that you are more likely to hear from people when they are unhappy with you than when they are satisfied.

So why not let just *one* project try something different without whining about it endlessly.

One project sure, just not Gnome :) And I haven't been whining endlessly (though with the number of dissatisfied users at the moment, it must seem endless). The previous was my first post on this subject. I didn't post to Bugzilla given that the same report had already be 'dealt with', I read, but didn't post the the Gnome discussion groups, because I saw how users were being dumped on by the developers. Maybe the endless whining should tell you something?