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A Look at the Upcoming GNOME 2.4
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Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
Having nothing better to do (and wanting to do a bit of testing on the localization [bengalinux.org] stuff we are working on), I decided to download the latest beta of GNOME - GNOME 2.3.5 (Jebe) . Since the RC release freeze is imminent [gnome.org], and the feature freeze is already in place, the system that I am running currently will not be significantly different from GNOME 2.4, when it is released on September. In this article, I would be briefly describing the new features and applications of GNOME 2.4. However, I would concentrate mainly on the packages in the core GNOME system, and will not be going beyond those.
Installing the packages (WARNING: slightly hairy) To GARNOME or not...
I had heard that installing the GNOME packages in the right order could be a tricky process, and I was looking at GARNOME [gnome.org] and other tools for an easy way out. However, after some poking around, I decided to do the install by hand. This decision was largely prompted by this [karubik.de] document, and I am really grateful to its author.
The system
The usual convention before doing a description of any large scale installation process is to give a short summary of the specs of the machine in question, and so, without much ado, here it is:
Processor: 700 Mhz Pentium III
RAM: 192 MB
Swap: 250 MB
OS: Redhat Linux 9.0 (Shrike)
Kernel: 2.6.0-test2
It is obvious that this is not a very modern machine, but such boxes are quite common in where I live (India).
The installation
Most of the files needed for compile and install are downloadable from the directory ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/2.3/2.3.5/sources/ [gnome.org]. There are also a few "extras" which are usually included in stock "development machine" installations, like the Docbook 4.1.2 DTDs, etc. If you don't have them, the ./configure script will complain, and you will find them in your
distro CDs.
/opt. That meant that the new
libraries and the header files would be installed in /opt/lib and /opt/include. So, I had to
set the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /opt/lib/pkg-config (by issuing
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/lib/pkg-config) so the pkg-config utility searched /opt/lib/pkg-config before the usual /usr/lib/pkg-config. I had also added the line /opt/lib
to the file /etc/ld.so.conf. Moreover, the usual ./configure was replaced by ./configure --prefix=/opt so the installation folder was /opt.
I did not download the gtk2, the glib2 and the pango packages. More or less up to date GTK2 and glib2 are already included in RH 9.0 and I usually keep in sync with the Pango development process through CVS (I have to keep track of certain outstanding bugs in Pango w.r.t bengali rendering). If you follow these steps, please ensure that you have the devel packages installed as well.
To avoid a mess, I had decided to install the new GNOME packages under
I followed the following sequence while installing packages. It works for me, and it may or may not work for you.
On-the-fly Resolution Change (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nautilus? (Score:5, Informative)
* I have never seen that problem; maybe time for a bug report?
* That is Redhat, and can be turned off. Go to "Preferences" -> "CD properties".
* It won't really release all memory until you _really_ close it - as long as you want it to handle your desktop it is still running. Oh, and just like all other Linux apps, releasing memory doesn't actually release the memory as such; the pages are kept around as long as nothing else needs it, and they are still mapped to the app as long as the app is running. Looking at RSS gives you a sort-of reasonable estimate on the memory use, but it too (if I am correct) will overestimate memory use.
Re:slashdotted (page 2) (Score:5, Informative)
GNOME 2.4 is going to have a number of cool, new applications. In this section, I am going to describe them.
The Browser: Epiphany
One of the most controversial changes in GNOME 2.4 is the dumping of Galeon in favour of Epiphany as the default browser. Epiphany is based on Mozilla, but is much more light and bloat free and features a much, much, much cleaner interface. I have not used Galeon very extensively, but Epiphany has already become my default browser. Startup is much faster than Mozilla, the interface is much more intuitive and clutter free and it merges nicely with the look and feel of the rest of the GNOME environment. The latest versions (0.8.2 and above) also have a extra experimental plugin which allows mouse gestures.
Fig 12. Epiphany - The Brand New GNOME Browser. (Click for a larger view)
It supports popup blocking, tabbed browsing, customizable toolbars, automatic image resizing and all of these, with an extremely simple and clean UI. However, I would like to see the download manager to be a little more advanced (resume support maybe??).
The PDF Viewer: GPDF
GPDF has a UI which is similar to GGV (The GNOME Postscript Viewer), and handled PDF files quite well in my system. It is based on xpdf (actually, the "NEWS" file says that it is a port of xpdf to GNOME 2).
Fig 13. GPDF - The GNOME PDF Viewer. (Click for a larger view)
As with most other GNOME applications, I found the interface to be nice an clean, but it seemed to have some issues with regard to embedded fonts.
The Character Picker: GUCharmap
This new GNOME Character map is quite a fancy tool - a bit too fancy, IMHO. It has support for all the Unicode Characters, and it seems to have detailed information on each and every character.
Fig 14. GUCharMap Showing Some of the Characters. (Click for a larger view)
Fig 15. GUCharMap Showing Details. (Click for a larger view)
The Calculator
The new calculator of GNOME is also quite improved. There is a handy list of commonly used mathematical constants (pi, e, various conversion factors, etc). It has three modes - basic, financial and scientific.
Fig 16. GCalcTool - The GNOME Calculator. (Click for a larger view)
GNOME System Tools
In my opinion this is one of the best additions to the GNOME software map in a long time. As the README file says, these tools are designed to make (Unix) system configuration easy for desktop users. They aim for what the README calls "unified system configuration", meaning that the same toolset can be used in different flavours of Unix. This is achieved by splitting each tool into two distinct parts - a frontend written in C/Python and a backend written in Perl.
Currently available tools include a Runlevel Admin, a Network Admin (which lets you specify your hostname, samba hostname and workgroup, DNS servers, search domains, hosts, network interfaces, ppp, ethernet, slip and in a limited way, wavelan). Also included are a Time Admin, a User Admin and a Boot Admin.
I really liked the interface of each tool, especially the artwork. I think it is a great approach towards making a user friendly set of system configuration tools for the desktop user. Tools provided by the various distros are also great, but since each one has a different interface of its own (and a different set of problems), it becomes difficult for both users and tech support people to handle them.
Fig 17. GNOME System Tools - Boot Admin (Click for a larger view)
Fig 18. GNOME System Tools - Network Admin (Click for a larger view)
More information on GNOME System Tools is available at http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/.
The Media Player: Totem
Yes - GNOME now has a media player of its own (though of recent, it has suddenly disappeared from the module listing withou any warning). It is called Totem, and currently it is based on a Xine backend. However, from the README, I gathered
LTSP (Score:2, Informative)
Let's hope that they'll fix it.
Oh yeah, the website is being slashdotted to death right now. Can't check it right now.
Re:The typing break (Score:4, Informative)
If I didn't spend 10 minutes an hour meandering arround the office I would probably go insane.
I am not sure why this is funny. It really is a good idea with typing breaks, and of course you can do other work while not typing.
The tool Xwrits [lcdf.org] may be of use for people interested in this item but not prepared for the entire GNOME upgrade shebang. It must be cool, JWZ uses it [jwz.org] (and so do I).
Re:Linux Ready For The Desktop ? (Score:2, Informative)
Insert Redhat CD, boot, let installation and plug & play take over. It is this easy.
Here is Google Cache (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta) (Score:5, Informative)
The current GTK+ file dialog *cannot* be changed without breaking compatibility. A new file dialog is under development for GTK+ 2.4, for quite a while now. But GTK+ 2.4 will not make it before the GNOME 2.4 release.
If you want a slightly better file dialog (with Back button, Home button, Bookmarks, etc.) but is still compatible with all the current apps, take a look at this patch:
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36
2) Galeon.
Galeon never was a part of GNOME 2. At one point they had to choose a browser so they chose Epiphany because it's goals are like GNOME's. There's nothing stopping you from installing Galeon yourself. I'm typing this in Galeon right now.
3) Extract Here
I agree with you on this. Email the File Roller author, not Slashdot.
4) Panel size
Why click 20 times? Just focus the spinbox and type in whatever number you want using your keyboard. As for the goat logo, how's that a usability issue? Users don't care what logo they see in the about box (if they look at all).
5) Media player
GStreamer doesn't "suck", it's just not finished yet. Xine is not "superior", it's different. GStreamer is a very ambitious project, and is like Windows's DirectShow. It's not just for playing files, it's an entire multimedia framework, which includes things like recording and encoding. I don't see Xine doing something like that.
What's stopping you from installing MPlayer (not Windows Media Player!) or Xine or whatever? I installed MPlayer, setup some associations and everything works perfectly.
Anyway, I don't know why you say 2.4 isn't as good as 2.2. Except for Extract Here, none of the features in 2.2 are removed, some features just didn't make it to 2.4.
Re:Nautilus? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Problems with gnome 2.3 (the 2.4 beta) (Score:3, Informative)
1) CMYK support
Do you have any idea how hard it is to implement properly CMYK support in the current Gimp codebase? It's *not* trivial! Remember that most Gimp developers are just volunteers, not commercial developers working full-time!
2) Weather applet
The old one was removed due to legal reasons. Or do you want the GNOME project to be sued by weather.com?
3) Wanda
And how's this even relevant?
4) Menu editor
You never had to restart the panel. Well, not on my box anyway.
5) Hidden preferences
Which preferences? Hhow many of those preferences do you change daily? How many of those preferences do normal users care about?
Think about that first.
Maybe it isn't a memory leak (Score:5, Informative)
If you suspect a leak in some process, look at its VM size. If there is a leak, the process will end up much larger after repeating some operation, such as opening a new window, N times (clean up after each time) than doing that once.
Another way is to look at the swap usage. It usually keeps increasing, but should mostly be stable after e.g. 2 hours of usage, unless you start some other very large applications.
GTK+ 2.4 Plan (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Improved calculator? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change (Score:2, Informative)
Faster, easier and X has it for looong time.
Re:Improved calculator? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue? (Score:3, Informative)
You *can* configure for single click. In Nautilus:
Edit->Preferences->Behavior->Single click to activate items.
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue? (Score:3, Informative)
-9mm-
Re:Nautilus literally has no clue? (Score:3, Informative)
Applications->Desktop Preferences->File Management
Click "Behaviour"
Choose "Single click to activate items"
As for the launch notification within nautilus, that feature will be in 2.4
Here's a list of the new features in nautilus [gnome.org]. There's lots of good stuff including the multi-rooted tree view, and
-Mark
Re:On-the-fly Resolution Change (Score:2, Informative)
Thimo
Re:slashdotted (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Q. garnome or "partial local portage"? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nautilus Useable? (Score:2, Informative)