GNOME 2.10 Beta 1 Screenshot Demo

linuxbeta writes "GNOME 2.10 Beta 1 has just been released. There is a nice screenshot demo here. Also known as 2.9.90, GNOME 2.10 Beta 1 is the first pre-release intended for wide public scrutiny before the final release in March. It is packed full of tasty GNOME goodness. This release is a feature frozen snapshot primarily intended for wide public scrutiny before the final GNOME 2.10 release in March. Like the good old days of Linux kernel development, GNOME uses odd minor version numbers to indicate development status. Please check the 2.9 start page for more info. - gnomedesktop.org/node/2138"

Fonts look nice

[Dancin_Santa]

But everything is so huge. The screen resolution looks really terrible. What is that 640x480? Did GNOme just enter the VGA world?

And I'm not sure I'd like that "Courtesy of OSshots" banner at the top. Ugly.

So my initial reaction, is, "Hey, that's cool. Where did the mouse pointer go?" Then my second reaction was, "It looks like every other window manager out there."

Screenshots are nice, but what are they trying to show us that can't be done with any other window manager?

Difference

[mboverload]

Honestly, I relaly don't see much of a difference.

Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

A changelog be more useful than crappy screenshots...

And why is this news anyway? There's several hundred current distros. Wheres the news posts for all those?

-7 Flamebait

[netrat]

It's not my intention to knock Gnome, but I think it future releases could have a more all-ecncompassing set of system configuration tools, like KDE has. Maybe I'm just not digging well enough, or am using too old of a version, but Gnome has always seemed to pale to K in that regard. KDE is frigging ugly though. We live in a world of trade-offs, I guess.

bad menu UI

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a big space between the "foot" and "Applications" (same spacing as between other menus), yet they're the same menu?! Either glue the foot to Applications, or call it foot *or* applications. What where they thinking?

still only one background for workspaces

[DeathAndTaxes]

This is just about the only complaint I have with gnome. You're stuck with the same desktop pic on all your workspaces. It's gone on too long, and it's silly.

A geeks wishlist...

[rmdir -r *]

Smaller GTK widgets (Maybe its just perceived, but GNOME, and GTK apps in general seem to waste waay to much real estate... not everyone has a 21' monitor..)

A decent default theme (Grey is ugly. Get over it.)

Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux

[hazah]

Um... yes, why indeed would anyone at all bother using linux. You have a flawd perception as to what linux is. Besides it being only a kernel (which isn't even the point here), it is, from the perspective of many, a highly adaptive system. A GUI, in linux, is NOTHING but a front end. It has a very specialized use. I don't think you'll ever find a linux user (one that actually knows how to use it, that is) that will brag about it's GUI. They probably don't care, and would laugh at the notion. Quit trolling, you obviously don't know what you are talking about.

Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux

[aristotle-dude]

I knopw that this was meant to be a troll but there is some truth to what you say. But I don't think looks are the main problem with it. The main obstacle for linux adoption on the desktop are some of its advocates who vehemently oppose movements like the LSB and commercial involvement with linux.

Face it guys, it's all well and good to have principles but the average joe/jane wants to have access to closed source apps on their platform of choice.

Linux advocates must also come to the hard realization that many closed source apps have superior UI's to their open source counterparts because those companies took the time and money to hire UI designers.

Perhaps I'm missing something...

[hatrisc]

But screenshots of the next version of a piece of software do absolutely nothing if it looks exactly the same!

Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux

[Anubis350]

as both a mac and linux user I'm bothered by both you trolls, stop being jerks and actually realize that a) both platforms have their merits and drawbacks and b) competition is good.

[begin rant]

I'm getting goddamn sick and tired of fan-boy posts, be they linux, mac, windows, goddamn paper tape, etc. Take the time to actually use a platform and you'll realize that it probably has its merits (yes even windows). Go out, stop trolling, and get a life. Posts like the parent and grandparent are the reason why slashdot is sometimes such a pain to read.

[end rant]

fix the file selection

[wotevah]

I just hope they fix that godawful file selection thing. I have never found a tool so unfriendly to "power users". I mean, what's up with forcing people to browse instead of letting them type the path.

I mean having to browse through to /usr/bin and waiting minutes for it to build a fancy list so I can finally select what I already knew I wanted, that annoyance is worth wanting to switch to KDE or something else that allows me to TYPE stuff. Yaknow, like the old interface.

GNOME

[Codifex Maximus]

There was once a day when I was in the GNOME camp. I didn't like the non-free Qt stuff. These days, Qt is not much of an issue. I still appreciate the GNOME guys for giving us an alternative but...

Why does GNOME always seem to be in a state of trying to define itself - to always be in the concept stage? Perpetually in ALPHA state.

Is GNOME still the GNU Network Object Model Environment of old?

Now, in favor of GNOME I must add: There are some GNOME apps that just rock. I really like the process list, some of the games and the panel apps. The widgets are crisp, beautiful and intuitive just like they were on the original GIMP.

The GNOME guys have got alot of impressive code. Now to use that code to form a cohesive and easy to use interface that doesn't change drastically with every point release.

Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux

[hazah]

So a Pretty GUI is the beall/endall? Comon, linux functions on many layers, and a GUI is only one of them. Yes.. it lags behind your precious Darwin (of which I'm fond of, of course). But that's hardly an obsticle for the OS itself.

Re:I love gray, but GNOME ain't gray

[Leo McGarry]

Gray is a beautiful colour.

Um. It seems like you either misspelled "grey" or you misspelled "color." Pick one and stick with it, huh?

Re:Difference

[Brandybuck]

I understand what you're saying, but the "gestural paradigm" doesn't work when you have lots of available actions. Some of them are fine. But to do everything with some sort of gesture, you're going to end up with dozens of keys to press while dragging. You can't remember them all. Alt+P+drag equals print, Alt+Y+drop equals compress, Shift+Alt+M equals upgrade the package the icon came from, etc, etc. What if you do Alt+P+drag on a binary executable? Does it print out the splash screen?

That's why there are context menus. The most common items can remain gestures (copy, delete), but you're going to have to put actions in a context menu, especially if they are not universal to the object being manipulated.

Drag-and-drop and other gestural interfaces are far more obvious.

Nonsense. The only reason it seems that way is because so many people have prior experience with other desktops. There are no analogues in real life to holding down a key while dragging. Some people may stick their tongues out while trying to thread a needle, but that's an individual behavioral quirk, and not a universal instinct applicatble to the computer desktop.

Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux

[l3v1]

Hahahaha! And you know what the worst thing is? You probably actually believe yourself.

You know what, Mr. AC ? If we would judge an OS by it's looks, noone would ever buy WinXP or else, and Apple would've become world leader with OSX.

Thing is, which is not necessarily sad, but nevertheless true, that the most part of computer users are not in any way developers, nor do they want to do anything development related, nor do they wish to know the insides or power usabilities of any OS they ever coem in conatct with. And that means that usually the GUIs will not be suited for a power user.

From that point of view - developer, geek, power user, etc. - Linux could really prevail in the x86 world. And these prople also are in perfect knowledge of an OS's power lies not in the GUI, so your parent post has quite a bit of truth in it. On the other hand, a KDE GUI is much more user-friendly than many others, for the simple fact that be _very_ easily customized to one's needs. I've seen and heard many opinions according to whom this is exactly a drawback of KDE (too many places to tweak on too many locations), but I've come to appreciate this approach over the years.

Re:Difference

[Leo McGarry]

The program you're referring to lets you pick the backend that GStreamer outputs audio and video

Dude, I'm a reasonably intelligent guy, and I don't have the first fucking idea what that's supposed to mean. I'm just gonna take a wild-ass guess here and say that this is the control panel you use to say whether you want sound to come out of the speakers or the headphone jack. Why wrap it in technobabble?

It doesn't have a volume control on it because that isn't related to the function of the program.

Volume isn't related to sound controls? I think you'll find you're mistaken.

You contol the volume through the -- gasp! -- volume control applet in the panel.

What's a panel, and what's an applet? And if I go to the Sound control panel, I'd damn well expect to find controls related to sound there. Telling me they're somewhere else isn't the right answer. Are we constrained by room on the dashboard or the cost of materials? Put a fucking slider control on there, stick a label on it, and call it a day.

Except that the label would evidently be "audiophonic amplitude attenuation," abbreviated to AAA, and it would range from -e to +pi.

Re:Difference

[cortana]

> No, it's right up there next to the "Audio" tab ...you know, the one that should
> read "Sound."

Then I don't understand how the fact that the multimedia systems selector is *not* a volume control, could have escaped your understanding.

> Sound and video are two different things. They don't belong together. Break
> one out and call it -- I'm gonna get wacky here --"Sound," and the other
> "Video."

The actions of picking which subsystems to use for audio/video (hence the 'multi' in multimedia) capture/output belong together. The actions are known as "selecting which multimedia systems to use". Hence, "multimedia system selector".

> Of course, if you have no video card attached to your computer, a "Video"
> control panel is superfluous. No video output, no need for a "Video" control,
> see? So if there's no video output (composite, 601, 292M, whatever), there
> should be no video control panel.

Quite incorrect. I may wish to select one of the video sinks that records a stream to disk, shunts it accross a network, or calculates MD5sums of the data stream. Not to mention configuring video capture.

> To change the volume, you click on the little volume icon shown at the top
> right of the screen.

Because:
* the multimedia systems selector is not a "sound" control panel; strcmp("multimedia systems selector", "sound") != 0
* if changing the volume was hidden away in a control panel then unskilled users would never find it
* if it were hidden away in a control panel then anyone who did find it would be annoyed that it was hidden away!

Re:Vectorized graphics

[Brandybuck]

Tell me about it. I did an SVG icon recently for an app of mine. It looked great at 48x48. But when I went to create bitmaps for the Mac OSX icon (which required a greater range of resolutions), I discovered that what looks good at 48x48 often looks like crap at 16x16, and fugly at 128x128. The problem is that when you scale an SVG image, everything scales, including the line widths. I had to manually tweak each resolution by hand.

Why would you need so many resolutions? Why can't everything be 128x128? Because that same icon is going to be used as the app icon in the folder or destkop, a smaller size if the folder is in a columnar view mode, as a quick launch icon on the panel, and as a mini icon in the titlebar or task manager. You will also have the rude heretic users who will change the GNOME defaults.

Re:Truth: The State of Desktop Linux

[mythicflux]

as both a mac and linux user I'm bothered by both you trolls, stop being jerks and actually realize that a) both platforms have their merits and drawbacks and b) competition is good.

I never said that they did not have there merits did I? The point I was making is that Apple products tend to not have longetity for the mass market. And unfortunetly, do to recent moves by Apple, certain long time developers who used to support (for example) Mac OS suddenly decided it wasn't worth their time. Apple is trying to maintain control of iTunes, the RIAA isn't exactly thrilled with the idea of future DRM being based on Apple's tech. Situations similar to that.

The computing industry is full of great products that died due to the fact that nobody bothered to develop technology for them. BeOS and Amiga come to mind.

What is hilarious is that I was modded as flame bait because I pointed out that Apple has a history of producing trendy products (good as they are) that don't really go anywhere after a few years.

I never once claimed that Linux was superior to Mac or Windows or that any particular technology was better (I simply stated that Linux would take a bigger chunk of the desktop market and as a side effect Apple would lose it relevence), but I guess people would rather assume that I am being a Linux fanboy because I'm calling out a Mac Zealot.

Take the time to actually use a platform and you'll realize that it probably has its merits (yes even windows)

Again did I ever state that I hadn't tried it? I have tried Mac OS X, find it to be a fine system, but ultimately when I use a UNIX environment I tend to not care about pretty graphics as I focus on the console.

So now you are making assumptions based upon notions you just came up with just as you are accusing me of. But hey it's /. so everyone will just spend time bitching about everyone elses opinion and then yell flamebait after which point Godwin's Law will come into effect and someone will follow with a link to goatse, all the while trying to figure out the 2nd step, which comes right before 3. Profit.

Screenshoots? Is this a fashion site or what?

[jotaeleemeese]

What about posting articles talking about features, bug fixes and enhancements. I mean, we are talking about software after all, aren't we?

file chooser still broken

[coaxial]

So after much out cry over the file chooser in 2.6, they decided to change it again. The problem with the 2.6 dialog was that there wasn't a way to type in filenames. GNOME is the only framework that doesn't allow users to type in filenames. Almost 30 years of GUI research and development had this, but GNOME decided that was dumb. Now, GNOME did allow users to type in a directory names if they hit CTRL-L. The problem with that is that it's hidden from the user.

Now, GNOME has added typeahead find to the dialog. Well, that got rid of the CTRL-L nonsense, but it's still hidden functionality, and doesn't allow users to paste in filenames.

This is just incompetence.

Re:But does it now have a usable interface ?

[BenjyD]

The first complaint is moot, as you can select multiple files in the open dialog in the standard way by holding down shift.

Your second point seems to have been corrupted by slashdot filters or something. Let me try to rephrase that for you:

Bug Submission #1
Severity: Enhancement
Title: Allow quicker navigation through nautilus file windows through keyboard navigation
Description: Finding files in a Nautilus directory view could be made much quicker if simple type-ahead find was implemented. Several other GUIs (such as Windows 95) on a keypress in a directory view move the focus to the first file beginning with that letter in the view. This makes keyboard navigation much quicker and reduces the need for the user to move their hand to the mouse.

Personally I like spatial Nautilus, and so do many people. Turn it off if you don't like it.