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GNOME GUI Announcements

Gnome 2.10 Released 526

Posted by timothy from the getcher-torrent-on dept.
Mad_Rain writes "The new version of Gnome (you know, the desktop of many Linux users?) has just been released. You can even try it out with a LiveCD (bittorrent link). There is a video player and CD-ripping utility included, and the all-important new splash screen!"
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Gnome 2.10 Released More

Gnome 2.10 Released

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  • The complete release notes... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom AT thomasleecopeland DOT com> on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:31PM (#11891968) Homepage
    ...are here [gnome.org].
    • Heh, I really wanted to include that in the article summary too, but couldn't find anything resembling a changelog off of the front page. Thanks!

  • Screenshots (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:31PM (#11891976)
    New screenies here [softpedia.com].
    It's only a matter of time.

  • Speaking of the new splash screen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Drunken_Jackass ( 325938 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:33PM (#11891987) Homepage
    Does anyone else find something wrong with the progress/height chart on the new splash screen?

    2.10
    2.8
    2.6
    2.4
    2.2
    2.0
    • erm... Maybe I'm blind or stupid. What's wrong?
    • its two integers delimited by a fullstop. its not a float
    • The sad thing is... No. I read this and looked it over a few times. I thought you were making a point that it parallel kernel releases or something.

      The thing is that, as a versioning system, it's perfectly legitimate.

      Only as an ordinary number is there a problem, such as on that chart. (0.2 after 2.8 should be 3.0, not 2.10 -- that's 2.1, which is halfway between 2.0 and 2.2)
    • Yes, I've always found that a bit troubling. I can't decide if we're supposed to believe:

      i) 10 has a higher value than 8;
      ii) .10 has a smaller value than .2;
      iii) 2.8 + .2 = 3.0;
      iv) 2.8 + .2 = 2.1.

      Of course, in the case of some unforunate releases, the addition of an even extention to an even extention results in an odd extention of a lower value, such as in some of the latest Mandrake releases. Those suckers should've been knocked back to version 4.15 or something.

    • Re:Speaking of the new splash screen (Score:5, Informative)

      by akzeac ( 862521 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:45PM (#11892192)
      Think of them more like IPs, you can have 127.0.0.1. Between 2.8 and 2.9 can come 2.8.1, 2.8.2, 2.8.2.1, and so on.
    • Think of it like a prison line up - feet.inches

      It's probably as good an analogy as anyone else in this thread thinks up :P

    • Now, now... how are we supposed to check the other submissions (mirrordot notwithstanding)?

      gimp.org did it again -- if you have a page with 252 big pieces of graphics, you need to check the Referrer against slashdot.org...

  • GNOME 2.10 (Score:3, Funny)

    by pathological liar ( 659969 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:34PM (#11891999)
    Now with no new exciting features! [gnome.org]
    • I know you're joking, but isn't that the purpose of this sort of point-release? Polish/stabilize what's there? I mean, if it had a bunch of exciting new features, wouldn't it be 3.0?

  • Hoary (Score:5, Informative)

    by peterprior ( 319967 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:34PM (#11892002)
    Packages are already in ubuntu hoary.

    just do an apt-get update and then an apt-get dist-upgrade :)

  • Future viability in question? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:34PM (#11892005) Homepage Journal
    Most people I talk to who use Linux have expressed a strong preference for KDE over GNOME. I don't know if this is because they get KDE with X-Windows on there system or if they switched in disgust, but they usually say that they think it's crisper and the look is more consistent across applications.

    I suppose it's another example of form over function, but there you go. Hopefully Enlightenment comes out soon.

    • Re:Future viability in question? (Score:4, Informative)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:43PM (#11892156) Journal
      As a windows user migrating over to linux, I really tried to get a good sense of which desktop was "better" and would be supported in the coming years. I was never able to get a good answer. Both have their pros and cons, and both have an enthusiastic user base. So I think both KDE and GNOME are with us for a good while now... which is a good thing!

      That having been said, I use KDE.

      • Re:Future viability in question? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by rainman_bc ( 735332 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:52PM (#11892304)
        Admittedly, the transition to Gnome from Windows is easier, for the icon standards are similar.

        KDE pisses me off with how cluttered the icons in the applications look. There appears to be little spacing between icons. It makes for a crammed, cluttered looking appearance.

        Gnome pisses me off because its menu editing is so friggin' stupid. FWIW FC3 dropped the Gnome menue editor because it was too buggy.

        I like both. However I lean towards Gnome because it's cleaner, and more polished.

        If I want performance, I'll use XFce
    • I know of absolutely nobody who runs KDE, almost everyone I know runs Fedora Core and Gnome.

      For most people, it's simply a matter of what they started using first. That being said, I started with KDE, and switched over to GNOME years ago for the cleaner and more simple interface.

      • Gnome is the default desktop in Fedora Core, but they've themed KDE in exactly the same way.

        I like the Bluecurve theme in Gnome. It's useable, looks nice (not like a kid's toy like Windows XP), and is simple enough not to be distracting. It doesn't seem to be totally complete - a few files, .exes for example, still have the standard huge Gnome foot icon, but it is good enough to make me use switch back after trying any of the other themes.
    • I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "no". The future viability is not in question. There's lots of development going on, a relatively large user base, and I'd even say a loyal user base.

      So, yeah, the answer is no.

    • Most people I talk to who use Linux have expressed a strong preference for KDE over GNOME.
      "My buddies think that KDE is better than Gnome" is moderated Informative? My faith in the public moderation system just dropped a notch.
      they usually say that they think [KDE]'s crisper [than gnome] and the look is more consistent across applications.
      Crisper? More consistent? Consistent in that everything starts with a K, perhaps. Consistencies fall apart after that. Gnome is designed around the principals of c

    • Re:Future viability in question? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phidipides ( 59938 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:57PM (#11892376) Homepage
      I attempted to use KDE on my laptop recently because it felt more refined to me than Gnome. The menus that came up seemed to offer a more intuitive way of doing things, and the system as a whole just felt more polished. I got the sense that someone was working to make sure that the KDE experience had some consistency to it, which was much appreciated.

      But I still wasn't as happy with the KDE desktop as I had been with Windows XP, so I figured I'd give Gnome a shot. After all, it had things like Beagle and Dashboard that sounded pretty cool. Plus, Hula and several other new applications were all being announced for Gnome. But I found that for a new user, there wasn't the same consistency to the Gnome experience as there was with KDE. Lots of things seemed (to me) to work differently from app to app. Changing settings could be done lots of different ways, it wasn't always clear what the preferred method of doing something was (true for the file manager, getting help, etc).

      Consistency issues aside, my biggest difficulty with each of the desktops was that there wasn't an easy way to install new software. I use Debian, and apt-get is great, but half the time after choosing to install something new I couldn't find it by looking through the menus. I never even tried installing something that didn't have a Debian package, but can imagine it would have been pretty evil. I realize that the LSB and freedesktop.org are working to improve this situation, but at the moment Windows is worlds ahead with its simple software installations.

      So in the end I went back to Windows XP for my desktop; I'm comfortable with it, it is stable (I've had fewer crashes/lockups with XP than I did with either Gnome or KDE), and I'm smart enough to be able to deal with the spyware & viruses. I still use Linux on my web server, and will try the Linux desktops again in the future, but for now I'll go with the evil empire simply because I like the product better. True, had I spent more time learning to use the Linux desktops I might have eventually preferred one of them, but for now the comfort factor just wasn't high enough to make me feel it was worth investing the effort.
    • They're going after different demographics IMHO. The biggest complaint I hear is that you can't tweak the bejesus out of Gnome like you can KDE.

      KDE is geared more towards power users who tweak for fun, Gnome is geared towards people who'll probably never change their settings (IMHO with much more sensible and aesthetically pleasing defaults for the thunderhing horde).

      I consider myself a power user also, who used to spend tons of time tweaking KDE. It's a matter of preference (before this degenrates into

    • Re:Future viability in question? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jdclucidly ( 520630 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @04:01PM (#11892420) Homepage
      Disclaimer: I'm a KDE user.

      I always give Gnome due dilligence for each release. Each time a new version comes out I test it out for one full week and see how it works for me. Since the release of 2.0 I have always gone back to KDE for this reason:

      [on #gnome on irc.freenode.net]
      Me: Where is feature X? It seems like I ought to be able to do X but I can't seem to find it.
      Dev/Zealot A1: Yea we think that's a good idea but we haven't gotten to it yet.
      or
      Dev/Zealot A2: Well, X is too complicated so we did Y. You must use Y. X is not implemented.

      As with other releases I will try 2.10 out and see how it's progressed but here's a list of show stoppers in previous versions:

      * Inability to edit or affect the panel menus in an intuitive way (somewhat addressed through the addition of applications:/// which was hard to find)
      * Inability to hold down the mouse button (drag through) while navigating the menus. The thinking was accessibility related. A click event occurs after some arbitrary criteria has been met that convinces Gnome that the user really wanted to click and just didn't know to let go of the mouse button and then click again. Very annoying.
      * No window snapping
      * Non-existance of KIO-slaves equivalent (ability to open and work with files on arbitrary network resources) -- very useful
      * Gnome terminal lacking ability to rename tabs by interacting with the tab (can be done through menu option somewhere)
      * Gedit lacking features as compared with KEdit
      * Epiphany / Galeon (which is it now?) not as feature complete as Firefox
      * Until recently, the Gnome file open dialog box was a nightmare. It still has some problems, though. Many of its features are hidden in shortcut keys that one would only know existed if one scoured the Gnome manuals.

      A lot of people bitch about spacial Nautilus but I don't think that's nearly important as some other basic needed features (window snapping). I can modify the way my brain works with a particular computer paradigm if I think it might be more sensible but I cannot do without features that increase my productivity.

      So here's to hoping.

      • Just out of curiosity? In which way is Epiphany not as feature complete as FF? I use FF, but I understand that FF is the backend to Epiphany.
      • * Inability to edit or affect the panel menus in an intuitive way (somewhat addressed through the addition of applications:/// which was hard to find)

        Agreed.

        * Inability to hold down the mouse button (drag through) while navigating the menus. The thinking was accessibility related. A click event occurs after some arbitrary criteria has been met that convinces Gnome that the user really wanted to click and just didn't know to let go of the mouse button and then click again. Very annoying.

        I'm not sure ab

      • Re:Future viability in question? (Score:5, Informative)

        by arose ( 644256 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @05:08PM (#11893343)
        No window snapping

        Shift+Drag

        Until recently, the Gnome file open dialog box was a nightmare. It still has some problems, though. Many of its features are hidden in shortcut keys that one would only know existed if one scoured the Gnome manuals.

        Many? As far as I know it's only the location dialog . I can't think of a good way to show it without clutering the dialog. At least it does not have the horizontal-scrolling-through-files "feature"...
    • It's because of the first-run wizard. Really. Firstly, it offers the choice of setting things up to be windows-like, which I think many new users do. And it really works, being just different enough to be interesting but not so much that it's confusing. Gnome can do the same but you have to configure it to do so yourself, and new users won't have a clue how to do that. And secondly, it gives them a hint of the "linux is all about choice" that everyone has been telling them. It works, quite simply. Has anyon

    • Re:Future viability in question? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Loco3KGT ( 141999 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @04:54PM (#11893172)
      Personally I've always thought they both sucked. In the meantime I've fallen for every damn "E .17 RELEASED!" April Fool's Day joke on Slashdot ever since .16.5 was released.

      I never pay attention to my calendar so come that fateful day I go "HOLY CRAP! FINALLY!" and tell atleast 6 people.

      Then my world crashes around me.

  • A BitTorrent link... (Score:4, Funny)

    by thepurplemonkey ( 814382 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:35PM (#11892017)
    in the actual article. At least we still have the splash screens we can smoke their server with.
  • ...and better; I've been using it for a few years now and it's a fine piece of work.

    I'm working on a Ruby binding [rubyforge.org] for it that will make the data easier to get at, too... good times.

  • Nice release (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:40PM (#11892109)
    From using the betas and now Gnome-2.10 on Hoary for some time now I have to say that this is indeed a great release. It's probably not so much about new incredible features, like including hal in 2.8, but a lot about small polishes and cleanups.

    My only problem is that the Gnome devs thought it was a good idea not to have a menu editor and no other (easy) way to edit the menus. There will be one in 2.12 afaik, but right now I'm stuck without an easy way to edit my menu and that's annoying.

    Anyway, great release and a pleasure to use. Thanks to all those involved.
    • > the Gnome devs thought it was a good idea not to have a menu editor

      Use kmenuedit. :-)
    • Recently, I've been playing with Gnome on my computer (older version - 2.4). The rest of the family is set up with KDE and I used KDM to start it up. I think, comparing Gnome 2.4 to KDE 3.2, I'd have to give KDE the nod, but that's not to say that Gnome doesn't have it's strong points. Once of the things I do like better is Gnome's approach to menu editing. Instead of firing up a separate menu editor as with KDE, you just right-click on the menu and either edit the specific item via "properties" or add

  • Finally... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:43PM (#11892159)
    In the past, while typing something into one application when suddenly your instant messenger offered a chat request from your friend, your words would be typed into the chat window. Imagine if you were typing your password at the time. This should no longer happen in GNOME 2.10.

    Ahh, finally. This was the most annoying thing for the longest time. I actually had to change my password twice because I unintentionally IMed it to someone else. I'm actually surprised that they didn't fix this a long time ago. It was a usability/security nightmare.

  • Karma Whoring? (Score:5, Informative)

    by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:45PM (#11892191) Journal
    The gnome.org site is apparently having a devil of a time keeping up with the bandwidth.

    Give the CoralCache [nyud.net] a try. Nice and speedy for me.

  • Wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by stepson ( 33039 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:46PM (#11892202) Homepage Journal
    I think Microsoft has some competition, finally! Check out this from the release notes:

    * The path button is now more obviously a button.

    Wow, a button this is ... MORE OBVIOUSLY, a button! Alright!

    * GNOME 2.10 introduces a new applet for controlling your Modem, integrated with GNOME System Tools.

    Words fail me. I'm going to go out and get a modem, just so I can try this!

    Finally,

    * daily weather forecasts / Get even more weather

    This one, I am not so sure of. Geeks don't leave the house! Why couldn't they make an applet that checks how much of their parents money they've spent living in their basements? How about how much more money they need before Scott Bakula will agree to do the next season of Enterprise? THAT would have been helpful.
    • * Wow, a button this is ... MORE OBVIOUSLY, a button! Alright!

      As opposed to windows, where buttons can appear as anything from buttons to underlined text to borderless free-form images to completely unmarked text.

      * Words fail me. I'm going to go out and get a modem, just so I can try this!

      News flash: A significant fraction of people in America, a not-insignificant place in the developed world, still us dial-up internet connections.

    • I think you're missing some of the bigger features in the new release:

      - A new "about box" in GTK+ 2.6!
      (I was wondering when this feature would finally arrive!)

      - When using keyboard navigation to open the parent folder (Alt-Up), the current folder will be selected!
      (yay)

      - New background images and patterns!
      (that'll go great with the solid color currently on my desktop) ... and lets not overlook the new crazy features in Epiphany:

      - The location bar now indicates whether the site is secure, and shows its fa

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SunFan ( 845761 )

      I almost wet myself after seeing how easy it was to configure a printer in JDS (based on GNOME). This was after having been absent from GNOME for quite a while, and it just blew me away. Finally, configuring basic printer functionality is easy in UNIX.

      And, now, modems! I think a part of my bald head was caused by configuring modems!

      Printers and modems have been the worst part of UNIX for ages. Now that's mostly history!

      You're right, Microsoft really does have some competition (sarcasm noted). Seriou

  • LiveCD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lakeland ( 218447 ) <lakeland@acm.org> on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:46PM (#11892203) Homepage
    When KDE's last beta was announced on slashdot, many people commented that a live CD was a really cool way of showing off the new system. Now we see Gnome taking this really cool feature out of KDE and incorporating it.

    That is why we need to keep two desktops around. Whenever either one invents something cool, both get it. (Friendly) compertition seems by far the best form of improving software.

    Oh, and why wasn't a garnome link posted? ;-)
    • Talking of LiveCDs, what distribution does it use? A few distributions (Think Fedora or Ubuntu) modify their Gnomes quite a bit to make it suit their distribution.

    • Re:LiveCD (Score:3, Informative)

      by 4of12 ( 97621 )

      Oh, and why wasn't a garnome link posted?

      Here's what came out on the garnome list a few hours ago...

      GARNOME 2.10.0
      ==============
      (the 'pink fluffy bunny slippers are in my future' release.)

      My God, we made it.

      Aside from marking the first time a stable GARNOME release has come out on the same day that the GNOME release did -- This release incorporates the full GNOME 2.10 Desktop & Developer Platform, as well as so much extra, new and improved stuff ... it's, it's ... it's GARNOMEtastic.

      Th

  • Gentoo Users (Score:3, Informative)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @03:48PM (#11892238)
    There are gnome-2.10-pre ebuilds in portage now but they are all hard-masked. The only issue in terms of emerging is unmasking them and getting a libgnomecups-0.2.0.ebuild into net-print. As far as how its working... well... I'm compiling :P
  • Here's why:

    I cannot open a file like http://www.marcusevans.com.au/pdf/413.pdf [marcusevans.com.au] from any GNOME native application! In this case, I have to save the file on the disk then open it after. I was even more dissapointed when Adobe based their recently released PDF reader for Linux on GTK. This means that this issue lingers. Meanwhile, all that I am dissapointed with in GNOME is a snap and works like a charm in any KDE applcation. What the hell....!

  • Things I'd like to see from GNOME. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @04:09PM (#11892524) Homepage Journal
    • Less feature churn.
    • Less feature-creeping bloat.
    • More consolidation of dependencies.
    • More fixing of the long-standing bugs.
    • More delivery of long-standing promises.
    Every release seems to have a lot of superficial changes that don't seem to buy anything, but don't really address the issues that everyone seems to complain about. Example: you'd think that the gnome-panel would be pretty ironed out after a few years, but there are still at least a dozen "critical" unresolved bugs for it, where the panel just decides to crash or hang.

    It's not as glamorous as mating a couple of Bonobos and getting a new SVG Pango baby, but please, for the sake of your users, focus on the fit and finish. What good is a HIG if the average user is put off by all the splinters?

  • Still no flashing notification (Score:4, Interesting)

    by astralbat ( 828541 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @04:14PM (#11892599)
    Looking through the release notes, there is still the problem of missing flashing notification for programs such as instant messenger clients. When minimizing the window, I would expect it to start flashing when a new message arrives (like Microsoft Windows)

    Many a time have I minimised a conversation only to realise after forgetting about it that I have several messages unread

    • I think this is there. Reading throught the NEWS in Metacity (the default window manager) and in the panel, it looks like both support the URGENT atom (defined somewhere in freedesktop.org).

      All we really need now is that the IM program you are using really sets this atom on the window (or else Metacity and the panel will never know what happened).

  • 2.10 is nice but 2.12 is where it's at... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stalyn ( 662 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @04:36PM (#11892931) Homepage Journal
    The 2.12 release is what i'm excited about... the cairo implementation, better compositing support (aka transparency and shadows... fading in and out of windows etc), gstreamer, dbus, Beagle, Mono, memory reduction...

    2.10 has some nice improvements and what one should consider as a release that smooths over some issues. But it's nothing terribly exciting and new. Hopefully 2.12 will be a release that blows people away.

  • Sticky Notes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phantasmagoria ( 1595 ) <loban@rahman+slashdot.gmail@com> on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @05:25PM (#11893519)
    My sweet little sticky notes applet! I initially wrote it to scratch an itch, and stopped working on it after the Gnome 2.4 release. It's nice to see that it's been maintained well. Hopefully, once I return to the US, I can take care of my baby again. :) And to all of you who sent me mail about it, thanks, and sorry I haven't replied to any of them for so long.

  • Still no mail notification for Evolution! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by figa ( 25712 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @06:20PM (#11894165) Journal
    This is from the release notes [gnome.org]:
    The Mailbox Monitor has been removed because it was unmaintained and insecure. We hope to have a solution integrated with our Evolution mail client in the future. If you don't use Evolution for your mail, you can use a third party application such as mailnotify.
    Does it strike anyone else as odd that after years of touting GNORBA or .gnet or whatever wonderful object/event model what supposed to underlie the gnome desktop, there still isn't a gnome applet that will tell you when Evolution has new mail? It used to be that you could tell by the text in the task list, but even that is gone. There's a bounty [gnome.org] of $400 outstanding for this problem if anyone has some free time.

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