The Notable Improvements of GNOME 2.22 265
Michael Larabel writes "Phoronix has up a list compiling eight of the most interesting improvements on track for GNOME 2.22. These improvements include the Epiphany browser switching to the WebKit back-end, transition effects inside the Evince document viewer, a new GNOME application for taking photos and recording videos from web cameras followed by applying special effects, a mouse tweaking module for improved accessibility, and a new GNOME VNC client. On the multimedia end, GNOME 2.22 has a few new features appended to the Totem movie player and the Rhythmbox player. Totem can now search and play YouTube videos and connect to a MythTV server and watch past recordings or view live TV. Rhythmbox now can utilize FM radio tuners, integration with new lyric sites, improved Podcast feed support, and even has support for communicating with newer Sony PSPs. There will also be a standalone Flash player and flash previewing support from the file browser in this release."
Re:khtml (Score:3, Informative)
KHTML is very good of course, but it wouldn't make sense to switch to an engine that's going to be made obolete soon.
Re:Epiphany? Really? (Score:4, Informative)
I used to. And my Gnome using friends that I've talked into trying it still use it.
Compared to Firefox, it's prettier (if you think "fancy colors and icons" is more important than "consistent", you'll disagree), is much better integrated into Gnome, has much nicer "search engine support" (type in the address field, and your installed search engines are at the end of the auto complete list - please, someone, give me a firefox extension for that!), and has a quite nice tag based bookmarking system which can be synchronized with del.icio.us or ma.gnolia.com. All of that, and just a fraction of the memory of Firefox.
I stopped using it approximately the same time as they switched backend, and now use Firefox 3 instead - it doesn't swallow all memory (only almost all), and it actually looks more integrated into Gnome, than Epiphany with a Gecko backend (the times I tried Epiphany/Webkit, it didn't really work yet) since it's not only has a native theme, it also has native form controls (which Epiphany/Webkit apparently has too, but not Epiphany/Gecko). It also works with Online Desktop [gnome.org], and has the famous extensions, which makes up for the other downsides of not using Epiphany.
In other words: people are actually using Epiphany, but I don't think they will for long.
Re:am I missing something here? (Score:5, Informative)
Low cruft? Anything that is a complete desktop environment probably doesn't meet most people's definition of low cruft, but if there is one that makes that cut in the free software world, I'd vote for XFCE (I'm a KDE user, and neither KDE nor GNOME come anywhere near low cruft in my book; XFCE is reasonably low cruft, although you also give up some things to get there; one user's cruft is another user's indispensable feature. YMMV).
If you really want low cruft, though, you need to really run just a window manager. Fluxbox and IceWM are a couple of very good choices in that area. They really are low cruft and they are also very, very fast. Of course, unless you truly are willing to trade a lot of features for speed, you may find yourself wishing for a bit more cruft after a while.
Is this new stuff going to slow it down? Yeah, maybe. OTOH, they may make tuning improvements in other areas to offset it. Of course, GNOME is already slow [1], so you may not notice an incremental slowdown. KDE is slow, too (especially KDE 4; having tried it, I put it back on the shelf to wait for 4.1, and went back to the 3.5 tree).
[1] Compared to faster things like XFCE, or even faster things, like $WINDOW_MANAGER_OF_YOUR_CHOICE, but still seems relatively responsive compared to certain proprietary systems.
Re:am I missing something here? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:am I missing something here? (Score:4, Informative)
Neither KDE nor Gnome are just window managers (that's Metacity and Kwin). Desktop environment is a more fitting term for them. They both aim to include most of what you need for basic day-to-day use of your computer. They also make sure everything they include is nicely consistent, which makes for a good user experience.
As for your speed concerns, I don't see how inclusion of a few new apps will slow down anything? It will take a bit more disk space probably, but it won't slow anything down unless you use these new apps. You're also free to uninstall anything you feel is redundant.
Re:gtkhtml (Score:5, Informative)
Re:am I missing something here? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.xfce.org/ [xfce.org] = a lighter, faster gnome...
filechooser ? (Score:4, Informative)
it's ugly and far from intuitive.
there's a wrapper aplication that allows some GTK apps use KDE's filechooser, but it doesn't work with everyting.
if GTK developers really don't wan't to fix this, could they at least put something to allow the use of KDE's dialogs when the app is not running under gnome ?
BTW, the wrapper is here: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=36077 [kde-apps.org]
Re:Gedit wish list... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:am I missing something here? (Score:5, Informative)
For a while now (since 2.2) the default WM has been Metacity [wikipedia.org].
W
filechooser is terrible... (Score:3, Informative)
I completely agree.
The GNOME filechooser is an abomination. It is one of the reasons that Linus Torvalds uses KDE, and the reason that no sane person will touch GNOME.
1. COMPLETELY unintuitive (and difficult to get used to) initial layout. Instead of having an area with the file name that you can type in, there is simply a three-panel directory. What happens if you start typing? Some weird mystery box appears that is right on top of your filter dialog, which is unlabeled!
Want to type part of the filename? Go ahead, but as soon as you make a selection to change to a different directory, it is gone! What's more, if you were in a Save dialog, the default value is now gone forever.
2. The CANCEL and OK buttons are reversed from almost all other GUIs. Cancel to the left? Cancel above OK? What???
3. Windows-like distrust of any other directories other than your home. Want to save something in
Numerous other issues (resize behavior -- the whole dialog moves if you change file type), etc. prevent me from using this, EVER.
For those linux readers using firefox, a simple fix is to go to about:config and change ui.allow.platform.filepicker to FALSE. Do it now, for your own sanity.
Re:am I missing something here? (Score:3, Informative)
Between those "extremes" are even-lighter desktops like Étoilé and EDE, and somewhat-heavier WMs like Enlightenment. Lots of options in the X11 world. Readers may want to take a look at this comparison [wikipedia.org] to start.
Re:Epiphany? Really? (Score:2, Informative)
GDM Greeter (Score:2, Informative)
The reasons stated for these distributions not including the 2.22 GDM are configuration issues, lack of a themed login, GDM Configuration tool and lack of testing. While many areas of Gnome are receiving improvements the GDM is one of those areas where there is a significant enough degradation that distros are not including it.
The new version of the GDM may be several release versions away and ultimately be less functional than the current version. I don't necessarily call that an improvement.
Re:khtml (Score:3, Informative)
Re:filechooser is terrible... not that bad (Score:3, Informative)
What happens if you start typing is not "a mystery" but simply type ahead.
I just tried it - I have a file on my desktop called test.txt.
I open the chooser dialog in Firefox. I type 'de' and desktop is now highlighted. The mystery box is showing you what you have typed so far. I hit enter to go into desktop, then type te and test.txt is highlighted. I hit enter to open it.
And if i try it a second time it remembers where i was last so now just "ctrl-o te enter" and i have opened that file again.
really fast, really good - you just haven't tried it properly, mate
Re:Different designs (Score:4, Informative)
I find it hard to understand why someone who likes C would then dislike C++ enough to base a toolkit decision on that, especially given the quirky C required for Gtk+, but that aside...
There are, in fact, Qt bindings for C, Objective C, Ruby, Java and many other languages. (QtPython is probably the most widely used.) I'm not sure why you think it's so much more difficult to write bindings for a C++-based API.
File Roller (Score:2, Informative)
I am a GNOME user. And I like it. It's all good. With one exception: the "File Roller" application, which is used to examine archives.
Using it is basically a chore. You open it up, and you get a list of files. So, you think, it's just a matter of dragging those files into a directory you want, and it'll extract them there. Oh no. Total rejection. So you click on "extract," and if you're already in the directory you want to extract those files into, you have to leave that directory, and then re-enter it, before the OK type button (it's also called "extract") actually does anything.
I'm very lazy. I don't want to have to open a terminal window, navigate to the necessary directory, and run tar or whatever in order to get at my files. File Roller makes me do that due to its problems of usability. I suppose I could try looking for something that integrates with GNOME better, but this is part of the package, it should already be integrated.
Re:am I missing something here? (Score:2, Informative)
Bonobo was just a bad idea though, too fine-grained for what CORBA does, and hell it was based on fucking COM, so it was always a dumb idea