Release Team Proposes Gnome 3.0 Plans 306
benuski writes "Today at GUADEC, the Gnome User and Developer European Conference, the gtk+ team announced their plans for gtk+ 3.0; immediately after, the Gnome release team announced their plans for Gnome 2.30 to be changed into Gnome 3.0. This would mean a release date a year and a half to a year in the future. Details are short at the moment, but the Gnome team seems to be following in KDE's footsteps, but hopefully will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release."
Background (Score:5, Interesting)
Reverse Position (Score:2, Interesting)
it's all about the mindset (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, at this stage this is about the development team, not about the technical issues.
Problem with KDE 4 (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem with KDE 4 has nothing to do with features of stability, but the transparency of the project.
Many of the nicer features like Solid, Phonon, Sonnet, Akondi, etc. aren't visible. Plasma is extremely visible. It affects the users directly.
Yet no one knows what the long term design plans ffor Plasma are. The users keep getting surprised, and they feel that Plasma over-promised and under-delivered.
On top of that you have Aaron Segio now suggesting that users should have less control over configuration, fewer choices, and saying that end users are dumb. He also has suggested repeatedly lately that if you're not a coder, then you can't comment on UI issues.
Gnome already has a few of those problems (removing choice, treating users like they're dumb) but Gnome users don't seem to mind. For corporate environments, or people who can't be troubled to configure things, they just want working defaults and simplicity. That isn't a flame, but rather the way things are.
I can't expect Gnome users getting upset unless they don't have a good working, default desktop.
Re:Problem with KDE 4 (Score:5, Interesting)
In terms of graphic capabilities, it can natively suppport every feature available on OSX and in Vista, besides a few new features that are unique to KDE 4. In theory, it would be possible to create a desktop that looks-and-feels EXACTLY like OSX or Vista.
However, the best features are not those, but rather the platform independence with native API support. This means that, unlike JAVA, you can create one piece of software that compiles in Linux, OSX and Windows, using the OS-specific APIs. So, the same software compiled in OSX and in Windows look completely different and they didn't have a single line of code changed. The platform independence is not available for everything... for now, you can only compile things like Openoffice. However, the multimedia API, as well as other APIs are being developed.
The other thing great about KDE4 is that it is done with SVG instead of bitmaps. This means that scaling to very small devices like smartphones is quite simple to achieve.
Re:Screens???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably clutter (http://clutter-project.org/)
Re:All hail letter "g" (Score:5, Interesting)
I know people will think I'm crazy, but I have a vision for kGnome.
QT 4 actually has a Clearlooks engine designed to look like Gnome. Dolphin can be configured to operate largely like Natilus (except it works better these days).
If QT 4 actully really does use less memory and runs faster, why not do a test and port a small Gnome app or two over to QT 4?
The app can run with the QT 4 Clearlooks engine, and look largely like Gnome apps, except they can take advantage of many of the KDE features like Phonon, Solid, Sonnet, etc.
As for the people who prefer C to C++, aren't there language bindings for both for QT and GTK?
I'd love to see just a few small apps as a proof of concept. It could demonstrate the feasibility of a Gnome desktop built upon QT, especially considering the annoucement of Gnome 3, and the decision to break API.
If you're going to build anew, shouldn't this concept at least be considered for a moment? Both projects can have their seperate apps, desktops, defaults, window decorations, features, etc. But more common libraries and toolkits are a win for everyone.
Re:All hail letter "g" (Score:5, Interesting)
If that isn't enough, Trolltech will also provide QGtkStyle [trolltech.com] which will draw using native GTK widgets in the same way it uses native Cocoa/Carbon on OS X to make all Qt/KDE 4 applications have a Gnome look and feel, including things like the order of the dialog buttons.
Re:Problem with KDE 4 (Score:4, Interesting)
I have two problems with KDE4, only one of which is due to the KDE people.
First, I believe the development team should have kept it in Beta until it was feature-complete. Feature complete, in my mind, is at minimum the feature set of 3.x. It shouldn't even be a release candidate until "done" and stable.
Second, distros should avoid including immature projects like KDE 4 until they *are* feature complete and stable. Yeah, Kubuntu, I'm looking at you!
Hopefully, the Gnome folks (and Ubuntu) will wait until everything's ready for prime time before releasing 3.0
Re:Problem with KDE 4 (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe KDE uses a bitmap cache of pre-scaled SVG icons.
Re:KDE's footsteps? (Score:4, Interesting)
KDE3 was bloated to a fault, and had an unhealthy obsession with identical-looking blue toolbar icons. It was also due for an architectural revamp.
GNOME started going down the "less is more" minimalistic path a few years ago, encouraged by Apple's similar philosophy that seemed to go over well with consumers. Unfortunately, many feel that they stripped a bit too much out (still, I prefer this approach, and was a rabid Xfce [xfce.org] user for quite some time).
KDE4 on the other hand, doesn't feel like it was designed with a minimalistic philosophy in mind. Granted, there was a clear and commendable goal to cut out most of the cruft from KDE3, but it currently still feels a bit incomplete
Do you think that's a fair assesment?
Re:KDE's footsteps? (Score:4, Interesting)
KDE4 is still in development, so yes it is incomplete.
That withstanding, I would say it is a fair assessment. Although I like XFCE more for its small footprint than lack-of-features (simple without being, er, simplified). But to be honest, KDE is my favorite and KDE4 is looking to be very nice (for me) once it's 'done'.
Re:Problem with KDE 4 (Score:5, Interesting)
> I asked in the #kde-devel channel if it
> was removed intentionally or just hadn't
> been re-added.
It just hasn't been re-implemented.
You should have been pointed at me rather than Aaron. Terminal related queries will reach me if they are sent to konsole-devel@kde.org , robertknight on #kde-devel or be filed as bugs against Konsole at http://bugs.kde.org/ [kde.org] . Your patch hasn't crossed my path yet and I cannot comment on it until I see it.
Re:.NET is standardized (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Background (Score:3, Interesting)
I've looked into this a little, and I've found that there would be a way to do it if the Gnome devels were willing to do what's needed. It's already possible to tell nautilus not to draw any wallpaper but you must specify a background colour and it must be opaque. All they'd have to do is allow the background to be transparent and Bob's your uncle. Granted, I'm not a graphics programmer and I've no idea how hard that is in practice, but in principle it's not that big a change.