GNOME 2.30, End of the (2.x) Line

stovicek writes "GNOME 2.30 was originally intended to coincide with GNOME 3.0 — a massive cleanup and rethinking of the popular desktop. However, GNOME 3.0 is delayed for at least another release, which leaves GNOME 2.30 as most likely the last version in a series stretching back almost a decade. [...] 2.30 will probably be the final version of the 2.0 series. For those who were around for GNOME 2.0 back in 2000, the 2.30 release stands as evidence of how far GNOME in general and the free desktop in particular have come in the last decade in usability and design. If you do a search for images of early GNOME releases and compare the results with 2.30, you can have no doubt that, although GNOME sometimes tends to over-simplify, its improvements over the last decade remain unmistakable."

Re:First for the first time!

[lolwhat]

Fail.

Article is bogus, needs proofreading

[Peter Steil]

I know it's sin to actually RTFA, but I've been a GNOME user since the 1.x days and figured I'd take a read. The author seems to use the number "3.30" to refer to the current release..

Re:isnt gnome smth like dead technology??

[DarkKnightRadick]

I remember using GNOME in the late 90s, and if bonobo is dead than it's a good thing. That was a nightmare to mess with.

Re:Gnome Desktop

[Nerdfest]

Not in 3.0 from what I've seen. Likewise with the sidebar ... it's currently locked in position as well.

Re:Sounds like a KDE-type cleanup

[neiras]

KIOSlaves are awesome, and while there are GNOME counterparts they aren't as used.

One neat thing about GVFS, the GNOME abstraction, is that part of it wraps FUSE filesystem modules. Any application, not just GNOME applications, can use filesystems mounted with GNOME's 'connect to server' feature, for instance. I think it's more desirable to write a FUSE module than a KDE-specific KIOSlave.

GNOME sometimes comes across as a hodgepodge of bindings and semi-coherent libraries, but there has been a great deal of work to consolidate [gnome.org] and even eliminate [gnome.org] core libraries, tighten up [gnome.org] coding standards, get rid of deprecated [gnome.org] symbols [gnome.org] in GTK+ and GLib... At least they're trying to get things right, right up and down the stack.

GNOME 3 will be a big shift. I can't say I'm crazy about the new shell, and the Task Pooper [arstechnica.com] scares the shit out of me (ha ha).

They'd have to screw it up really badly to make me go back to KDE. Even then, I'd go to 3.x.

Re:Oh good!

[MrHanky]

Qt has been LGPL for a few years now, and KDE has always been part LGPL (like WebKit, a derivative of the old khtml).

Re:Uhmmmm

[Peach Rings]

It looks like it's theoretically possible [mozilla.org] to build firefox with Qt widgets thanks to Nokia, but it's difficult and unstable.

And yes obviously you can just load both Qt and GTK libraries but it's ugly and memory-inefficient.

The mono trap and GNOME

[jmorris42]

> And Gnome has been adopting mono like it doesn't matter.

You are out of date. Have Fedora 13 Alpha + all updates in a VM right now and behold:

[root@Fedora13 ~]# rpm -qa | grep mono
dejavu-sans-mono-fonts-2.30-2.fc12.noarch
liberation-mono-fonts-1.05.2.20091019-5.fc13.noarch

Everything works just fine. They ditched F-Spot for Shotwell and replaced Tomboy with the C++ port GNote. With those gone mono doesn't need to be installed. Somebody caught the cluetrain and stopped Novell from infecting GNOME with their patent poison.

Re:Sounds like a KDE-type cleanup

[Homburg]

is MOC really needed

No, basically. But back in the early nineties, when Qt was first developed, the various C++ features that make these pure-C++ signal and slot libraries usable weren't widely available.

Re:key-bindings

[Albatrosses]

I ran into that too. I've had Compiz configured with Meta+Button1 = move a window, Meta+Button3 = resize a window for as long as I can remember. It's quite handy - no more groping for that little resize handle, just click-drag click-drag done.

Then, I tried out whatever build of GNOME that was, and suddenly Meta+Button3 brings up the window context menu (with "close" helpfully placed at the top so I hit it every time I try to do a quick resize).

Try to set the binding in CCSM? It claims to have changed, but Meta+Button3 still brings up the menu, and if I close and reopen CCSM it's back to not being set. I checked keyboard preferences, keyboard shortcuts, everything. Couldn't find the source of it. It just overwrote whatever I told CCSM to do, with no indication of why. I tried hacking it in gconf, I tried the "Simple CCSM", no avail. And here I thought Linux was about user choice... maybe I'll buy a Mac instead :)

Re:First for the first time!

[mqduck]

By the way, first person to say that my having successfully made a First Post guarantees that I won't have any grandchildren gets hit.