GNOME 2.30, End of the (2.x) Line 276
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."
GUADEC (Score:5, Interesting)
Gnome-screensaver still broken... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a lot more things I don't like about KDE4. It tries to be all integrated, with a common notification daemon for example, so that status messages can appear with a consistent look in the corner of the screen. The problem is that virtually nothing supports it except for KDE apps that start with "K". If you want that sleek, consistent QT4 look, you're limited to a small subset of free software - there are a lot more GTK applications than QT applications. And I'd prefer to be able to use, for example, a different file manager. Without dolphin, you're unable to take advantage of KIO and whatever search index thing that KDE uses. KDE as a whole seems really tightly coupled - I regularly use gnome apps on my XFCE system without having the gnome libs installed. That's unheard of for KDE.
A particular barrier for me to use KDE is a decent web browser. I've used Konqueror for a few months and it's OK, but KHTML became intolerable. Arora (webkit powered) is good but incomplete. I have similar complaints about the usual KDE chat programs, music players, and Konsole.
Re:Sounds like a KDE-type cleanup (Score:5, Interesting)
I love signals and slots. They require a bit of a different way of thinking, and a semi-proprietary compiler (it's open source but still).
It's really the first time since Visual Basic where I think a language has really 'gotten' event-driven programming. Everything else has you writing your own event loops to switch on a message type. Signals/slots let you use a single statement as a patchboard. It's the reason they can have an example where a slider changes a text box in one line of code.
Is it different? Sure. It's slightly different than straight C++, but not by much. It definitely demands a new way of thinking about how to program graphical applications. But if you can manage it, I think it's far superior.
Though I'd also agree that Mono's crapulence is Gnome's biggest problem. I don't want the whole damn framework for some note-app
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm really tired of the trade-off between simplicity and functionality. This trade-off should not be inherent to either windowing system. Rather, the variety of options presented to the user should be configurable. Each distribution should be able to decide how simple or how configurable they want to make their windowing environment when it is first installed.
A great windowing environment would be able to be made to look very similar to Gnome, KDE, Windows, Mac OS, etc. I don't just mean superficially similar - it should be configurable down to the menu options presented and the types of configuration options presented in dialogs. All of this presentation of options and behaviors should be managed in a special layer, much like CSS is used to configure the presentation of a website.
For example, Ubuntu might choose to ship with a very simple, user-friendly interface. In the system administration, this interface could be changed to a more configurable preset if the user so desires. It wouldn't be a matter of switching from Gnome to KDE. Visually, the change might be as dramatic as a switch from Gnome to KDE, but the basic windowing system would just be running with an alternate configuration.
I think a lot of KDE users disappeared with KDE4. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used KDE from KDE 1.0, when I switched away from TWM. I was fully integrated into the KDE "way of life," and reliant on lots of KDE apps.
I tried to use KDE4.0 but after about two weeks it got the boot. Though it has theoretically improved and I keep a KDE 4 installation on my Fedora 12 personal machine, logging into KDE thus far provides no incentive to switch back, despite updates.
Dolphin is still intolerably slow. Important apps still don't share a consistent appearance; Firefox, Chrome, and OpenOffice in particular look good in GNOME but are full of distracting artifacting and other appearance problems in KDE. GNOME apps in general don't mix well with KDE themes right now. The graphics still don't work right. A notification balloon is likely to take out half the taskbar, etc. They blame this on the radeon driver and I believe them, but that's the hardware I have, and GNOME shows none of the same problems. Desktop management for multiple monitors doesn't behave as I expect it to, and it's difficult to create a configuration that jostles well amongst varying configurations of external, internal, or both, monitors without taskbars disappearing or desktops shifting from display to display unexpectedly. The default icon theme is far too colorful and luminous for focused desktop work of the kind that I do (lots of writing, editing, and calculating) but there are few replacement icon sets to be found. The wireless connectivity manager seems incapable of working with my simple home WiFi installation without needing constant reconfiguration and tinkering, while in GNOME it "just works."
Yes, some of these things could be fixed, but to trudge through each one of them would require rather a lot of time and effort that I just don't have to spare. So despite the fact that I'm still not wild about GNOME either, KDE4 is simply not on the cards in the near future for me. What's missing everywhere is polish. Not the kind that makes widget corners have a "glass" appearance, but the kind that keeps widgets from disappearing or artifacting unexpectedly, or the kind that doesn't leave you wondering why the hell the widget doesn't work, or there isn't a widget for that at all, in the first place. Details work. Not big thoughts. KDE needs to cut out the innovation for a while and patch roof leaks.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that many other KDE users right up through KDE 3.x switched to GNOME with the KDE4 release.
Re:Oh good! (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that they're trying to push Gnome/Mono into all the Linux distros, and Linux is increasingly being used by businesses and governments. If there is a patent trap in Mono (which exists regardless of its license), then that means that MS can then sue all those businesses and governments for patent infringement. Of course, the real idea probably isn't for MS to get money from people from patent suits, but basically to scare everyone away from Linux for once and for all, and only use "safe" MS software.
The reason that the Linux software you now enjoy is as usable and functional as it is is because many businesses and governments have been investing in it, working with it, and using it. If it were some project only used and developed by hobbyists at home, like ReactOS, it wouldn't be good for anything but playing around. Instead, we have an OS and thousands of apps that are all free, and we can use to do just about anything you can do in a Windows environment (and sometimes much more). The only thing we can't do is run some Windows-specific apps, but that's becoming less and less of a concern as more companies make Linux versions of their apps, and as more alternative apps become available or mature (e.g. OpenOffice).
So these issues which seem to affect only the larger players may not seem to affect you personally, but in reality they do.
Re:early gnome (Score:4, Interesting)
GConf isn't a binary-only registry, it's XML files stored in a directory structure. More importantly, it's a library that provides a convenient way to update and monitor the information in these files.
Linux audio is a bit of a mess, but the mess is due to there being lots of different ways to access the sound hardware (OSS, ALSA, PulseAudio, Jack, whatver else there may be). GStreamer doesn't really contribute to that mess, as it's at a higher level; if you standardized on, say, pulseaudio, you'ld still want something like GStreamer to handle file formats and codecs.
Re:The mono trap and GNOME (Score:4, Interesting)
That's encouraging.
Let's hope it stays that way.
But is that the "installed" or did they remove Tomboy and the rest in the repositories too?
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BMO
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
"Simplicity" can mean different things.
Ask a regular user: a "simple" system hides any complexity; in this sense, Ubuntu is simple - everything is automated or set by GUI-based tools.
Ask a developer: a "simple" system is transparent; in this sense, Slackware is simple - there are few GUI-based tools to set the system.
Re:Oh good! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but with Qt, you don't have a rabid Microsoft fan bent on directly implementing Microsoft technology on Linux. Trolltech does not have Miguel. Novell does. Judging from Miguel's actions and his words, I think we have something to worry about. I don't think that Miguel is some sort of Manchurian Candidate, but he is driven by his admiration of everything Microsoft.
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BMO
Mono considered harmless (Score:5, Interesting)
If there is a patent trap in Mono (which exists regardless of its license), then that means that MS can then sue all those businesses and governments for patent infringement.
I'm getting sick of this meme.
Tell me, are you a patent attorney? What is your expertise for making claims like this one?
Now I'm not a patent attorney either, but here is my understanding: If Microsoft does assert some kind of submarine patent, the main effect will be to cause GNOME and everybody else to yank out Mono. At that point, we will just have to port the Mono apps to Java or something. That is the absolute worst case. Can you give me an example of any time where some company had a submarine patent, then suddenly asserted it, and successfully extracted a bunch of penalties from businesses and governments?
Furthermore, while I'm still not a patent attorney, I have read Groklaw for a while, and I read some essays there about the "unclean hands" doctrine. If a company has patent rights, and discovers that someone is infringing, that company has a duty to inform the infringers as soon as possible; it is not allowed to just let the patent sit there ticking like a bomb, and then demand extra damages because the infringer was infringing for so long.
So, let's review: Mono is a technology that is very similar to the JVM, which in turn is similar to other virtual systems, going all the way back to the UCSD P-system. The amount of prior art is staggering. Besides that, the only danger is a submarine patent, not a new patent: the .NET stuff has been around for years and years, and you have to file for a patent before you publicly disclose a technology, or you lose your chance.
So, the alleged threat is that there is a patent already granted, that nobody has noticed, on technology that has a ton of prior art; and Microsoft is deviously not asserting the patent, but is going to later. Microsoft won't care about the negative publicity for itself and for .NET, because it stands to gain so much and is certain its patent will survive all challenges. And anyone infringing will somehow be on the hook for penalties.
I for one don't believe any of it. C# is as safe as Java and Mono is as safe as the JVM.
steveha
Re:Why the hang-up with version numbers? (Score:2, Interesting)
In many open source projects the version numbers have a technical basis, e.g. ABI or API compatibility. In proprietary software it's usually marketing fluff. Unfortunately much open source is heading in the same direction.
Re:I think a lot of KDE users disappeared with KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uhmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that virtually nothing supports it except for KDE apps that start with "K".
Actually, that's not true. With the latest Fedora, for example, Firefox uses KDE notifications under KDE, and GNOME notifications under GNOME. The integration's spreading really, really quickly, now that the DBUS API has been fixed down for a release cycle.
Re:How far have we come? About a quarter-inch. (Score:2, Interesting)
And the small, lean desktop apps of those days have been replaced with bloatware as well. Abiword and GNUCalc were fast and useful back in the GNOME days, Now they are a joke-- they crash as soon as you do anything with them.
Numerous little GNOME 1.4 applications existed (time trackers, media players and cd rippers) that were fast and light and that worked well. Every GNOME release one of these apps would get booted out in favor of some bloated project that was "new" and "great". The "new" and "great" always meant twice the memory size, unstable habits while running, and much less functionality-- provided in drop down windows and wizards.
GNOME ended up with HAL, BONOBO, and mono. And guess what? All that crap in 2.0 that they added over 10 years-- that is now going away again because it was all so piss poor to begin with. LOL.
Hopefully GNOME 3.x is more like GNOME 1.5x.
Hopefully GNOME stops trying to include default applications and goes back to providing the API's and the HID best user practices and requirements.
I don't want to hear that web browser X is out of GNOME, and IM client Y is now "blessed" to be in GNOME. That crap is retarded. When your GNOME package starts depending on this silly list of dorky applications it gets really annoying. Either the app meets the GNOME usability and code and API usage guidelines or it does not. Give it a gold star, or a silver star, or a black dot, or whatever. But making productivity apps a core part of the desktop, and then changing the apps in every release to reward whomever has kissed the most ass that release has pissed me off to no end these past 10 years.
Light features + heavy footprint = Meh (Score:2, Interesting)
The most interesting thing to me about Gnome these days is that it's memory footprint is still ridiculously fatter than Xfce's [xfce.org], even though Xfce has caught up with Gnome's basic features.
My "family computer" has been running default Ubuntu with Gnome, and my non-technical wife has been happy with it. However, it's starting to show its age, and with each major software update it gets a little slower and slower. So for the hell of it last month I thought I'd experiment with Xfce and see if I could postpone the next computer purchase until the holiday season.
I might postpone a lot further out than that! Thanks to Canonical's packaging of Xfce [xubuntu.org], it looked pretty much the same as Gnome right out of the box. After 5 minutes of tweaking the panel icons and theme settings, it was almost indistinguishable from my machine's previous setup. My wife didn't notice at all until three weeks later when she went to copy some files from a USB drive, and noticed that the file manager was Thunar rather than Nautilus. She turned out to be happier with Thunar though, because it doesn't randomly freeze up during drag-and-drop operations.
For years now, Gnome's "niche" has been with those who want something more feature-rich than Fluxbox, yet simpler and more lightweight than KDE. However, Gnome's basic functionality has been pretty stagnant for a long time, and lighter-weight desktop environments are catching up with the core expected feature set. Right now, I don't know of any compelling reason to run Gnome other than wanting to use a lot of Compiz visual effects, and Xfce is almost caught up with that too.
Re:early gnome (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I'm leaning toward a custom session consisting of sawfish and gnome-panel. Most of the actually *useful* features of Gnome can be had just by running the panel (and individual apps launched as needed, though the terminal is the only Gnome-branded app I use very much) in conjunction with another window manager. I'm not sure I need the rest of Gnome. And unlike most of Gnome 1.x, sawfish has been maintained and still works just fine with modern stuff.
Setting up a custom desktop session is surprisingly easy. You only have to edit a couple of files...