GNOME 3.0 Delayed Until March 2011 201
Julie188 writes "GNOME 3.0 was scheduled to be released in September but during the developers conference, GUADEC 2010 in Den Haag, the organization had to face facts: the much ballyhooed GNOME Shell really wasn't ready. The Shell is supposed to bring 'a whole new user experience to the desktop.' So now, in September, what users will see is GNOME 2.32, distributed as a new stable release. Next target date for 3.0: March 2011."
New GNOME Shell design (Score:5, Informative)
Another reason they're pushing GNOME 3 back is that Shell's design isn't quite usable yet. I would know because I frequently use daily builds [gnome.org] of GNOME Shell for testing purposes. I mean, look at it. It's so... blah and thrown-together. The design team is working on the design, and the final design will look much different. If you clone the gnome-shell-design git repository [gnome.org], you'll get the most current mockups. Here's a link [dropbox.com] to those of you unable to use git including the latest mockups as of today. These mockups look amazing and make the shell much easier on the eyes as well as usable. Ever since they announced this new design, I've been looking forward to it much more than I already have.
Re:What about GNOME 3? (Score:1, Informative)
Have you ever used a Mac? Do you know somebody who has? Macs have a tendency to "just work" much, much more than Windows or most Linux distributions. GNOME 3's their own version of that. See the GNOME Shell design page [gnome.org] and the latest mockups [slashdot.org] for more information.
Re:Learn Lessons From KDE4 (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I stick by my statement, "as long as it takes," because:
a) It's an open source effort and if I want to use it, even though they haven't officially released it, I can do it any time I want. In fact I have already tried it using the Gentoo Gnome overlay, and I do agree it's not ready.
b) They're continuing to work on Gnome 2.XX which is actually my primary desktop. This is very different than the KDE4 situation which basically caused the excellent KDE 3.X DE to be unsupported.
Now I do agree that repeated product delays are not a good sign (although I wouldn't go so far as to necessarily call it a, "sign of ineptness or a demonstration of gross incompetence"). Fortunately with open source software, I can determine for myself when a product is ready for my use regardless of an official release. There may be consequences with that choice (e.g. a redesign causes a significant break or lack support), but it's still my choice.
Re:What about GNOME 3? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Smart (Score:5, Informative)
They wish they had something even remotely close to KDE 4.0. All they have is a new desktop shell.
Re:Smart (Score:5, Informative)
Telepathy
Kopete is being ported to work on top of Telephaty
Re:Havoc Pennington? (Score:4, Informative)
He is one of the main programmers of gnome-shell.
By the way, do you know what language did they use to program gnome-shell? Javascript.
Re:Havoc Pennington? (Score:4, Informative)
By the way, do you know what language did they use to program gnome-shell? Javascript.
The JavaScript is the high-level "business logic" that manipulates nodes in a scene graph to move things around on the screen. The actual scene-graph library, Clutter [wikipedia.org], is written in C and renders via OpenGL.
I think it's a pretty reasonable design decision, actually. High-level behavior in a high-level language that's easy to maintain, lower-level implementation details in efficient compiled native code. It's similar to what browser-based apps like Google Maps do, with Clutter taking the place of the HTML DOM.
Re:Smart (Score:5, Informative)
gvfs-fuse
For what I want to do (mount remote file systems) KIO works better.
Re:Havoc Pennington? (Score:4, Informative)
He is one of the main programmers of gnome-shell.
Where did you get this from and who the hell modded you Informative?
The top 10 contributors to gnome-shell since last years GUADEC was presented in the talk this year. It certainly didn't include Havoc.
If anyone would even bother to look at http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/log/ they would realize not a single commit has been made with Havocs name on it.
What's a "main programmer" anyway?
Oh well, why bother.... I'm just feeling sorry for people who thinks anything written on slashdot is even remotely true... this article certainly drew alot of crappy comments.