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GNOME GUI

Gnome Begins The 1.2 Freeze 84

Posted by Hemos from the locking-it-down dept.
A reader wrote to us with the news from Gnome.org stating that the freeze for 1.2 has begun. Gnome-core and gnome-applets 1.1.1 (Beantown) was released at the same time, but is meant for "advanced users and developers" so play carefully kids. This release marks the last release with new features until post-1.2 - a full list of the new features/fixes is in the changes list of 1.1.1.
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Gnome Begins The 1.2 Freeze More

Gnome Begins The 1.2 Freeze

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  • The Gnomes of yore (Score:3)

    by J.R.R. Trollkien ( 141993 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2000 @08:14AM (#1338051) Homepage
    Far over the crufty distros cold,
    Through dependencies deep and rpms old,
    We must QA ere break of day,
    "Squash the bugs," we are cajoled.

    The Gnomes of yore make mighty apps,
    We wont fall for the same ole traps,
    Download, install and test, please do,
    And help us fill existing gaps.

    While the Gnomes QA beneath the moon,
    KDE hears the tramp of doom,
    They rpm -e, their desktop falls,
    Beneath our apps, it will be soon.
  • gnome applications are expanding phenomenally..the gnome core is also growing exponentially so yes you are going to find stability issues at this stage..its very pre alpha. dopnt forget that gnome has basically caught up with and is surpassing KDE in terms of functionality in half the time.

  • Somebody submitted a GNOME article, and the editors posted it, because a specific event happened involving the GNOME project within the last day or two. In particular, the release of a new development version, and a feature freeze in preparation for the next full release. This is new information.

    Do you have any new information on KDE? Did some event of interest happen in the KDE world? If so, then submit a KDE article and hopefully the editors will post it. If not, there are lots of places where interested readers can look at old information on KDE.

    Slashdot is biased towards new information; in other words, news. This is the way it should be.

  • Howabout because.... it's OFFTOPIC???

    Howabout because... nobody CARES???

    Howabout because... it's NOT news for nerds???

    Howabout because... the number of people who live in or do business with DC compared to the number of people who read Slashdot is so small that it's not worth putting up a story about it being largely shut down for one whole day?

    It's just not relevant. It was rejected, and rightly so!!!
    --
    - Sean
  • gnome applications are expanding phenomenally..the gnome core is also growing exponentially so yes you are going to find stability issues at this stage..its very pre alpha.

    Funny. It doesn't say alpha on the releases. I completely concede that it's done great in a short time, but the exponential growth is a blessing and a curse: we get lots of potentially fantastic applications, but keeping them under control, setting standards, etc. becomes (has already become) impossible to accomplish.

    And if I sound like I'm complaining, I'm really not. I got along for years withuot StarOffice, and I'll do so again (since I seem to have to). I dno't have the time to write my OWN competitor to GNOME, and I don't want to. I just hope that this explosion gets contained before it's one heap of unrealized potential.

  • Just out of interest, what does Staroffice not working got to do with you changing from E to Sawmill? Staroffice crashing is a Staroffice fault, nothing to do with GNOME.
  • So, what makes you think that your StarOffice problems have anything to do with GNOME? You said yourself that you upgraded a bunch of other things at the same time.

    Also, why are you complaining here? Complain to the developers. File bug reports. It doesn't take any longer, and you will be much more likely to get the ear of someone who's actually in a position to fix the problem.
  • If a piece of free software doesn't work for you, then don't use it. My impression is that Gnome has a prettier interface than KDE, but is not yet as stable. And I've been using KDE for more than two years now with virtually no problems. I've also found that WindowMaker makes a very stable and easy- to-use software environment. Don't knock Linux just because one of the packages you're using isn't sufficiently complete. Similarly, if gedit doesn't work for you, then try emacs (or xemacs for a more GUI version). Emacs never, ever crashes in my experience. You do have a point about the lack of an incremental linker; it would be nice. But 5 minutes to link? At my previous job, I was linking about 20K lines of C++ code in less than 20 seconds on a PPro200. At my current job, I'm writing in Java, which doesn't even require linking. So perhaps nobody has really considered incremental linking all that important. What I consider really important is that gcc has been very stable for me, and that the source is available so that I can easily create cross-compilers targeting platforms other than the one I'm developing on. Can you do that with MS's tools? That's really sorry... :-) On the other hand, I have heard that Cygnus now supports pre-compiled headers in its C/C++ compilers. This should give more of a speed boost, although I haven't tried it.
  • The QPL does not make any distinction between platforms. If you want free Qt on windows, it's just a matter of porting.
  • I suspect there are a couple of factors at work here:
    • Most people who actually write code use stable, proven tools. I write most of my code in XEmacs, and also use vim a great deal. Other people rely on FSF Emacs, plain vi, jed, joe, and other editors that have been around "a while". At least in my corner of the world, people just don't use these newfangled programs like gedit.
    • For people to want to work on free software code, the code has to want to be worked on. Both the GNOME and Gtk code I've looked at has been pretty hostile: there are almost no comments at all in any of the code, and one has to dredge through miles of source to figure out what's broken and how.
    • For that matter, the underlying toolkits need to be documented a lot better. There continues to fail to be a complete, functional set of documentation for Gtk+ or for the GNOME libraries. This is really annoying for people trying to work on end-user applications.
    Really, the GNOME people need to put more effort into making their source tree developer-friendly, and into writing useful documentation. Until then, I suspect free software developers who might otherwise be anxious to work on GNOME code will run screaming.
  • Slashdot is not biased towards GNOME. When KDE went into the feature freeze, it was mentioned on /. [slashdot.org]. Incidentally, what does what the Linux Journal publishes have to do with what /. publishes?
    ----
  • Personally, I don't give a damn which desktop is prettier, nor what a poll would say at this point. The real issue for most users is (as you would guess) usability. How fast and how many mouse clicks (or keyboard shortcuts) does it take to perform a certain action (and is it even possible to perform this action?).

    I have used KDE 1.x a fair amount, briefly played with pre-2.0 (a lot of which is unusable), tried the most recent Redhat 6.1 binaries for GNOME, as well as some projects outside these two desktops (Netscape, Staroffice, Wordperfect). I find certain things easier in Gnome (the addressbook is much better than KDE's), other things easier in KDE, and certain things easier in outside projects. Hence mix and match is still the reality for me. In the future, if there is enough cross-fertilization and evolution, I might be happy doing everything in one project.

    As far as the license thing goes, I only give a damn about QT not having the same status across platforms as does GTK. In my mind, I want to learn to use (and to contribute to one or two) software projects that are ported to as many OS platforms as possible (Linux/*BSD, Windows, Mac, OS/2, Be, ...). Then I can teach what I know to as many other users as possible. Kword looks to have great potential, but if AbiWord has what I need (not yet), I'd rather become familiar with that program as my standard word processor, since I can use it on Windows and Linux.

    I'd love to see some sort of database on the web that compares the functionality of the components of the different projects (Gnome, KDE, Gnustep, ...). I know some people are keen on the idea that competition results in faster improvement. If this were true (and I'm not sure that it is), it would be even better to have each component in a class be compared with one another as opposed to comparing entire desktop projects. (e.g. which is more usable: Excel, StarChart, Gnumeric, Kspread, Oleo, or something else?). Last time I looked at http://sal.kachinatech.com/index.shtml, it didn't have direct comparisons, but perhaps this has changed.

    - dara (written with AbiWord for Windows)
  • And what, pray tell, is not Open Source about KDE? Every one of its files are either GPL, LGPL, Artistic, or BSD. Every one if its files, singly or collectively, may be freely distributed, modified or both.
  • "High-quality open-source Desktop Environments available for your favorite unix-style OS: KDE, Gnome"

    And coming up: Enlightenment as the "LiteDE".
  • Is there a .au of Miguel saying (like Torvalds) "hello my name is Miguel and I pronounce Guh-nome and Guh-nome" ?

    All my friends pronounce it as Gee-nome, (as in the g-nome project), while other's call it nome.

    I wanna set this straight ;)
  • Those are not really transparent window borders, they are shaped.

    Ie: you don't have an alpha channel, but just a mask.

    Those have existed for E and KWM for ages.
  • 38a. All of the above on login
    38b. Round Robin selection at login.
    38c. Random at login.
    38d. Least used by time at login.
    38e. Least used by total distance mouse traveled at login.
    38f. Least used by total keys pressed at login.

    Or, mine
    39g. Random selection of 38a-38f at login.

  • I think it's fairly obvious where the bias is here. Read your statement and think about what you are saying. First of all, I have looked at the /. stories related to Gnome and KDE. As a general rule when there is a newsworthy story related to either project, and it is submitted, it gets posted. As I look at the KDE news page, and the Gnome news page, then look at the stories that have made it to /. regarding either, I see a very evenly distributed coverage. Not every gnome item submitted makes it to /. and not every KDE item submitted makes it.
    ----
  • Am I the only one noticing increasing problems trying to keep GNOME-related software afloat?

    There are pieces of Gnome software that are rather buggy, yes. There are pieces of KDE software that are rather buggy as well. Overall, my personal experience with October Gnome has been exceptionally good. That is to say, the core elements of Gnome are wonderfully stable at this point. And many of the peripheral Gnome Applications such as Gnumeric, GnomeICU (with the release of 0.90, this is easily the best ICQ clone available), x-chat (the latest development version is incredible), grip (how could I live without this application?), and others, are absolutely top-notch in terms of stability, functionality, and usability.

    I just changed from Enlightenment to Sawmill. Now StarOffice crashes when I try to run it. (That's not the only change I've made, I've upgraded other things.)

    This clearly has nothing to do with Gnome. :)
    Try looking elsewhere.


    ----

  • hmm..then why did the harmony project die ? simple. QT used the QPL to kill it. period. anyway, i dont give two shits about KDE and no one is holding my hand - im happy with AfterStep and thats what im sticking to.
  • "QT used the QPL to kill it. period."

    With what? A gun? A knife? Don't be ridiculous. Harmony was started because Qt wasn't free. But when Qt became free, there was no longer any need for Harmony. No one was interested any more.

  • Core only (Score:3)

    by Nodatadj ( 28279 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2000 @07:12AM (#1338083) Journal
    This freeze is only for the gnome-core package, NOT for the whole of GNOME.
  • This is the most stable -- unstable gnome code I have ever used. I have had zero problems so far on a previously stock rh6.1 + gnome december rpm updates. Dont be afraid!... give it a whirl.
  • Sorry for the double post, I thought I stopped it in time.

    Never knock on Death's door:

  • NOT all of GNOME (Score:5)

    by Havoc Pennington ( 87913 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2000 @07:19AM (#1338088)
    Note that gnome-core (panel, session manager, some other desktop components) will have a 1.2 release, but gnome-libs, control-center, and some other components will be jumping straight to 2.0 and will come out some months after gnome-core does. gnome-core will also get a 2.0 update. So this is not GNOME 1.2 but "Half of GNOME 1.2" the other half of GNOME will go straight to 2.0 over a longer timeframe.
  • Of the following, which do you use, which would you -like- to use if it had all the stuff you wanted, and which did you eat this morning, when you found the Cheerios had frozen solid?

    1. KDE
    2. KDE2
    3. Gnome/Enlightenment
    4. Gnome/FVWM2Gnome
    5. Gnome/WMG
    6. Gnome/Something Else
    7. ROX
    8. Window Maker
    9. Xstep
    10. Afterstep
    11. AEWM
    12. AmiWM
    13. Blackbox
    14. Efsane
    15. EPIwm
    16. EvilWM
    17. FLWM
    18. IceWM
    19. LWM
    20. MLVWM
    21. PLWM
    22. Sapphire
    23. Sawmill
    24. SCWM
    25. VTWM
    26. WM2
    27. WMX
    28. UDE
    29. QVWM
    30. FVWM
    31. FVWM2
    32. FVWM95
    33. OLWM
    34. MWM
    35. OLVWM
    36. TWM
    37. Sunview
    38. All of the above
    39. I use Berlin and don't need these!
    40. I'm agnostic, and believe in all of them.

  • Slow?? (Score:1)

    by 348 ( 124012 )
    Something to do today while we're snowed in on the east coast.

    Although I'm a little aprehensive, a buddy of mine has it up and running already and says it is very slow at times, he's still tweaking but not having much luck. However from what he says it's a GIANT leap in the right direction. Very slick.

    The FTP links:

    ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/ GNOME/unstable/sources/gnome-core/ [gnome.org] ftp://ftp.gnome.org/p ub/GNOME/unstable/sources/gnome-applets/ [gnome.org]

    Never knock on Death's door:

  • I've used both KDE and Gnome with various combinations of window managers and distributions recently, and while both are perfectly good solutions, there's a couple simple things that gnome does that I personally find endearing:

    1. The high quality of the icon artwork.

    2. The graphical virtual window manager. For some reason I like the little grid a whole lot better than the "one,two,three,four" buttons.

    In addition to these "hard" first impressions I find I'm also drawn to gnome for some purely subjective feelings that GTK is more in the open source spirit than qt, and that gnome pushes the destop manager envelope a little further than KDE. I like the "try" button better than "apply"
    for example. It seems to make more sense. I dislike the "explorer" windows being cluttered with buttons, however.

    Keep in mind that these are just feelings, and I can't really make a logical arguement for them. I continue to use my KDE desktops alongside my gnome ones. Both desktops are very useful to me and I haven't had serious stability or performance problems with either one.

    Cheers,
    -OT

  • Slow?? (Score:3)

    by 348 ( 124012 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2000 @07:20AM (#1338092) Homepage
    Something to do today while we're snowed in on the east coast.

    Although I'm a little aprehensive, a buddy of mine has it up and running already and says it is very slow at times, he's still tweaking but not having much luck. However from what he says it's a GIANT leap in the right direction. Very slick.

    The FTP links:

    ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/ GNOME/unstable/sources/gnome-core/ [gnome.org]
    ftp://ftp.gnome.org/p ub/GNOME/unstable/sources/gnome-applets/ [gnome.org]

    Never knock on Death's door:

  • Because /. has run articles about the exact same things that the LJ article writes about. And they've had interviews with the KDE developers. I don't think there's more to write about KDE now! :)
  • Am I the only one noticing increasing problems trying to keep GNOME-related software afloat?

    I just changed from Enlightenment to Sawmill. Now StarOffice crashes when I try to run it. (That's not the only change I've made, I've upgraded other things.)

    So, now my machine is starting to behave like a Mac: upgrade a few things and watch other programs crash and burn from conflicts.

    I like GNOME but so many of the associated applications are insanely buggy. I've had problems with GWeather, GNotes, the GNOME address book (it prints other people's information in the display panel mixed with the information of the person you look up --- at first I thought it was a user-input error but I verified it twice by creating new books and carefully entering in test cases).

    So, while it's great that some of GNOME will come out as V1.2 --- how can we place a high standard on GNOME-based application software? OR is the problem that there's something unstable about GNOME that makes it hard to create stable application software???

  • It's pronounced Guh-Nome. Like Guh-Nu.
  • He's completely right. I'm trying to do professional development for linux at a proprietary software company and the director of r&d is very unimpressed when his screensaver doesn't work and gedit crashes opening a file! I mean come on. So much stuff in gnome works "some of the time" it's ridiculous. What happened to the open software model being so effective because man people can fix the bugs? It's not happening. I feel like there's been a lot of unrealistic hype about linux. I mean really, there isn't even an incremental linker! M$ can do it, but hundreds of programmers all over the world cant? And as a result my project takes 5 minutes to link?!?! This is really sorry...
  • http://www.gnome.org/gnomefaq

    It's one of the first questions.
  • How about Enlightenment without gnome? Not everyone runs Enlightenment with gnome.
  • They are very easy to use, and exstremely practical.
  • Up to now I thought that I am pretty well served with my 233 PII. But the new gnome-core slows the whole thing down... If only my hardware improved automatically like the software!
  • i prefer AfterStep and detest GNOME and KDE..its all about personal preferences anyway.

  • Maybe I'm over-simplifying, but if you notice a bug, download the source and fix it. If you use debian (my favorite distro) getting the source is as easy as typing 'apt-get -d source '

  • that Slackware is simply repackaging of the gnu tools.

    I'm guessing slackware probably does very little more than any other distro, they package software and release it. For the most part distro's do not include original software.

    RedHat is no worse than any other distro... and what is milktoast

  • I used to be 100% behind the Gnome development team until they started making stupid decisions.

    Stupid?

    1) Ditching Enlightenment instead of helping
    2) Ditching Imlib instead of modifying
    3) Re-inventing the wheel for libraries instead of borrowing & re-writing.

    Open source isn't about re-creating everything from scratch. Sure, its what the average new programmer does with their freedom because they're not aware of the breadth of existing applications or the complexity of starting over, but its still stupid.
  • why don't you give me your email address and we can continue this debate elsewhere? KDE has more applications that are further along, however, GNOME has a much stronger framework.
    ----
  • I myself really like bash 2, with the perfectly working filename completion and w3m for websurfing. And if you like to use the mouse, just start gpm to get a nice copy'n'paste feature in almost every terminal-based program. And it even runs on my 2-color HGA screen.
  • How can you say kde is prettier. It looks like windows. gtk+ is themable. It can be made to look just as ugly as kde. gnome has better icons. Unfortunatly of you are using kde you can't tell because it does a horible job of rendering gnome icons in its gnome menu. With the alpha channel suport in gnome 1.1.1 the icons look even better. and gnome manages to display kde's icons just fine. That and kde didn't get fullcolor icons untill kde 1.1.2. Also kde will only let you choose icons for your stuff from two directories and only in xpm format.

  • A Total Zealot's Guide to >>Desktop Environments (Score:5)

    by Jikes ( 123986 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2000 @07:57AM (#1338119)
    High-quality open source operating systems for your computer: Many.

    High-quality open-source graphical toolkits for your favorite unix-style OS: GTK, QT, FLTK, Tk

    Bindings for your favorite language to your favorite unix-style graphical toolkit: Complete and comprehensive across all toolkits

    High-quality open-source Desktop Environments available for your favorite unix-style OS: KDE, Gnome

    High-quality open-source Window Managers you may use with either Desktop Environment: At least sixty to choose from.

    Cost of any of the prior products: Marginal amounts of time and effort.

    Financial cost of any of the prior products: Nominal to none.

    Number of developers on aforementioned products: Thousands.

    Their sum and total total obligation to you: Jack Shit.

    Reasons to complain non-constructively about ANYTHING: None.

    Catches: You have to be mature enough to use and modify high-quality warranty-free cost-free open-source software constructively. Whining, baseless complaining, vague, criticism, and political pot-shots reflect poorly on you, your technical skill, and your penis size. (if applicable)
  • How come I knew while I was waiting for this discussion to load that among the few articles already posted would be one saying "You mentioned GNOME but you didn't mention KDE (sniff)"?

    By the way, you mentioned GNOME three times in your whine, but only mentioned KDE twice - you'd better hurry up and post a message that says "KDE-KDE-KDE" real quick, because your post shows that you are already aware that it's illegal to say "GNOME" in any context without saying "KDE" as well.

    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • the QT library which the code links to prevents people from using KDE across any platform other then what is mandated by the trolls..troll tech controls the QT library, the library controls the GPLed code therefore KDE is non free. i.e. it is not freely distributable.
  • actually Enlightenment is working towards becoming a desktop shell. not another desktop environment. I believe that the enlightenment [enlightenment.org] website explains this in more depth

  • Re:because GNOME is L/GPL and KDE is not (Score:4)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2000 @11:16AM (#1338130) Homepage Journal
    Troll Tech does not control what platforms Qt may run on. The QPL is Open Source and Free Software, period. If you want a Win32 version of Qt there is nothing stopping you from porting it over. Nothing. So if this is your only complaint, get off your butt and start porting.

    This is the Free Software Community. We are soveriegn. We are not sheep or serfs that blindly follow the whims of the masters. Here, we do things for ourselves. We are the ones who make things happen. Nobody's going to hold your hand or wipe your nose anymore. If you see that the world needs changing, go out and change it. Otherwise go back to Master Bill and his software/welfare world.
  • http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
    See "Points for Style: Wordplay and Puns"
    It is called having fun..
    Lighten up, diet 7-Up.
  • How do the so-called "restrictions" on Qt prevent Linux developers from using it? If your programs are going to be released as open source anyway it's not a big deal. The only other "restriction" is that all modifications to the source be released as patches. That's not really a restriction, it's barely even a nuisance. Get over it already.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • KDE does freeze-up at the expense of being a qt.

    he he, sort of flamebait, but oh, how true.

    Never knock on Death's door:

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