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GNOME GUI

GNOME 2.0 Beta 272

Posted by michael from the size-13-wide dept.
xer.xes writes: "The first public beta release of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is ready for your testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download here. Please read the release notes first! Due for general consumption in March, the GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface." LinuxToday or gnome-announce have the announcement. I don't see release notes anywhere - post a link in the comments if you find them. GNOME is having a bug day today.
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GNOME 2.0 Beta More

GNOME 2.0 Beta

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  • Gnome or KDE? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by ciryon ( 218518 )
    This is nice news. I am running KDE now and I believe that KDE 3.0 will be the ultimate *nix desktop. But perhaps this Gnome beta can prove me wrong.

    The anti aliased fonts, is that the gtk hack that came some months ago? It looked really ugly. :-P

    Ciryon
    • No, its not the gtk hack. GLib 2.0 supports full anti-alias support.
    • No the anti aliased fonts are part of gtk2. They look great.

    • Re:Gnome or KDE? (Score:5, Informative)

      by st. augustine ( 14437 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:20PM (#3047013)
      The anti aliased fonts, is that the gtk hack that came some months ago? It looked really ugly. :-P

      No, it's the proper, internationalized anti-aliasing that's been in the works for a while. For a good list of all the user-visible changes in Gnome 2, check out Havoc Pennington's "What's New in Gnome 2" page [pobox.com].


      • The anti aliased fonts, is that the gtk hack that came some months ago? It looked really ugly. :-P
        Oops - forgot the screenshot [gnome.org].

        • Re:Gnome or KDE? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by MaxVlast ( 103795 )
          Boy that looks like Windows with different colors. Not trying to be a troll here, but what's the point of striving harder and harder to make Linux interfaces as close to Windows as possible? Sure, people say the secretary factor, but either a) the secretary will not be a linux user, or b) people underestimate the ability of others to do something new.

          To me, it seems more confusing to have something that works and looks somewhat like Windows, but not quite than something that is well-designed and faithful to itself.

          But, I'll probably be modded into oblivion, so what's the point?

          • Re:Gnome or KDE? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @06:07PM (#3047847) Homepage

            Reducing the barrier to entry is a big potential advantage, and I think that you're wrong to underestimate it. Every user interface difference between what people are using now and what you want them to switch to is one possible reason for them not to switch. Integrate over every difference, and you wind up with a big barrier to changing. Of course every beneficial difference is one reason for people to make the switch, so you shouldn't be afraid of making improvements. But there are a lot of cosmetic things that probably should be kept the same just because people expect them to be that way.

            The net result is that the "start button" is going to be in the lower left corner, new icons are going to be placed starting in the upper left, etc. There's no fundamental reason that those things have to be in those places, but people are used to them being there from using Windows, so they will automatically look for them there. If that makes it easier for a Windows user to switch desktops, it's more than enough justification for making that the default behavior. And yes, I do realize that the menu bar in Windows can be moved around; the fact that it's still on the bottom with the start menu at the far left on essentially every Windows desktop is simply proof of how conservative most users are.

            • I agree that keeping the barriers to entry low are important. I think that installation and cooperation are more dramatic barriers to entry than the start button. If a system has a sensible UI, even if it's different, people are going to have a better time than a half-bred UI that serves many masters and pleases none. My windows-using friend borrowed my PowerBook running Mac OS X. He used it for a while, and liked it. He thought some things were strange, he had to ask me a few questions about it, but he didn't reject it for lack of a start menu. Most people aren't that stupid. And the people who are that stupid typically are taught what they need to know by others, they don't acquire that knowledge on their own. So it doesn't much matter. My point is that different isn't necessarily scary (it can be, but it isn't by definition) and I'd much rather see something that was (gasp) original, creative, different, and effective, rather than the derivative drivel that has characterized so much of what we buy.

              The start menu is dumb. The Windows start menu is dumb but we're stuck with it. The start menus in Linux are even dumber because they are so completely decoupled from what's on the system that they're utterly inconsistent across different distros and different peoples' desktops that I don't consider them to be a factor. If nothing, I consider them to be a confounding factor.

              Multiple desktops are a great idea. Multiple desktops confuse more people than any other UI feature I have ever seen. By your reasoning, they should be left out.

            • Re:Gnome or KDE? (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Shelled ( 81123 )
              What you say is true, but emulating Windows is also a trap. It's hard to argue that the Windows model is an ideal way of managing the desktop, no matter what MS research on Windows users says. (Have they ever tested the Win desktop on Mac users?). A good example is the one you mentioned, forcing the wrist to the lower left of the screen every time a user wants to start an app. Where's the logic in that? Or in the adherence to a single desktop? These are configurations MS is forced to maintain because their market base became accustomed to it in '95.

              It's also the reason MS can't make wholesale improvements. Their users would rebel over anything too new, no matter how much better it works. Should window managers then follow the same path, lock into a single desktop model for short term gain and foresake long term development potential. This Windowmaker/FVWM user votes no.

          • What's new and more importantly what's new that is useful?

            I just went and checked out some screenshots for Enlightment and WindowMaker. The default screen [enlightenment.org] for E 0.16 looks completely unintuitive. There is obviously a window showing a desktop in the lower left but I have no clue what the window below it does and the window in the lower right is anybody's guess. After years of using Windows I had an easier time of figuring out the Mac and CDE interfaces.

            Now let's look at 0.17 CVS [enlightenment.org] screenshot. Without being able to do some test clicking, it looks like a varient of the traditional taskbar. Go here [enlightenment.org] and there is very little to distinguish it from any other WIMP interface.

            WindowMaker is different and I used to use it all the time under linux. The Dock is pretty nice. However, it is still just another WIMP interface.

            The stuff that really differentiates&lt sp? &gt Gnome, E, Windowmaker and the rest from Windows is the ability to do multiple desktops, the abilty to roll-up windows and the like.

            A screenshot is only going to tell you so much.

      • Re:Gnome or KDE? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mrcparker ( 469158 )
        This [redhat.com]
        screenshot and this [redhat.com] can be so cool if implemeted correctly.

        Any other screenshots along this line?
  • So, those of you that has tried it. Is it reasonably stable or are they rushing it to fight KDE?
    • Well, from where I stand, it looks reasonably stable. There are very few bugs being filed against it right now, and I use it every day with very few problems [well, nautilus is crashy as all get out, but otherwise everything seems to work fairly well.]

      Caveat: like I say, pretty few bugs are getting filed but it's hard to say if that is because of the number of people using it or the number of actual bugs. We'll know better after the beta.
    • "Is it reasonably stable or are they rushing it to fight KDE?"

      Realeasing a beta can hardly be described as rushing software out. Besides, people who prefer KDE won't switch to GNOME just because some new version of it comes out before a new version of KDE. This is also true for people who prefer GNOME.

  • This is really great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ColGraff ( 454761 ) <maron1@LAPLACEmi ... m minus math_god> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:15PM (#3046965) Homepage Journal
    I've always thought that GNOME looked nicer than the windows or mac desktops (almost as nice as BeOS), and it's really cool to see that it's getting even prettier. To anyone who reads this who works on GNOME: thank you very much for working on this, and even more thanks for releasing it under the GPL.

    It's people like the ones who work on GNOME who are going to make Linux into the desktop OS it has the potential to be.

  • Accessibility: suddenly it's a priority... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gmkeegan ( 160779 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {nageekmg}> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:16PM (#3046979)
    new accessibility features for disabled users

    Having just broken both my wrists 2 weeks ago while snowboarding (right in 3 places, left in 2) this is suddenly of great interest. (took 10 minutes just to type this in :(
  • I am not talking a Cygwin thing, I am talkina an actual shell replacment.

    I think it woul dbe realy cool it it could be done. Ximian for everyone!!!!!

  • GNOME 2.0 Release Schedule (Score:3, Informative)

    by bob@dB.org ( 89920 ) <bob@db.org> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:21PM (#3047021) Homepage
    from http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/schedule/ [gnome.org]

    • January 28 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Alpha 2
    • January 30 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Alpha 2
    • February 11 UI FREEZE - no more UI changes w/o approval of release team (excludes 1.4 feature porting)
    • February 11 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta
    • February 13 Porting FREEZE - porting complete as per GNOME 2.0 Porting Guide
    • February 13 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta
    • February 18 String FREEZE - no more localizable string changes w/o approval of release team
    • March 4 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
    • March 6 DEEP FREEZE - release team approved fixes only from now to final
    • March 6 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
    • March 27 PACKAGES DUE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final
    • March 29 RELEASE - Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final
    • hmm...

      1 beta, 1 release candidate, and then - final version...

      Am I the only one to think this schedule is stupid? GNOME 2.0 is a major revision with an entirely new libraries - and yet - 2 releases before final? didn't someone actually think that people need more time to find the bugs???

      Or does the GNOME people want to have the same honour as Nautilus (the most unexpensive piece of application I ever tested)?
  • Does anyone have a url where I can preview some screenshots of the new gnome interface?

  • Some juicy screenshots (Score:5, Informative)

    by segfaultdot ( 462810 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:23PM (#3047039)
    01 [gnome.org]
    02 [gnome.org]
    03 [gnome.org]
    04 [gnome.org]
    05 [gnome.org]
    06 [gnome.org]
    07 [gnome.org]
    08 [gnome.org]
    09 [gnome.org]
    10 [gnome.org]
    11 [gnome.org]
    12 [gnome.org]

    please ignore the following text (lameness filter):

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  • Does anyone have any .deb's, or do I actually have to make all the packages...? = )
    ie: is there any way I can just toss a line into my sources.list?

  • mirrors (Score:5, Informative)

    by I Want GNU! ( 556631 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:24PM (#3047047) Homepage
    The main FTP site seems to be down, but at ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/MIRRORS.html [gnome.org] you can find a list of mirrors.

    A few of them are:

    ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Gnome [buffalo.edu]
    ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/gnome.org/ [rpmfind.net]
    ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/gnome/ [sourceforge.net]
    ftp://ftp.twoguys.org/GNOME [twoguys.org]
    • Apparantly the FTP isn't down (it just was for a second when I tried, it probably is getting flooded with requests), but it still is a bit slow at the moment.

  • Debian Packages? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by evilned ( 146392 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:26PM (#3047064) Homepage
    I see tar.gz and some RPM's but no .debs. Is there someone packaging them, or will I have to wait till march when it gets out of beta for it to be put in unstable?
    • Some newer versions of the gnome2 libs are in
      http://sinfor.lcs.mit.edu/~cananian/debs, but as another reply mentioned, you'll probably have to wait a little longer for the non-library parts. If anyone wants to do the porting (probably shouldn't be very hard) I'm willing to host the debs at the address above.

      You can get a gnome2 version of gnumeric from my archive, since that's what I'm working on.

  • APT-get the Red Hat packages (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:32PM (#3047110)
    For Red Hat users, packages of Gnome 2.0 for Red Hat 7.2 should be available within Gnomehide reasonably soon, depending on how fast Havoc Pennington updates GNOMEhide (usually within a week, judging by previous announcements).

    Add the following lines to your sources.list


    # Red Hat Linux Rawhide
    #rpm http://apt.nixia.no redhat/rawhide/i386 cds
    #rpm http://apt.nixia.no redhat/7.2/i386 gnomehide

    And if you still don't have apt-get, then visit Freshrpms, download it, use it, and wonder how you ever got along without it. [freshrpms.net]

    PS - If any of you have the bandwidth to host a publically avaliable apt repository for Red Hat, then please post to the freshrpms mailing list and tell us all about it.

  • GNOME vs KDE for the newbie (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Glorat ( 414139 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:37PM (#3047149)
    I know this dicussion can start the many flame wars so let me ask this from a personal perspective

    I am a relative Linux on the desktop newbie (although very comfortable deploying on servers) and still prefer the ease of use and performance of the Windows interface. One day, I installed Linux to try out and had a go at both KDE and GNOME (about a year ago) but didn't like it. Today, I sadly develop on Windows to be deployed on Linux

    I found KDE took ages to start up, GNOME was slightly better but Nautilus while featureful was horribly slow. Both were rather confusing with respect to my favourite shortcut keys and mouse commands (especially clipboards and window control) although I hear KDE has a "Windows emulation" mode it wasn't convincing

    So the things that are on my mind are:
    - Have the environments improved a lot in the past 12 months in terms of usability and performance and startup speed?
    - Is it getting much easier for the Windows user like me to get into?
    - What are the main goals that GNOME are trying to accomplish over their new releases? KDE?

    Otherwise, I guess I'll keep my "desktop environment" to nothing but an xterm console and only use Linux when I have to

    Thanks

    • Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:43PM (#3047194) Homepage
      Download ROX filer. and then replace the Bloatware called nautilus with ROX (to replace the desktop you need to run ROX as ROX -p=default)

      This one change will increase the speed of Gnome by at least 300% no you dont get the nice-n-integrated everything that Nautilus is but you also lose the one thing that makes gnome slower than tar.
      • I will try that =P
        I'm getting larger HD on my laptop so I can try Linux once again.

        Just one thing. I will be using Mandrake (newbie distribution) and last time the darn package manager insists that Gnome requires Nautilus to be installed *and* Nautilus has all those hooks into Gnome :(

        Suggestions always welcome
        • Go into the Nautilus preferences and there is a checkbox - [] Use Nautilus to draw the desktop (or something similar to that, I don't remember)

          Turn it off and Gnome's responsiveness/speed will greatly increase.

      • Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie (Score:5, Funny)

        by pthisis ( 27352 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @04:53PM (#3047276) Homepage Journal
        you also lose the one thing that makes gnome slower than tar

        Actually, tar is pretty fast--it's bzip2 that makes it seem slow. Try gzip or lzop instead, or don't compress if you are storing compressed files--though maybe cpio is somewhat faster than tar.

        (Sorry, couldn't resist)

        Sumner
        • or just be patient, since bzip2 compresses better than gzip :)
      • yeah, or you could just stick to GMC. ;) It matches Rox's speed, but beats the hell out of it for features.

        As it is, though, Nautilus2 for Gnome 2 is a big improvement for performance it seems. I tried some Gnome2 development snapshots last weekend and Nautilus was pretty responsive. Heck, 1.0.6 isn't bad, but it could definately use some improvement. What I like about Nautilus though is features, features, features. Lots of good stuff, like the ability to use scripts with Nautilus, and using as an SMB browser (when you get gnome-vfs-extras installed that is). And let's not forget the uber-l33t SVG icons it supports, too. :)

    • That's what I do to. And it's fine with me. I've been trying GNOME and KDE since 1998 and I haven't seen much improvement in the interface. Actually the look is still almost the same. I still won't use Linux as a desktop OS, it's a server OS.

      I'm pretty happy with my setup, Windows on the dekstop and Linux on the server side is the perfect balance for me. I got the best of both worlds.
      • I have to agree, I wish it wasn't so. I use win2k on the desktop simply because it works. Please don't flame me. I have a 750 athlon running Suse 7.3 as a desktop machine and while kde runs fine there still is something missing. I use Redhat on my servers, I have 2 and they are flawless in that capacity, but then again they get configured from the commandline. I think that Linux ,especially kde have come along way on the desktop but by no means are they truly there yet. I think one day they will be though.
      • As a developer and network admin, Windows pales in comparison to Linux, for me, as a desktop OS. I run Windows in VMWare so that I can use MMC consoles to admin some NT domain services, but past that, I can't stand Windows. Somehow, every time I use it, it manages to piss me off. I know that these are hardly objective observations, but for me, using Windows as a desktop OS would probably cause me to commit crimes.

        Linux's flexability and it's tendency to force me to understand what I'm doing is what sells me on it. Oh, and it's free :) What's lacking, in my eyes? 3D graphics, advanced audio/video tools, easy and consistant printing, and good mime support (I do not consider Windows to have good mime support either). Groff/Lyx does a good job of typesetting, but it would be nice if Abiword improves. These issues are being worked on, so that's good :) Give it time, and it'll get better :)

        If Linux doesn't do what you need in order to make it a viable desktop OS, that's cool. If you could lend a hand in improving things, that would be good :) If not, thanks for using Linux where you can :)
        • Funny thing, it's Linux I just can't stand as a desktop OS, because it's always so damn *slow* whenever I want to do desktop-ish work on it. I can use emacs to write code on either platform, but when I want to run off some handouts, I just get the job done faster in Word. I used to run windows for IE, now I run windows for Mozilla. I discovered it's just Mozilla on Linux that gives the project a bad name...

          I don't want to be "forced to understand" what I'm doing. I already know what it's doing behind the scenes. I'd rather it stay behind the damn scenes where it belongs.
    • One option is to use one of the lightweight desktops such as Xfce (www.xfce.org)
    • FVWM 2.4 and gnome-panel for me, I try to use gtk apps when I can, but run a few QT apps too. rxvt is my file manager, this has worked pretty well for a year now.
    • http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/articles/w hy_care/ [gnome.org] and http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/ [gnome.org]That's why I'm optimistic for gnome. These people in the usabillity project, when their work really starts to show, Gnome upon GNU upon Linux will have the best user interface of all, incl. WIN & macOS.

      I really have faith in them. That's why I stick with GNOME.

    • Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've never used KDE (I don't like the look of it - icons have too many colors...looks kind of gaudy but maybe that's configurable)

      I'm a big fan of Ximian Gnome. [ximian.com] Its much less clunky and more attractive than vanilla Gnome IMHO. I recommend it.

      I also liked Windowmaker and Blackbox when I used them, they're much more lightweight than running a whole Gnome or KDE environment.
    • Nautilus seems to get slower with each release. I use gmc now as my file/desktop manager and I have been a much happier person.

      I really don't understand why Nautilus needs to have so many features, ie web browsing and themes. On my installation, Red Hat 7.1, Ximian Gnome 1.4, Gnome starts, sets my background, then Nautilus starts and sets my background. I click on the slashdot link on my desktop, Nautilus starts and loads the site in its file pane and then in the left pane asks if I want to open it with Mozilla, Opera, or Galeon. Now Galeon is associated as my html default viewer. In my opinion Galeon should load the website and Nautilus should not even execute at all. Perhaps this is all resolved in 2.0. Other than Nautilus, I am very impressed with Gnome.

      KDE is nice too. I used both for a while until I decided I liked one better. It's nice having more than one desktop option. What kind of influenced my switch to Gnome was Ximian's Red Carpet. I always had dependancy hell when keeping KDE up to date on Red Hat. Gnome was easy to update using Red Carpet so I eventually removed KDE.

      • Nautilus runs fast for me on my YDL installation on my Powerbook. I'm running Ximian as well and my PB is a Lombard 333. Nautilus takes a second or two to start up but once it is running the going is pretty smooth. The start up speed doesn't bother me much because it is as fast or faster as an Explorer window on my PC. I think Nautilus has so many features so it can be held up to Windows Explorer which has a huge featureset and is actually competitive with the modern Windows desktop rather than playing catch up with Windows 3.11. I'm not much of a theme guy but I do like the ability for a file manager to discern some context for my files and know what they are and adapt the display of them accordingly. For me it is useful to be able to scroll a directory full of pictures with thumbnails and tags telling me how big the picture is. That is how I scan through photographs when I'm looking at them after getting my film back from processing, I don't brose through a list of names hoping to remember that image10056.jpg was that really awesome shot of the Rockies I took a couple months ago. That is just me though, some people just want a flat list hold the mayo so gmc works just fine.
        • I think Nautilus has so many features so it can be held up to Windows Explorer which has a huge featureset and is actually competitive with the modern Windows desktop rather than playing catch up with Windows 3.11.

          This is why I don't run Nautilus -- because I don't think emulating Windows Explorer is the right way to go, especially considering the amount of resources required. File management nerdvana, for me, was Directory Opus 5 on the Amiga... nothing else even comes near it.

          • Nautilus acting like Windows Explorer is less Nautilus emulating Windows and more Nautilus better following the concepts laid out by the Macintosh HIG which is one of the best books on computer itnerfaces I've read. Windows has gone from an almost unusable state where iconic representations had little to do with the actual underlying concept of the object being manipulated to emulating what MacOS had done and use consistant and easy to understand metaphors. Nautilus like Windows has begun to better noun then verb principals, seeing an object and then telling the program to do something to that object. File management is basic and not really the aim of either Explorer or Nautilus, both are trying to do their best to present media to the user, the actual content of the file rather than a mere representation of the file itself.

            This is why Windows has a thumbnail mode, you can browse through a directory full of pictures by visual cues rather than archaic file names which may or may not have anything at all to do with the actual content of the file. Like I said it is going to be easier to find a picture I took if I can see them all rather than just names of pictures. I guess its just me in this case, I use Nautilus and Explorer to browse through my files which are mostly pictures and music files and the occassional bits of source code. Actual management of files isn't really my prime concern when I open up Nautilus or Explorer. I don't need to go in an rearrange them very often.
            • Nautilus acting like Windows Explorer is less Nautilus emulating Windows and more Nautilus better following the concepts laid out by the Macintosh HIG which is one of the best books on computer itnerfaces I've read.

              Macintosh HIG are good, but I find the Macintosh Finder too restrictive for the more powerful tasks. This is why I liked DOpus 5 -- regex-like multiple renames, great for renaming multiple pictures, etc. Also things like filetyping by a multitude of file attributes -- extension, name, size, bytes in file headers, etc. All that and an extensible API, so others could write archive browsers, FTP modules, etc. that fit into the same space... some of this is old hat now, but wasn't at the time.

              The Macintosh GUI always felt to me like a very carefully dumbed down interface. The best thing about many Amiga programs was that they were usable on that level, but if you went looking there were layers of complexity that were well designed and didn't mess up the entire user experience. (Not all programs were that good, of course, but a larger percentage than on any other platform, I found).

              Anyway, I don't know why I'm bothering to mention it... just preaching an aesthetic of usabilty *and* power that few people seem to be able to combine well :/

    • {Windows|Mac} and unix coexist rather nicely.
      Unix is an excellent server platform, but a poor desktop[1], while Windows/Mac are decent desktops, but not something I'd put on a server[2].

      Otherwise, I guess I'll keep my "desktop environment" to nothing but an xterm console and only use Linux when I have to

      That's what I do, as SSH and a web browser are pretty much all that's required to admin my FreeBSD box.

      C-X C-S
      [1] X bites no matter how many layers you drop on top of it.
      [2] Servers don't need framebuffers.
    • To run KDE you really need a current machine with a decent amount of RAM. I haven't run any tests so I can't say what exactly the system requirements are. But I can say that it runs plenty fast on my machine (Duron 700 w/128mb RAM). And yes, KDE has gotten awesome in the past 12 months.

  • Merge! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Sir Homer ( 549339 )
    It's getting to be a pain in the @$$ to have two different desktop enviroments with little competability for each other.
  • honestly, that's just such a HUGE thing in a desktop environment.

    consistent keystrokes that can copy and paste between apps -- is that so much to ask?
    • I have absolutely no problems cutting and pasting between apps in Gnome. If anything, KDE's klipper caused me more problems then anything.

      So, what you talking bout willis?

    • Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:13PM (#3047436)
      consistent keystrokes that can copy and paste between apps -- is that so much to ask?

      Dude, that would be, like, taking freedom of choice away from the people. Every application needs to be free to negotiate data transfer with other apps as it sees fit.

      What if an application knows that it handles data better than anyone else? Why should it give up its data to some inferior process? Why should it accept data from some flawed source? Remember, it's Garbage In, Garbage Out. Apps need to be able to protect themselves from other people's garbage.

    • Re:can it copy and paste between apps yet? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alan ( 347 ) <arcterex@NOspAm.ufies.org> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:29PM (#3047566) Homepage
      The problem is that you can cut/paste fine between gnome apps. Or KDE apps. Or java apps. Or motif apps. Each with their own way of doing it, and each with a 50% chance of being able to cut/paste from one type to another, and have it work the same way.

      IE: cut in gnumeric and paste into gedit. Not a big deal. But cutting text in xarchie (the original) and paste into say, gimp? I don't think so. Or maybe, but it won't be the same way as it works for other apps.

      The other thing I miss is cut/paste of non-text elements. I'm not talking full OLE, but why can't I cut an image in the gimp and paste it into abiword? That's what I want from gnome :\
      • I heard MacOS X has some wacky 'services' thing similar to cut-and-paste that involves passing mime-ified data around between apps. ANybody know details on this?
        • I heard MacOS X has some wacky 'services' thing similar to cut-and-paste that involves passing mime-ified data around between apps. ANybody know details on this?

          But OS X doesn't run an X Window System by default.

          What would be interesting to know is if cut & paste on OS X also works between X applications using different toolkits and between X applications and Aqua applications when you run a rootless X server in parallel to the Aqua desktop. If that does work, than Apple's system might indeed be interesting for Linux as well.

      • Application support is the only thing missing that
        prevents cut/copy/paste of non-text data (or even -say- RTF text).

        X itself doesn't care what kind of data you cut/copy/paste. It's only the apps that do.
        • Yup, exactly. It's all there, but the apps don't support it without some (I assume) major diddling). And when some do, you still have the problem that you can't do anything with older or non-gnome non-kde apps.

          I guess part of the blessing and the curse of free software is that you can use whatever you want. You can use bobstoolkit for your gfx routines if you'd like, regardless of the fact that it doesn't support functions x,y,z.

          Windows never has this problem because they use one toolkit, and one API, and it's all built into that api. Maybe the cut/paste functions that are in the gnome/kde API need to support more than just text (or they should enforce cut/paste ability to applicable widgets, instead of leaving it up to the programmer to remember to write the code to make it happen).

          I'm sure part of the problem is programmer laziness. If the toolkit(s) that people programmed in had all this done for them already, in such a brain dead way that they didn't have to worry about it, there would be far less bitching (IMHO). Of course, it might already be in there and easy to do, but is it so easy that the program doesn't have to do anything to it? If so then great, now make it work for pictures, and other data types :)

          #include
          /* yes, I am a programmer, no I'm not a gtk/kde programmer, yes I know I shouldn't bitch and I should just do it myself. */

  • It still looks like... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChaoticCoyote ( 195677 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @05:04PM (#3047377) Homepage

    ...Windows. I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- in fact, it may be a Good Thing for moving people off the MS desktop onto Linux.

    I'm just wondering what's innovative about Gnome 2 -- what makes this something special or different? And why did it need to be incompatible with apps written for previous versions? I can still run old Win 95 apps on Win 2K, for the most part.

    I'll appreciate polite and informative answers...

    • Gnome 2 has a diferent API, or new version of several base libraries. You can still have the old versions of the libraries installed and you apps compiled to use GNOME 1.4 will work just fine, buit they will not use any of the new features. In that respect it is the same for win95 and win2K, the only diference is that some of the new dll in win2k has the same API so the old applications won't have to load an older version. This is works fine if your API will not change from one version to another (MS usualy changes APIs in a additive way, the new API has as a subset the old API). Linux apps usualy are open sourced so it tends to update the API more often, but allowing the old apps to compile to the new version.

  • Why dont they release in one big file (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:26PM (#3049192) Homepage Journal

    I hate having to download and install 23092039 diffrent files, ill never update gnome.

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