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GNOME GUI

Feature Preview of Gnome 2.8 244

Posted by michael from the gnome-man's-land dept.
Leonardo writes "The GNOME foundation should release the new version of this desktop environment on the 15th of September. While we waiting for version 2.8, Foot Notes has a link that explains what's new in this release. Improvements include both core parts (like VFS and Nautilus) and UI modules, like a new applet manager, an improved gconf editor and a new theme. In addition there are some proposed modules like new system tools and a new VNC server. Take a look at Davyd Madeley' site (mirror) if you want to view some sweet screenshots."
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Feature Preview of Gnome 2.8 More

Feature Preview of Gnome 2.8

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  • System Tools? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @08:47AM (#9868456) Homepage Journal
    I haven't RTFA, but it seems to me that GNOME isn't the right project for system tools. It's nice when gui-oriented system configuration features are made available in a GNOME style, but does it make sense for GNOME itself to have system-specific features?

    The GNOME project and all its core features should be independent of what OS is running underneath, relying on a minimum of required components like suitable graphics, sound, pointer and keyboard services.

    • Re:System Tools? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zerblat ( 785 ) <jonas&skubic,se> on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @08:58AM (#9868506) Homepage
      The Gnome System Tools are separated in frontends and backends. The backends are system specific, but the frontends are supposed to basically be the same on all system. Also, this separation means that it would be possible to create a non-Gnome interface (although I don't think one exists).

    • Re:System Tools? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Kiloman ( 640270 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:21AM (#9868626) Homepage
      It's great that you didn't RTFA, but you obviously haven't read anything about GST either.

      As another poster mentioned, the frontends are all Gnome and C, will look the same on all platforms. The C frontend calls into a standard library of Perl functions to do the distro-specific backend bits, the whole idea being that regardless of whose distribution you're using, the config tool will look the exact same and do the same things.

      Pontificating is wonderful and all, but when you haven't RTFA and have no clue what you're talking about, what's the point? Just karma whoring I guess...

      • Re:System Tools? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by GileadGreene ( 539584 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @10:58AM (#9869232) Homepage
        I think that what the parent was getting at is that GNOME should be independent of Linux, not just independent of a given distribution. There are other OSes out there than Linux you know. Some of 'em even use GNOME.

        • Re:System Tools? (Score:2, Informative)

          by The Kiloman ( 640270 )
          Re-reading the post now that I've had some coffee, that may be so. However, I think I can still say the same thing - GST is designed to be OS-agnostic. (I think they even use that term in the documentation somewhere.)

          However, it seems more likely that the parent poster thought that the existance of GST meant that GTK was suddenly mucking around in his OS internals. I don't think he's aware that Gnome is not GTK... which is an important distinction to make. I can see how he might be confused, since they ten

  • Oh no ! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @08:56AM (#9868499)
    Why do they keep bolting more and more stuff on ? Isn't it big enough already ?

    I really wish projects would deal with getting stuff actually working and working well (bug-free and fast) before they start adding even more functionality.

    There must be a million and one OS projects out there... ...but how many of them are actually usable ? Mose (like Gnome - and I'm not just picking on Gnome here) are buggy, increasing bloated, slow and memory hungry. ...not that many. And yes, I don't doubt someone will come up with a couple of examples that ARE quite good, but they are the exceptions.

    Gnome (like the linux Kernal and loads of other stuff) is getting way t0o bloated to be useful - instead of adding more stuff, they should be slimming it down to core functionaly and the other stuff should be seperate projects.

    OK, rant over

    • Re:Oh no ! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:17AM (#9868596) Homepage
      Why do they keep bolting more and more stuff on ? Isn't it big enough already ?

      And some say Gnome doesn't have *enough* features. Man, you just can't win. Maybe it's just fashionable to bash Gnome.

      • Most of the time the problems with Gnome are not gnome's fault but the distro that has to screw with it before shipping.

        I use Gnome exclusively now, and afte rthe past few months of wading chest deep in Mandrake 10 teaching newbies and learning the new stuff I built a fresh "economy" machine and installed Slackware 10.

        when I launched X and used Gnome I was blown away almost completely. It looked so much nicer, aced more correctly (I love the mycomputer/drives list in a window!! it makes everyone elses's

    • Re:Oh no ! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:23AM (#9868638)
      You realise that most of the changes in 2.8 are about fixing bugs and polishing, right?

      The new MIME system is "fixing" the old one by totally replacing it, no other approach would work. The new system by the way is a lot easier to use for both users and developers, and is a freedesktop standard shared with KDE :)

      The rest of the desktop is not receiving any major new features really, just lots of bugfixing too small to go in these sort of "what's new" pages and various cleanups. Actually Gnome seems to have slowed down in this release as a lot of the Red Hat and Novell hackers are tied up with non-Gnome work as they round out the rest of the Linux desktop (so, hardware integration, management tools, backwards compatibility work etc).

      • Will they also be fixing all the bugs they ignored from 2.0 to 2.6? I know fixing bugs isn't the most glorious work, but Gnome seems to just be ignoring them all.

        Also, do I still have to kill the toolbar or log out when I make a change to a menu or have they got their thumb out and fixed that too?
        • "Also, do I still have to kill the toolbar or log out when I make a change to a menu"

          Install FAM. It's used for file change notification.

    • Re:Oh no ! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mornelithe ( 83633 )
      Perhaps you should use something like XFCE that aims to be a slimmed down desktop environment. Or Fluxbox that's just a slim window manager.

      Gnome aims to be a fully featured desktop environment, with all the apps a user needs (more or less). If that's not what you want, then you probably shouldn't use Gnome (or you could refrain from installing all the applications).

      And how is the Linux kernel too bloated? Would you rather they not support any new hardware drivers or something? Do you have specific exampl

    • Re:Oh no ! (Score:5, Informative)

      by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @10:43AM (#9869164)
      How is this AC Insightful? You see, the thing with F/OSS is that you have a chioce. If you think Gnome is bloated, use an earlier version such as Gnome 1.4, or KDE, FluxBox, BlackBox, XFCE (pretty nice and fast too), etc, etc. You think the kernel is getting bloated? Um, go and download an older one, like 2.4, 2.2 or even 2.0. Hey, you can go out and grab an old distro like RH 7.x or 6.x or Debian unstable : ). Use what you want. Exactly how is GNU/Linux going to keep up with technology with out adding "bloat". How would the Linux kernel support new hardware without adding "bloat"?

      If you have written your own non-bloated kernel, OS tool chain, and desktop, please submit them to the OSS community so we can all enjoy your excellent, non-bloated work.

      • Actually, Gnome 1.2 is pretty nice. I dunno what that "Nautilus" thing is (I thought Nautilus was one of those torture machine they have at the gym), but GMC makes a VERY nice file manager. And most of the rest of the stuff is pretty friendly, and reasonably fast, too. Did upgrade from the Enlightenment WM to the Sawfish WM, that's OK too. A few things break now and then, but I got the RedHat 7.0 complete with source, so I guess I COULD fix them if I really wanted to.

        If it isn't BADLY broken, don't fix it.
      • Cool attitude. "You don't like it? Use something *older*". I'd trade that for developers that get from point A to point B, then stop and refine the journey over and over, tightening it up, always looking for faster, cleaner ways. Generally speaking the desire to "add shit" outweighs making existing content faster, trimmer, tighter, righter.
        • The 2.4 kernels (and possible 2.2, I'm not sure) still have new releases coming out.

          How do you want to support new hardware and new features without adding to the kernel? Also, the kernel is modular, so you can choose to either not compile certain features at all, or to compile certain features as modules so that you don't use memory unless you need it.

          And if you don't like how much stuff is in Gnome, you can choose not to compile some of it, or you can use one of the other 4 examples he gave that aren't
      • You ever notice that after a while "bloat" stops even sounding like a real word?

    • Re:Oh no ! (Score:5, Informative)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <[ajs] [at] [ajs.com]> on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @11:03AM (#9869263) Homepage Journal
      Why do they keep bolting more and more stuff on ? Isn't it big enough already ?

      Simple answer: because it's important and no.

      Complicated answer: because it's important and yes.

      I like to say (permuting an old saying about open source) that open source succedes because it scratches a niche. The more niches, the more success.

      "Gnome" is not a single application, it's a distribution of applications that meet a plethora of needs based on all of the niche audiences that use it.

      You can say that having an IRC client is just bloat, but if Gnome didn't have that some people wouldn't be using it, and they'd be using a desktop system that was inclusive of their needs.

      I really wish projects would deal with getting stuff actually working and working well (bug-free and fast) before they start adding even more functionality.

      Actually, Gnome works pretty damned well circa late 2.6. It's been a long time coming. 2.4 was a big change (as the version numbering implied), and a lot of people had a lot of good and constructive feedback that shaped 2.6. 2.8 is clearly taking the next steps in becoming the desktop environment that we can all rely on, and I'm happy with that.

      As for bugs... well, I guess it's a matter of perspective. From where I stand, 2.6 is not bug-free (nothing ever is), but it's moving substantially in that direction (kaizen if you will). As for fast... I run a suite of applications on my desktop at home that do things my poor little 300MHz Pentium 4 years ago could only dream of, so I'm a bad judge. I'm quite happy with the current suite of Gnome video and 3D tools in terms of their response and bandwidth, though. I don't really use a file manager much, so that I can't speak to. The Web tools are slick and fast. The high-level object drag-and-drop seems like it could be faster, so there's a place for improvement.

      But seriously, do you think the addition of system configuration tools is going to slow down the desktop?

      Gnome (like the linux Kernal and loads of other stuff) is getting way t0o bloated to be useful

      Well, let's look at Gnome and the Linux kernel. Both are highly modular, allowing the user to strip away what he/she does not need.

      Both have many, large components that provide functionality so powerful that most users DON'T go without, at the expense of resources.

      Both address the needs of dozens of niche users (internationalization, accessibility for disabled users, strange hardware, etc).

      So... I guess I have to ask... what exactly is the bloat that you're not happy with, and how willing are you to configure your system so that that's not a problem?

      I've seen Gnome running on top of Linux on an iPaq, so I'm not really buying the "bloated" party line. I just think you're too lazy to configure it to your needs.

    • Re:Oh no ! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ericdfields ( 638772 )

      In order to achieve the high-level of functionality coupled with ease of use that the Gnome project is striving for, it must - simply put - be bloated. Features like DBUS and HAL implementation via daemons, CD burning, etc create an immensely intricate desktop experience. Too many people forget that the Gnome project aims at being an extremely accessible desktop while catering to as many needs as possible in an unconfusing way.

      It may seem 'bloated' compared to other DEs out there, but we compare the 'big b

  • It's a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ninjadroid ( 622900 ) <ninjadroid&gazuga,net> on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @08:58AM (#9868507) Homepage
    It does make sense. Providing a uniform interface through which common configuration tasks can be performed is an excellent idea. If gnome can configure network devices, and you know how to use it's configurator, then you also know that wherever you go, if gnome is installed, you can setup the network. This is superior to having every individual distribution provide it's own custom interface, at least from the perspective of consistency (which is a valuable quality in UIs).

    Even though different distros may have different internal solutions to configuration, I see no good reason why a consistent front end can't (or shouldn't) be provided. Furthermore, I'd rather have many hands working together to achieve the best interface once, rather than divering talent toward reinventing a boring wheel to mediocre effect.

    • Re:It's a good idea (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dcstimm ( 556797 )
      Wow you hit the nail on the head with that, I have always thought that since I tried Mandrake out back in the redhat 6.2 days. I thought it was silly that every distro had its own UI for things like this. It just feels the more Gnome ages the more it becomes usefull, I remember back when WindowMaker was amazing, and I used netscape 4.6, opensource apps sure have come a long way, Now I use Gnome 2.7, Firefox, evolution, gimp 2.0, gaim, gqview, beep, abiword 2.0, xchat 2, mozilla, gnome-terminal, and Nau

    • Even though different distros may have different internal solutions to configuration, I see no good reason why a consistent front end can't (or shouldn't) be provided.

      That's very true. In fact, Webmin [webmin.com] already achieves that for a lot of stuff - it can auto-detect which OS or distribution it's installed on. It should be very easy for the Gnome team to do the same.

  • Nice UI - better for Linvirgins? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grunt107 ( 739510 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:08AM (#9868552)
    The inclusion of system tasks in the UI graphic selection seems to be a good way to allow the Linux newbies to more easily understand and control their non-Win computers. Once they get acclimated to the commands, they may venture into the faster cmd-line that 'experts' like to use.

    This may even help faster corporate adoption, with the remote control software and other networking tools.
    • Once they get acclimated to the commands, they may venture into the faster cmd-line that 'experts' like to use.

      If the GUI tools are done right, then many tasks can simply be done with the GUI and there would be no reason to go to the command line.

      For example, if you want to shut down your Wi-Fi, you would probably be content to right-click on a widget on your desktop; going to the command line wouldn't be better.

      steveha

  • Haha! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out the screenshots - they have a shortcut to Adequacy.org's most infamous article "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?"

  • I still have hope for gnome. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:16AM (#9868592) Homepage
    But here's what would have to change for me to use it:

    1. Jettison the whole gconf/registry thing in favor of a tree of plain text config files in .gnome or something

    2. Resurrect the old GNOME control center

    3. Give me a default window manager with the ability to select focus-follows-mouse mouse

    4. Construct a usable menu editor somewhere so that I can customize my menus

    5. Choose: either a) reincorporate gecko into Nautilus for Web browsing or b) go lightweight and jettison Nautilus for the old gmc

    6. Create a base distribution of official GNOME applications from a lot of the GTK stuff out there, based on which authors agree to follow a rigidly follow a GNOME style guide and use the GNOME API rather than just GTK, so that there is more desktop consistency

    7. Add compatibility with KDE themes to GTK, since they seem superior (ability to change colors, not just widget styles, etc.)

    8. Give me an "advanced mode" to turn on all kinds of extra GUI configuration bells and whistles like keybindings, autoraise, MIME types, etc.

    • Re:I still have hope for gnome. (Score:5, Informative)

      by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:25AM (#9868651) Homepage
      1. Jettison the whole gconf/registry thing in favor of a tree of plain text config files in .gnome or something

      gconf _is_ a tree of text config files in .gconf .

      2. Resurrect the old GNOME control center

      What did it do differently than the preferences view in nautilus?

      3. Give me a default window manager with the ability to select focus-follows-mouse mouse

      Settings->Windows, choose "Focus follows Mouse".

      4. Construct a usable menu editor somewhere so that I can customize my menus

      Not sure what you feel is wrong with the current method?

      8. Give me an "advanced mode" to turn on all kinds of extra GUI configuration bells and whistles like keybindings, autoraise, MIME types, etc.

      keybindings - in the preferences already. autoraise windows - you find that in the same preference dialog as focus-follows-mouse above. MIME type editor - already exists, improved for 2.8. For other things, gconf-editor _is_ your advanced mode.

      • gconf _is_ a tree of text config files in .gconf .

        gconfd-2 is also a broken database server. On my two systems using Gnome 2.6 (Solaris and RedHat), gconfd periodically goes rogue and eats all configuration. Gnome poorly implemented what was a bad idea in Windows.

        Consequentially I use either WindowMaker, WinXP or OS X.

        Not sure what you feel is wrong with the current method?

        So is there a menu editor? I've never spotted one anywhere.
        • So is there a menu editor? I've never spotted one anywhere.

          Well, it's disabled in fedora, but in a default Gnome install, like on slackware, you simply open Nautilus, go to Applications://, and edit it's subfolders. Really, it couldn't be simpler.

      • gconf _is_ a tree of text config files in .gconf .

        No, It's some kind of XML variant which is so obfiscated that you can't touch anything without breaking it unless you use the gnome tools - and that means poorly documented command line nastiness like gconftool-2 (no man page exists folks) in distributions as recent as RedHat9.

        Another thing that would be nice if someone told the gnome people that most operating systems are multiuser now - and that permissions of lock files should never be changed to root wi

    • "5. Choose: either a) reincorporate gecko into Nautilus for Web browsing or b) go lightweight and jettison Nautilus for the old gmc"

      Or c) put more file management functions into Epiphany. I for one think haveing a tabed file manager would be just as usful as a tabed browser

    • Re:I still have hope for gnome. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jodrell ( 191685 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:56AM (#9868830) Homepage
      1. Jettison the whole gconf/registry thing in favor of a tree of plain text config files in .gnome or something

      If you're a system administrator, gconf is a godsend. You can "lock down" certain preferences so your users can't break things or waste time playing with useless preferences. Another win from using GConf is that it's "process transparent." This means that if I change a setting from one application, it instantly updates in all other applications that are interested in that setting. This technology is vital for the snazzy "instant apply" UI of GNOME, and vital for writing applications made up of multiple out-of-process components.

      3. Give me a default window manager with the ability to select focus-follows-mouse mouse


      GNOME Menu -> Preferences -> Windows, then select the "Select windows when the mouse moves over them".

      5. Choose: either a) reincorporate gecko into Nautilus for Web browsing or b) go lightweight and jettison Nautilus for the old gmc


      Nautilus isn't a web browser, use Epiphany [gnome.org] for that. Nautilus's performance has come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, particular between 2.4 and 2.6.

      6. Create a base distribution of official GNOME applications from a lot of the GTK stuff out there, based on which authors agree to follow a rigidly follow a GNOME style guide and use the GNOME API rather than just GTK, so that there is more desktop consistency


      More and more of the GNOME API is moving into Gtk+ - the icon theme implementation, for example, and the new UI Manager system. But GNOME can't coerce other developers into following their guidelines, they can only encourage them.

      You may also find that things like the GNOME Fifth Toe [lyrical.net] has what you want.

      7. Add compatibility with KDE themes to GTK, since they seem superior (ability to change colors, not just widget styles, etc.)


      Check out this project [freedesktop.org] for a Gtk-Qt unifying theme.

      8. Give me an "advanced mode" to turn on all kinds of extra GUI configuration bells and whistles like keybindings, autoraise, MIME types, etc.


      gconf-editor and GNOME Hacks [jodrell.net] are your friend :)
      • while you're at it could you help me too? =)

        How can I get case insensitive order in the gnome file dialog/nautilus etc.

        This has to be one of the most stupid default settings btw. If you're doing a desktop for new users and are ready to piss off lots of people to achieve that goal why oh why would you use something so unintuitive

      • If you're a system administrator, gconf is a godsend.

        Nay, a curse. If a user looks at the gpanel of another, and sees a complicated mass of icons aand "drawers" full of icons that will work well for them too, you can't just copy a configuration file like you could with almost everything from fvwm on - you have to constuct the whole thing mouse click by mouse click.

        It would be nice if the gnome people got away from the MS Windows single user non-networked PC idea. Having portable configuration files would

    • GTK themes can have their colours changed as the BlueCurve sets in FC2 show, however their is no GUI for setting whatever colours you like. There could be, it's just that nobody wrote one yet. Why don't you do it?
    • I especially agree with:
      "4. Construct a usable menu editor somewhere so that I can customize my menus"

      In Windows you can right click on the Start button
      and add something to the menu. No such luck with Gnome 1.6.
    • 1. XML rules. And it is really no less plain text than .ini files. What we need is a *powerful* gconf-editor. Searching is still very basic stuff, if fact gconf-editor was hopelessly broken without it. We also need a mechanism that makes sure old stale config keys don't get left in the registery. Better stuff would be metadata for keys.

      2. A nautilus view with all the capplats would be nice.

      4. Nautilus is your friend.

      5. No..not gmc..Nooooo! Why would you like to browse the Internet and your local computer
      • > 5. No..not gmc..Nooooo! Why would you like to browse the Internet and your local computer with the same software?

        With *my* unreliable ide controller, there is very little different between the local disk and a remote disk. Latency and reliability seem to be about the only difference, normally.

        I suppose you really meant browse the web, but even the web is made up of many concepts, there is the document, the image, the animation, the video, the song, the interview, the chat room/channel, the bulletin b
    • Add compatibility with KDE themes to GTK, since they seem superior (ability to change colors, not just widget styles, etc.)

      Not having written any GTK themes, I nonetheless beleive that GTK has that ability. If they are true theme "engines:, then you can apply whatever color scheme you want to them. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do in the "new and improved" GNOME.

      Why the GNOME leadership considers color schemes distinct from widget themes to be too difficult for newbies to use is beyond my unde

  • it's all about xfce (Score:4, Informative)

    by TimODonnell ( 719258 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:18AM (#9868600) Homepage

    Anybody who still hasn't settled on a wm, take this advice: try xfce [xfce.org]. It's fast, it's customizable, it's simple, but it still feels like a desktop environment, not just a window manager like fluxbox. It's the middle ground between the two huge desktop envirnments and the dozens of ultra-lightweight window managers.

    It's gnome without the bloat.

    • Re:it's all about xfce (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cronot ( 530669 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:47AM (#9868786)

      I do use XFCE too, plus the Rox [sf.net] pinboard - makes the perfect combo, and still keeps the environment lean and fast.

      However, I beg to disagree with your last sentence. The "bloat" in gnome is something relative - it may be heavier on the system, but Gnome and its apps feels far more integrated than XFCE. XFCE is pretty much only the panel, an eye-candied window manager, and a taskbar, and while it comes with easy to use configuration tools, they are very limited in the sense that there aren't not much room for customizing - something that gnome surely wins. The taskbar, for instance, have no real meaningful configuration, and always lives separated from the panel - IMHO, it should be a plugin, so you could attach the taskbar to the panel, thus freeing desktop space.

      I can live with that tough. My main beef with the state of desktop on Linux is the fragmented situation of the GUI Tookits (mainly QT vs. GTK, though there are lesser ones). The problem is not having many toolkits per se, but the fact that this leaves the desktop with an unconsistent appearance. I'm all for having toolkit choices, but I wish they'd unite to create a standard themeing format, so a theme could be used on both toolkits, thus leaving a more or less consistent appearance to the desktop (there's still the GUI guidelines).

      Well, not gonna happen anytime soon, tough... :-(

    • Re:it's all about xfce (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <[ajs] [at] [ajs.com]> on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @10:33AM (#9869117) Homepage Journal
      No offense, but that's spoken exactly like someone who has no idea what a desktop environment is.

      Gnome is 90% the application libraries that manage inter-process data, configuration, internationalization, accessibility, theming, common invocation semantics, error reporting, etc, etc.

      That 10% that you're thinking of (window management, applet baubles, desktop layout, file management, changing the root background, etc.) is nice, but if you still have to have all of Gnome around for the important parts (the applications that integrate with the desktop), what exactly is the point.

      If xfce is a Gnome- (and implicityly ICCCM-) compliant window manager, it will work just fine in the Gnome desktop, but that doesn't make it a Gnome-replacement.

      What people love to refer to as bloat in Gnome (and KDE for that matter, I'm not playing favorites here) stop seeming like bloat the moment you a) want to know how to configure 20 different applications at once b) want to change all of your applications to use LCD-friendly font-smoothing c) speak a language that isn't the default (and perhaps has strange rules like being written backwards) d) can't see / hear / type / use a mouse / etc. ; or any other sort of desktop-level strangeness.... then you actually want a suite of tools and libraries that support your needs.

      • Gnome is 90% the application libraries that manage inter-process data, configuration, internationalization, accessibility, theming, common invocation semantics, error reporting, etc, etc.

        That 10% that you're thinking of (window management, applet baubles, desktop layout, file management, changing the root background, etc.) is nice, but if you still have to have all of Gnome around for the important parts (the applications that integrate with the desktop), what exactly is the point.

        Do people actually u

        • I don't use Gnome, so I can't tell you about it. I can give some KDE examples, though.

          Lots of KDE apps are designed as kparts with wrappers around them to be actual applications. For example, KGhostview can view PDFs. But since it's written as a kpart, Konqueror can load up that kpart in itself and display PDFs. In fact, Konqueror isn't much but a wrapper for a whole bunch of kparts, which is how it can work as a browser (khtml) and also display images, text files, PDFs and so on.

          Another example is kwrite

          • Ok, I see.

            But the apps I actually use are, say, OOo, Mozilla, emacs, xpdf, GAIM (hey, that's Gnome, isn't it?), eboard, Scid, mplayer, some mp3/ogg player... and a bunch of development stuff. That's about it. A lot of terminal windows, too.

            Those are fine, I don't really see the point of switching to similar-but-probably-inferior apps that do similar things but that happen to be part of Gnome (or KDE).

            • Yeah, you certainly don't use the functionality. :)

              Some of the KDE stuff is kind of nice. For example, kmplayer wraps Xine/mplayer in a KPart so you can view videos in web pages (I know, there are similar plugins for Mozilla).

              There are other interesting things you could do with it as well. for example, you could theoretically specify a vim/emacs kpart (only vim exists, as far as I know) as the default text editor part, and then kwrite and kate and so on would all automatically have vi/emacs behavior.

              But

      • Re:it's all about xfce (Score:3, Informative)

        by Florian ( 2471 )

        No offense, but that's spoken exactly like someone who has no idea what a desktop environment is.

        No offense, but you replied exactly like someone who has no idea what XFCE is.

        Gnome is 90% the application libraries that manage inter-process data, configuration, internationalization, accessibility, theming, common invocation semantics, error reporting, etc, etc.

        Almost half of what you mention (configuration, internationalization, theming) is GTK stuff, not Gnome. And those aspects managed by Gnome

        • Re:it's all about xfce (Score:3, Informative)

          by ajs ( 35943 )
          Almost half of what you mention (configuration, internationalization, theming) is GTK stuff, not Gnome.

          Much of this functionality that has been trickling into Gtk+ over the last year or two is being moved there from Gnome to allow non-Gnome applications to participate in the desktop, but let's not confuse things like Gtk+ internationalization and accessibility support with Gnome... they work at different levels of abstraction.

          Well, except that this doesn't work because you will hardly find 20 applicatio
      • In reality font smoothing on all new KDE and Gnome programs (and also many other programs using other toolkits) is controlled by the file ~/.fonts.conf. (they use Xft and Freetype2 and Fontconfig to draw the fonts, these are all shared just like KDE and Gnome all use X11).

        The problem is in fact these "desktop environments". Both try to write the fonts.conf but neither correctly reads the settings stored by the other program, and I think Gnome just reads it's own data and ignores the fonts. I discovered thi
    • I just installed xfce based only on your post, and thank you sir. It's beautiful. I installed it under Red Hat Professional Workstation, and it installed itself as a session option at login. Nice. Its much lighter than wither Gnome or KDE, and the catch is that it still runs all gnome apps (or kde), it just loads the libraries. I'm actually running WebSphere Studio, EditPlus under Wine, and VMWare running Windows 2000, all usable with 1 gig ram. Couldn't do that usably under gnome! Thanks for the post.

  • The media device manager... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @09:18AM (#9868602)
    is the best upcoming feature of 2.8 IMO. I will finally be able to just plug in my various USB drives into the computer and have them mount (and unmount!) automatically.

    For me personally, this means that my non-ubergeek wife (who isn't aware of the root password or the commands mount -a and umount -f), and will be able to download pictures off of the camera without asking me to unmount the camera or to fix the multiple mount points that cropped up since she plugged in the camera multiple times.

    Thank you Gnome hackers!
    • I pretty much have this now and had it for at least 2 years.

      edit your /etc/fstab correctly and your USB devices will work well for users.

      you still have to unmount them, but all real OS's require you to unmount the media first (CD's can do an auto unmount by detecting the eject button) I cant count the number of times a windows User comes crying to me because they hosed their presentation by saving to their thumbdrive and then yanking it out of the hub before unmounting it.

      It's not new, many Linux users h
      • I have the same setup (Fedora Core 2 does a nice job of automounting my camera) but a real problem is that FAM (which monitors drives for changes and alerts Nautilus) has to keep file handles on the mounted drive open in order to monitor directories, and this prevents unmounting the volume. The easiest workaround I know of is killing FAM (actually by restarting xinetd), which is ugly. Unfortunately, from what I understand, it's a kernel problem: the file/directory monitoring API requires open file handles,

  • Gnome gets better all the time (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Gnome's been really impressive with their rapid turn around schedule recently. With their 2.8 release already, I wonder what kind of goodies they'll have to add before they can rationalize a bump to 3.x.

    I'm looking forward to their plans to further integrate OpenOffice.org (though I can't think of anything off hand that they could improve) and once the Mozilla project changes to Firefox as the official browser component, hopefully Gnome will switch to it. (I liked Galeon for a while before I heard about
    • 3.0 won't be here for a long time, I think. We will probably see 2.12 or further before that time, and it seems that the GNOME Community is focused on improving 2.x as far as possible and relax a bit on the pressure of releasing major versions. :-)

  • Bigfoot (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SilentReproach ( 91511 )
    Does it still have the goofy "foot" icon in the taskbar? I know this sounds trivial, but I swear it's the reason I chose KDE years ago (Although the "K" wasn't very attractive either in times past).

    I don't think I'm trollin, I honestly want to know if that icon can be user-defined.

    • Re:Bigfoot (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you use the taskbar, yes, the four-toed foot is their equivalent to "Start" or "K", but if you use the menubar like OS X, then the foot is smaller and just an accent next to the text "Applications".
      • Have they made that menubar actually MacOS like? As in it actually has the menu for the active application in it, rather than just displaying a static applications/actions menu like it used to?
        • Unfortunately not. And it sucks ass. It's even more annoying when you have configured KDE to use a shared MacOS style menu, and Gimp or some other app chooses to do the "fuck you and your preferences" routine.

          Unfortunately, this won't change. The people behind X seems to hate the thought of a general API for showing a button or a menu or a what-you-want.

    • Re:Bigfoot (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ajs ( 35943 )
      It depends on the distribution that you use.

      The way Fedora installs by default, no you get a ... wait for it ... Fedora.

      But ... and I can't say this enough ... GNOME IS NOT A TOOLBAR, TASK LIST, WINDOW MANAGER or any of those other things you're thinking of.

      Don't like the foot menu? Change it or install a theme that changes it. What Gnome is a set of tools, libraries and interfaces for allowing your desktop (infrastructure, apps, etc) to communicate and for providing a set of standards to which a user ca

  • Why VNC? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MrNemesis ( 587188 )
    I'm confused as to why VNC has been integrated. Most Linux users (and windows too...?), I would have thought, would be happier with X11.

    I hope you can choose not to install the VNC server... it's of utterly no use to me, and seems to smack of copying XP's built in remote desktop functionality.

    There are several good VNC client/server packages out there for Linux, if you really want to use it.

    • Re:Why VNC? (Score:2, Informative)

      by moorg ( 537751 )

      I'm confused as to why VNC has been integrated.

      Look at the use cases for Vino, the proposed included VNC. Mark McLoughlin has done an excellent writeup [gnome.org].

      If you follow GNOME development you'll notice the shift towards better integration into the other desktop applications. See: Evolution and GAIM speaking over evolution-data-server.

      Mark's use cases answer your question.

    • Re:Why VNC? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kbielefe ( 606566 )
      I personally don't use VNC at work because straight X is available and looks better in my opinion, but a lot of colleagues do because they can be working at their desk and then go to the lab and have all their editor windows, etc. open in exactly the same way. I use screen for the same reason at home. One of the nice things about gnome is that you don't have to have everything installed that's available. Most distros only install about half when you install "Gnome". Probably, you will have to install a
    • Never worked in an environment where IS team just can't keep a stable network, have you? :) X just doesn't work to well when you have consoles and windows flying all over the place and then *whoops* network goes bye. Now where was I? Recovery is possible, but by the time you get back to where you were, whoops their it goes again. Xvncserver works well for that by 'preserving' your desk across outtages and inbetween the office, test lab, and the offsite developer who just got a wierd error that you can

  • Please please please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by djohnsto ( 133220 ) <dan.e.johnston@noSPam.gmail.com> on Tuesday August 03, 2004 @10:31AM (#9869097) Homepage
    Fix gnome-terminal. Any terminal that uses more cpu to display the text from compiling software than is needed for the actual compile is just broken. Miguel complained (and stopped using gnome-terminal) about this more than 2 years ago! This is one of the few reasons that I have stuck with KDE.

    (Yes, I know I can run konsole within gnome, but aside from the inconsistent themes, it sucks up a lot of memory to load both the gnome and kde libs at the same time.)

    • Re:Please please please (Score:3, Insightful)

      by juhaz ( 110830 )
      It's nowhere as bad as taking more cpu than the actual compiling, though granted the overhead is quite sizeable...

      Besides, you're assuming the problem is in terminal itself and not the underlying font layout and rendering libraries (pango and xft).. full unicode support and anti-aliasing take a toll.

      Can't you just run rxv/x/e/aterm if you know you need to run something that's going to put a LOT of stuff to stdout, if gnome-terminal isn't fast enough and konsole hogs as much memory as running the whole KDE
      • For some smaller files (when run compiled with the help of libtool), yes, the terminal takes more cpu. After delving into it a little a few months ago, I found the main culprit to be the vte terminal emulation library. It eschews the stock X11 terminal emulation and is flexible enough to emulate pretty much anything (with text that reads forwards, backwards, updside down, and perhaps inside out). The problem is, it's REALLY slow. And while it does slow down compilation a little, the real problem is doin
    • Yes, gnome-terminal's CPU usage when scrolling is just nuts.

      It's one of the _main_ reasons why I finally switched from gnome to KDE.

    • Fix gnome-terminal.

      The GNOME terminal is really just a shell for VTE. (It may still be possible to build it with ZVT.) 90% of the bugs associated with the terminal should really be filed against VTE, the maintenance for which seems to be a low-priority task for Nalin Dahyabhai at Red Hat.

      If you want to help, try testing some of the unconfirmed bug reports, or some of the patches, such as 143914 [gnome.org].

  • Standards are the key (Score:2, Insightful)

    by metalac ( 633801 )
    One key point that Gnome has, btw I use Gnome as my one and only WM, are the standards. I think there should be more of this and similiar things in Open Source community. The GNOME Human Interface Guidelines is a great way to let the developers know what's a good way to code the apps so that when you make them those apps don't look off from the rest of the desktop. I believe that if every project at one point had a version that standardized it, we would get much better software at the end of it. I know
  • ...as some posters seem to claim. It actually can be made to look quite nice and really is no bigger than it needs to be to perform the tasks for which it was designed. The only real problem I have with it is the way it identifies some applications in its menus with generic terms such as "web browser" and "editor" instead of the actual name of the program.

    Why does it do this? If all applications were identified this way a user could end up not knowing which item to click to launch the correct program. If t
    • OK...But have they fixed the bit where it randomly crashes every 5 minutes?

      Not meant as a troll, that is exactly why I gave up on Gnome years ago, and started using KDE.

      Every time I upgraded RH (several versions, we're talking years here) I gave gnome a shot, and every time something (button click/standard app/config tool) caused gnome to leave a smoking crater within 5 minutes.

      I NEVER had that problem with KDE. If I wanted flakey, I'd run Windows.
  • I really like the Gnome desktop. I find the spatial nautilus very useful, but there are two things that I really don't like about the Gnome desktop. First is Metacity, the window manager. I can't stand it that I cannot middle click or right click on the maximize button and have it maximize the window vertically or horizontally. That is on of the most useful features that i've seen for quite a few window managers running under Linux and *BSD, and I see no reason for Metacity not to have it. (btw, if som
    • You can set keyboard shortcuts for vertical and horizontal maximize in Gnome 2.6 but no, as far as I can tell you can't do that with the mouse. The other problem I have is that you can't set the "raise window" action to only happen when you click on the top bar of a window and not when you click in the window. These two things seem like simple things that most other window managers have.
  • At what point will the OSS community start breaking new ground like OSX with it's Quartz layer and beautiful scaling UI? The 2 mainstream Linux UI's are just boring knockoffs of Windows. Surely the OSX UI would be cake for a world-wide community, even something better?

    No excuses, just make KDE and Gnome go away and make OSX look bad.

  • Where's the effing font management? How does my wife install TTF fonts without the command line or editing text conf files?

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