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GNOME GUI

Gnome 2.10 Sneak Peek 436

spectre_be writes "Davyd Madeley wrote a Sneak Peek at Gnome 2.10, scheduled for release on the March 9, 2005. Looks like the new release-policy is starting to pay of, as several existing utilities get enhancements and a couple of new ones are added. Also (finally) a mozilla-stylee type-ahead find has been implemented in Gnome's Open/Save dialog. Together with OpenOffice.org 2.0's scheduled release and Novell's Mono coming up to speed, will 2005 prove to be the year of Gnome?" Update: 01/18 01:40 GMT by T : Oops - the "2-point" got chopped off in the headline; still a while until GNOME 10.
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Gnome 2.10 Sneak Peek

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  • Big difference.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by chipster ( 661352 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @06:39PM (#11390176)
    ...from the previous releases. Looks fantastic - and actually looks like the interface was *thought through*. Good job team.
    • I hate the pixels used to round off corners to give the candy coated look of XP and KDE. I also hate the stupid bubbled beveled effect of minimized windows taking up space in the task bar. Gnome looks much more "professional" and those stupid GUI features are an embarrassment to anyone that understands the true nature of UNIX.

      Why not embrace Linux for what it is (UNIX), and not try to make it something it is not (fisher price).
      Well done Gnome.

  • OpenOffice? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dionysus ( 12737 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @06:40PM (#11390191) Homepage
    Why would a release of OpenOffice make it the year of Gnome? Isn't OpenOffice independent of Gnome (I run it fine in KDE)?

    Also, the header is soo misleading (I thought I had done timejump or something)
  • by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @06:41PM (#11390198) Homepage
    You can see Suns influence on gnome here!
  • Gnome 10? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wow what year is it? I haven't checked out Gnome for a while and I missed 7 versions already!
  • wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by dolson ( 634094 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @06:42PM (#11390208) Homepage Journal
    I'm so behind the times using Debian here.. I only have 2.8, and here 10 is released? Wow. I thought all the "Debian is old" jokes were stupid, but now I know for sure that they were right all along.
    • Well, they recently switched to a 6-month release cycle if I remember correctly, and odd minor numbers are development versions. Having said that, my housemate is a GNOME hacker, and he's never mentioned 2.9 (or 2.7, or 2.5), only 2.8 and 2.10. (or 2.4, or 2.6) Not quite sure what's going on there.

      Oh what the hell: KDE rules! ;-)

      ~phil

      • Re:wow (Score:3, Informative)

        by thephotoman ( 791574 )
        They may be on a 6-month release cycle, but they still use the Linux versioning system where x.odd releases are development (use Ubuntu Hoary or Gnoppix 0.9.3b2 if you want to see 2.9 in action) and x.even releases are stable, production releases (the latest of which is still 2.8). That said, most people aside from the Gnome developers aren't using 2.9 for a variety of very good reasons (the menuing system has massive bugs in it yet).
      • Re:wow (Score:3, Informative)

        by Kleedrac2 ( 257408 )
        If you check it out it's a classic case of the odd numbers being -dev and the even numbers being release. I'm running 2.9 right now because it's the -dev arm of 2.10 :)

        Kleedrac
        • If you re-read my post, you will notice that I'm aware of this. I just have never seen/heard the development branch referred to by version number. All I seem to hear about is "pre-release 2.10" or so. Oh well.

          ~phil
          • Re:wow (Score:3, Informative)

            by Homburg ( 213427 )
            Well, I don't think the GNOME developers really publicise the devel versions until they're close to a release, at which point they call them 2.10 pre-release or whatever. But, for example, on the developers blogs at Planet GNOME [gnome.org], they refer to the work they're doing on 2.9 quite often.
    • Re:wow (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      you luser, I have gentoo and we got gnome-2.11-beta5-pre2-alpha-sector-5.

      go use AOHell on your interweb!

      n00B!

      ____________

      Hackers unite!!!
    • by Alan ( 347 )
      Not released yet, sneak peak. They are on 2.9.4 developer release last I saw, you still have a bit before you're behind :)
  • One of the things I keep hoping GNOME will get better at is file handling. Konqueror is a great tool for splitting windows, drag'n'drop between ftp sites/websites/etc, and the FILE DIALOG in KDE is pretty decent too...

    Why can't the GNOME one get better? The 2.4 and pre series was a JOKE and this new one, even with all it's vaunted HIG stuff, is still horrible imho. Why can't I see thumbs? Previews? A decent file tree? Bleh.
    • Re:finding files! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zsau ( 266209 )
      If you enjoy using KDE, use it. People who enjoy using Gnome will use it. They don't need to be identical; in fact, it would be pointless to have them both if they were. I congratulate both the Gnome and KDE teams for making different products (though I prefer ROX, which is different again from both!).
  • The major flaw (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @06:51PM (#11390275) Journal
    The mime sniffing is still a pain. I have to drag and drop to open certain types of files, even occasionally plain text files like .cpp which on rare occasion it mistakes for a file I never heard of. Just double clicking the files or right clicking and selecting "open with" gives a security warning and it refuses to open, even when both both the sniffed filetype and the filetype matching the extension open with the same application. A fix for the problem involves changing about 4 lines of code in 1 function.
  • by DeathAndTaxes ( 752424 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @06:52PM (#11390280) Homepage
    I'm all about the HIG-enabled stuff. I dig it a lot...In most cases. I think the HIG-powered windows are great when you're going through your ~/, but I think it stinks when you're going across to other parts of the FS, like /usr/lib/gettext. Plus, I think it'd be outstanding if I could simply get different desktop pics for my different workspaces. As it is now, you can't. Isn't part of the HIG to make it as intuitive as possible? However, we can't know what workspace we're looking at unless we look at the little applet on the taskbar. Having different images (like in *cough* KDE), would be fantastic.

  • I know it's not *that* important, and represents something that the user could (I hope) change, but the nasty garish colors used for syntax coloring in that text editor screenshot have got to go.

    A more muted palette would look more attractive. Drop the saturation a bit, use darker colors than hot pink and neon purple. Muted blues and greens like the ones in slashdot's Developers section and Main section. Those would look nice.
    Using the bright colors also makes it look primitive, like it's limited to using
  • by dioscaido ( 541037 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @06:56PM (#11390319)
    They'll catching up to win95/OS8 in no time flat!

    /I'm sorry... no 'wow' factor at all. Maybe they should get Enlightenment's people to build up a visually appealing gnome demo?
  • ...we've had 30 comments already and nobody has pointed out the typo in the story summary.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Hello?! What's 2 in binary?
  • The GNOME-Mozilla-Mono "alliance" makes sense when you look at Avalon. It's a good move that is sure to give Linux and other OSS users an option that doesn't involve going to Microsoft. Soooo where is the KDE team in all of this?

    Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the KDE guys have really missed the boat here. It seems like they are so caught up building a traditional desktop that they haven't realized that their competition is much more aggressive now.

    Not trying to be a troll, just noticing that GNOME
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17, 2005 @07:13PM (#11390470)
      So, umm, KDE is bad because it is more like Windows, and the solution to this is to...be more like the next version of Windows (Avalon)?

      The really remarkable thing is that in spite of having only a fraction of the corporate support KDE is far more usable. Yes, a few things are clumsier than I would like, but they seem to have avoided the completely idiotic design decisions that GNOME has made (the spatial browser, the hideous file selector, eliminating user-visible preferences to an extreme).
      • by Ogerman ( 136333 )
        The really remarkable thing is that in spite of having only a fraction of the corporate support KDE is far more usable. Yes, a few things are clumsier than I would like, but they seem to have avoided the completely idiotic design decisions that GNOME has made (the spatial browser, the hideous file selector, eliminating user-visible preferences to an extreme).

        The really pathetic thing is that GNOME and KDE today are pretty much duplicate efforts. This situation has become a terrible waste of community res
        • by clem ( 5683 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @08:28PM (#11391056) Homepage
          The really pathetic thing is that GNOME and KDE today are pretty much duplicate efforts. This situation has become a terrible waste of community resources.

          I'm certain these developers that volunteer their time are eagerly awaiting your consent as to what projects they may work on.
        • by 10Ghz ( 453478 )

          The really pathetic thing is that GNOME and KDE today are pretty much duplicate efforts. This situation has become a terrible waste of community resources.

          Not really. Gnome is written in C, KDE is written in C++. Gnome uses GTK+, KDE uses Qt. What makes you think that Gnome-hackers would be good KDE-hackers, or vice versa? I mean, the two are technologically quite different. And what makes you think that Gnome-hackers would even want to work on KDE, or KDE hackers on Gnome? Each group has created a deskto

    • Soooo where is the KDE team in all of this?

      With Novell (who also owns Ximian) via SUSE and other large companies like IBM. The default desktop for *all* of the commercially successful desktop distros (commercially successful, since you're talking about commercial alliances). Connected to state contracts with national governments like Germany's Kolab project.

      KDE does have plenty of connections, as does Gnome. I'd hardly say that either is ignoring that aspect of their projects. Both have excellent people working toward commercial advocacy.

      --
      Evan

  • But seriously, Gnome and KDE are so close in functionality that I've honestly only chosen to use KDE because it looks nicer.

    They are both great desktops. KDE's latest offering (3.3) even added convenient single-file theme packages (*.kth) which strangely hasn't seemed to generate even a tiny bit of buzz. That means its fully themeable without any complicated packages! Just import your best friends theme and use it.

    Which all mean I don't understand the Linux communities relationship with their desktop
  • by xjerky ( 128399 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @07:00PM (#11390358)
    I couldn't quite tell from the article, but are true transparencies going to be supported in, say, gnome-terminal, using the Composite module?
    • They actually were supported in Gnome 2.8. I remember enabling transparency on my roomate's computer. We had to specifically use Metacity 2.8.5 (IIRC) and change some settings in xorg.conf to get it all to work. There are tons of howto's on that running around the web.
      • I know - Ive used it myself. But as far as I know it only made entire windows transparent, not sections like just the console area. I thought the app has to have explicit support to be that specific.
  • Those screenshots look HOT!

    It also looks like they've fixed a long standing gripe of mine - namely the fact that creating Samba shares under Gnome is (was(?)) a pain in the neck.

    I cannot wait to get my hands on 2.10. Does anyone know if Ubuntu Hoary is going to use it?

    If this preview is anything to go by, the UI offered by Gnome as it matures and its feature set becomes complete will be a serious contender gainst the other major GUI's (namely KDE, Windows and Aqua).

    Kudos to the Gnome team and keep up th
  • by mehu ( 92260 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @07:11PM (#11390447)
    With years of slashdot stories asking "Will XXXX finally be the year of Y?", will 2005 finally be the year of slashdot retiring that stupid phrase?
  • Dey took ahr jawbs!

  • Yep, all this seems great, but still there's one thing: I'd like to see a _real_ PDF reader in GNOME (with type ahead find if possible :). KDE is going to have one in 3.4

    Anyone knows if, say, Evince is going the way kpdf is?
  • I sure hope there will be a graphical way to edit the menu. With Windows you right click on the menu with Gnome you -er- I donno.
  • There was Gnome 1. Then it was Pango. I thought different Gnome-native IME would be implemented (some already have been) but to this date a lot of people still are waiting for the CJK IME...especially since other input modules don't have good integration and sometimes just don't work well at all.

    Can anyone shine some light on it?

  • I've been asleep. Can someone point me to the release policy mentioned or precis it for me?
  • by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @08:45PM (#11391181)
    I love Gnome/Ximian for Mono and GTK, for Evolution and Gimp, for AbiWord and Gnumeric, for Gaim and Rhythmbox.

    Yet, somehow, I use them all on my KDE desktop.

    No flamewar is necesary. I guess thats part of the beauty of linux. Maybe we can all get along after all.

    Cheers,
    Adolfo
  • by noda132 ( 531521 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:29PM (#11392159) Homepage

    Unmentioned on that page: Epiphany extensions can now be loaded/unloaded on-the-fly. The epiphany-extensions package comes with an extension which lets you do this. And the adblock extension is coming, dammit!

    And there's also "pyphany" in CVS. It lets you make extensions using Python. Included in the CVS module: a Python Console extension, which is probably the best way to prototype extensions (you can, say, connect a signal to change the zoom, with just a couple of lines of code).

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