OSNews

I'd forgotten how bad gnome looked back in the day. Now days it looks much much better. Thanks for the working link.

GNOME team keep up the good work.

I was not able to access your file with your link as it is, but using : http://rs171l33.rapidshare.com/files/49024673/gnome.png works fine.

Why captchas if it can be far easier:

/kneel in front of the waybackmachine

I second that. I remember using it back in 2000 on Red Hat and I loved it. Awesome to see how far it has come in only a few years. Best of luck on future releases. Keep up the competition between KDE and GNOME and there is no telling how far they will both go!

yes another "me too" post, I used it with red hat 6 (I guess) it wowed me showing top lines of text files as text file icon, I said to myself that time

- this thing is something, light years ahead of windows

(year) later I removed windows 98 from my P2 240 MHz, 4GB HD, 96 RAM Toshiba laptop and installed red hat 8 and never turned back to windows... later I got P3 733 MHz, 120 GB HD, 192 RAM Compaq and installed red hat 9, skipped all Fedore to Ubuntu... then two years ago I upgraded my hardware to P3 3GHz, 120 GB (same old HD) 1 GB RAM, I got this computer only because I need vmware to run W2k which I was studying at school

me happy GNOME user

Well, this isn't a "me too" post, as I'm a relative noob who's only been using Gnome since 2.0. But screenshots just like this of early Gnome were my first glimpses of Linux. Man, I thought it was the coolest looking desktop ever! Those icons, and all that stuff at the bottom. I didn't even know anything about the OS, I just knew I wanted it on my computer.

A humbling reminder to myself to not laugh at the current noobs who want Linux just so they can have spinning cubes and flaming windows.

Me too! I started using Linux at about RedHat 7 and GNOME looked something like that. I hated it so much that I installed KDE. When GNOME 2.0 came out, I went back to GNOME and have never looked back since.

We definately have come a long way since then. I have it still running on an old Pentium III with RH 6.2. Just recently upgraded the RH 6.2 to Gnome 2.18 and you can tell there's a big difference.

I also have Gnome running on the new fedora as well. Keep up the great work.

Eh? Three times faster doing what? These older versions tend to use a lot less resources than newer ones (especially because they were built on GTK+ instead of GTK2, and thus had a lot more primitive font rendering and other features). I can see 2.18 being faster than 2.0, but faster than 1.x? How did you measure this?

Congratulations to Gnome by the way. Without it the Linux desktop world would be a lot more boring.

Edited 2007-08-15 00:39

Gnome 1.4 is slower than 2.X, e.g. Gnome 2.18?
No, this is not possible. Gnome 1.4 is definitely faster than Gnome 2.x.
I still use Gnome 1.4 (from Woody) on my old Pentium I 200 MHz notebook which has only 64MB RAM.
Would you suggest that I should install Ubuntu 7.04 with its beautiful Gnome 2.18 desktop on this machine for testing purposes and comparison with the speed of Gnome 1.4? I don't believe so.
Maybe "1.4" was a typo.

He is probably referring to 1.4 with Nautilus - anyone from then would remember what Nautilus was like using the Mozilla framework; it was buggy, slow and unreliable. Compared to then, Nautilus is rocket fast.

Yes, it must be, because it doesn't go anywhere!

I think it should be this link
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-list/1997-August/msg00123.html

hahah. i started using gnome around then, too. i agree... i liked it better then, as well! for a while, it seemed like each new release too away features that i liked. oh, well... i've long since dropped heavy desktops for lighter wondow managers. i'm really digging openbox these days.

sometimes XFCE reminds me of what gnome *used* to feel like.

oh, nostalgia.

[OT]

We've been through this a few hundred times already. This very same exact line could be said by by a gnome user who knows gnome, and by a kde user who knows kde. It's _not_ a valid argument, unless someone's completely uninformed of the other de's capabilities. Still, up is the way you're modded. Woot.

[/OT]

Once my desktop is configured the way I like, I rarely change it (I've got better things to do), so why should it always be staring me in the face?

Because software should do what you want it to do, and it should jump when you tell it to. On a great many occasions, certainly looking through Gnome's Bugzilla, that hasn't been the case. Features could have been debated, organised and added in ways that would not have impacted general usability and would not have 'got in the way' of anybody at all. Linus Torvalds even created some patches for his window manager configuration beefs, and there's really no reason at all why they couldn't have been integrated sensibly and in an organised way without impacting default behaviour:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=408898

However, the standard answer is words to the effect of "No ordinary user would ever want to do this". I don't see any definition anywhere in Gnome's HIG or on their site that defines what an 'ordinary user' is, or does. Go on to Amazon, buy any standard usability book that people tend to use, and you will never find that phrase, or anything like it, anywhere. I guarantee it.

GNOME stays out of my way,.....It's simple, clean

Gnome can't stay out of your way. It's a desktop environment, and it should do what you want it to do at any given time. I have asked people on umpteen occasions to define what those phrases mean, and they never can.

[q]GNOME stays out of my way,.....It's simple, clean

Gnome can't stay out of your way. It's a desktop environment, and it should do what you want it to do at any given time. I have asked people on umpteen oc

I really beg to differ on that. A DE can be very intrusive. Windows Explorer can be very intrusive with it's focus stealing balloons and gaudy themes.

Mac OS X's interface is intrusive because it is meant to be looked at. It's not meant to fade into the background.

For a definition. An unintrusive DE that is clean and simple is one that is minimalistic and goes un-noticed by the user as work is performed. Modernist principles where form follows function with a lack of decoration is usually the connotation.

Then, at least to me, GNOME is intrusive.

I usually use KDE, but as GIMP is definitely better than anything in the KDE world, I use GIMP whenever it comes to photo editing.

Which brings up the topic of the "save as" file dialog. It gets in my way in a very serious manner.

First, it pops up as a small window with no filesystem tree view or file viewer. How the path is displayed (as buttons) also needs some getting used to, for long path names not the whole path is shown which is a bad thing. Better make the dialog window wider if needed!
I never have a clue, where Gimp will store the file in my filesystem. So I have to click the "filesystem browser" button, which brings up a filesystem browser which is not very well integrated into the rest of the "save as" dialog.

To put it planely: This thing uses too much brain power, getting oriented is really hard work.

I think, most people who do not like GNOME dislike it because of the file dialogs.

"Gnome can't stay out of your way. It's a desktop environment, and it should do what you want it to do at any given time. I have asked people on umpteen occasions to define what those phrases mean, and they never can."

Perhaps he wants it to stay out of his way?

"However, the standard answer is words to the effect of "No ordinary user would ever want to do this". I don't see any definition anywhere in Gnome's HIG or on their site that defines what an 'ordinary user' is, or does. Go on to Amazon, buy any standard usability book that people tend to use, and you will never find that phrase, or anything like it, anywhere. I guarantee it. "

You are right. This is currently handled as a judgement call by the maintainers. Havoc has actually pushed on more formalisation on what the target market for GNOME actually is. But even as it is, GNOME with the fuzzy idea of "ordinary user" is a more clearly defined project than most free software projects.

The main problem with integrating "your pet functionality" is that every user has their own pet functionality that does not match yours. So in order to please everyone, GNOME would have to pack in loads of features and configuration options and basically end up pleasing nobody but the "power users" that love to tweak and configure things. A horrible example is Emacs, which has so many obscure options that it is impossible to find the straightforward and simple ones.

That is why everything is weighted so carefully before integrating it. If Linus feels GNOME is too restrictive, he should just keep on using KDE, there really is no reason for him not to.

Also, there is no reason for Metacity to integrate loads of "power features", because people can just keep using sawfish or whatever window manager they please.

Once my desktop is configured the way I like, I rarely change it (I've got better things to do), so why should it always be staring me in the face?

Well, it is like that in KDE too. I usually set up my desktop the way I like it, and then very seldomly use the "control panel" again. So your argument of KDE settings taking up menu- and window-space is hard to follow. Or do you have the GConf window open all the time?

But to be able to set up everything the way I like, in KDE I do not have to read through pages and pages of a manual, to find the right keyword, try it out, see it was not the right one and go back to searching again.
I simply open the "control panel" and start looking through the tree.

For one setting, there usually are only 2 or 3 places where it could be (equivalent to the 2 or 3 keywords which could influence what I want), so finding the right place takes far less time than searching through a manual for the right keyword. Sorry, but especially dumbing down the configuration application was one of the worse ideas with GNOME 2.0 .

"""
and how laughably slow (albeit flashy) Ximian Nautilus was in comparison.
"""

That would be "Eazel Nautilus". Remember all those news stories about how the crack team (that wrote the original Mac interface!) were going to revolutionize Linux with this file manager? (A file manager is low level computer software that stores your documents and spreadsheets.)

Of course, they turned out like most poorly administered startups. They went through millions like money was going out of style, and then went belly up.

It took some more years before Nautilus was really ready. But I do like it.

Happy birthday Gnome. :-)

Ack, you're absolutely right! Curse my spotty memory!



Well said, sir. I fully agree (though I was an onlooker rather than a real developer). I've never taken sides in the DE war, but even as things stand today I'd prefer to use GNOME (or a third choice) over KDE... So long as I can dispense with icky Metacity.

Edited 2007-08-15 06:31

I remember when back in the 1.x days, being "cool" was enough to get something in to GNOME. After the massive 2.x restructuring, it took a hell of alot more. While I have remained on board all these years, I still find that they got too draconian and hierarchical during that transition. While I have loved the usable environment, I have also been watching KDE make quantum leaps forward in underlying technology, while GNOME has had a more steady evolutionary advance.

I really think at this point, GNOME has lost its way. I look at KDE4, and in about a year or so of development it looks like they not only have fixed 90% of my usability gripes, while delivering killer frameworks and APIs that compete with what the competition is shipping on the latest generation of operating systems.

I love GNOME, and have for years. While the retrospective gives you a sense of pleasant nostalgia, I only feel some sadness at leaving what was my favorite platform for many years. While I havnt been here for the full ten years, Ive been here for most of them.

I miss being able to choose your window manager;

You can still do that and run Gnome on your choice of Window Managers.

I used to run Gnome 2.14 with Openbox as Window Manager a few years back:

http://icculus.org/openbox/index.php/Help:GNOME/Openbox

If you really want a lighter system with the Gnome panel. You can run the Gnome panel alone on another WM. Back at Gnome 2.6 I used to run XFWM4 as window manager with the XFce session manager. I had Rox as the default file manager and used its pinboard to manage the desktop. The whole thing was set up to look pretty much like a default Gnome desktop but it ran a lot faster.

I started using Gnome 1.0 with RH 6 and I remember how proud I was of that desktop. It looked a lot better than NT 4 at work. Somewhere I have some old screenshots like that one. GMC was pretty fast compared to the later Nautilus (once upon a time the worlds slowest file manager) but it was a pain to configure just the way you want it (mimetypes etc).

Nowadays I run a pretty much out of the box desktop from Feisty.

"Well, Nautilus' speed still sucks, but at least we still have our command shells, right?"

The last version of Nautilus that ever slowed me down doing graphical file management was around Gnome 2.8 or 2.10.

Also, just because Metacity doesn't have the features you like, does not mean it is awful. It is a brilliantly designed window manager that integrates perfectly, is incredibly stable and has a sane theming and configuration system.

Pretty much the perfect window manager for people that don't care about what a window manager is, which is the majority of computer users.

It still has far more features that window managers of today's commercial operating systems.

yeah, time has proven it was a silly reason - Qt is now more free (GPL) than GTK (Lesser GPL). and it is still ahead of GTK...

Yet, Gnome did the free desktop a lot of good, leading the way in usability (not to everybody's happiness, but still) and through competition ensuring the Free desktop is better than it would have been without Gnome. So congrats on these 10 years...

This is neither the time nor the place to discuss this, but no it isn't. The GPL places more restrictions on developers than the LGPL does; hence the LGPL is a more free license.

So the BSD is more free than the GPL as well. I think it depends on your point of view. I just follow the Free Software Foundations' view where they prefer the GPL over the LGPL, even for libraries.

Still neither the time nor the place, but leave it to the KDE-zealots to ruin a perfectly good birthday party. They even brought off-topic GNOME-bashing to their own party last year:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=16177

In any given situation, the word "free" does not depend on your point of view. In this case it applies to what you can do with the code. Someone linking a proprietary program to an LGPL library doesn't deny anyone their rights. Also note that GTK+ is licensed under the Library GPL -- not the Lesser GPL.

This FSF document:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
simply states that the LGPL is inappropriate for some libraries. The LGPL-licensing of GTK+ (and supporting libraries) is in no way in conflict with that document.

BSD allows you to do more with the code than the GPL or the LGPL. So you consider it more free than the LGPL? I DO think the term free is subjective to a certain extend. And I don't see why someone writing proprietary code (which nobody should be writing) should be allowed to freeride on the hard work of other developers without any obligation to contribute back.

BTW I dont see why this is bashing gnome. They can use whatever license they want. I have no problems with Solaris nor freeBSD either... I just noticed the statement from that old email was today as true as it was then...

Yes it's a free ride. What's wrong with that? If the developers want to give out free rides who are you to argue?

I never claimed that you were bashing GNOME, I claimed that you were misusing the English language in order to score political points. The statements from that old email were incorrect then, and they're still incorrect today:

The Qt licensing at the time was anything but a nonexistent problem. If Qt was the leading (or only) free desktop GUI toolkit today, the licensing would still be a problem. Fortunately, there's GTK+.



GTK caught up with Qt 1.4 a loooong time ago.

Best of luck doing this with GTK... it has a long ways to catch up with Qt.

GTK caught up with Qt 1.4 a loooong time ago.

Now YOURE playing language games... I won't go into this, it's silly.

Anyway, I do agree with you that choice is good. It's essential for FOSS and the darwinian way of improvement. Even though it's sometimes annoying to see all the duplication of work... I just wish the political stuff wouldn't lead to (technically) stupid decisions anymore... But vhs/video2000 and other past stuff have shown it's kind'a inevitable, so I'll shut up now and won't respond anymore.

The Qt licensing at the time was anything but a nonexistent problem. If Qt was the leading (or only) free desktop GUI toolkit today, the licensing would still be a problem. Fortunately, there's GTK+.

The problem is that the people who thought Gnome was solving a problem then and wasn't, still don't understand that it isn't solving any problem today.

Having an open source desktop was a given so that code code be shared and modified by anyone. As long as the license for that code was clear and understandable by everyone involved, there was no problem. That fulfilled developers needs to get the code and improve it. Any other concerns are basically the political things that ultimately killed Unix and CDE as a desktop, and Gnome still hasn't got them out of its system.

Beyond that, if you want to get people to actually use your desktop then it has to be good enough. Users simply do not give a shit if your desktop is licensed under the QPL, GPL or LGPL. It is judged on its quality, regardless of how favourable your licensing is.

GTK caught up with Qt 1.4 a loooong time ago.

Hmmmmm. Well, GTK was a graphical toolkit then, and it still is now. Qt has always been a complete, general purpose cross-platform programming toolkit with APIs for a multitude of things not GUI related. GTK hasn't become that at all.

"Free" is very much subjective when it comes to software licenses. You have to distinguish between "freedoms of the software (source code)" and "freedoms of the user".

The GPL is very much about the freedoms of the software. It places restrictions on how it can be used, and tries to guarantees that the source will always be available.

The BSD license is very much about the freedoms of the user. You can do whatever you want with the source, including incorporating it into proprietary and/or closed source software.

"Free" is also subjective in that it has multiple definitions in English (no cost vs freedom), and both/neither apply when discussing licenses.

>The GPL is very much about the freedoms of the software. It places restrictions on how it can be used, and tries to guarantees that the source will always be available.

>The BSD license is very much about the freedoms of the user. You can do whatever you want with the source, including incorporating it into proprietary and/or closed source software.

I disagree.

I would say that GPL (and copyleft in general) is about users freedom and BSD (and non-copyleft in general) is about the freedom of the software.

Let me explain why:
non-copyleft licenses allows the software to merge with non-free software or to become non-free by their own. So that the user will have zero freedom.

On the other hand copyleft guarantees that all users will have the freedom to use the software for every purpose, to modify it and to distribute it.

So copyleft licenses guaranties freedom for every user while non-copyleft allows the maximum freedom for the software even if it will result in non-freedom for the users.

Still neither the time nor the place, but leave it to the KDE-zealots to ruin a perfectly good birthday party.

Well, stuff will always get debated. I don't call legitimate debate trolling. Enough people seem to want to tell us how much of an advantage this is. EDIT: Particularly as the old e-mail above talks about Gnome being as a response to KDE.

Someone linking a proprietary program to an LGPL library doesn't deny anyone their rights.

In the eyes of the project it does, because when you link a piece of closed software to the LGPLed, open sourced core, how do you define what is and isn't in the open source project? It severely impacts the integrity of the code and the project as a whole to the point where less code is being contributed back.

Going back to my previous example, just tell me how many open sourced drivers you think we would have, coded and distributed in the Linux kernel if Linux was LGPLed.

Also note that GTK+ is licensed under the Library GPL -- not the Lesser GPL.

Same difference. The Lesser GPL is merely the Library GPL renamed because of the perception it gave. This was done around 1999 I think, so I'm not sure what differences you think there are.

This FSF document:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
simply states that the LGPL is inappropriate for some libraries.

That's just skipping over the relevant parts:

"Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising “more users for this library” if we let them use the code in proprietary software products."

That pretty much confirms my Linux kernel example above.

The LGPL-licensing of GTK+ (and supporting libraries) is in no way in conflict with that document.

"Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all."

Personally, I find that very relevant considering that LGPL licensing has been continually muted as having sort of advantage by various people, merely by virtue of the fact that you can develop for free - completely ignoring quality or fitness for purpose:

http://www.gtk.org/faq/#AEN81

That very much covers what the FSF document is talking about. There will be times when a proprietary application will need to use one of your libraries, but the FSF is pointing out that it shouldn't be used for the promotion of developing proprietary software at the expense of your own open source project. That seems to be what is happening here.

Edited 2007-08-15 12:56

No it does not. The library is used exactly as allowed in the LGPL. The library authors chose to license their work under the LGPL which specifically allows proprietary programs to link to it. They made that choice, hence no rights are denied.

Edited 2007-08-15 13:44

No it does not. The library is used exactly as allowed in the LGPL.

It denies the project code that it would have had added and contributed (proprietary drivers deny Linux code and has promoted instability), thus denying contributors and users access to code that is used as a part of the project. That's the point the FSF is making on that page.

The library authors chose to license their work under the LGPL which specifically allows proprietary programs to link to it. They made that choice, hence no rights are denied.

The fact that the authors have made a choice over what license to use their project, and the success and well being of that project and its code, are not mutually exclusive.

I'm sorry, but the FSF have critiqued their own license quite well as to how it is a poorer choice, especially if you are trying to promote free proprietary development because that's all you have.

Edited 2007-08-15 15:46

so you admit that the Lessor GPL is about proprietary software. Is this appropriate on a free, open source operating system?

The LGPL denies me the right to any proprietary software code that it lets link with it.

Edited 2007-08-15 18:07

I'm guessing it was an attempt to reference this:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

that was badly worded. "More in tune with the FSF's philosophies" would probably have been a better choice than "more free".

The GPL places more restrictions on developers than the LGPL does; hence the LGPL is a more free license.

Hmmmmm, well I wasn't going to reply, but that's just plain wrong, because your definition of 'free' does not correspond to the meaning of free that the FSF coined when they came up with the GPL and the LGPL.

The FSF is talking about the freedom of the code, not your freedoms. The GPL ensures that any changes that anyone else makes are available to you, and vice versa. The LGPL can be got around because people would just create proprietary extensions that would drag down the quality of the open source project, and ensure less code being contributed back in. Imagine the Linux kernel LGPLed, with people shoving binary drivers on it right, left and centre and you'd have a disaster from an open source and free code point of view - not to mention quality.

Point is, it adversely affects the integrity and identity of the project and what code should be contributed back. The LGPL has just become a poor excuse for a lot of people to say "Look, you can develop everything for nothing!" Sadly, that just isn't enough, nor are things that simple.

The FSF always intended that the LGPL should have limited use, and for reasonably good pragmatic reasons, aside from any other FSF politics or rhetoric.

Edited 2007-08-15 11:17

"Qt is now more free (GPL) than GTK (Lesser GPL)"

QT is licensed under a double license: not only pure GPL but also a commercial, proprietary license. If you want to write commercial proprietary applications with QT, GPL is not enough but you have to buy a commercial license from Trolltech. That could restrict commercial development of QT-based proprietary apps (mobile apps, games etc.).

From Wikipedia QT article:
"Proprietary commercial development requires the commercial license, and, unlike some open source software libraries, Qt is not licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and does not include a GPL linking exception."

"..you have to buy a commercial license from Trolltech. That could restrict commercial development of QT-based proprietary apps (mobile apps, games etc.)"

Riiight...and having to purchase a Visual Studio license restricts proprietary Windows software development. Gotcha.

You don't have to buy VS to develop closed-source software using Windows widgets. You do have to buy Qt to develop closed-source software using Qt widgets. That's a huge difference.

That all depends on how you look at "free".

If "free" means the fewest restrictions on use, then GNOME is far free-er than QT.

Of course, I don't expect GPL zealots to understand that you do not gain freedom by adding restrictions, so whatever...

Freedom has to be protected. Is that new to you?

Search gnome-look.org. It's a wallpaper from Foresight Linux.

Happy Birthday GNOME! Thanks for all the wonderful years.

Enjoy:

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/teams/art.gnome.org/backgrounds/GNOM...

Grejt!! thank you very much

you are dreaming ?!?

just spend a few minutes configuring kde , and you can make a gnome lookalike of kde. ( i just would have no idea why you would want this , though... gnome is far too obtrusive to me )

heh , anyway , forgot earlier ... happy birthday gnome , happy another 10 years

I think you are being a bit optimistic by suggesting it will take "a few minutes" to configure KDE so the interface is less obtrusive. The default KDE desktop is way too cluttered and busy for my liking, and it takes me a good 30 minutes+ to get it how I like it. I personally prefer XFCE, but Gnome has pretty good defaults, and it doesn't take me long to configure. Gnome is actually very flexible and configurable, contrary to what some say about it, but it doesn't shove all of the options in your face like KDE does. Most people won't change their preferences much once their DE is set up to their liking, and it is much better to have the more boutique user options hidden away somewhere that constantly in plain sight, cluttering up toolbars and menus.

I think the underlying technology behind KDE is probably more advanced than Gnome, but the default interface is just too overcrowded with options. Options are fine, but it becomes very annoying when the interface for adjusting those options is plastered all over the DE, rather than tucked away in a discrete dialogue somewhere.

Beyond that, I just find the default KDE setup to be messy and disagreeable to my sense of aesthetics. I couldn't be bothered going to the effort required to get it looking like the DE I like, when Gnome and XFCE are so close out of the box.

I also like the way you can change the mouse cursor in gnome without restarting X, and how changes to the themes etc are applied instantly. These are the sort of options people are likely to change frequently, and Gnome handles them elegantly, while KDE is rather awkward and cludgey in this regard.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Featuritis

That said, I have no problem with anyone who likes KDE - people should use what works for them.

Edited 2007-08-16 09:27

Gnome is a modern desktop environment. It needs modern hardware to run optimally. If your hardware is out of date, your mileage may vary. On a modern machine, Gnome flies (I have certainly not noticed any sluggishness with Ubuntu on a 3 year old machine at any rate).


This isn't directed at you Tanner per se (since I have no idea what you are running Gnome on or with), but I really don't have much sympathy for people who insist on installing the latest version of whatever OS/DE on a decrepit 386 with 8MB of RAM or similarly obsolete hardware and who then complain about the sluggish performance. There are desktop environments (eg Fluxbox) specifically designed for low-spec machines, and if you want the bells and whistles of a full featured, up-to-date DE, expect to get decent hardware to run it.