Gnome 2.0 is finally here! Read the press release, download Gnome 2.0 for various architectures, mirrors here, while the Sun Solaris 8 version can be found here. Update: Compilation instructions here. You might want to use the CVSGnome script which downloads and compiles everything for you, but make sure you will give it a subdir on your ~/ or on /opt/gnome2 as PREFIXDIR, and not anywhere outside your $HOME or /opt. Type “world stable” when you are asked to, and it will do everything for you. You will need to modify the script’s compiler CPU defaults from “athlon” to whatever you got. Or, you could use Garnome.
GNOME 2.0 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s about time… it’s only what… a year late.
It’s about time… it’s only what… a year late.
Too cute, really. =)
Anyway, I’ve been using GNOME 2 for some time now, and I am strongly impressed with the project’s work. The wait was certainly worthwhile! Finally, I’ve found a polished, well-implemented desktop that doesn’t make me long for Windows when using it, and that’s a pretty strong compliment coming from me! Congratulations to GNOME hackers everywhere. Quite the accomplishment.
Does anyone know how well the Gnome VFS works? One of the main reasons I use Win2k for work right now is because with Boxter I can load and save files from a FTP on the fly. Is this possible with the VFS and does it work reliable? If it does, would anyone care to quickly explain me how it works.
Or where it’s explained? I tried it from time with Kate and KDE but this either screwed up my files (KDE 2) or didn’t work at all (KDE 3, said no permission when trying to save).
I’m also looking for some decent Gtk text editor with some simple syntax highlighting that can make use of the VFS (if it works). Any suggestions? I didn’t like Glimmer very much. Something like a Gtk Emacs or Gtk VIM would be great but I doubt that those can use the VFS.
I didn’t use Gnome for quite some time so I might be terribly out of date…
Xemacs isn’t quite GTK, but it looks much nicer than std emacs.
http://www.xemacs.org
emacs/xemacs has been able to save over ftp for a long time.
Actually, XEmacs does have GTK+ support… http://www.cs.indiana.edu/elisp/gui-xemacs/. I’ve heard that it is ultimately bound for integration into some XEmacs release, just not sure which. =) It’s not ported to GTK+ 2 yet, and isn’t really being too actively hacked on as far as I know, but it’s stable and looks pretty!
I doubt that GTK+ XEmacs will ever make it into the regular XEmacs tree. We can hope, but it’s not been touched in *forever.* You can even embed XEmacs as a widget in a GTK+ app- perfect for a GTK+ email app!
Fine, I’ll look at it… Emacs is still a large riddle for me.
I’d love to hear from someone who has used older versions of GNOME extensively as well as 2.0. What is it like?
I’ve been using the panel some from GNOME 1.4 on my Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 PPC install. One of the things I’ve observed about GNOME is that it’s very seperated. It’s not like KDE, where you can easily go through your day without touching a non-KDE app, it seems that on your average GNOME “desktop,” you end up using non-GNOME GTK+ apps and KDE/Qt apps as well. Perhaps that’s not the case, but I just curious.
One of the things that has made me wary of running a full on GNOME or KDE desktop is that it’s so much like Windows. That’s fine because most of the people using it are people like njm who actually long for Windows when using it. There are a few of us who don’t long for Windows, regardless of whether or not GNOME is worth using.
When discussing if GNOME is worth using, it always ends up in a discussion of how close it is to Windows in terms of ease of use or features. Just not my thing, I guess.
From an end-user perspective, what is GNOME 2 like?
Aaron
Aaron, are you trying to say that you find that there is a lack of GTK+ applications? Personally, i much prefer GTK+ to Qt for speed reasons, so all (with the exception of kmerlin) the X11 applications i run are GTK ones. If you need help on finding apps you need, feel free to give a shout, i’ll give ya a hand.
“Like Windows” is generally viewed by the ‘geek community’ (osnews, slashdot, kuro5hin readers) as a bad thing. Strangely, I think the Windows UI is pretty decent. That’s why so many people use it – they can figure it out. A Linux desktop, for most users, should be “like Windows.” Maybe not to the extent Lycoris takes it, but certainly like Gnome and KDE design wise. I LOVE the screenshots of Enlightenment 0.17 – they’re different, but, in some ways, the same general idea. I think there is a general human feeling to lining up your frequently used app shortcuts (taskbar, panel, quick launch…whatever you want to call it). Gnome 2 is gorgeous in my book. I can’t wait for Ximian to adapt it into Red Carpet.
Actually, the KDE GUI seems to remind me more of MacOS more than anything else. Right down to the frame-based approach of KWord.
http://www.sunshineinabag.co.uk
get from there the metathemes (I suggest the mozilla-2, but adjust the gtk theme to be used on gtk-2 too) and have fun.
So now I’ll wait for a distro to come with both KDE 3 and Gnome 2 pre-installed, so I can try them both at the same time
I am rather looking forward to this, as these things only seem to get better with time, and anything has to be an improvement over Gnome 1.4 and the POS Nautilus
If you want you try Gnome 2 and KDE 3.1 try garnome. It is really simple. Plus it can be as incapulated as you want for an easy uninstall.
if you want to try gnome 2 from cvs or tarballs (official gnome 2.0.0 tarballs) then grab
CVSGNOME
http://www.fh-wilhelmshaven.de/~akcaagaa/
for further instructions read inside the file.
And what is the reason you posted this, when it can already be found on our story? You obviously did not even read the story.
oh.. its in the story ?.. heheh i am only going around and post the link thats all 🙂 lemme read it then
as anyone noticed that on gnome.org uses a new logo? One with a metalic background, and a glowing effect (like Aqua)? I really like the new logo, especially the foot…
Besides, bleh, I just completed downloading RC2 a couple of days ago..
Does anyone know how well the Gnome VFS works?
I’m not sure whether this is VFS but Nautilus has had FTP and WebDAV support for a while now with view/edit/save.
I have had no problems with it. It doesn’t yet implement some of the nicer features of WebDAV.
This one made me laugh:
http://vhost.dulug.duke.edu/~louie/screenshots/kenneth-gnomemeeting…
😉
Aaron, are you trying to say that you find that there is a lack of GTK+ applications? Personally, i much prefer GTK+ to Qt for speed reasons, so all (with the exception of kmerlin) the X11 applications i run are GTK ones. If you need help on finding apps you need, feel free to give a shout, i’ll give ya a hand.
Actually, I think he meant that GNOME 1.x wasn’t as integrated as KDE.
Also, about speed, the reason why Qt applications are slow is that the object linking from GNU sucks. This is a plaugue for all C++ apps. If you download unoptimized object-prelink packages of your Qt apps, you could notice significant increase in performance, unless you are using a very old computer (which if you are, you better forget using KDE or any QT apps… or GTK+ apps and GNOME). I have done so about a year or so ago and I found all my QT apps much faster than my GTK+ apps.
Besides, I hate kmerlin – it crashes a lot. Thankfully, all of my MSN friends started using ICQ 😀
Oh, and for my OT message above, I think I wouldn’t download the sources now, and get Ximian’s version when it comes out. Supposedly, accroading to my friend, I would be impress more….
Didn’t GW tell you? Gnome is a terrorist cell. Our friend here is obviously on drugs and that means ALLLLL_KIIIII_DUH gets mula from Yo and since he has a “connection” to gnome… Man I guess that mean GW also supports terrOr with previous snort_a_thons. Now, about this time you must be wondering if I’M on drugs.. well what are gonna do? Call the FBI?
Well sorry for slashdotting this forum. Or does that mean crashing it? I never can remember…
They come for the gnomes in the mourning and the… um.. freaky… green.. dragon thingys… ugghh! Nevermind…
Maybe you were using an old version of kmerlin, but i have yet to see it crash on this box, i have yet to see many apps crash. I dont quite understand what you mean by downloading unoptimized object-prelink packages , i get whatever apt-get throws my way. I’m quite limited to where i can get my binaries as this is an Alpha. I’d be very interested in knowing how to speed up Qt apps though, i find koffice to be quite nice feature-wise, my sister loves it (the computer illiterate linux user (and now admin of her own box)).
Anyone knows about how to install Metacity? I just finished compiling Gnome2 and it only loads Sawfish as wm. How one changes the window manager to Metacity, as there is no control panel to do so now?
killall sawfish ; metacity &
However I’m not sure how to make it permanent… I would like to know this also.
Thanks, you just need to save the session and it will remember Metacity after that. Any URLs to download themes for Metacity?
Also, are the Sawfish themes of 0.3x compatible with the new Gnome2 sawfish?
This one made me laugh:
http://vhost.dulug.duke.edu/~louie/screenshots/kenneth-gnomemeeting…
😉
Maybe you were laughing at the chat content which I don’t understand.
Or maybe it is the Think Different! one.. which was funny 🙂
Maybe you were using an old version of kmerlin, but i have yet to see it crash on this box, i have yet to see many apps crash. I dont quite understand what you mean by downloading unoptimized object-prelink packages , i get whatever apt-get throws my way. I’m quite limited to where i can get my binaries as this is an Alpha. I’d be very interested in knowing how to speed up Qt apps though, i find koffice to be quite nice feature-wise, my sister loves it (the computer illiterate linux user (and now admin of her own box)).
I don’t really know of any obj. prelink debs for Qt apps.
But if you were to compile any Qt apps, make sure you compile it with obj. prelinking hack. Add in GCC 3.1 optimizations, you get really fast Qt apps. Then you compare them with the unoptimized non-obj-prelink apps, the latter would look so slow. There is really a significant difference. I think you better ask someone that knows Debian for help (#kdeusers on irc.openprojects.net is pretty good).
About kmerlin, I admit, the last version I have used is 1.0 (well, it is 1.2 now…) But then I have no MSN friends anymore, they all use ICQ and prefer it 🙂
I’ve yet to find anything even vaguely resembling a difinitive archive of themes for Metacity, but I have found a couple places with some tarballs. E.g.:
http://www.lucidus.uklinux.net/metacity/ (probably the best)
http://people.nl.linux.org/~jorn/Files/Themes/Metacity/
TigertCrack is probably my favorite. Themeing within Metacity is remarkably straightforward, since it’s all just stored in a easy to read/modify XML file; some friends and I spent an afternoon at work tweaking our themes (naive management! =). I certainly feel that XML is a far more logical format to store themes than a LISP dialect, but that’s a whole other story….
The thing that irritates me to no end in Metacity is the minimizing animation. How do turn it off?
Oh and you might want to try xfwm4 as a window manager. I find it even quicker than Metacity.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xfce/
Guys, where do I get the gnome-audio package? It seems that none of the .wavs are installed…
BTW, now that I installed Gnome2, Galeon stopped working, is complaining about GConf…
This thing is still beta. I had 3 more app/preference panel crashes in less than 1 hour.
I think it said in the install notes that some gnome 1.x apps require gnome 1 parts.
As for crashes, I have never had a single one and I have not even used the final. But unless someone does some actual tests I doubt anyones statements as to the stability of anything.
“”Like Windows” is generally viewed by the ‘geek community’ (osnews, slashdot, kuro5hin readers) as a bad thing. Strangely, I
think the Windows UI is pretty decent. That’s why so many people use
it – they can figure it out. ”
That really is not why so many people use Windows.
Agreed, Cox get the square, or maybe the hole.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist I just couldn’t.
Again, sorry,
Sorry.
It seems to not have any official website. Any URLs maybe? I would probably download mine after GNOME 2.0 matures a little and when I get ADSL…
Just use KDE and get it over with.
For the people that don’t want to deal with the hassle of compiling everything yourself, and are running debian sid:
add these to your sources.list
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian ../project/experimental main
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
And then you can just install the gnome2 packages you want.
do an apt-cache search GNOME2 or a
apt-cache showpkg libgtk2.0-0 to show the packages which depend on it.
I have to say, I’ve been running this for a bit more than a month, and I’m really impressed.
* Gnome2 looks much less messy than Gnome1 or KDE3
* It has anti-aliasing too (I use ‘export GDK_USE_XFT=”1″‘ but I’m not sure it’s still necessary)
* I can run it on my 166mhz/64MB ram laptop, I believe it takes something like 32 megs. I’m not running Nautilus2 on there for footprint and screen estate reasons.
* Nautilus2 is soooo much faster (not on the laptop of course). Eog2 rocks too.
* It’s a lot more polished in general. The settings are simplified too. Even so, you can still tweak advanced options using gconf-editor for instance.
All in all I’m really happy. I don’t like the idea of using ugly glib based software, but it works, and it looks good.
Some bad points:
* there’s some cosmetic errors when I use Xinerama. Might be this user’ stupidity/ignorance.
* Galeon, Evolution and Abiword aren’t ported to Gnome2 yet. Don’t know about Gnumeric’s and Gabber’s status.
* Some applets are gone, and some are a bit buggy. That said, the others improved a lot.
* Still lot of issues with stability – but considering I’m running Debian unstable+experimental+… this is hardly surprising and will get worked out eventually.
* Can’t use thesame font/size in gnome-terminal2 like i did in 1. Big issue for me since I’m using pretty high resolution.
* No gstreamer yet. I guess that’s for the next (2.2?) release, but it would’ve been cool to have now.
Like I said, I’m happy. I always liked the GTK apps way more
than their KDE counterparts (even though I agree technically the C++ way makes a lot more sense for a GUI). Galeon, Gnumeric, Evolution, Abiword, … they all just plain rock, and I never found Konq, KWord, … to be all that good, personally. (probably because I got used to the ‘gnome’ look and feel early on)
I guess Gnome2+ will tide me over until there’s a nice GUI available based on fresco.
As I’ve said, I don’t use a full desktop. Just don’t need it. However, in some ways, I prefer GNOME and others KDE. One thing I’ve preferred in KDE is that you can have the menubars at the top, MacOS style. Personally, I love this, and on my 1024×768 screen, especially, considering the space it saves per window.
Is there any way to do this in GNOME 1.4? 2.0? You’d think it was very possible, considering that menus can be ripped off in GNOME- why can’t there be a panel-type that just automagically rips off menus and puts them inside it?
Does this option exist in GNOME, am I missing something?
> Actually, I think he meant that GNOME 1.x wasn’t as
> integrated as KDE.
rajan hit the nail on the head. there are many GTK+ apps, yes. but the qualitative difference between using a GNOME 1.4 and a KDE 2 desktop is big. In KDE, everything works together to about the extent that Windows does (that’s not a diss, just a benchmarks). Perhaps in KDE3 (not used it) or 4, everything will work together as well as it does in Mac OS 9.
It’s not that I have a problem with all desktops. As soon as GNUstep is a bit more towards finished, I can see that working together as well as NeXTSTEP (duh
) or MacOS. Or perhaps some later revision of KDE or GNOME. But until then, it’s largely just a group of bundled apps. Perhaps that is all the maintainers look at their desktops- I certainly hope not. A desktop should worktogether, be integrated so that it helps me do my work faster. Otherwise, the desktop provides me nothing novel.
But I’m definately willing to give both GNOME 2 and KDE3 a try. Where can I get PowerPC debs for them?
It’s funny. Since I switched to Debian from RedHat, I’m so much less inclined to compile my own packages. The only app I’ve installed from a tarball is Opera. I don’t want to break the lovely setup Debian has provided for me. It’s too bad dpkg can’t just analyze an install script and make it appear as an uninstallable package.
That’s why all you have to do is make sure you will give it a subdir on your ~/ or on /opt/gnome2 as PREFIXDIR, and not anywhere outside your $HOME or /opt. Type “world stable” when you are asked to, and it will do everything for you.
🙂 ok I know this is about compiling source code and was just kidding. But is there anything like visual C++ on linux?
about galeon you should :
– get galeon2 from the cvs
or:
– compile the older one with the gconf schema support disabled
I hope it helps
btw stay away from the panel and his configuration using nautilus, if has flaws and is known already
Lu_zero, how do I get sound on Gnome2? I just want sound for when login or logout, or when closing a window etc. I am talking about system sounds. Why there are not any coming with Gnome2?
I have sounds
maybe because of gnome-audio ebuild still merged (that is the same of the 1.4)
check that is enabled and that esd is running
there is a capplet for that
preferences:/// -> sounds
Enable sound server startup
Sounds for events
check the events shelf
Gentoo officially has Gnome 2 in portage and ready to emerge, now aren’t you glad you run gentoo linux
I do not have sounds. It says that there are no such audio .wav files found where they supposed to be. I have the sound servers up. It seems that I do not have the actual sound files!
emerge gnome-audio
>emerge gnome-audio
I am on Mandrake right now, for Gods sake…
I need a real solution for Mandrake, not Gentoo’s tricks.
Compile GNOME 2.0? It’s PITA….
What do you mean “Gentoo’s tricks”?
I think she’s just bitter and jealous of the snazziness of Gentoo, when she made the mistake of installing Mandrake. Heh.
export WINDOW_MANAGER=metacity
I HAVE Gentoo installed. I wrote a review about it months ago. Get a clue.
Thing is, I compiled Gnome 2 on my Mandrake partition yesterday, it took 6 hours. I would not try the same on Gentoo any time soon now. I have also Gnome 2 on my other Red Hat partition, but it is a beta there.
Eugenia, I was just wondering why do you have gentoo, red hat, and mandrake all installed at once?
For the same reason I also have Lycoris and SuSE. 🙂
I need to know whats up with all these distros, so I wont be talking trash on osnews when we are on their subjects… In other words, it is ‘my job’ to do so.
You get paid for this, nice.
No, I do not get paid for this. Don’t you see that the ‘my job’ is in quotes?
OSNews is just my hobby, I do not receive money at all. Even the advertising is handled by David, who owns OSNews, not by me.
Would be cool if you did though huh
urpmi gnome-audio
^^
But I’m definately willing to give both GNOME 2 and KDE3 a try. Where can I get PowerPC debs for them?
Well, KDE 3.0 is like KDE 2.0 on steriods, with some UI enhancement (mainly because of QT3) and much more customizable. GNOME 2.0 is most a developer’s release which is under featured and very much uncustomizable. It is in fact so different from GNOME 1, even the logo had change, LOL.
Plus, you can’t get KDE debs for Debian right now… don’t ask me why, they don’t exist 🙂 KDE 3.1 is coming out by end of this year, GNOME 2.2 might come out by end of this century… both of which would be much better UI wise and ease of use 🙂