GnomeFiles.org (OSNews’ sister site & GTK+ software repository) is celebrating 1000 applications added to its database. Since GnomeFiles’ launch 1.5 years ago the site grew enormously and it now serves more than 22,000 web pages per day on average and it includes a recently improved version for mobile browsers (optimized for PDAs & smartphones, plain phones should be using its WAP version).
1000 Applications at GnomeFiles.org
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
congratulations for both, the site’s team, gnome’s crew, and all developers of applications on GnomeFiles!
I love the layout and everything else about GnomeFiles.org very happy it is around!
Yep it’s a great resource for gnome users and easy to use
.
Why doesn’t http://www.kde-apps.org/ get a piece of the index page the way gnomefiles does?
Because GnomeFiles is part of OSNews LLC. It’s our own site, kde-apps and freshmeat and versiontracker and bebits and anything else, are simply not.
“GnomeFiles is a trademark of OSNews LLC.”
That’s why.
And perfectly okay
It’s not a secret, you know
Maybe adding a little “hosted sites” header on the sidebar would prevent this question from being asked over and over?
kde-apps.org counts over 3000 Kde Apps
Congratulations!
I know this will upset people, but just because there’s 1000 apps registered in the database doesn’t mean that the applications in question are of any real value, if any value at all.
A more valid question is “How many applications that work as advertised and aren’t more than ‘Hello World’ introductions to programming are there?”
you so mean but so true…….
Most of them actually.
Bygfoot Football Manager is one of them. A real good project btw
(not saying this because I’m doing the danish translation… oh no.. not at all :p )
LOL, I think most applications work, although they might be primal IMO, but some people find these applications fantastic, for instance the GIMP has 9/10! I guess there are people out there who vote before using the applications, can’t be!
Try these applications, and then we talk.
I’d say Gimp is a perfect 10, are you implying it’s not good?
It’s like … the quintessential desktop linux application…
I’d say Gimp is a perfect 10, are you implying it’s not good?
It’s like … the quintessential desktop linux application…
I would give Gimp 0.1. It’s a pure crap, especially with its jagged fonts ann ugly icons. I have never been able to get used to it over the years. Gimp is out, Photoshop CS2 rocks!
Obviously you haven’t used the gimp since the start of the 2.x series if you’re complaining about jagged fonts and ugly icons. Heck theres even Gimpshop if you just can’t learn a new interface. I think Inkscape and the Gimp are a killer combo for desktop art.
The only thing the gimp still lacks is better cmyk support and higher color counts. I suppose this rules it out as a serious tool for professionals, but I think some of the limitations it has are due to software patents.
I rather like gnomefiles, reminds of azaka/kamidake. I suppose thats no surprise though.
I’m using Gimp even on windows. It’s a really good app
It was a much-needed site for the Gnome community. My favourite feature is the RSS feed. I’ve discovered quite a few Gnome apps that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
It would be nice a seccion to know what GTK+ apps are cross platform (can run on Windows too), I think something like that is missing. I know the application inform you if is cross platform or not but i’d like a simplier way to find out wich one can run on Windows too.
Just a sugestion.
This is NOT missing. Windows and SkyOS native GTK+ applications are welcome at GnomeFiles. As long there is a GTK+ dependency on an app, these apps are elligible to be posted there, and many people already have done so. Look at Klavaro for example: http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=1135
It’s up to the developer to simply enter a download url for a specific package format or binary format or sources.
There won’t be a special “section” though, but just a specific download URL entry (any developer has 3 download-form entries to fill up if he/she desires to).
I know, but Im a GTK apps user but I use them mostly on Windows (inkscape, GNUMERIC, GIMP, Abiword, GAIM, etc..)
I use all those apps. on my Windows box, so Im not interested on those GTK+ apps that are not cross platform or cannot run on Windows, I was only sugesting an easier way to find those apps.
Most large and mature apps are going to be ported… You’ll just have to browse I think.
Although, a platform availability listing might be nice. But it’d probably involve a lot of coding for Eugenia. Ya know, sort of like the trove on SF, except not crappy.
Gnomefiles.org is awesome. It has become a great resource and they’ve done an outstanding job. Keep it up, guys!
GNOME files is a great resource, but there are a few little things I would like changed on the site. A preview image and threaded comments a la KDE-apps style. It might also be nice to let people login when leaving comments so that you can look a a specific user’s comment history (it makes it easier to see if a user is just being helpfully critical, or if he bashes everyones apps.
The rss feed is great, but I’m not sure of the usefulness of it being mobile browser accessible. I would assume that you would probably want to go there with the PC your’re looking to install the software on. It’s kind of like I’ve never tried checking out KDE-Look on my cellphone since I do not intend to install the crystal icon set on there.
Congrats on your 1,000th app.
> A preview image
We already have icon URLs that are broken (most icons are hosted off our servers), it would be even more unprofessional having pages with broken images (like many pages on Freshmeat have). No, we can’t host the images ourselves, neither screenshots fit the current design layout.
GnomeFiles includes a “Screenshot” link, users curious about an app, can simply click the link and go see the pictures there. I am not going to implement anything more about it on gnomefiles.
>threaded comments a la KDE-apps style.
This will mean a complete rewrite of the commenting and voting and back-end developer’s system, like it happened on osnews. I don’t plan to do this, I like to keep things simple (the current osnews system is great but also mind-boggling for the maintainers of this site). Also, I can’t reuse code from the new OSNews system either, as that code belongs to Adam now (the gnomefiles code belongs to me, but the service itself belongs to OSNews LLC). Let’s keep things simple.
>I’m not sure of the usefulness of it being mobile browser accessible
For 99% of the gnomefiles readers, there’s not much usefulness indeed. I mostly wrote it for myself as I am a known gadget freak and also as a ‘live sample’ for the http://www.MoBits.com purposes.
Eugenia,
Thanks for the rapid response, and I can relate to the gadget freak mentality. My newest site (not quite complete yet, so I won’t post it) is mobile browser friendly (but I do it with css sheets instead of an .htaccess file like OS News and presumably GNOME files).
OSNews and GnomeFiles don’t use a .htaccess file for mobility. We have a *unique* database of 120+ mobile user agents (no one else has it, our research took more than a year to gather the data) and we serve on-the-fly either the full or the mobile version, depending on the user agent. Yes, you can fool the engine by changing your user agent to a mobile one, but that’s stuff that only geeks do, and as these are fewer than 0,001% of the internet population, so we don’t really worry about it.
Why not follow the open source philosophy and make your database available for the benefit of other site designers? That way, hopefully, everyone gains from more accessible sites on mobile devices.
I’m fully behind you here Eugenia. On both accounts:
1.) Screenshots on the page are just ugly and eat space. It’s nice to have a link, that way you can link to a page of screenshots, or cooler yet a swf.
2.) Threaded comments would suck. It’s not a development forum, it’s more like a feature request spot for people. Threading would just be wasted on it. The active projects seem to get no more than a few posts a day, and they’re always along one line of discussion…
Being able to view projects according to “Software categories”, “most popular”, and “best rated” are great for users. It also worked pretty darn good for bebits because most of the apps there were C++ apps.
But I think that a major improvement to GnomeFiles would be to make it more developer-friendly. I think prospective contributors visiting the site should be able to sort the projects there based on development language used and/or license.
This way, if I’m looking for a GnomeFiles project to contribute to, and if I like using, say, Perl, and only want to work on, say, an LGPL or GPL project, I should be able to search GnomeFiles on that criteria and get a definitive listing of the subset of projects listed there.
It might then be beneficial if those search results were then displayed according to “software category” — but only after I’ve already weeded-out the ones I’m pretty sure I don’t want to work on anyway.
I’d like to see GnomeFiles come full-circle. It’s there for the users. Bring it there for the devs too.
>should be able to sort the projects there based on development language
I don’t see the reason for this. Most modern distros come with pygtk, wxWidgets (gtk-dependant) and gtkmm pre-installed already. SuSE comes with Mono as well. The rest of the bindings have very few apps, so it will appeal to very few users.
>used and/or license.
99% of the apps there are GPL, so that would be a waste of my time.
Eugenia, he said later on so that he could select languages for purposes of contribution, not use.
Although GnomeFiles is an interesting project, and is useful for those who use GTK apps, the web site is plain ugly, and the applications are crappy software for most of them.
Gnome is ugly, icons are ugly, the DE is unstable too, and it just won’t beat KDE.
Now, lemme see under “Best rated”:
The Gimp 9.22
Frankly, is this serious?
Gnomefiles has proved to be the best place to debut my software…
On sourceforge I have to fight through a 15 minute process to post files (it takes me that long to dig it up in the docs). And, to boot, anyone who wants to find the project has to deal with the worlds weakest search engine (yahoo) and about 55 dead projects in the front of the listing.
Freshmeat has proved to be very nice as well.
But on gnomefiles I can REALLY easily post new versions.
Thanks for the awesome website and community!
> > should be able to sort the projects there based on
> > development language
>
> I don’t see the reason for this. Most modern distros
> come with pygtk, wxWidgets (gtk-dependant) and gtkmm
> pre-installed already.
From a *user’s* perspective you are right — who cares what language it’s written in, you just want to run the thing, and you’ve very likely already got the required libs installed.
But for *devs* out there who use Gnome and who also want to find a somewhat-Gnome-related project to contribute to, it would seem to be useful to be able to search on programming language used.
Consider this: you’re a student taking a class in $language_x. As extra-credit, or as a class project, you’d like to hop on over to GnomeFiles, quickly find all the projects there written in $language_x, choose one of those, and submit a patch, or add a feature, or somesuch.
It’s also interesting (though I’m not sure how useful it is) to be able to see trends in which languages are being used for Gnome-related projects.
> 99% of the apps there are GPL, so that would be a
> waste of my time.
Understood.
How about just adding an advanced search page?
You could have:
– a text field box, just like on the front page,
– checkboxes for languages you’re interested in,
– checkboxes for licenses you’re interested in (though, as you say, this one isn’t so useful, but it should be trivial to implement, and *might* be useful to someone)
– a “last updated” combo box (i.e. “only show me software that’s been updated in the last n months/years”)
and then just use those three options to prune down the results you’d otherwise have gotten if you’d just the “simple” search in the first place. (Dunno how you’ve implemented your “simple” search, so I’m just guessing how you’d do it.)
Only devs would likely be interested in this “advanced search” page, so it doesn’t need to be fancy.
Please consider it.
>”what about the developers who want to learn about percentages of languages…”
Gnomefiles is primarily a site for users, not developers. Developers are needed there to post apps and update them, answer users’ questions and learn about problems of their software etc. But the site’s central element is the USER, not the developer. The Gnome mailing lists are better suited for developers. The Gnomefiles backend tries to help develeopers as much as possible to make it easy for them to post new apps/updates, but the FRONT-END is all about the user.
>- checkboxes for languages you’re interested in,
It’s just not possible. The only field that has such information is the “dependency” database field, which is a free-form field. Someone might write there “gtk-sharp” and someone else “gtk#” and someone else “mono”. As you can understand, because this has been always a free-form field, it’s impossible to search *reliably* on it.
>- a “last updated” combo box (i.e. “only show me software that’s been updated in the last n months/years”)
I see no reason for that. You will waste the server’s cpu time for nothing. This one is good enough for most people (last 8-12 days, depending on how busy releases are): http://www.gnomefiles.org/latest.php
>- checkboxes for languages you’re interested in,
And here is what a developer wrote in the “dependencies” form field a few minutes ago: “See banshee Wiki for distribution-specific packages and/or installation instructions.” As you can understand, there is no way I can create a RELIABLE search function for this. Neither is really needed IMHO.
> >- checkboxes for languages you’re interested in,
>
> It’s just not possible. The only field that has such
> information is the “dependency” database field, which
> is a free-form field. [snip] As you can understand,
> because this has been always a free-form field, it’s
> impossible to search *reliably* on it.
Aye, there’s the rub.
Well, thank you anyway. The “simple search” will do fine.
BTW, minor nit — you wrote:
>”what about the developers who want to learn about percentages of languages…”
but that’s not a quote of what I originally wrote, which was:
“It’s also interesting (though I’m not sure how useful it is) to be able to see trends in which languages are being used for Gnome-related projects.”
>but that’s not a quote of what I originally wrote
That’s because I was replying on your second reply and I didn’t have readily available the exact quote on the ‘reply screen’ I was in, quote that was on your first reply. The browser I use right now doesn’t support tabs, and I got lazy to open a new window and find your first comment back.
>to be able to see trends in which languages are being used for Gnome-related projects.”
Well, if that’s only what you need to know, it’s easy: GTK+ plain apps are about 50-60% of the whole. PyGTK has about 25%, the rest 15+% is for all the rest of the bindings/wrappers. I follow closely Gnome apps and their trends, from all the third party bindings, PyGTK is the strongest.
Your site is a blessing to GTK+ and GNOME developers whose works desperately needs to be exhibited, but who don’t have the celebrity status so nobody takes them seriously.
I’m glad you had the foresight to see this project through. And I doubt people will really appreciate its effect until a few years when it becomes the de facto repository for all GTK+ and GNOME applications as well as a resource pool for GTK+ and GNOME developers.
gnomefiles not only represents a test bed for technology that may someday get into GNOME, it also provides a way for users and developers to communicate at a level that is open and uncompromising (Sorry, Bugzilla sucks). You are building an ecosystem of developers, users and ideas. Thus, I consider gnomefiles to be one of the most influencial projects for the future of GTK+ and GNOME. I commend your efforts.
Thanks to you, one no longer needs to be a part on an elite click to show off ones GTK+ and GNOME applications. Good job, and thank you for a great project.
I think that gnomefiles should encourage the use of autopackage ( http://www.autopackage.org ) as a way to deliver software to the users. The main reason people download a application for their linux-box from gnomefiles is that they don’t have that application packaged in their distribution. Encouraging developers to deliver software on a standard non distro-specific way would be a great thing for linux users. I propose having this links for software download: Source Code, Autopackage, Windows Binay and Other hardcoded so we can search software depending on the packaging format too.
I think that gnomefiles should encourage the use of autopackage
How would you imagine such an encouragement could look like?
By redesigning the download section for a application so that can include links to the formats : Source, Autopackage, Windows Binary and Other Format. When a user looks at the application info page on gnomefiles he should see every format that that application is deployed, if the developer did’t submit a link to one of those formats the icon(?) associeted with that format should be grayed.
Also it wold be great for the user to search the applpication database depending on the package format (Source, Autopackage, Windows Binary and Other Format).
Maybe the icon to the autopackage format shoul be called linux-binary or something less confusing to the user.
There should also be a how-to on installing autopacakages somewere on the site. These are some of the ways that i could think of for now, should be many others too.
PS: Eugenia, if you like the ideea but don’t have time for coding, i would be more that happy to help.
This sounds useful, I think freshmeat.net does this.
But I’d rather let it be named autopackage download, it is already starting to be a name.
linux-binary is too generic
Why are many of the applications listed under “most popular” anything but Gnome apps?
You can’t say that NeroLinux, MPlayer, Nvu, VMWare, Real Player,… are Gnome apps. Aren’t there any popular Gnome apps besides gnome-menu-editor and things like that?
>Why are many of the applications listed under “most popular” anything but Gnome apps?
If you had taken the time to read about what GnomeFiles is, you would see that it is not a Gnome software repository, it’s a GTK+ one. All the apps you mentioned, are all *GTK apps*. We used the word “gnomefiles” because it flies better with people.
As for AUTOPACKAGE, no. Gnomefiles.org won’t endorse any package format. Developers are free to link the 3 download infos to any kind of packages they want though, including autopackages. It’s up to them.
All the apps you mentioned, are all *GTK apps*.
Actually it seems to be apps that can have a GTK GUI as one if their UI options.
So applications that have several possible GUIs, like Licq can register as well.
>> I think that gnomefiles should encourage the use of autopackage
> How would you imagine such an encouragement could look like?
He would like to force _everybody_ to have the first Linux download option an autopackage format. He uses “encourage” as an euphemism for “force the damn thing down everyones throat”. (Certanly because he is sure linux _NEEDS_ (desperately) only one package format.)
Thats why he also wants to make Autopackage the de facto “Linux binary”, and all other package formats to be deported to “other (read: irrelevant) formats”.
I’m so sick of these “linux needs dumbing down, unification, and a strong, high-handed leadership” morons, popping up annoyingly every time a articly sounds suitable to spread their dictatorial agenda.
I’ve got so many Apps in my GNU/Linux systems of various distribution that I have to admit I couldn’t have used more than a small subset of Applications.
What I really need is an Application Managament Application. I need one App which automatically gives me the best tool for the job, in such a way that it is not closed set of ideas. ie. If I add a new App, somehow, my App Management App will understand (Meta-Action-Data?) what that App can do and how it goes about doing it and tell me next time if this new App is now a better App for the job that I want done.
Well, thats the end of my semi-vague idea.
Also it wold be great for the user to search the applpication database depending on the package format (Source, Autopackage, Windows Binary and Other Format).
The trouble here is that GnomeFiles is more of a place to browse — to give yourself a general idea of what’s out there. Many of the projects listed there have their own web sites which describe in detail all sorts of details about the project. You only want the more stable details of a given project listed on GnomeFiles (like the license used, the implementation language, and the names of the developers). What sort of binary packages are available can change at any time, and that sort of info is at the project website — no sense in duplicating it on GnomeFiles giving yourself the job of keeping that info syncronized with what’s on the project’s website.
I like GnomeFiles.org. I really do. It’s a really nice listing of what’s available for Gnome.
However, the downloads of software listing is, by and large, less than useless.
I’ve tried downloading several titles, and most are source packages with config and make files. In about 90% of the cases, I’ve been forced into a tinkering / dependency nightmare, ending in ulimate frustration, and my time completely wasted.
In these cases, I typically don’t have the right version of autoconfigure, the right version of GTK+, the right version of make or automake, the right version glibc, the right version of gcc, the right version of gktmm, the right verion of python, or the right version of this, that, and the other thing. After about an hour of downloading, installing, tinkering, fiddling, and still no successful installation of the program I want to try, I just give up.
I have no problem with doing the drill of …
su
./configure
make
make-install
… so long as I don’t have to download/upgrade/tinker too much in order to get a successful configure, make, and finally make-install.
And I’ve done these things with Fedora, Mandrake, Ubuntu, and Mepis, and usually pretty current versions.
Thus, I strongly suggest that all listing on GnomeFiles should be RPMs or DEBs, and that the whole site should be yum and apt repositories (with instructions on how to add the repo to one’s yum.conf or sources.list). Alternately (or in addition), everything could be an Autopackage. Then any developer(s)/project who want to list their software on GnomeFiles can put it up as RPM/yum or DEB/apt, or Autopackage.
This way users could easily try out the stuff, with little or no headaches.
Sure, it’s easy for developers to simply put up a source package with config and make files, then let the user worry about conforming to the source. But if the devs want people to try/use their stuff, they really, actually do need to put in the extra effort of packaging their software as RPMs or DEBs or Autopackage, into a dependancy resolving repo.
This is not meant as a criticism of the devs, particuraly since many are developing the software for free, as a hobby (for which we all owe them gratitude). But if a dev is posting their software on GnomeFiles, it probably means that they want people to actually use their software. So it makes sense for them to put in the extra effort of proper packaging, so that end users don’t have to jump through extra hoops.
Just a teensy little suggestion. 🙂
>Thus, I strongly suggest that all listing on GnomeFiles should be RPMs >or DEBs, and that the whole site should be yum and apt repositories
I am sorry, but this will never happen. Gnomefiles is not a repository for any package technology or specific distro. The MAIN package format for Unix is the source code (if the app is OSS) and for Windows a simple binary. Then, if the developers want to include autopackages, rpms, debs, ebuilds or whatever else, they are free to do so. But it’s not a requirement.
Another point is that MOST of the people who read gnomefiles, don’t use the included packages/sources. They simply visit the page, check out what’s new, and then they resort to their distro’s package management repositories to see if the new version made it in as of yet. This is why in 1.5 years there have been “only” 350,000 downloads from that site, while according to its pageviews/per-day, if that was a Mac or Windows repository we would be counting in millions. Linux is so diverse, that no software repository site can please everyone. This is why we resort to the basic package: the sources for OSS, a binary for Windows. This won’t change.
Fair enough! 🙂
Just so you know, the G is silent, so “Gnome” is supposed to sound like “nome.”
I feel compelled to educate you since several Linux dorks I encountered recently keep saying “Guh-nome,” which is ignorant and stupid. Since they are heavily into open source crap and the rest of the Linux hype, I figure a lot of you would also benefit from this lesson. Too many of you have a piss-poor command of the English language. Your lack of mental clarity probably contributes to your various Linux delusions.