http://www.osnews.com/story/6662/Looking_at_the_New_Gnome_2_6 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:04:13 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Very nice article. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That pretty much sums it up. Well done! I can't wait 'till FC2 is released so I can give it a spin.

Question for you: what GTK theme is that in the screenshots? Very pretty! Thu, 08 Apr 2004 19:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Disabled menu items, like Paste, should not show. It makes the menu longer than they should be. And the stretch icon menu items should disappear. It's un-needed fluff.

Add to Music Library-type menu items should not exist. Only exceptions are folder/file operations like anti-virus scanning, compression and other similar types of non-specific file type activity. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 19:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Is in XFCE CVS. It uses the XFCE GTK engine. what you really need is the gtkrc file, which is CVS. You can download that using the web interface assuming you have the theme engine already. I can't remember what is called exactly, but just go through all the gtkrc's they have and you will find it.

Just to add, the file chooser shots shown were not using gnomevfs, just plain old gtk+. If you select the gnomevfs (using gconf) you get more location like the floppy drive an any locations in fstab appearing in the default bookmarks list. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I use FC1 & Slackware 9.1 after FC2 test 2 .I think Dropline-Gnome is were I,d like to see 2.6 Thu, 08 Apr 2004 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think a many people actually strech some icons which the use a lot so that they are bigger and thus easier to hit targets. That is actually a good thing.

The Music Library thing is added by rhythmbox. Its not part of the default anyway. I am sure it will be worked on once rhythmbox becomes a part of GD&DP.

I think removing things like Paste because there is nothing to paste is a wrong idea. It suggests that "copy...paste" does not work rather than suggesting that there is nothing in the copy...paste buffer to paste. IMO of course. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? now this is idiotic, that it didnt move in. what is this gnome-vfs supposed to do IF not being able to open files that lie on some server. if you do webdevelopment, you soon hit the borders of gnome's great HIG, and have to resort to the commandline to upload files, which sure is nice, but somehow throws away all the things you got a windowing system for. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Where can i see Evolution with the supposedly 'better look' in action (screenies)? Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? some screenshots here.

http://codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/evolution/ Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Nautilius has support for ftp. Just go to the menu and select "Connect to server". It is also documented in its help how to pass the user and password.

What it doesn't do is to ask you for the username and password. So, it is not nice to have that information showing in your lacation ;-) Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Maynard,

You just have to go open up nautilus-either mode, and select preferences...there is an option on the first tab(Views) labeled "show hidden and backup files"...Once this is chcked hidden files will appear..... Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? First, I'm using 2.6 and love it. Nautilus seems to crash a bit when doing using it to ftp or if you select it to view files as "audio" sometimes. My questions are: 1.) How do I get the keyring to work? How do I launch it? 2.) It was mentioned you can open a terminal from nautilus in an folder..but I don't see the option. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm afraid he means the file chooser not being able to open hidden files (not nautilus). It was fixed recently. Read here:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136077

Until the new version arrives, you can do what Karl suggests and drag and drop the file from nautilus to the application (that is, unless the app doesn't support drag and drop). Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "And the stretch icon menu items should disappear. It's un-needed fluff."

It comes in very handy when using SVG icons. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Why is the Nautilus "spatial" feature the recipient of so much attention? This is neither inovative nor radical.
Remembering folder position, size, display type (list, detail, thumbnail, etc.) are long-time features in the Mac (classic) and Windows (TM). Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ...for dropline to get it out. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 1) The article icon is cute! (I guess Eugenia did it)

2) Very good article!

3) About Gedit: I'm actually not happy with it. The reason isn't that it would be too simple or too slow, but the bulky MDI interface. Especially together with spatial Nautilus I _much_ prefer using a spatial text editor (yes, for programming and web development as much as writing simple texts). For this reason I wrote my own text editor (not hard with Mono and gtksourceview), but it would be very nice if GNOME would come with a quality spatial text editor. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Great article Maynard, I already learned 4 new things.....



Further footnote....

If you double mouseclick on the folder/directory you wish to open-the new folder/directory opens while closing the parent windows(ie. the where just clicked in)... Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >1) The article icon is cute! (I guess Eugenia did it)

Yup.
I was thinking of making each toe a heart of a different color, but that was a bit too much. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ugghhh. that is depressing-and although it has now been resolved in CVS, it looks like gedit still won't work with it-until gedit gets fixed....

almost enough to dampen my spirits.... Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Does anyone know if you can make panels with rounded edges. It was possible in 2.2 but I cant do it in 2.4 Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? man, each new release of gnome makes me more and more of a fan. i like the minimalistic approach, while still keeping a nice amount of eye-candy and functionality. im more then a little disappointed that totem and rhythmbox will have to wait for 2.8 though. I havnt used evolution in ages, but just reading up on dashboard gives me the incentive to start using it again. Gnome has quickly become one of my favorite OS UIs, and 2.6 appears to be yet another quantum leap forward for the DM Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? has nautilus got ACL support now ?
I really miss a filemanager that handles Posix ACL. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I also like the new icon. I feel there should be two icons. The heart for pro-Gnome articles and a broken heart or something else for anti-Gnome articles. Otherwise, it would make more sense as just a toe. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm currently running FC2 test2 on a Compaq laptop. Kernel 2.6.5. Very nice, snappy and the very first time I have my laptop acpi functional fully without doing my own custom kernel recompile. Gnome 2.6 has admittedly become my fav DE lately. Even my OS X friends look at it and say 'Wow, nice..' Multimedia is not a problem for me after installing xine, totem and a few others. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 21:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? BS I say to your comment about them not shipping pre-release software. Don't get me wrong, I love GNOME, and use it every day, but 2.6 has some very serious bugs that simply shouldn't have made it past the most cursory of testing. Not all these are just me either, or some quirk in my install, as they are known bugs and problems. The big ones that got me were:

- new keyboard applet to replace ACME is fine, but the keys set either don't work or give errors when trying to set them. This is apparently fixed in CVS
- nautilus's new and improved network ability has a big bug in it, giving an error message when you double click (sometimes) on a object on the desktop created by the 'connect to server' option. IE: ssh:// or ftp:// URIs. This is known and is being worked on apparently.
- documentation to do with navigating the network under nautilus in the help docs has not been updated from the 2.4 version, and this section is completely wrong (sec. 7.8.1 IIRC).

There were other things I noticed as well, but those were more things that would make sense to me, not "bugs" so much. These few were big ones that really surprised me that they made it through. I'm glad that the release went out on time (kinda) and everything, and I'm glad it's here for me to find bugs in, but..... Thu, 08 Apr 2004 22:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The new fileselector is crap, imo.

I mean, I know about CTRL+L 'trick', but why the HELL did they remove a place to type the location in *in the window itself*??

Massive, and stupid, step back in usability, imo.

Spatial Nautilius is annoying too.

I'm gonna give it another week, then if I'm still not happy it's back to XFCE. (Might give K** 3.2.1 a shot, maybe...) Thu, 08 Apr 2004 22:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi

Almost every .0 release it quickly followed by .1 release with the bugs fixed. it worked very well with kde 3.2.1. I think the version that distributions will actually ship will contain the fixes. This is the reason why you should wait for them to do it imho. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 22:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You can select files in the file chooser directly by typing -f. A little box comes out, and as you type, it selects the first file with the first latters matching. You can delete and correct as you go too. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 22:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > Disabled menu items, like Paste, should not show.

Yes, it does make the menu longer. However, it is based on a priciple of spacial stability in the user interface. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines explain it well (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/...). Basically, the idea is that menu items are always in the same place, regardless of what is enabled/disabled. Also, knowing that a menu item is on that menu, but currently disabled can sometimes be informative ("Save..." disabled because there have been no changes in the document).

> And the stretch icon menu items should disappear.

I think I agree. It's pretty cool, but I'm not sure the functionality is worth the added UI elements. It's also a bit odd that this can only be done on the desktop. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? documentation to do with navigating the network under nautilus in the help docs has not been updated from the 2.4 version, and this section is completely wrong (sec. 7.8.1 IIRC).

Yes, this is very unfortunate. For reasons that aren't all that interesting, parts of the User Guide are misleading or just incorrect, and there just wasn't much community review to catch these problems. This will be addressed for the 2.6.1 release.

If anybody is looking to get involved, the GNOME Documentation Project always welcomes new contributors. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, are you progressively making all these new icons for stories. If so, I think you are doing an impressive job, but don't have a cute overload. I think there has been at least 2 hearts in the last few days. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > You can select files in the file chooser directly by typing
> -f. A little box comes out, and as you type, it
> selects the first file with the first latters matching.

Unfortunately, things aren't so great when using this trick in a directory where several files start with the same letter. Typing that letter doesn't take you to the first file beginning with that letter as you would expect. For example in /usr/ I have a file called hxplay and hxplay.bak along with the usual directories. -f opens the magic box but pressing the "h" key highlights the rt-synth directory for some reason. Only untill I type "hx" does hxplay get highlighted.

Oh well... Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm running Gnome 2.6 on FreeBSD 5.2.1 and so far it's been great! Faster, better and better looking. Spacial Nautilus is so good it should be illegal (it's dangerously close to the file manager I always wanted)

Some blackspots remain though
- gedit is slooow : I use jedit instead and that is much faster despite having a jvm in between.
- fileroller is slow, in the time it takes to read a file I can decompress it from the command line
- what the hell is up with metacity window placement ? Sometimes it favors top-left, sometimes it's all over the place.

Despite this Gnome 2.6 is the best desktop available on any platform at the moment IMHO. Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Although I like Gnome, I really think they should work on making it look more appealing. I know people are going to say that computers are there to do work, but I have to look at it all day and if it looks nice it makes me feel better.

Some people find the KDE default icons too colorful, but them coupled with the new default widget set makes KDE look much better than default Gnome in my opinion. Gnome seems very gray and boring to me, and the icons have a very old fashioned looked to them. This scares new users away as they tend to think ugly looking applications are inferior. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 00:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Fileroller is not slow. its the way tar.gz and tar.bz2 archives are that makes it seem slow. when you decompress from the commandline, you just go through the file once as you decompress it. tar is a sequential format suited for Tape ARchives, hence the TAR. This means a tar.gz archive has to be read sequentially from the beginning to the end to see what files are there. I think zip files have a sort of index of the files, so to know what is in the zip file, you just look at the index.

Try open a zip file using file-roller. It should be near instantaneous on a fast machine. opening a tar.gz file is still limited by the hard-drive then. I just tried this with a 340MB zip file, and can confirm it. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 00:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I really can't agree with you about the icons, to me they look very nice and shiny. In fact I think that the icons are the visually most appealing part of a default GNOME installation and compete well with every competition.
The default controls and window borders are a different story though, I can see how people could find them too gray and boring (though it's still my favorite besides Bluecurve and I'm currently using it). It's not easy to create a theme that is both visually appealing and doesn't get annoying after using it for a longer time. I haven't seen such theme for Gtk yet other than the default and Bluecurve.
Something like Plastik would be nice, but even Plastik isn't perfect and tends to look old on me pretty soonish. If it would be easy to create something like Aqua or Luna, we'd have it already. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 01:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi

I can agree on aqua but luna looks like crap. plastik and industrial themes are far far better Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi,

A theme is much more than just window borders and window border colors. Luna is very nice in the buttons and eye candy. If you use it for a while, you will start to notice lots of little things it has that are very nice. Nearly every widget has a nice mouseover effect (that isn't garish) to indicate when something is selectable or not, tooltips fade in and out, etc. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It is intyeresting how some of the object oriented features being talked about were available in the Work Place Shell (IBM's OS/2) oh, 10 years ago.

I have always wondered if anyone would try to achieve something like that with a modern flair and look, and it looks like Gnome is trying.

Best of luck... Fri, 09 Apr 2004 03:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? They are also the scrollbars, which are garish, the big green arrow/acknowledgement button, which is garish, the combobox dropdown button, which is garish, and the orange tab highlight, which clashes. The window borders are just the icing on the scheisse cake.

Microsoft certainly has good artists. The Luna-Silver theme is actually pretty nice, and Watercolor (the Whistler theme) was beautiful. I don't know why they tied them up in the basement so they could ship Luna-Playskool as the default theme! Fri, 09 Apr 2004 03:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? try Ximian's Industrial from XD2.
It looks very nice.

(RPM : ximian-artwork) Fri, 09 Apr 2004 03:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, when I first saw that Watercolor theme, all I could think was "if XP is going to look like this, we have nothing to fear". Unfortunately it didn't look like this and Luna turned out to be rather nice.
I'd agree that Silver looks much slicker than the default, but just because it's using a different color scheme doesn't mean that the quality of the skin is worse.
Of course it doesn't even come close to Aqua, but I do think that Luna looks more professional and sharp than both Industrial and Plastik together. :| Fri, 09 Apr 2004 03:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm a .NET developer, i have used Linux since Redhat 6.2 and i love Linux alot but recently i want to try out MONO .NET for the development in Linux. Is Gnome 2.6 still not support with MONO, GTK# and all of its component?. If not what version it will be support? Fri, 09 Apr 2004 04:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As many years passed, both Linux and GNOME grew in size and complexity at niceness. And so it is that we have on our doorsteps, Linux 2.6, and GNOME 2.6.
This is pretty childish !!

Gnome was there only to compete with KDE.
Nobody who is using Linux since 1.9 would see GNOME as the "Linux Dsktop" !

There is GTK 2.4, with the much awaited file selector. Well, what about it? It brings a few new widgets of its own, plus the file selector. The flame wars should be over at last. Is there anything good about this file selector. Well, there is the good, the bad, and the beautiful.

KDE has a file selector since 1.? ! and it has been alwyas quite good !
So quit joking with this elementar desktop widget. GNOME just isn't up to date on widgets. In fact it seems like a wannabe. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 04:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? try Ximian's Industrial from XD2.
It looks very nice.

After 1 month you will get really tired of it. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 04:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Gnome 2.6 currently does not officialy support ANY of the bindings. There is a nice GNOME Platform Bindings release (http://www.gnome.org/start/2.5/bindings/), but that is also not officially supported by GNOME. This is a GNOME policy for now, and I dont think it will change anytime soon.

That dosn't mean that you shouldn't use the bindings. They are almost all of high quality and many are used in commercial enviorments (specifically the python, C#, and c++ ones, last I recall)

P.S. I am not officially connected to gnome or any of the bindings in any way. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 04:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Microsoft certainly has good artists. The Luna-Silver theme is actually pretty nice

For the money theybget paided I don't see any real difference ! GUI artistry is a must but the general accepted concept is a holy grail not yet discovered .... Fri, 09 Apr 2004 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? GNOME is getting worse and worse form version to version.. and the 'new features' it has, are pathetic: it remembers now size & position of nautilius windows! wow! amazing!
this new nautilius is so much crap imho, and if I wanna navigate to lets say /usr/local/some/very/deep/directory I have 20 windows opened.. l.a.m.e.

not menshioning the 'New And Amazing File Selector': they took out the location bar: gosh.. even stupid DOS programs had something like that.. are gnome uses to damn stupid to type or what did they think when they designed it????

Not mensioning swaping the order of buttons like OK | APPLAY | CANCEL, after all this years.. this is what made me stop using it from version 2.x..

GNOME is simply trying to rip off Mac: just take a look at at a new nautilus, file selector, swapped buttons, preferences (no ok, apply, cancel buttons just close)... is there a bell ringing?

It's simply Mac wannabe done in bad way... Fri, 09 Apr 2004 05:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I just wanted to extract some archive with path which already existed on my system.. I dragged and dropped it in new and amazing nautilus (sarkazm) from file-roller: it asked me: the directory /path/to/dir already exists do you want to overwrite it? well ofkoz I knew it existed.. so I pressed ok - and this stupid program wiped out everything under old location and put only content of the archive into it!!!! geezz this is not copying this is replacing!!!! thanks good god I had backup.. but imagine extracting using file-roller + new and amazing nautilus into something like /home/your_very_important data.. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 05:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Personally I don't like luna at all. And it makes windows xp rather slow and resource-eating...
but like everything, this is subjective.
(notice the comments? A:"Ñ is great" B:"No, it stinks. I like better option Z" C:"It's great but could be greater". The REAL thing is having options Z and Ñ, so everyone can choose what they like)
So don't think your opinion is universal, only MY opinion IS the TRUE ONE and ONLY.
(Whaahhahaha....) Fri, 09 Apr 2004 05:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? However the wipeout problem described two comments ago should be corrected.
The BEST copying/replacing/updating dialog I have ever seen (and behold, it is even better than windoze kommander's) is definitely the one OpenTracker (BeOS) had. I believe everything should have those options when replacing/copying/uptdating. Besides it is very well done. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 05:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I don't have the box to spare to play with a linux install but keep trying the live cd variants to see what the state of play is like. a 2.6/2.6 would be nice to play with. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 06:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? can't believe i posted but forgot to comment on the article. this is one of the better articles i've seen posted on osnews for quite some time. well done. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 06:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The only live distro that I know of that comes with Gnome by default is Gnoppix [http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gnoppix].

But devolpment is kinda slow, so I wouldnt be expecting 2.6 any time soon. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 06:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? DROPLINE GNOME 2.6.0 HAS JUST BEEN RELEASED!!!

http://www.dropline.net/gnome/ Fri, 09 Apr 2004 06:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Being a real long time linux and gnome user, I see only one complaint with the current direction of Gnome: the window manager. I understand that beginner users need something simple, but metacity is simply not powerful enough for the poweruser: lacks far too many features. I used sawmill first as a replacement (then it got renamed to sawfish , and recently, I got addicted to openbox3. It's got every little tricks and features I want, and completely configurable - love it.

Is there any chance to get openbox3 voted in as an alternative window manager to be *part of* the core gnome as well? Fri, 09 Apr 2004 07:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Is there any chance to get openbox3 voted in as an alternative window manager to be *part of* the core gnome as well?"

I hope not, not out of any meanspirited desire to see you not get your choice but because the overwhelming amount of choices was holding back Linux on the desktop for a wider audience. It also holds back the development of each DM if they have to account for multiple WMs.

No, let each DM come up with their blend of front and backend and work them out to the best they can. That way we might get lucky and desktop usage will flip over the magical breakeven point and other proprietry software development houses will start to develop and it can take off. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 07:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The only live distro that I know of that comes with Gnome by default is Gnoppix

Not true. Morphix-Gnome is another Gnome live-cd:
http://www.morphix.org/ Fri, 09 Apr 2004 07:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with the comments about GNOME trying to rip off Mac. Right down to the "keyring" which is called keychain on my powerbook.

Also, the spatial nature of nautilus goes beyond what the author discusses, the fact that each folder opens in a new window is a required property of a spatial interface. Read this article:

http://arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.html

which describes some of the gripes with the Mac finder not being spatial. A spatial browser must treat a folder and a window as representations of the same object. If you have a window representing a folder open, attempting to open the same folder should just change focus to the window for that folder you already have open, and opening new folders must open their corresponding window representation. I don't care for this design per se but that is the nature of a spatial browser. The idea being that in the real world, if you pick up a folder, open it and place it on your desk, you cannot go back to the cabinet and grab the same folder, open it again and have two views/copies of the folder sitting on your desk. A spatial browser in a computer must obey the same properties. The idea that a folder remembers your position, etc flows from the same reasoning. If I put a folder on my desk, but cover it up with other items, it's position and attributes remain the same when I uncover it to use it again. The problem is that we have become so accustomed to using navigation style interfaces, we no longer expect objects in the computer to mimic the behavior of real world objects. Proponents of spatial browsers claim that new users expect objects in GUIs to behave as their real world counterparts. They want naive user intuition that the window is the folder to be true. And they believe that the names we give UI elements should conform closely to the properties of the real objects they are named after.

This is a problem with user interfaces on linux. If in some distros the spatial feature is disabled, but in others enabled, any intuition that a user might have can be thrown out the window. It not so important that the browser is spatial or not, so long as it is consistent. I know people complain about the mac os interface not being customizable or skinable, but that is by design so that users can form an expectation of how the interface should look/behave and have that carry over onto all machines running the mac os x operating system. Yes, linux is about choice, blah blah, but at some level consistency is needed because users don't want sitting at another linux desktop to be a whole different experience. In someways the spatial browser is a silly idea when you consider that users don't even have an expectation of what the title bars of the windows will look like. Depending on the theme selected by users or their distros the close/minimize/maximize buttons may be in different locations, some may be missing, or represented by different icons. Sometimes too much choice or variety can be a bad thing when it comes to getting users to feel comfortable with a system, and until some creates a user interface that realizes this linux will always lag behind the Mac GUI or even (gasp) Windows. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 08:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The comment that describes GNOME best sadly got moderated down. Well, comments can be modded down but it doesn't change the facts. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 08:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Anonymous, the comment modded down didn't describe Gnome best. It described Gnome in a very biassed and childish way. The comment provided nothing. (For instance, if you want to go to /usr/local/some/very/deep/folder, you can type Ctrl+L and go there, just as in ROX you can type /.) If you think there's an actual reason not to do something, say so, don't just say you hate it.

(And oh: The presence of OK and Apply buttons on Windows confuses me. They're just trying to immitate some previous windowing system. Why should I have to explicitly say I want to change something? But more seriously, having got used to it, I keep forgetting you have to choose apply on Windows and I wonder why the new settings haven't taken affect. I'm just used to the system I use. Such is life.) Fri, 09 Apr 2004 09:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I just want to say (repeat ?) that if you want to *browse* to /usr/share/whatever using Nautilus, you can open the *navigational* Nautilus. It's very easy: whether right-click on a folder and choose "browse this folder" or launch "browse filesystem" from the main menu.

It's that easy... Fri, 09 Apr 2004 09:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The pro-spatial arguments are far away from just claiming to be more intuitive to new computer users. The main advantage is that it can make people more efficient because it plays to our natural strengths (spatial recognition, etc).
While that might sound very theoretical, I know that it works because it made me more productive and also made my desktop usage a heck of a lot more enjoyable. In fact, I can't remember to ever have used a desktop as much as I do these days (as opposed to just using a fancy window manager and a panel to launch applications). Fri, 09 Apr 2004 11:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The Amiga workbench used spatial file browsing. I remember that most of the Amiga users had Directory Opus installed and it instead of the workbench for file manipulation. In my opinion, having used an Amiga for almost ten years, spatial browsing is inconvenient, more difficult and not as powerful as convential browsing.

And not being able to enter a path in a fileselector without pressing some key to pop up some other dialog is one of the stupiest things I ever heard. A typical line widget does not use much space anyway, it is convenient for most users to always have it there and please don't tell me that a line widget where you can enter the path makes it more complicated to use a file requester.

And in my opinion it is very nice to have the most important button on the left, because people (at least in the US and European countries) read from left to right and so they will read this button first. And I don't like instant apply at all. What if I play with some settings and I decide that I don't like them? If there is a cancel-button I can just press it and don't have to worry to find my old settings again.

I think usability is a good thing, but one can go too far. There is no point in changing things just to change them. Why not just stick with the way Windows is doing things, as long as there is no BIG advantage of doing something different. 95% of the world is using Windows, most new Linux users are coming from Windows and the Windows GUI is not that bad, anyway. I think, people should really be more pragmatic here. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 12:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? each version of gnome is more and more "empty" and desolated... i want icons, flags, menus, buttons...

look at those spatial nautilus windows...they are depressing, well looking at them i have the feeling that the only thing i can do is browse...where are the toolbars for copy, cut and paste? and for which reason i would whish to have 2000+ windows open on my desktop?? the workflow is much more smooth with the tree view of the filesystem ala konqeror/explorer, this spatial concept has been abandoned by apple to... Fri, 09 Apr 2004 13:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Excuse the dumb questions, but how exactly is spatial Nautilus different from for example Win98 (or later). As far as I can understand, both open new windows for directories. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 16:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It has more features which make navigating spatially more useful. You can close all parent windows in one click for instance. It does remember the settings for all your folders. And the spatial nautilus is sort of independent from teh navigational one. You can use both at the same time, or which ever one you prefer. With windows, it was either open in new window all the time, or open in the same window all the time. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 16:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree.
Gnome will simplify itself into oblivion.
They've been cutting features and functionality for whom? Windows converts? No, Windows converts will end up running KDE because they are used to a wide variaty of software and features from Windows. They are used to multiple toolbars and customizable toolbars and a decent file selector.
The only familiar "feature" that Gnome is bringing is registry based configuration that's very familiar to Windows users, i.e. get a corrupted registry, your system is hosed, start reinstallin.
Those that don't learn from history are bound to repeat the same mistakes. Text based config files are the best feature of Linux and insure that a system can be easily administered and easily repaired. Registry based systems are nothing but a nightmare.
The spacial browsing argument doesn't hold when a little logic is used.
In the big article about spacial browsing the reasoning was that people remember 3D objects and an analogy was made to a room with some objects that a human has memorized the position of, like light switch etc.
Well, that's all fine, if you're dealing with a few objects but when navigating *nix file system, one can easily find 10,000 files in /usr/bin instead of one light swith, one desk lamp, one phone etc. So spacial browsing my ass. Have the righ tools for the right job. Spacial browsing is not the right concept for computers with a lot of files. A real file manager is the right tool.
And having to start a bunch of servers just to use one gtk program is a bad desigh in my opinion too. That kind of design will come to haunt us later on when software gets more sofisticated and complex.
Components should be modular and independent of each other so that when one link in the chain breaks it doesn't take down the rest with it. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 16:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think you would be expecting too much of any file manage to try manage /usr/bin with ANY file manager. That is not logical. The file manager is meant to provide a graphical view of your files, and it only really works well when you have a few files in a folder. Honestly, how many of us actually ever just navigate to C:/windows/System32 with Explorer. This is why GNOME has a picture manager for jpegs and pngs, and this is the reason you probably use a proper IDE for web development. A file manager like Nautilus is general purpose, not specialised for tasks where it does not make sense to use a file manager.

Besides, you still CAN use nautilus with the old method. Nothing has changed there. So if anything, you just have MORE options, the Windows way, and the Nautilus Spatial way. Of course you only memorize a few things, which is exactly the situation most computer users find themselves in. They have a documents directory, a Music directory, a pictures one and so on. Not a thousand barely recognizable ones. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? About GConf. It is not like the registry. It is an easy way to simplify configuration, but if you go into your .gconf files, you will see it contains just a bit collection of xml files in a hierarchy of folders. It works just like old text file configuration but with standardized structure to the files and standard ways of accessing and writing data. It's the best of both worlds, really, in that respect. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "each version of gnome is more and more "empty" and desolated... i want icons, flags, menus, buttons..."

Then you are not GNOME's target! So go use KDE or something. Nobody's forcing you to use GNOME. There are plenty of people who *do* like GNOME's direction. GNOME is for those people, not for you.


"I agree.
Gnome will simplify itself into oblivion."

No it won't. You only say this because you're not GNOME's target.


"They've been cutting features and functionality for whom? Windows converts? No, Windows converts will end up running KDE because they are used to a wide variaty of software and features from Windows. They are used to multiple toolbars and customizable toolbars and a decent file selector."

You're right: GNOME's not for Windows converts. But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. GNOME is for people who want simplicity. Just because you don't like simplicity doesn't mean everybody doesn't!
This is a classic example of facistic force-your-opinion-down-to-others'-throat.


"The only familiar "feature" that Gnome is bringing is registry based configuration that's very familiar to Windows users, i.e. get a corrupted registry, your system is hosed, start reinstallin."

Sorry but you are completely wrong. GConf is nothing like the Windows registry, only the idea is the same ("centralized place for storing configuration").
1. Unlike Windows, GConf doesn't store everything in a huge, error-phrone file. Instead, it stores things in a lot of small XML files. Each GConf "folder" is stored in a seperate file in the filesystem. If one of those files are corrupted, you only lose a *very* small part of your configuration.
2. GConf supports change notifications. This allows features like instant apply.
3. Only unimportant preferences are stored in GConf, and nothing else. Your email addressbook for example is not stored in GConf!

GConf is much better than the registry.


"And having to start a bunch of servers just to use one gtk program is a bad desigh in my opinion too."

As opposed to, say, dcopserver?
And how's having something in a server worse than having the same thing in a library? In either case, you're screwed if you need certain functionality and the server or library crashes. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ...I have found that if ever something were to go wrong with your configuration, simply deleting your (the users) gconf database will usually work well. You only lose your configuration. You do not get apps not working because it is all per user stuff. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I want to get 2.6, but on which Distro? An aging RH 9.0? Retrofit core 1, test core 2? The others are lean toward KDE : ( Do they have it for Debian?

Gnome needs it's own software installer-uninstaller. This is what is needed to rule the desktop.

Synaptic can be included. It works great, but are RPMs really the way we want to go?

I want open Distro dedicated to Gnome from the ground up with no easliy cuuruptible corporate steering committe. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? full ack! Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There are many distros that are DE agnostic. You might want to check them out. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I really disliked the old MacOS spatial finder -- and I suspect I will dislike the new Nautilus just as much. There are two problems with 'spatial file management'.

The first is the cause of many a heart flutter: open a window, scroll down to the last icon, because there are more icons than fit the window, and you need that file. Close the finder window. Next time you open the finder window, do you remember that you had scrolled down all the way last time? I don't, and I get something horribly near to a hear attack thinking that I have accidentally deleted the rest of the files. Ouch.

The second problem is clutter. My desk is a disorganized surface area with stacks of papers, books, folders, binders, notes, pen cases, mice, tablets and formerly cats.

My computer desktop is a neatly organized work surface where whatever clutter I produce is quickly put in alphabetic order. The computer keeps order for me; a spatial finder makes me live in chaos not only on my desk, but also on my desktop. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 19:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "The first is the cause of many a heart flutter: open a window, scroll down to the last icon, because there are more icons than fit the window, and you need that file. Close the finder window. Next time you open the finder window, do you remember that you had scrolled down all the way last time? I don't, and I get something horribly near to a hear attack thinking that I have accidentally deleted the rest of the files. Ouch."

Well, that never happened to me and I'm using it for quite a while now. Can't be that common.


"The second problem is clutter. My desk is a disorganized surface area with stacks of papers, books, folders, binders, notes, pen cases, mice, tablets and formerly cats."

The browser is still there if you need it to sort your chaos. The spatial representation gives you possibilities to work with your files (in a very direct manner) which simply weren't there before (on GNOME or the Unix desktop in general).
I agree that a computer should assist us in sorting our mess, but I don't agree that browsers are the best answer to this problem. I want my computer to sort my chaos when I'm asking it to do it and I want my computer to find me what I'm looking for, but I don't want to be limited to a viewing device to scroll through all my data. While that helps to reduce chaos, it doesn't make me more productive. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 19:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Definitively, I don't like the spatial thing. A couple of reasons:

o It clutters the desktop with nautilus' windows. You need to open a lot of windows to go to a site, and the "close all window parents" is just a hack to fix that

o There's no text on the window that will tell you where you're. And join this to the previous statement "It clutters the desktop with nautilus' windows": You can have five windows and there's no way on earth you can know what fielsystem directory is representing each window. I mean, how can I know if I'm in $HOME or in $HOME/doc? With the previous nautilus there's the address bar and you just see where you're.

o Direction buttons: Can someone explain why on earth a "spatial interface" can't have a "up" "down", "backward", "forward", or even more important, a "HOME" button? Why should I waste time switching between windows (windows that I don't know what they're representing, remember the previous point) when I can press a button and be done with that?

Even more, what is that "connect to server" menu entry crap? What is exactly wrong with typing "ftp.gnome.org" in a address bar, or "start-here://", or....all the things that gnome-vfs could represent like "usb-drive://" (which means that nautilus could be transparently used as explorer or browser when you want, like the windows guys did with explorer and that the KDE guys have imitated so well with kparts? Instead of that, the nautilus guys did a menu entry where you'll write "www.gnome.org, a *icon* will appear in the "My computer" entry, and that you have to UMOUNT?!? before being able to delete it)


Definitively, I don't like spatial nautilus. It's not that it's a bad idea - matter of taste - but *FULL* of basic UI errors that you can make in a file browser - no matter of it's spatial or no. Gnome, I don't recognize you, where's the HIG spirit? Fri, 09 Apr 2004 21:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Been done to death, but I'll chip in anyways.

o When I create a link to a folder on the filesystem and put that on the Desktop, I don't get a 'browse folder' context menu. It's probably not possible at all, and so double-clicking gives me this bizzare single window per folder mode.

o I'd love to have an option to switch to browse mode for the current folder from *within* Nautilus, without having to edit a pref via GConf.

What happened to backwards compatibility? At least behavior wise. That too, for a component that is used as often as a file manager.

I like GNOME and I'm sticking with it, but I hope this aberration goes away in the next release.

But whatever they did, Nautilus is a hell of a lot faster and opens up instantenously. Nicely done. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 22:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am sorry if someone said this but editing gconf to get the "old" nautilus is not needed. Just type "nautilus --no-desktop --browser" and you have the non-spatial nautilus file browser. Doesn't seem hard to me, especially if you make a menu entry (which already exists as "browse filesystem") or an icon on the panel or desktop. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 23:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Epiphany is a top browser, which is capable of all
>but the most demanding tasks

Maybe - if they've fixed the terrible "search"- style bookmark lookup they used in Fedore Core 1. Clearly the originator of this idea never actually bookmarked much stuff, or he'd have noticed it doesn't scale well. Fri, 09 Apr 2004 23:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > Maybe - if they've fixed the terrible "search"- style bookmark lookup they used in Fedore Core 1.

Hmm.. i haven't used Fedora but the Epiphany i have been using for, a year maybe? Has had "Bookmarks" menu entry that works like with the other browsers. And you can use the addressbar to "search" for bookmarks.

> Clearly the originator of this idea never actually bookmarked much stuff, or he'd have noticed it doesn't scale well.

I use the addressbar bookmarking almost exclusively as i know the titles of my most visited sites, and those that i don't remember i browse through the "Bookmarks" menu. You did know that you don't have to remember the exact bookmark name for example to get bookmark "Gnome tips and tricks" you'll just type "tips" and it will find that bookmark (and list others that include "tips" in them). I have over 100 bookmarks. And yes, i should clean up my bookmarks; too many hobbies, too many bookmarks. Sat, 10 Apr 2004 00:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Michael Thaler, spatial Nautilus is there for people who want it. Browser Nauti is there for people what prefer that. If you were capable of using Directory Opus on an Amiga, I'm sure you're cappable of switching to the browser Nauti. Personally, I prefer a decent spatial fm to a decent browser fm. I can't comment on whether Nauti is decent at either, though; I haven't used 2.6 yet.

I can't comment on the absense of the text field; I haven't used GTK+ 2.4 yet. I only ever used it in GTK+ because it was so much more useful than the rest. When I used to use Windows, I only point-and-clicked.

As to the direction... Well, I guess that's up to you, if you insist on reading graphical items like sentences. Windows puts its buttons on the bottom right at times, and I tend to read them backwards because I will read a dialog box in a circle. I guess Windows gets that wrong?

As to instant apply, I'll be damned if I can work out how you know you don't like a changed setting if you haven't actually changed it yet.

As to Windows, if I wanted to use Windows, well, I would, wouldn't I? Or, failing that, XPde. There's no reason to be gratuitously different, true, but there's no reason not to try to do different things. If something turns out to be a horrible failue, well, I'm sure our friends at Gnome well recognise that and fix it up. Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? BTW, I will point out that it's not necessary for instant apply settings to lose the state of the world before the change. ROX uses instant apply, but it has a Revert button, so that not only can you see the new settings in action, you can decide you don't like them! Try changing settings in Windows and pressing 'Apply' then 'Cancel' and see how reverted your changes become... Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Did anyone notice how slow gEdit gets after about 100 lines of text? Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am opening a file here with 102400 lines of text. No problems. (its the Fedora kernel-config-i686 file). Maybe my computer is just fast. :? Sat, 10 Apr 2004 02:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? :? ? that's an odd smily. What's it meant to mean? Sat, 10 Apr 2004 02:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? meybe you like this one better: =¿. Sat, 10 Apr 2004 02:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? only 6 errors/problems to go. lol

Installation was painless. Making the bootdisk generated an error (out of space, I think). I couldn't properly read the error as it was quickly erased by another screen.

I found a neat installation guide on the Net. It said to make 3 partitions to /root, /usr, home. I just made one "/" and a swap instead.

I added a user account, added LILO and an Windows XP option. There are some errors in the messages before the login prompt. I have no idea what to do aboot those. If I could read them, I could use google to help out.

StartX generates a couple of errors. Xscreensaver is choking. Libcdda isn't found, so Nautilus doesn't come up. I am left with the 2.4 Gnome panels. The web browsers don't seem to work.

Pretty soon, I'll get to Gnome 2.6 *sigh* Sat, 10 Apr 2004 03:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'd like to use words clean, consistent, timeless and stylish, among others, to describe what makes me like the look of Gnome UI. I have many times wondered, how can a community effort like Gnome produce a visual design of such high quality, that it leaves the commercial competion behind. Gnome really is above anything else that I have seen to this day, in this respect. I think that Matt put it well in his post, when he said "...i like the minimalistic approach, while still keeping a nice amount of eye-candy and functionality".

I haven't had the opportunity of trying 2.6 yet and thus can't tell my personal view of the spacial browser (Maynards description of it was so well written, though, that I almost feel like having tried it already), but I got a feeling, that some people commented it without having really tried to adjust them selves to a new (new for at least implementation) concept. When one is used to work with a tool and learnd how to be productive using it, it's only natural that when trying a new tool, work doesn't start to flow from the beginning. We easily call a new way of doing something bad, when it may just be a question of having to adjust ourselvs - which always takes a little time. When we instead of resisting new, take a few steps back and try the new path, whe may well find ourselves having an easier walk. But I shall not say more before having tried 2.6 myself :-) Sat, 10 Apr 2004 04:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think you would be expecting too much of any file manage to try manage /usr/bin with ANY file manager. That is not logical. The file manager is meant to provide a graphical view of your files, and it only really works well when you have a few files in a folder. Honestly, how many of us actually ever just navigate to C:/windows/System32 with Explorer. This is why GNOME has a picture manager for jpegs and pngs, and this is the reason you probably use a proper IDE for web development. A file manager like Nautilus is general purpose, not specialised for tasks where it does not make sense to use a file manager.

Besides, you still CAN use nautilus with the old method. Nothing has changed there. So if anything, you just have MORE options, the Windows way, and the Nautilus Spatial way. Of course you only memorize a few things, which is exactly the situation most computer users find themselves in. They have a documents directory, a Music directory, a pictures one and so on. Not a thousand barely recognizable ones.

Well, I was actually only refering to the spacial nautilus.
The listing mode of Nautilus works ok even for large directories like /usr/bin although I do have a fast computer.
And I go to /windows/system32 all the time when trouble shooting a system etc. But you're right, most users don't go there very often. However, some user folders can get large too, like image or mp3 collections, so good file manager that can quickly display a lot of files is still very useful. Sat, 10 Apr 2004 10:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Gnome 2.4 did not have this possibility Sat, 10 Apr 2004 11:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > Metacity has a new 'reduced resources' mode, which
> encompasses previous options like disabling the animations.
> But in the interests of providing visual feedback as much as
> possible, when you drag a window for example, in reduced
> resources mode, you get a frame instead of the whole window
> and its contents being dragged along. Unfortunately, I could
> not get a screenshot of this. It refuses to come out on the
> shot.

Of course in a 'reduced resources' mode you don't want to repaint window contents as you move it.
You cannot get a screenshot because the X Server is grabbed (XGrabServer - say, the X server doesn't get events and doesn't repaint while it is grabbed). This is done this way so there's no need to repaint windows under the frame (repaint meaning asking the app to repaint the window). This is standard practice. Sun, 11 Apr 2004 03:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >> Maybe - if they've fixed the terrible "search"- style
>> bookmark lookup they used in Fedore Core 1.

>Hmm.. i haven't used Fedora but the Epiphany i have been
>using for, a year maybe? Has had "Bookmarks" menu entry
>that
>works like with the other browsers. And you can use the
>addressbar to "search" for bookmarks.

No, it doesn't work like other browsers. Other browsers use a multilevel schemem, my copy of Epiphany was single-level-only. That doesn't scale.

> I use the addressbar bookmarking almost exclusively as i
> know the titles of my most visited sites, and those that
> i don't remember i browse through the "Bookmarks" menu.
> You did know that you don't have to remember the exact
> bookmark name for example to get bookmark "Gnome tips
> and tricks" you'll just type "tips" and it will find
> that bookmark (and list others that include "tips" in
> them). I have over 100 bookmarks.

You've gotta be kidding. You only have 100 bookmarks, and you claim your experience shows the bookmarking scheme scales? Your list practically fits on the screen! I have way over a thousand bookmarks, and no, their page titles usually don't have a **** thing to do with the content that caught my eye. For example, the page title "default.htm" does not explain why http://www.stopabductions.com/ is in my "humor" list. Sun, 11 Apr 2004 05:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have gnome 2.6 and I love it
the only thing I have a problem with is the way nautilus acts with a new window opening on every click and no adress bar
can I change it back?

thanks in advance
Guy Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments