Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 6th Apr 2011 17:50 UTC, submitted by Cytor
The day is finally here, the day that the GNOME team releases GNOME 3.0, the first major revision of the GNOME project since 2002. Little of GNOME 2.x is left in GNOME 3.0, and as such, you could call it GNOME's KDE4. We're living in fortunate times, what, with two wildly divergent open source desktops.
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RE[2]: Tested it for a few hours
by phoenix on Wed 6th Apr 2011 21:20
in reply to "RE: Tested it for a few hours"
Member since:2005-07-11
This is/was my gut reaction as well... reflecting further, however, I think the designers might have done this intentionally. The overall shell design seems to lend itself very well towards tablet and touch-based hardware. I wonder if that (sort of "future thinking") drove this layout. [Though, they probably shouldn't bet the farm on one style. I would have preferred UI elements that adapt to the system being used---standard desktop, Tablet, portable, phone, etc.]
Overall though, component integration is well-delivered; UI is consistent; and notifications are really unobtrusive but usable. Window "snap" functionality is useful (wouldn't mind having keybindings defaulted for this though), and the type-driven app/doc finding functionality brings GNOME more on-par with Win7 & KDE4's app menu and OSX's spotlight.
Overall though, component integration is well-delivered; UI is consistent; and notifications are really unobtrusive but usable. Window "snap" functionality is useful (wouldn't mind having keybindings defaulted for this though), and the type-driven app/doc finding functionality brings GNOME more on-par with Win7 & KDE4's app menu and OSX's spotlight.
Actually, what you just described is pretty much exactly what plasma-netbook (the "small screen" desktop shell for KDE4).
Personally, and I haven't played with GNOME Shell much yet, plasma-netbook got things "more" right. Although, you do have to remove the default "launcher" bar and put back the default panel, taskbar, and systray to really make it useful.
I'm definitely looking forward to see how user feedback, dev enhancements, and new infrastructural implementations land in future releases. I can't wait for 3.1, 3.2, and so on!
Anyone tried GNOME 3.0 via an NFS-mounted / and /home? Does it work better than KDE4? Better/worse than KDE3? Better/worse than GNOME 2.x?
RE[2]: Tested it for a few hours
by No it isnt on Wed 6th Apr 2011 22:46
in reply to "RE: Tested it for a few hours"
Member since:2005-11-14
"The biggest problem for me was that it broke audio entirely, and after a while I got fed up trying to fix it, and switched back to KDE.
That may not be a GNOME-specific problem. Audio stacks are a bit convoluted in Linux, so unless the distro was tailored specifically for GNOME 3, you might find some quirky behavior. I could be wrong.
"
No, it was of course a PulseAudio problem. I don't think I had PulseAudio installed at all before, and used bare-bones ALSA, which never caused any trouble. When Pulse started on top of it, it seems to have muted one of the ALSA channels, and of course then the mixer didn't quite work and I couldn't see what was wrong. Or at least that's how it seemed after I uninstalled PulseAudio. I'll look into it some more when I reinstall it later. PulseAudio should be mature enough for general use now.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-18
Absolutely agreed here! The GNOME 3.0 release is, by far, more stable and usable than my experience with OSX 10.0 and KDE 4.0...and certainly more pleasing than Windows VISTA was. One really cannot fairly compare GNOME 3.0 against KDE 4.6, OSX 10.6/7, or Win7 (basically Vista "done right")... every desktop *.0 release has significant usability issues... but based on its introduction, the GNOME 3.0 is a good start and strongly positions the platform to be great in the long-term.
That may not be a GNOME-specific problem. Audio stacks are a bit convoluted in Linux, so unless the distro was tailored specifically for GNOME 3, you might find some quirky behavior. I could be wrong.
This is/was my gut reaction as well... reflecting further, however, I think the designers might have done this intentionally. The overall shell design seems to lend itself very well towards tablet and touch-based hardware. I wonder if that (sort of "future thinking") drove this layout. [Though, they probably shouldn't bet the farm on one style. I would have preferred UI elements that adapt to the system being used---standard desktop, Tablet, portable, phone, etc.]
Overall though, component integration is well-delivered; UI is consistent; and notifications are really unobtrusive but usable. Window "snap" functionality is useful (wouldn't mind having keybindings defaulted for this though), and the type-driven app/doc finding functionality brings GNOME more on-par with Win7 & KDE4's app menu and OSX's spotlight.
The biggest hurdle is change: people, by default, tend to not like change. Sometimes benefits are less apparent simply because we're accustomed to working a specific way. And I'm guessing that, in areas where users are unable to adapt, the desktop will be changed to fill that usability gap. Time will provide those fixes... Gnome2.x,KDE4.x, and every major commercial desktop have thoroughly demonstrated that.
Come to think of it, especially with its "just type"-like actions, GNOME 3.0 sorta makes me feel like I'm working on an over-sized Palm Pre/WebOS. haha... so GNOME 3 is like a new cell phone---usability feels rigid at first because I'm used to my old phone; there's a different (but better) UI, and it's full of tricks and cool features that I'll discover over time. I think GNOME 3 will grow on me.
I'm definitely looking forward to see how user feedback, dev enhancements, and new infrastructural implementations land in future releases. I can't wait for 3.1, 3.2, and so on!