What’s Coming Up in GNOME 2.4

Ppl, one thing is file selector, the other is file manager( konq, nautlis, etc). And I still think I can’t see hidden files’n’folders in File Selector (atleast in Gnome 2.2).

Im a simple guy who likes simple things.

That’s why I use Gnome.

Nah, I tried KDE, to much options that I didn’t wanted, with GNOME a never edit anything and the options are visible and not hiden with other options.

GNOME is for me.

I find the options quite hidden, even showing hidden file stakes many more clicks than in KDE.

We’re nor all brain dead and illiterate why would it matter if there are a lot of options as long as they are organized well and intuitive.

I guess your really lucky to require so little from your desktop, if you never had to edit anything in GNOME.

Anyway, CVS in KDE is better in usabiltiy. I urge everyone to give 3.2 a try when its out and from a KDE distro like SuSE or Mandrake not RH’s half baked KDE.

Anyway… does anybody know if there’ll be multiple-rooted (and customizable) trees in the new Nautilus?

Certainly, I believe one of the screenshots actually has the multirooted thing.

http://rox.sourceforge.net/

The only File Manager you will need.

Gnome is a desktop that aims to counter whatever the lunix zealots consider to be the #1 threat to linux. So, Gnome was founded in facing the “threat” of the QPL to Linux. Then it became all about facing off the “threat” of CORBA. Nw, it is all about facing the “threat” of .NET to linux. GNOME has no clear vision of its own. GNOME is an entirely reactive project, with no beliefs and ideals of its own, founded in jealousy and hatred of superior technologies and based on technological bigotry.

Dude…have you ever tried Gnome? It’s freakin REFINED. No clear vision of its own? There’s a link off its main page explaining exactly what it hopes to accomplish. At first, yes it was created to counter the threat of QT in KDE, and that’s reflected in the earlier versions. They seemed very “hacked together” (sound familiar?). Gnome 2 was a complete rewrite with a single goal in mind: simplicity and usability. The team now has HIG specifications which it holds in high regard, more than I can say for KDE. Also, the entire desktop is extremely well thought out and planned carefully. What will the text editor be? GEdit, over GVim or any other gtk-based text editor, for a bunch of reasons. The alternative of course would be to throw in every text editor that applied for a spot in the main distribution. I mean, every app has its place, but THREE editors? I need one for a scratchpad and perhaps for viewing code, and if I actually need to write something I’ll use and IDE or a word processor. Another example is pretty evident in the klipper utility. There are precious few people who have ever done a lot with the klipper applet, and that’s mainly because the damn thing’s too complicated! There’s no reason why a clipboard utility should have a prefs list like that. Things like the clipboard should be totally transparent to the user.

The point is that KDE just feels awkward. A million different menu items to choose from, and apps that appear to have buttons strewn about wherever they feel is needed, prefs dialogues that go on for pages and pages without any real sort of organization, and a general feel of clutter and business. The difference between Gnome and KDE is like the difference between http://coaster.sf.net/ and http://www.nme.com/ (note: completely different content). Yes, both of them accomplish what needs doing…the information is there on the web. But one site presents it in a clear and organized fashion, and the other throws everything but the kitchen sink at you and hopes to god you can figure things out. I think I know which one I’ll opt for.

but why do people insist on making any article about Gnome or KDE a religous battle about which is better? This is an article about Gnome and the new features added to it, where does KDE enter the picture? I could care less which people prefer I would like to hear some intelligent comments about the features or maybe fetures still missing in Gnome. Why Gnome? Because that is what the article is about!

I like Gnome personally, particularly Dropline Gnome for Slack. The only reason I moved away from Gnome is they did not have any clean ability to add context sensitive key bindings and menu options.

I don’t read /. all day!

Ey !

Where i can find the author’s article wallpaper?

It’s really cool !! “Think Linux” 🙂

Here:

http://www.sadeem.net/wp/linux.jpg

Victor.

I always liked the “beginner”, “advanced”, “expert” kind of concept for configuration of apps, where options are hidden/exposed based on the users choice. To be honest I never really paid attention to whether an app is KDE or Gnome before so I am not sure who uses it. VideoLan is the only example that comes to mind.

I’m actually more of a KDE user, and I honestly can’t imagine switching any time soon, but Gnome sure is great software that gets better and better. What a great open source project! I’m glad it’s around.

…maybe put “.” in the name edit field and press TAB key will work

A desktop is for getting work done. If you want to fall in love with a particular DE and denigrate the work of others – well go ahead waste your time.

For the rest of us unless the data is easy to move around we stay with what works. Contacts, appointments, emails, bookmarks, documents, spreadsheets and every other form of data comes first then the eye candy.

If you can’t just swap between KDE, Gnome etc and continue working then you’re just locked in to an app or DE.

I’m like many others who need (and will continue to need) to use a combination of Gnome/KDE and other apps. It would be nice if the user and their data would be the focus, rather than the senseless war over widget preferences.

Best regards to all developers for their efforts

rob

These are the apps I use on the Gnome platform: Nautilus, Epiphany, Gaim, Evolution, Totem, X-Chat, Gedit/Gvim. That’s about it, and these tools do everything I need. I know that there are equivalents on the KDE platform (Except nothing is up to par with Gaim) but Gnome keeps things simple and elegant.

I hope Gnome dies.

You forgot to say why ! … , unless you are an empty person trying to flame with no arguments….

Choice is a valuable thing for the strategist~, it leaves the battle opened till the end.

I always liked the “beginner”, “advanced”, “expert” kind of concept for configuration of apps, where options are hidden/exposed based on the users choice.

I, for once, never liked that ! and it costed me 1 day to figure out why I couldn’t change a particular aspect on FreeBSD’s Gnome2. Errrr … no such thing on kde to annoy you.

___________

I find me using Gnome2 more than KDE now unless I have to do some pretty heavy cut and paste (I mean heavy like a 10 KBytes long html page) or highlighting text/script (I know gedit will have highlighting now, good on which case I will change to KDE.

I use my favorite window manager 50% of the time (IceWMM with motif look). Just my preference. I also think that KDE is not bloated at all ! It just gives you the power that’s all.

The new file browser will be *very* welcomed, a little slow in time,

it will save many clicks and boring time to get to the directory you want (it would ben very good if it remembered the last directory you were on, like in win32

“edit-preferences->show hidden files

How hard is that? ”

It’s harder than simply View->Show Hidden Files

KDE ROxorz! And 3.2 will eXPecially rock! It will have been in the making for nine months at least and there are so many awesome things going in it!

BTW: I actually think the opposite, there are better themes for KDE than GNOME. ThinKeramik, Alloy, Elmo 3, Fusion X, dotNet, Mandrake Galaxy, QtCurve and High Performance Liquid are all awesome themes!

I also like KDE-LOok’s dynamic nature, I can vote on content, submit content, post on their forums, comment and much more. It really is a communtiy!

the apps in gnome “know about each other” if you don’t like the file selector then just keep a nautilus open on another desktop. when you want to open a text file for editing just open gedit then drag the file onto it. easy. i just found out lately about this with totem (gnome movie player) i had the playlist open and i accidentally dragged a movie onto it and it added it to the playlist! cool 8) kde just seems gaudy and frilly with all the options, also the themes are just eyesores, unless you’re a child who like the fisher-price/candy cane look. i like the laid back themes like mist or ximian’s industrial.

finally, i really love gnome apps, i think they are peerless in linux.

pan > knode! no contest!

totem > kde has no decent media players installed by default, if it does, i couldn’t find ’em ;] at least none that would play .ogm’s

evolution > kmail

gaim > kopete – gaim is sexy.

nautilus rules, don’t smack me but i like media, images, movies and nautilus makes thumbnails of any media file so i can identify movies quickly.

k have fun

Thanks mega, it works. But how should avarage user know that. It’s like hidden feature. There are no tooltips or labels.

KDE just seems bloated and full of TOO MANY features.

Seen the latest CVS? The menus for a lot of things are shorter now, especially those contextual menus.

Besides, what does “bloat” have to do with “consistency”. Sorry, if I don’t get your logic. GNOME is way way way not consistent. It may be moving that way, but very few apps follow their HIG to the word. By comparison, if there is a common feature for KDE, you can expect it at the same place. It is not that KDE have better UI designers, they see the value of keeping everything the same.

Consistency also have to do with how different is one version from another. UI-wise, the jump from GNOME 1.x to GNOME 2.x is far far bigger than the jump of KDE 1.x to KDE 2.x and certain bigger by extreme proportions in relative to the jump from KDE 2.x and KDE 3.x There is consistency between releases. If you are used to an old version – get a new version and the learning curve would be smaller by comparison with GNOME.

There are many areas I consider GNOME better than KDE. GNOME have a better default presentation, although if you see my desktop (don’t feel like rebooting to take a screenie) on KDE, it looks much better than any GNOME customization as well as their default look. In other words, it wouldn’t take KDE much time to change their default look, by comparison with the GNOME team.

But back to your argument, consistency – KDE wins hands down, if you follow the dictionary defination of consistency. Which one have the better default UI? Sad to say, GNOME. But as with most Linux users, if you find it too hard to customized, frankly, you should be using something else besides Linux. Hopefully one day there would be a distributor like Ximian, but meanwhile, even Lycoris, Xandros and Lindow’s version of KDE is much better than GNOME default.

Talk with Dobey on irc.gimp.org. Go to him, and ask him straight what he thinks. If he denies it I will put a chatlog quote on here.

Dekkard, stop playing the GNOME Task Force here. Do you fear I could be right or why don’t you simply go and ask him to confirm it in person ? Now that my chatlog may be faked how else would I be able to convince you ?

> Various XIMIAN employees already mentioned that GNOME in it’s

> current state is more or less total clusterf**k.

I can just imagine it:

Interviewer: Ximian Desktop has made a few changes to GNOMElib, are there any others that you have in mind for XD 2.1?

Miguel: Well, yes we have re-written the file selector dialog, hacked together a new GTK theme and window decorators, re-organised the menu structure and added an update utility (Red Carpet).

Interviewer: How do you believe the current events with Novell will impact on the future of your committment to GNOME?

GNOME has and for the foreseeable future will be the backbone of our business. Given the current state of GNOME which can only be described as clusterf**k (IMHO), we will certainly be making a lot more of these changes, possible even a fork.

Interviewer: Thanks for speaking with us, Miguel.

Miguel: You’re welcome

See, It’s no secret. There is dobey, miguel, me and probably a handful others who develop on GNOME who think the same. It’s just a matter to sit down on the butt and talk with all kinds of developers on their own. Simply spent some time talking with them privately and you understand what they think.

Hello? I asked for facts. There’re none in that post.

And really, Miguel saying it’s a clusterf**k would be something ))

It’s no secret but all you do is giving the people the chance to explain and not task force and bear their opinion just before they got the chance to talk about it.

Did you read my post? I just gave you a chance. You didn’t use it. Game Over.

We shouldn’t lie here and claim GNOME to be the best Desktop. It’s definately not (yet).

When did I say that? I don’t care if Gnome is not perfect neither the best. Just explain why you think it’s structure is a clusterf**k.

it will be great gnome on windows xp!!!

Dekkard, explaining something to you would be simply a waste of time and at the end you don’t understand it anyways or use it only to troll around even more.

Suuuure. (*cough* no facts *cough*) ))

And the way you ask for it and the way you TASK FORCE GNOME (hell please dear god, don’t let one wrong word come on it) gives me the impression that your intentions aren’t honourable at all.

Yeah, you’re one to talk. At least I don’t go around trolling about some open source project.

Take the statement as it is. Miguel , Dobey and Me (and various others) know why we call it a clusterfuck.

Then explain. Oh, wait, you can’t. Cause you’re just trolling

People can’t play together, code is not properly maintained, help is not wanted, people following different directions rather than one, people who can’t be convinced to work nicely and aesthetically and so on. Yes it’s opensource, what a dumb excuse to not work nicely.

So you have a problem with some gnome developers, and go around trolling to get some relief to your tormented mind. Sad.

Maybe Dobey or Miguel would show up here explaining why THEY think GNOME is a clusterfuck. I bet you value their statements higher than mine.

Of course. They at least use their names.

I used GNOME 1.0 to 1.4. I used KDE 1.2 and 3.0-3.1

Both of them have advantages and disadvantages! GNOME is coming off a rewrite, so it doesn’t see bloated. Neither did KDE 2.0-2.3, imho. Just wait till GNOME 3.2 or 3.4 (which I guess, would be similiar in version numbers to KDE 3.1/3.2)

KDE was NOT mentioned in the article at all, but you have a couple of people here who are advocating KDE whenever they here GNOME mentioned, They are trolls, not Dekkard. At least he is posting with his name.

By the way, if this was an article about KDE, and some GNOME ‘advocates’ came and started advocating here, they would be trolls too.

This article is about GNOME 2.3/2.4 so at least stick to critiquing/criticising GNOME 2.3. If you know nothing about GNOME, then shut up. At least try to get a life, and stop going around calling people fags and all, and actually stick to the topic.

Dekkard also trolled during defending GNOME.

It is possible to defend GNOME without telling lies about KDE.

GNOME or KDE is a personal decision, there is no need to convert other people.

i have been using the gnome current tarballs from breakmygentoo for a while and the things i like about the new gnome are these

– huge cleanup in dialogs, about boxes etc

– multi tree view in nautilus, it’s just great to finally have it

– speed improvements. though they are not huge, folders load faster, gtk overall feels faster (though not that much)

– nautilus has improved, the nautilus cd-burner is in place (i hope it burns music cd’s in 2.4)

– all gnome components have undergone HIG-ification, which does improve usability a lot. Maybe this doesn’t mean a lot to power users, but to average (and even power users IMO) users knowing what to expect in eg. dialogboxes improves the overall feeling of the system.

– HIGification of the menu: gTali has become Tali etc, this IMO getting rid of gAnything in the menu is a good decision, if you don’t you can add to the discussion in their bugzilla

– my applet-loaded panel configuration hasn’t crashed or leaked memory on me once

– the desktop allows to keep the icons aligned by right clicking on it

– there are some nice new features in various places

Overall:

I don’t feel this gnome release is so much a feature packed release, but it does improve a lot overall on little things that make using it a lot nicer. It’s very hard to name that one killer feature they have added, but there are A LOT of little ones to like.

Just check the changelog to see the extensive list of improvements

Despite that I enjoy Dekkard’s gift of the gab and his style of arguing rendering other-camp-zealots helpless I must incline to the oposite site.

For a few months I was developing GUI applications under linux so as technical merits matter I can understand what it means when somebody says: “Gnome sucks”. Because it really does.

Beeing a windows developer I was used to higher standards at least in some areas(such as Documentation for example). When I was choosing/doing research which linux GUI api should I deploy my application in, numerous “choice-choice-wont-tell-you-I-better-start-new-project-choice-choice” apis” suddenly surfaced. I don’t found _any_ of Gnome apis/libraries appealing(GTK in any version nor any wrapper or whatever). The pure fact gnome is C-based(arcane in 21st century) makes it really strange(and beeing hacked by blabla_new() or delete_blabla() functions makes it even worse). As a matter of fact, there can’t be a good designed GUI underlaying architecture if it is written and it’s api exposed in pure C.

On the other hand, KDE was based on Qt(cute qt 🙂 which was no much of effort to fall in love with. Although Qt has also some bad design decissions(beeing developed by commercial company at least they seem reasonable) like providing it’s own container class library instead of using STL(with say future possibility of wrapper) or _too much_ relaying on signal/slot connection noise it is still very good and most importantly, Object Oriented C++ in/out based library.

For others out there, to make a MS Windows anology:

Gnome api/libraries are equivalent to MFC hell library. Beeing bad from start it’s get slightly better by heavy usage, support from big projects and microoptimalization, adding features, rewritting slightly and such, but it still SUCKS(take MFC libray, there would be _again_(there is 7.0 version as today if you don’t noticed) new improved version in new release of Visual Studio 2004 whidbey! despite it’s archaic design but it will STILL SUCK ALL THE ARSES).

Qt is well thought from the start(by skilled developers I asume) and equals to say latest version(see platform SDK) WTL/COM+ win32 api interfaces and _can_ be possible competitor to even .NET Winform API.

The main problem I had with Qt back then(2002) was poor documentation. Although that might not seem as poor for average linux/unix developer but comming from windows world it’s below-average. I was looking to KDE source codes 40% of time how it’s supposed to work and what are the best practices on using it.

As to user perspective on visual apperance, KDE sucks in and out. I am no longer 13teen years old kid(nothing bad on it though) so I no longer appreciate all that candy colors with rather infantile icon design. It has not really bright widgets possitioning also and so on. And all that Katasthropic name Konventions drives me Krazy(it looks lame actually if you are interested).

So Gnome wins here easily beeing solid and obviously taking inspiration from Apple for it’s slight clean design. Also icons are one class better.

As to applications, I can’t think of a single native KDE killer application which is mainly legacy of past Qt licence I think. Take Mozilla, Open Office, Gimp, Gaim or anyhing you want, I just can run Gnome whole year without touching any of KDE application(actually KOffice was a bad idea but choice my ass). You can’t do opposite running KDE.

But knowing architecture merits, you just have odd feeling when working with Gnome…