“Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 2.12, the latest
version of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment.” Important changes include, but are not limited to: Clearlooks set to default theme, improved file manager (Nautilus), new document viewer (Evince), and much more. The release notes are here, download information can be found here.
Congratulations to Gnome developers and users! I wish faster, more user friendly, more beautiful Gnome in future. Gnome that could look good and could work fast. Gnome that worked together with other OSS projects (KDE, Enlightenment, Freedesktop) and delivered us good desktop experience.
First comment, YAY!
until October.
Gnome was set for now, the new Ubuntu is October :*
Good work! It looks very nice and useful and still maintains the KISS philosophy.
Though, I’m still waiting for more Memory Reduction and ACLs in Nautilus.
About ACLs, did you give Eiciel a try?
http://gnomefiles.org/app.php?soft_id=805
Thanks. I will try it when I setup the office’s new Linux terminal server.
Looks nice, but things like this really need to be there by default, and it is getting more and more important as the abiligy to handle ACLs allready are in KDE CVS. Not to mention that samba users may set ACLs from windows.
There are already discussions on nautilus-list about how best to add ACLs into 2.14.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is an “ACL?”
I had a quick look on Google and found “Accessibility Control List.” Is this a security feature you want added?
ACLs are an enhanced replacement-type thing for Unix permissions. They let you set up who can access a file and what rights they have, unlike conventional unix permissions, which only let you set read, write and execute permissions for the user, group, and world. ACLs are much more common on Windows Server 2003-based networks (afaik).
ACLs are an enhanced replacement-type thing for Unix permissions. They let you set up who can access a file and what rights they have, unlike conventional unix permissions, which only let you set read, write and execute permissions for the user, group, and world. ACLs are much more common on Windows Server 2003-based networks (afaik).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_control_list
Thanks for the link, mate. I will read it as I want to learn about this.
It would be interesting to compare this release to 2.10, to see if the memory footprint was reduced (or other general optimizations). I’m sure that with GTK now using Cairo, drawing operations should be wicked fast.
Anyone have any thoughts/info?
-Eric
> I’m sure that with GTK now using Cairo, drawing operations should be wicked fast.
Faster? How come you think so? Cairo is a pretty complex vector graphic library…
The funny thing is that Cairo indeed has an (experimental) OpenGL backend that performs better than the X11/XRender backend, but (as far as I’ve checked) this one simply isn’t currently activated in Gtk.
Cairo allows great graphics but isn’t a safe bet for better Gtk performance.
The funny thing is that Cairo indeed has an (experimental) OpenGL backend that performs better than the X11/XRender backend, but (as far as I’ve checked) this one simply isn’t currently activated in Gtk.
I believe the reasoning for this is that the gain of using glitz at a toolkit level isn’t all that great, and that it’s preferred to introduce OpenGl at the level of X itself.
Though without the ability to do the latter yet, it’d be nice to try enabling the former.
Faster? How come you think so? Cairo is a pretty complex vector graphic library…
The funny thing is that Cairo indeed has an (experimental) OpenGL backend that performs better than the X11/XRender backend, but (as far as I’ve checked) this one simply isn’t currently activated in Gtk.
Cairo allows great graphics but isn’t a safe bet for better Gtk performance.
Actually, there’s been a lot of work in the last week for the implementation of the new acceleration architecture EXA in as many drivers as possible, see http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/ExaStatus . Can’t wait for the inclusion of the patches in CVS and for the next RC release, EXA should be many times faster than XAA.
> The funny thing is that Cairo indeed has an
> (experimental) OpenGL backend that performs better than
> the X11/XRender backend, but (as far as I’ve checked)
> this one simply isn’t currently activated in Gtk.
And nor is it going to be, the GTK devs have made quite clear.
The intent is to use the Render backend by default, and then accelerate Render using the EXA acceleration architecture in the short term, and using glitz to accelerate Render in XGL in the medium-to-long term.
There is no plan tou output GTK via glitz to GL directly: that way you lose many of the benefits of X, and gain nothing.
But don’t worry, accelerated Cairo is coming, just not using the glitz backend directly.
Martin
They have done some work for 2.12, but there is more work to do on memory. 96MB RAM ought to be enough to run a few terminals and get decent performance.
See http://live.gnome.org/MemoryReduction . Elsewhere on the Wiki, it lists Memory as a goal for Gnome 2.14. IIRC, it was pushed back from 2.10 to 2.12 and now to 2.14?
It would be interesting to compare this release to 2.10, to see if the memory footprint was reduced (or other general optimizations). I’m sure that with GTK now using Cairo, drawing operations should be wicked fast.
Anyone have any thoughts/info?
In Breezy (2.12 today) mine uses a little less RAM (Firefox is still the big hog) than before with Hoary 2.10 (a few days ago)). Yet the desktop rendering is not any faster. The fonts are better…but the rendering is not “snappier.” At least not until I turn on xcompmgr, just like in Hoary. Then it flies.
Well been using gnome 2.12 (betas/rc) for a couple weeks now, I can say that it is a lot faster in terms of drawing functionality…
Many thanks to all GNOME developers and contributors.
rehdon
Anyone know if gedit supports gnome-vfs yet, or can it still not save the files it opens?
“Anyone know if gedit supports gnome-vfs yet, or can it still not save the files it opens?”
No, as far as I can tell, the same behaviour applies to the current (2.12.0) gedit.
The new GNOME release looks great. The only thing I’d suggest is overdue is an updated iconset. The current eons old iconset, good as it is, looks a little dated to me. Love everything else though!
Find an iconset that <50% of the user would hate and it is a possibillity… 😉
I haven’t seen one yet that I’d like to use over extended periods of time. Except the default one.
Ever six months Gnome developers release the same soup
full of big press and minor features like a semi functional menu editor…..
……you are the best!
Thank you!
Hopefully the memory reduction goal will not be pushed back again. We need it!
While Apple and Microsoft are interlocked into the maddening game of “who can make the most bloated code” it’s up to us to be the e1i73 H4XorZ that we are.
That being the case, I can’t wait for 2.14.
What a braindead comment.
What keeps Apple’s code base bloated is support for Classic and Carbon. Drop those and let the entire OS be back to Cocoa and you won’t be bitching about code bloat and instead finally admire the full power of Cocoa’s OO system: You know the one that was getting their with Openstep.
This is the best release till now, it has many new features but is a shame tha some of them are not listed in the page, lack of time maybe, anyway Im looking forward for the next Ubuntu.
GNOME is the best free desktop around.
Goof job GONME team.
been using Ubuntu Breezy for a Month and it’s amazing
I hope mono and all its marketing keep out of gnome
That desktop is so retro even windows 95 is better of gnome….
GNOME 2.12’s memory reduction goal has not been unactive. Great improvements have been been made in GTK+ to easily detect bloated memory consumption, etc. Now that we have the appropriate tools, the _real_ memory reduction objective will be achieved – I hope.
Cairo, by itself, does not make GNOME go faster, but will allow GNOME to make full use of hardware acceleration when we have an appropriate OpenGL backend for Cairo.
How is glitz not appropriate? I mean, I personally think it’s a better idea to use XRENDER and then Xgl so that all of the drawing is accelerated, instead of only what Cairo does, but at least glitz is there, no?
How is glitz not appropriate?
I said appropriate as in “appropriate for default usage”, not in a bad way. I like glitz.
Woo. Can’t wait for breezy to come out. I’d love to try the new tree view in spatial nautilus.
-bytecoder
>I’d love to try the new tree view in spatial nautilus.
Me too, I hope it will be usable (from screenshots looks, like it can be).
Thanks GNOME hackers!!
Taskbar buttons are now capable of flashing—like KDE and windows. This is especialy useful with Gaim (you have a visual feedback in the taskbar when your pal types something).
Nautilus bookmarks have been merged with the bookmarks that appear in the “open file” dialog (in the left sidebar).
Nautilus’ sidebar can now display bookmarks (places). I prefer displaying the history though.
Totem has a very usable sidebar instead of two separate windows.
The “add applet” dialog for the gnome-panel has been redesigned.
Also, don’t forget to install the “nautilus-open-terminal” add-on to nautilus, so you can easily open a terminal in the current directory. (Enable the universe repository first)
Beagle is available in the universe. It works well (the kernel is compiled with inotify support).
Unfortunately I don’t see the following *extremely annoying* GTK bug to be corrected:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153792
It was already the default document viewer since 2.10 was it not? I remember upgrading to 2.10 in Debian, an observing gpdf being removed and evince taking its place.
While a few distros (including Fedora, I think) have already included Evince, this is the first time it’s been an official component of GNOME.
Excellent news. Having used 2.12 betas in Ubuntu builds for a while, this is the moment when open source reaches early maturity on the desktop. Lots of small improvements and an ongoing focus on useability.
Now, my wishlist for 2.14:
1. Continued work on memory reduction;
2. Make more use of Cairo in themes;
3. A block-select tool in GEdit;
4. Improvements to the spam filter in Evolution;
5. A DTP application for GNOME Office;
6. A Cairo clone (non-Mono) integrated tightly into the desktop.
I made a mistake…
Point 6 should read “Beagle”, not “Cairo”, in case you hadn’t guessed.
7. A better menu editor, something like SMEG, but it should be possible to edit Places and Desktop menus as well.
8. Support for posix ACLs
9 Fix windows focus so that you can drag files into the active Nautilus window whitout the location of the file being activated instead.
10. Fix .hidden so that it works in file dialogs as well as in nautilus windwos and use it to hide /etc, /proc, /lib, /bin, /sbin, /root, /dev, /boot, /usr, /sys,..
and other directories that a non sysadmin never or seldom need to visit. (they should still be able to see these directories by doing “show hidden files”)
11. Get a logo that doesn’t look like Gnome is disintegrationg.
12 Hide the desktop folder in Nautilus views, as of now , the user is led to believe that the files on his Desktop are copies of the ones in the Nautilus view, and he may delete them by mistake. Besides showing the contents of the Desktop twice doesn’t fit well with the spatialness of Gnome. Similar problem exists with the trash that can be displayed both as a panel applet and on the desktop.
7. Agreed. SMEG should be enhanced to overcome existing limitations.
8. Yes.
9. Yes.
10. Definitely. The option for admins to view these directories is a must, though, as you affirm.
11. No opinion. Could be a good time to do a rebranding now, though, as GNOME can only grow more popular. (Could be part of the 10*10 marketing campaign… maybe.)
12. I’m very ambivalent about this one. How did the early Macs handle this?
10. Definitely. The option for admins to view these directories is a must, though, as you affirm.
Actually I think all users should be able to unhide them. This is not about preventing people from accessing these files. It is about getting these seldom used folders out of the way. The quesiton is if sysadmins should see hidden files and folders by default. I’m not quite sure. Most sysadmins will probably use CLI to access them anyway. I know I do.
12. I’m very ambivalent about this one. How did the early Macs handle this?
As far as I can remember, they had no Desktop folder inside a Finder window. You could however save things on the Desktop from a file dialog.
Apart from the risk of fooling users to delete what they think are copies of files on the real desktop, the current situation breaks the metaphores at play.
The Nautilus icon looks like a file cabinet, who will store their real life desktop into a folder in their file cabinet?
It is also inconsistent whith the way the Trash is handled. That too, is part of the file system, but just the same it is not displayed as a visible folder in Nautilus.
I think it is important to stick with the Desktop methaphore and let whatever artefacts the user sees on the computer desktop interact with the user in similar ways that real life objects would.
Ordinary people doesn’t think in terms of UNIX file hierachies, they see separate entities like a file cabinet, a trashcan, and a desktop. They dont expect that these items should have any tree like relation.
I think everyone is missing the underlying issue here. First of all, nautilus shouldn’t be hiding /anything/. dotfiles allow you to glaze over the issue instead of fixing the root cause–in this case, the filesystem layout. Nautilus wouldn’t need to hide it if was layed out properly (/System, /Users, /Applications, etc).
Secondly, nautilus is a poor excuse for a spatial interface. As the previous person said, the metaphor is broken in so many ways that it’s not nearly as useful as it could be. Some things that need to be done to get it up to shape:
1) everything needs to be accessable from the desktop (assuming you want to keep with that metaphor; I don’t particularly like it).
2) Each desktop entry needs to be treated as the root of its own tree, e.g. you shouldn’t be able to go up and view the contents of the desktop in a nautilus window.
3) Only somewhat related: filesystem operations should be isolated to nautilus only. Of course programs can still read and write to files, but operations such as selecting them should be done by dragging and dropping/double clicking. Save dialogs could be eliminated by allowing the creation of files from within nautilus and opening them with the appropriate program.
-bytecoder
Your ideas are intriguing, especially point 3. Have you logged these in Bugzilla or used the developer mailing lists? Was there any interest in what you have to say?
(2) ¡Amen! It is indeed disconcerting to open your home directory in the “Places” menu, then click up and be teletransported to /home, or open a cdrom, click up, then appear in /media.
Are you stating that you feel GNOME should not mirror the structure of the *NIX file system when navigating with Nautilus? I agree with hiding the system directories from users but not with fundamental changes to navigation behaviour.
How confusing would it be to see one abstraction in Nautilus and then another from the shell?
How confusing would it be to see one abstraction in Nautilus and then another from the shell?
This isn’t confusing. OS X does it too, by the way.
Anyway, it actually makes a lot more sense to hide the real POSIX/UNIX directory structure, and cover it by a more accessible and more non-geek friendly virtual directory structure. This makes the system as a whole a lot more accessible to computer illiterate users. What’s easier to understand for dad: /Applications or /bin?
The good thing about all the above is that the POSIX/UNIX structure isn’t lost or inaccessible: just open a shell and it’s there.
Anyway, it actually makes a lot more sense to hide the real POSIX/UNIX directory structure, and cover it by a more accessible and more non-geek friendly virtual directory structure. This makes the system as a whole a lot more accessible to computer illiterate users. What’s easier to understand for dad: /Applications or /bin?
The problem with this is that “bin” is short for binaries not applications, and I wouldn’t expect any applications to have their executables in /bin (as /bin is intended only for tools/programs that might be needed before /usr is mounted), they would be in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or possibly somewhere under /opt. The average user should not need to see the directory structure outside their home directory and mounted drives (CD, DVD, network, etc.) and anything which causes them to is an issue which needs to be fixed. I’m not paricularly keen on the idea of abstractions, as with the complicated nature of the filesystem hierarchy, it would be difficult/impossible to abstract it in a way that isn’t still confusing.
Agree, however I see another problem, closely related to this, with the POSIX/UNIX directory structure.
Not only is the structure a complete mess to new users, but trying to keep track of the files of a specific application is close to impossible, without using a package manager to do the work for you.
Why would I even want to do this? Well, I’ve grown up with Windows and it’s (sometimes) awful directory structure, and I’ve gotten used to keeping track of where I install applications and where said application keeps it’s files. It enables me to keep the directory structure clean’ish and browsable (readable) as in, I know what app is located where etc..
In POSIX/UNIX, I have absolutely no idea where my app happened to be installed, and even worse, all of it’s files are spread out in numerous directories across the entire filesystem.
I know package managers solve this supposed ‘problem’ very very nicely, but in my opinion, it’s still a problem.
A good way to go would be to have it sorta like mac osx, in the way that you simply put the entire application in the dir you want it installed, and all dependencies are sorted out automagically.
I’m guessing it would have symbolic links in all those places it would normally put the files themselves.
I’m no developer so I don’t know how it would work out exactly, or even if it would work out at all, but I’m sure it’s possible to make a solution without screwing up current model too badly.
And, with a solution in place, there would be no problem in having /System, /Applications, /Users directories and just hide/move/whatever the current dirs, since all those path problems would be taken care of with sym links.
Anyways, this is hardly a GNOME issue…
On to a GNOME issue instead
I’m not sure if it’s just me not knowing what I’m doing, but I can’t for the life of me seem to access samba shares (from a windows comp) at all in certain applications, like K3B, LinDC++, etc.. and I’ve read somewhere that XMMS has this problem too..
It works if I first create a dir and then mount the samba share to that dir, but this is done in the terminal and is hardly practical.
Just creating a permanent connection in Nautilus to the samba share doesn’t work. I can access the share in Nautilus, but not in the apps.
This is very annoying and should really be a non-issue, especially since X was built for networks in the first place. In Windows, this has never been an issue.
My suggestion, make Nautilus do a proper mount when making those permanent connections, instead of just a link.
Oh, and sorry if this really IS a non-issue and I’ve just not figured out yet how to do it..
Not only is the structure a complete mess to new users
It’s not, they rarely if ever see it.
but trying to keep track of the files of a specific application is close to impossible, without using a package manager to do the work for you.
New users don’t do that, have no interest in doing that, and the problem is already solved like you said.
I know package managers solve this supposed ‘problem’ very very nicely, but in my opinion, it’s still a problem.
To sum up, there is no problem as it is already solved, but you love to argue. Worse, you have a perfect solution that enables you to see exactly where the app is installed, but you prefer to dismiss it in order to be able to argue. Pathetic.
A good way to go would be to have it sorta like mac osx, in the way that you simply put the entire application in the dir you want it installed, and all dependencies are sorted out automagically.
Ah that was the reason to support your flawed argument, to have a (still flawed) reason to say Apple way is the way to go. Even more pathetic …
I’m guessing it would have symbolic links in all those places it would normally put the files themselves.
FYI, Gnu Stow does all of this already, check it. You will have more work though, but you seems to give higher priority to your flawed argument, so it’s no bother to you.
I’m no developer so I don’t know how it would work out exactly, or even if it would work out at all, but I’m sure it’s possible to make a solution without screwing up current model too badly.
It already exists, but nobody uses it. Perhaps you will find a distro that uses it though.
And, with a solution in place, there would be no problem in having /System, /Applications, /Users directories and just hide/move/whatever the current dirs, since all those path problems would be taken care of with sym links
There is no path problem except the flawed ones you invented.
Anyways, this is hardly a GNOME issue…
This is not an issue at all …
On to a GNOME issue instead
I guess it won’t be a Gnome issue …
I’m not sure if it’s just me not knowing what I’m doing, but I can’t for the life of me seem to access samba shares (from a windows comp) at all in certain applications, like K3B, LinDC++, etc.. and I’ve read somewhere that XMMS has this problem too..
None are GNOME apps, so I guessed right …
It works if I first create a dir and then mount the samba share to that dir, but this is done in the terminal and is hardly practical.
This is done at the OS level, that’s why it works. It’s actually possible to automount samba shares, ftp sites, … like that, once configured.
This is very annoying and should really be a non-issue, especially since X was built for networks in the first place
And you are so technical to say it should be a non-issue ? Get down to earth please. This has nothing to do with X being built for networks, you’re so confused, don’t talk about technical things please.
In Windows, this has never been an issue
You’re kidding right ?!! I still can’t access files on NFS or FTP with the Windows apps !!! So obviously it does not work in Windows, it’s even worse.
My suggestion, make Nautilus do a proper mount when making those permanent connections, instead of just a link.
Nautilus does neither. What have to be fixed are the apps anyway. There is a tool I forgot the name of (perhaps Linneighboorhood), that did mount samba shares in home directories.
Ookaze
dude, seriously, wtf have I done to you to deserve such disrespect?
I know my attempts at explaining my point were flawed, but don’t just throw away the entire thing like you did, calling me pathetic and the problems non-existant.
Just because you and alot of other people are quite happy with the way things are handled, doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems with that way.
I know there are lots of people who agree with me on this directory structure discussion, in fact I know several people who refuse to switch to Linux, solely because of the mess, yes I said it, that is the POSIX/UNIX directory structure when coming from a Windows world.
And insulting my intelligence about techincal things is nothing but lame from your side. You have no f*ing idea about my knowledge in the world of techical things, it, electronics, whatever…
Just so happens that I’ve not been using Linux for years, last time was maybe 5-6 years ago, and have instead been using Windows, not because “it was installed on my store bought ‘puter” but because 1. I used to be a gamer and the games were built for Windows, and 2. I didn’t think Linux had matured enough for me to ditch Windows completely back then.
I’m currently closely following the progress of Linux in various areas to see if/when it meets my list of demands for making the switch.
So, the only reason I couldn’t give a more techincally correct description of the problems I mentioned, was because I don’t f*ing remember enough from my experience with Linux to do so!
Geez!
I didn’t say one thing in my previous post that was meant to be a flame or whatever, I just listed two things that in my opinion are problem areas in Linux, and that I’ve noticed recently when again testing out Linux.
You failed to address any of the problems and instead dismissed them completely and called me pathetic..
I’m guessing you’re about 13 years old.
With regards the *nix directory structure… I have a few points to make:
1. It’s not difficult to grasp. Give it a couple of days, and a small amount of reading, and you understand.
2. Users hardly *ever* have to wander out of their $home, so don’t necessarily need to know.
3. As of Windows XP, most apps don’t save data to Program Files anymore, they save user specific info to the user’s profile like they should. The user profile is precisely like $home in *nix.
4. Standard users of systems don’t install software. When they do, it involves using raised priviliges to do so, and it will involve a pre-packaged application. As long as the app appears in their menu, they’re happy. They couldn’t care less about the contents of /usr, /usr/bin, /opt etc. When was the last time you had to understand where to put things in Program Files, System32, Documents & Settings etc when installing software in Windows?
5. The *nix file system is language agnostic – becuase the layout doesn’t use specific words there is no need to worry about internationalisation. I can only begin to imagine the mess MS have to deal with setting PATH variables, registry keys to the appropriate directories etc just so software doesn’t have to worry about where to install to.
*nix is not Windows and never will be. It will only compete on the same playing field(s).
ookay, I’m gonna try to answer all three of your posts here.. Bare with me..
It’s obvious I did a piss poor job of making my points in the first post (I’m the original poster about the dir structure problem and samba problem, just on another machine now).
I tried to explain some more in my second post, but to be honest, was way too pissed off at the insulting reply I got for no good reason, and apparantly still receive.
SO, if some users could try to STOP the god damn insults, I’ll try to explain my points in a way that you HOPEFULLY can understand them..
I’ll start with replying to JCooper’s response, which is the only one not beeing insulting towards me:
1. I didn’t say it was difficult to grasp. I grasp it, I just don’t like it.
2. I know users hardly ever do that, but me personally (and several friends of mine) like to have complete ‘control’, if you like, of the file structure and where all files are located. This is due to the nature of Windows, having to pretty much format the system every year or so, in order to keep it somewhat effective.
Which brings me to #3.
3. I almost never install apps in Program Files, due to the same reason as point #2.
I install apps on another partition, so whenever I need to reformat, I ONLY format C: and can keep most of my apps and files intact, which makes everything ALOT easier and takes ALOT less time (still have to go through the complete mess called ‘documents and settings’ tho for all my settings etc..).
So, I pretty much keep C: as unused as possible and instead keep all my stuff on D: or something..
This is how I like it and if it was up to me, it’s how I’d do it in *nix systems aswell, even tho they don’t have the need for reformats like Windows does.
4. see point #3.
5. I absolutely don’t mind the dirs beeing called /sys, /etc, /bin, and so on…
I just don’t like how there are tons of system dirs directly in the root, instead of all collected in one dir, like this:
/System/etc
/System/bin
/System/sys
instead of:
/etc
/bin
/sys
like now… If you see what I mean..
That alone would clean up alot imo..
Then ofcourse there’s the whole thing about partitions..
I actually am not entirely sure how this is handled in *nix systems.
In Windows partitions have their own logical unit, like C:, D: etc..
And I choose on which partition to put my files, but how is that handled in *nix’s?
Say I have two harddrives, and I fill my home dir with more files than one HDD can handle, does the system automatically put files on the second drive, even tho they are in the same directory?
Or does it work like in Windows, like my homedir is located only on one of the HDD’s and when it’s filled, I’m forced to abandon my home dir and instead store my files in some other dir on the second HDD?
I don’t know if I explained that good enough, but I hope so.
If it’s automatic, then sure that’s good and all, but I _still_ prefer the ‘windows way’ of doing it because what happens if half the system is located on one HDD and half on the other and one HDD breaks?
In Windows world, atleast I know exactly which files I loose if one HDD breaks, but if all that is handled automatically in *nix, then I guess it would be possible that I’d loose half of my files in one project and half in another project, even tho all projects were located in the home dir.. Right or Wrong?
I honestly don’t know and am asking here, so no flames please.
Thanks for the extensive reply – it shows a bit more of your understanding and reasoning behind your previous post(s).
With regards your partitions, *nix and XP (I’ll use XP as my example as its easier to type than Windows!) both handle partitions slightly differently, but also similarly in some cases. For e.g. did you know you could mount a new hard disk in XP as c:mydatagames? Then mount another one as c:mydatamusic… This kind of points to how mount points etc work under *nix.
How to set up your disk is a wide topic and I could never possibly describe the varieties, reasoning, arguments etc. I tend to have my / partition (i.e. the one that contains all the “system” files) as one partition. Therefore, if I want to nuke my installation I only have to kill that / partition. On that same disk, I create a /swap partition. I then have a seperate disk for my /home and /mnt/datadrive. When I fill my /mnt/datadrive.
In theory, anything stored in the / file structure is mountable on any partition or disk. You therefore have *more* control over a *nix file system than you do of an XP one. However, XP hides away a lot of the goodies of mounting to directories etc from novice users, and will instead do a “you have a new disc, would you like to format it” kind of routine, ending up with C: D: E: F: etc. Once you get your head round the possibilities of *nix file systems, you’ll see that “the Windows way” as you put it is more susceptible to being b0rked than a comparative *nix setup.
See http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/pro… for details of Dynamic Volumes in XP.
See http://twiki.iwethey.org/Main/NixPartitioning for a sample Debian suggested partitioning scheme.
Thanks for the reply..
It was very informative and actually made me ‘get’ the whole *nix dir structure alot better now..
I actually never thought about it in the way that for example /home could be it’s own partition, just like I use d: for all my stuff and keep c: for windows itself as much as possible..
so /home could then be pretty much like my d:, except for the fact that apps aren’t installed there.. correct?
if I wanted to make one partition for the apps then, what would that be? /usr?
One thing I still wonder about tho, what happens when /home is filled? Can I ‘extend’ my /home dir onto another HDD, or do I create a new /home dir on the new HDD, or how is it handled?
(hope someone still reads this, since this item has been pushed down into the archive..)
Just because you and alot of other people are quite happy with the way things are handled, doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems with that way
Of course, but when you cite a problem, then say it is solved, then carry on saying there is still a problem even if it is solved, then yes, there’s still a problem, but it’s you.
I know there are lots of people who agree with me on this directory structure discussion, in fact I know several people who refuse to switch to Linux, solely because of the mess, yes I said it, that is the POSIX/UNIX directory structure when coming from a Windows world.
You describe the UNIX directory structure a mess when coming from Windows ? And you want to be credible ?
When in Windows, each user files are scattered in at least 3 different directories if not more ?
People who refuse to switch to Linux solely because of the Unix directory structure ? Can they be any more moronic than that ? Specially when these are not visible to the user ? I did not doubt your intelligence till then, only thought you were clueless, but now I’m starting to change my mind.
And insulting my intelligence about techincal things is nothing but lame from your side
Was not the point, I thought you were clueless. But now I’m starting to doubt it is only that.
You have no f*ing idea about my knowledge in the world of techical things, it, electronics, whatever…
Of course not, but for Gnome, Linux and X topics, I sure have a very good idea now.
I’m currently closely following the progress of Linux in various areas to see if/when it meets my list of demands for making the switch.
You have the right to use Windows. You have the right to follow the progress of Linux. Just try being more humble as to what knowledge you have, and don’t throw things you don’t understand in the discussion (like X networking ability in a Gnome discussion).
So, the only reason I couldn’t give a more techincally correct description of the problems I mentioned, was because I don’t f*ing remember enough from my experience with Linux to do so!
You gave a correct description of your problems. That was not the problem with your post. The problem is that you affirmed technical things that are just false, and based on your false assertions, implied some fix. This is actually a common behaviour among clueless folks new to Linux, and overwhelmed by the fact that they can change things. Only problem is that they think they have great ideas, when most of the times, these have been debated or dismissed a long time ago.
I just listed two things that in my opinion are problem areas in Linux, and that I’ve noticed recently when again testing out Linux
Of the two, one is solved, and the other one is also a problem in the OS you use (meaning that in Linux, we do it another way).
You failed to address any of the problems and instead dismissed them completely and called me pathetic
Wrong. I told you one is solved, and the other one is being worked on if not already solved (I will install gnome 2.12 tonight only), while in the OS you are using now, the problem is worse and is not being worked on.
I’m guessing you’re about 13 years old
Which would make me a genius, given that I started using Linux 7 years ago, have gone entirely on my own made Linux OS from scratch 4,5 years ago (so at 9). Given the ton of work I have done with Gnome since 2001, well, I can be proud to be 13 years old (or perhaps I’m not).
Ookaze
Right, on to Anonymous response and insults:
“Of course, but when you cite a problem, then say it is solved, then carry on saying there is still a problem even if it is solved, then yes, there’s still a problem, but it’s you.”
I said IN MY OPINION. I think the problem has been solved by a method called solution_by_ignoring.
They saw a problem, but instead of removing the core-problem they instead worked around it by making apps that keep track of the mess (and yes it IS a mess without package managers, it wouldn’t be called dependency hell otherwise).
It _is_ possible to make one solution to a problem and still have the problem, and I think this is the case.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the package managers and the work they do, but I STILL don’t like the directory structure, mkay?
“You describe the UNIX directory structure a mess when coming from Windows ? And you want to be credible ?”
Right, and I’m sure your memory is soo short, that you completely forgot that I actually said the Windows dir structure could sometimes be a pain aswell?
I believe my exact words were: “I’ve grown up with Windows and it’s (sometimes) awful directory structure”
But I guess you missed that, right?
“I did not doubt your intelligence till then, only thought you were clueless, but now I’m starting to change my mind.”
Right, 13 years old seems about right.. I still don’t know why you feel it’s soo important to try and make me look as bad as possible by insulting me as much as possible for as little reason as possible..
Grow up!
“Of course not, but for Gnome, Linux and X topics, I sure have a very good idea now”
No you simply don’t. You have no idea at all.
“You have the right to use Windows. You have the right to follow the progress of Linux. Just try being more humble as to what knowledge you have, and don’t throw things you don’t understand in the discussion (like X networking ability in a Gnome discussion).”
Why not?
about the networking ability, I was actually talking about Nautilus way of making permanent samba connections and my wish for it to do it with a proper mount. Which IS Gnome related thank you very much.
And I actually SAID that I’m sorry if I just haven’t found the correct way to doing it yet (without using the terminal or manually changing some config files).
I did NOT say I knew better than you or anyone else, I simply described my experience with it and a posted a suggestion on how I’d like it to work.
NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!
“You gave a correct description of your problems. That was not the problem with your post. The problem is that you affirmed technical things that are just false, and based on your false assertions, implied some fix. This is actually a common behaviour among clueless folks new to Linux, and overwhelmed by the fact that they can change things. Only problem is that they think they have great ideas, when most of the times, these have been debated or dismissed a long time ago. ”
Again, I’m not f*ing clueless!
I know my way around the system, and I’ve been using several distros for several years, but it was a long time ago now, since I last used Linux as regularly and I simply forgot.
But you come off like you are some kind of god and everyone who doesn’t know every single byte of information there is about Linux, should not post in a Linux thread, BULLSHIT.
If I described a problem that has been fixed already, just say so instead of insulting me.
If I suggested a fix that’s been suggested, been dismissed, or even accepted before, then FFS say so!
And I’m NOT overwhelmed by the fact that I can change things.. Jesus, I’m starting to wonder if you’re simply not trying to make everyone else sound stupid so you yourself don’t come off as a noob… maybe that’s the case?
I’m no f*ing noob and don’t you f*ing treat me like one!
I did not deserve your treatment, and if you thought there were some errors in my first post, you should’ve simply asked me to explain better, or told me what those errors were, like a grown up, not bitch like a child.
“Of the two, one is solved, and the other one is also a problem in the OS you use (meaning that in Linux, we do it another way).”
well, read my reply to JCooper, and I hope that makes you understand why I think the ‘problem’ is not yet solved.
and the second problem, I ASKED if there was some other way to do what I wanted, or if the manual mounting in the terminal was the onyl way.
I just think it’s such an obvious thing that if I make a permanent samba connection, I want ALL apps to be able to access that connection.. But that’s just me..
And that’s a Nautilus issue, not an OS issue.
“Wrong. I told you one is solved, and the other one is being worked on if not already solved (I will install gnome 2.12 tonight only), while in the OS you are using now, the problem is worse and is not being worked on.”
I hope it’s solved in 2.12, but you didn’t say anything about it beeing worked on in your first reply, you just bitched at me and insulted me..
This response is much more constructive..
And I know Windows is a mess, I hate it, that’s why I wanna switch to Linux, in case you haven’t figured that out yet..
“Which would make me a genius, given that I started using Linux 7 years ago, have gone entirely on my own made Linux OS from scratch 4,5 years ago (so at 9). Given the ton of work I have done with Gnome since 2001, well, I can be proud to be 13 years old (or perhaps I’m not).”
I guess it would..
But you honestly act like a 13 year old sometimes..
And not a very smart one either..
For that matter, I don’t know how long you’ve been using computers but I’ve been pretty much raised up among computers, and bought my first pentium 10 years ago, and have owned and used atleast one x86 computer every day since then. and before that I ofcourse had 486, 386 (no 286 tho, got stuck in Nintendo/Sega land for a couple of years), Amiga, C64, Vic20…
And I first started using Linux 6 years ago, maybe 7.
But I went back completely to Windows after about 3-4 years, and the last 2 of those years, I only used Linux on my server.
However, the first distro I actually liked, was Slackware, and that was right there in the beginning of my Linux experience, so I had to learn everything the hard manual way, which I actually preferred.
I love Slackware, but for my everyday system, I want something that doesn’t FORCE me to go text-mode as soon as I need something done. I love text-mode for more advanced stuff, but not for everyday stuff… Some things _should_ be possible to do with just a simple point and click operation. That’s one of the points of a graphical user interface.
Personally, I prefer adding a short editable description to directories (by default).
/bin — Linux’s Applications, See Help for more Info.
/etc — Linux’s Configuration. See Help for more Info.
It would educate the user and make it more usable if you don’t know the language since you could always default back to the “cryptic” file name. This “directory description” feature would also allow users to be more descriptive for their own directories. This is especially useful for collaborative work. For example:
/shares/myproject — See John Smith about accessing this directory
This isn’t confusing. OS X does it too, by the way.
And that would be the #1 reason of many why I hate OSX.
Nautilus wouldn’t need to hide it if was layed out properly (/System, /Users, /Applications, etc).
Yeah, right. Another Apple abstract fan.
Hidden is much better than abstractly renamed. Some of us hate having real folder abstracted differently than in terminal. Here are the points why
/Users??? why is this different than home
/Applications??? This actualy one of the biggest bugs on OSX. Application must NOT be a real folder. It leads to common assumption that you simply copy application inside and that is it. Application folder is public writeable and every app you copy as user is not secure.
Only installable applications are installed with higher user. You can simply modify .app/Contents/Info.plist (or something like that, in my usual reality I hate OSX), put a bash script
#!/bin/sh
rm -y /
application
You just need to run (or correct me, as I said I’m not sure) this application and then preach your logic
In nautilus you have applications://, which is in fact your application menu. There are only two features it misses:
1.support for some autopackage or something like that to be dragged inside and installed (off course with root privileges only).
2.support to uninstall the package when dragged from applications:// to trash (again with root privileges)
/System – linux and usual unix has different structure.
But then again runing script like
#!/bin/sh
for fname in /[a-z]*; do
[ -d $fname ] && echo `basename “$fname”` >.hidden
done
for fname in /*; do
[ -f $fname ] && echo `basename “$fname”` >.hidden
done
ln -s /home /Users
mkdir /System
ln -s /etc /System/Preferences
ln -s /lib /Library
ln -s /usr/lib /System/Library
ln -s /var /System/Var
ln -s /var/log /System/Logs
does the trick, and here you have your beloved Mac view in Nautilus
And if the symbolic liks bother you, you can still do
mkdir somedir
mount –bind realdir somedir
Right, on to somebody’s response:
“Yeah, right. Another Apple abstract fan.”
Acutally, no, I hate Apple’s Mac OS, even more so than Windows, but they have some good ideas.
The way they install apps (if modified some) is one of them imo..
and /users, /applications, /system were just suggestions made from some other person, not me..
I have no problem with /home, /sys, /bin.
I just don’t like that there are so many of those system dirs directly in the root, like I explained to JCooper..
“This actualy one of the biggest bugs on OSX. Application must NOT be a real folder. It leads to common assumption that you simply copy application inside and that is it. Application folder is public writeable and every app you copy as user is not secure. ”
Okay, didn’t know it wasn’t secure..
But if it could be made secure, wouldn’t that be a very good way of installing apps?
Ofcourse, commong stuff should remain in a commong place, imo, but the app itself should as much as possible be kept in it’s own dir.. I like it that way..
But this is MY opinion.. Seems I can’t stress that enough around here..
If there’s a big reason why this way is no good, even if it would be secure, then I really want to hear it.
I really do..
“In nautilus you have applications://, which is in fact your application menu. There are only two features it misses:
1.support for some autopackage or something like that to be dragged inside and installed (off course with root privileges only).
2.support to uninstall the package when dragged from applications:// to trash (again with root privileges)”
I actually haven’t checked this out, I think, maybe I did in my old days, but I don’t remember it..
However, does this list all my installed apps, or just the ones with a menu item?
And even if it lists all of them, and even if I, personally, definitely can live with the *nix way of installing apps, there are still people who have the same opinion as me (mostly from the Windows world) and just will not install a system that won’t let them choose where to install apps, like Windows let’s them.
And even if some people don’t think that’s a problem, it actually is, since it keeps some users off Linux, and that’s not good if the goal is to attract users, not scare them away..
But as I said, I personally can live with the way it is, I just think there are other ways I like more..
“…and here you have your beloved Mac view in Nautilus”
I hate Mac.. I really do..
The system with the best dir structure imo, was Win98, but the Win98 itself was horribly broken. Pretty much the only things I like in Windows is Explorer (not IE) and the dir structure (in Win98, later they made it cluttered and messy imo).
I don’t know much about the Mac structure, I just know that the Mac supposedly installs apps by just moving them into a dir, and then the entire app is located in that dir.. And if that could be worked out securely and without apps having duplicate common files, etc.. Then I think that’s a very nice way of installing apps.. It’s simple and clean looking.. And makes Installing/Uninstalling a breeze, even without package managers..
And it’s easy to manage from a filemanager..
I hope this very long post can stop the insults and flames and instead start a nice conversation, if needed.
Okay, didn’t know it wasn’t secure..
But if it could be made secure, wouldn’t that be a very good way of installing apps?
Yeah, common mistake
Can be made secure? Yes it can, just as on Linux as on OSX. OSX just flawed their version with security problem.
How it could be handled on Linux?
RE-POST for reference: In nautilus you have applications://, which is in fact your application menu. There are only two features it misses:
1.support for some autopackage or something like that to be dragged inside and installed (off course with root privileges only).
2.support to uninstall the package when dragged from applications:// to trash (again with root privileges)
As you see, installer like for example autopackage could be used (or again for another example xml file that contains yum|apt|whatever repositories and package names, in this case everything could be done by any system package manager, in this case you could even stay subscribed to program updates). If gnome-vfs would support detect & d’n’d appropriate handler of this package from for example one nautilus to opened nautilus window with applications:// or directly on start menu and start autopackage installer. This part would be almost trivial.
Autopackage (as does any package manager on linux) automaticaly demands root by default. And lately even distro package managers start getting support for it. So, no security flaw here.
Uninstall would demand similiar feature, but by dragging application shortcut to trash. By calling uninstall (again with root password). Another trivial thing.
If I think the only really missing feature is missing parameter of package information in fdo desktop shortcut spec, where packager and package would be specified.
It is much safer d’n’d install than the one that OSX provides and it is a simple solution.
Have this idea for long time now but I’m too lazy to either fill bug report or implement it.
I actually haven’t checked this out, I think, maybe I did in my old days, but I don’t remember it..
However, does this list all my installed apps, or just the ones with a menu item?
Menu apps only, but lately all apps come with fdo desktop shortcut so that is not a problem.
Although, I just tried it and it doesn’t work. So,… either I haven’t compiled support or this was dropped. I never used it anyway. But here is more info anyway: http://gnome-hacks.jodrell.net/hacks.html?id=28
I hate Mac.. I really do..
Ok, now that you mentioned twice all that is needed is your mothers signature and I believe you
And, so do I. I own G5 and G4 but I try to avoid to touch them with a 10foot pole if possible.
10. Fix .hidden … to hide /etc, /proc, /lib, /bin, /sbin, /root, /dev, /boot, /usr, /sys..
Fantastic! This will be my main reason to go back to try GNOME again!
Peter
7: A menu editor now exists. If you like smeg more, you can always choose to use it. As for the Places menu, that’s simply the same locations of the file chooser, so edit that (duh). As for the Desktop menu; NO, it should not be possible to edit it. What would be the point of doing that?
8: get eiciel. It’s mentioned even on gnome.org
9: I don’t really get it, could you explain it better (and file a bug in bugzilla)?
10: Could be an option, sure. As of now they are hidden under “filesystem”, and do not show up unless you go looking, however, so not really a big deal.
11: don’t troll, please. That’s a splashscreen, btw, and close to no distro uses the default gnome Splash, so what’s your point? Change it!
12: Uh… switch to “home_dir_is_desktop” behaviour and live happy.
7: A menu editor now exists. If you like smeg more, you can always choose to use it. As for the Places menu, that’s simply the same locations of the file chooser, so edit that (duh). As for the Desktop menu; NO, it should not be possible to edit it. What would be the point of doing that?
For one thing, you may wan’t to turn off configruation options that are seldomly used by your users. You may want to move some of the things you find under System tools in the Program menu to the System settings menu under Desktop. E.g. how many users would find “New login” in its current position. Tools for desktop sharing would probably benefit from being moved as well. But this is only how I want to move things, other people may have other ideas. So the best thing we can do is to make good defaults and give some possibilities to them.
8: get eiciel. It’s mentioned even on gnome.org
This is only a work around. The result you get by installing it is that you manage permissions in two places. The ACLs should be integrated in the standard permissions tab.
9: I don’t really get it, could you explain it better (and file a bug in bugzilla)?
Try this: 1) open a Nautiulus window containing a text file. 2) Open gedit 3) Now drag the text file into the gedit window. The focus is now on the nautilus window from where you collected your file not on gedit where it most likely should be. That is on a successful drag & drop the focus should shift to the window of the drop target.
12: Uh… switch to “home_dir_is_desktop” behaviour and live happy.
That creates other problems. E.g. some applications doesn’t create proper dot files for their settings. If I want to switch to other DEs, they will expect a Desktop folder. Secondly the Desktop is not a very good place to store things, other than temporarily. It quickly gets cluttered and it is often hidden by other windows.
7: this kind of customizations could be possible with profiles in Sabayon (did not look into it). Could actually be useful in multiuser environments.
8: I see ACL as advanced and separate from normal posix permissions… but anyway, integration of eiciel is scheduled for 2.14 I think
9: got it. You are right, that would be a sensible behaviour… file a bug! 🙂
12: did not know about app problems, and well, other DEs not behaving properly is other DEs problem 🙂
I however keep the Desktop dir and keep almost everything under it, nowadays.
Try this: 1) open a Nautiulus window containing a text file. 2) Open gedit 3) Now drag the text file into the gedit window. The focus is now on the nautilus window from where you collected your file not on gedit where it most likely should be. That is on a successful drag & drop the focus should shift to the window of the drop target.
Focus is on the gedit window here. (ubuntu breezy)
Gedit is probably focused as I have focus follows mouse enabled come to think of it.
I hope mono and all its marketing keep out of gnome
Sad little troll.
6. A Cairo clone (non-Mono) integrated tightly into the desktop.
Cairo itself is not a Mono app. Why would we need a clone? Dumb troll.
I had a quick look on Google and found “Accessibility Control List.” Is this a security feature you want added?
That’s correct. With ACL, you can chown/chmod files with the click of a mouse from within Nautilus.
Thanks for the explanation. Sounds neat!
Dumb…site…It times out on the “submit”, so I edit a bit and resubmit, but then it turns out that the first submit worked! Ack!
GNOME still needs a stable release of Anjuta 2!
used for a week since the rc version, very stable and speed is faster than 2.10.
thanks guys.
GNOME is shit
I think everyone is missing the underlying issue here.
Right.
Nautilus wouldn’t need to hide it if was layed out properly (/System, /Users, /Applications, etc).
Right again, and it’s sometimes called /sys, /home, /bin, etc.
/System /Users, /Applications wouldn’t be much better than /sys, /home/, /bin, for people who don’t speak English. But this can be fixed for all languages now that Nautilus (and the File Chooser) can display human-readable names for standard directories. That’s thanks to API in glib.
Murray
That would probably break a lot of existing Applications, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
It also doesn’t take users of various nationalities into account. If we want more human readable names that should be fixed by .desktop files, not by changeing the real names in the file tree.
To do that each each item (/Users,/Applications…) would need to be need to be a file hierachy of its own, or we would get problems knowing what to display in the path bar in certain situations. (Just like we allready have with Trash).
One more thing, the Users folder should contain folders named by the real name of the user followed by the login id to prevent ambiguity E.g. John Smith (jsmith)
From what I understand KDE will do this in future releases.
The Applications folder should be special in that respect that if you drop an installation package for your system on it the application should be installed provided you have permissions to do so. If not you should be asked for your password if you have sudo rights, or the root password. And if you drag an application to the trash you should be asked if you want to uninstall it.
Your ideas are intriguing, especially point 3. Have you logged these in Bugzilla or used the developer mailing lists? Was there any interest in what you have to say?
I totally agree. If you are not happy with the behavior, you can always tell the developers about your opinion. Also, you must remember that you pay nothing for using Gnome. That’s why you should become part of the ‘gnome community’ expressing your points.
I am just trying out the new Gnome and have to say the developers did an excellent job. Keep it up guys! The new Gnome totally rocks!
I have been a KDE user for a couple years and I like it, but every time Gnome comes out with a release I try it, I used to hate it, but with every release it seems to get better and I have to say that as of late Gnome seems to really be coming into its own
The recent realeases of Gnome seem to be quite nice and while it does not suit my personal taste I can see how Gnome is developing such a large following. The Gnome team is really making strides towards a great desktop and I hope they continue this effort.
Keep the up the good work Gnome dev’s and I wish you the best….. Who knows, maybe some day in the not so distant future I will be using Gnome instead of KDE.
I will be emerging Gnome 2.12 as soon as it is in my portage tree (a day or 2) and I suspect it will be better then the last.
Except from ugly color scheme, morbid icons, dog-slow and memory hog console and horrible spatial navigating nautilus gnome is making some progress.
Has Metacity acquired any features yet? Like edge resistance and smarter automatic window placement (see kwin)?
Gnome still does not have the kind of implicit and inherent network awareness that one needs to stay productive today.
Gnome is a resource hog and therefore unusable as a Terminal Server desktop for multiple users or on low-end hardware. I believe that a freedesktop should be usable on a P-II 400 Mhz with 128 MB of RAM. There are millions of those machines still around. What’s more, XFCE and KDE perform much better on that hardware
Gnome uses the horribly central registry for its configuration.
Many gnome developers, clearly not all, have a huge chip on their shoulders (hint, hint, Miguel and Nat) and they often badmouth other free software projects.
Gnome’s multimedia applications crash too often.
Gnome’s devs claim fiefox as a native Gnome application.
Gnome is bland and horribly boring in its looks.
Gnome reinvents the wheel too often. Instead of using the kiosktool that was available and expanding it to have one single tool that could manage all desktop applications, they had to invent their own tool. This not-invented-here syndrome is going away, but it is still very prevalent.
#################
Good things######
#################
Gnome uses instant-apply which is very elegant.
Gnome presents a simpler interface to first-time users.
Evolution is a good email client and Gaim is a good IM app.
“Gnome uses the horribly central registry for its configuration. ”
It’s NOT a registry.
“Many gnome developers, clearly not all, have a huge chip on their shoulders (hint, hint, Miguel and Nat) and they often badmouth other free software projects. ”
Yeah because you would never do that
Gnome uses the horribly central registry for its configuration.
It’s not a registry, it’s file-based with multiple GUIs and I do like it.
Gnome’s multimedia applications crash too often.
GStreamer is maturing fast. It doesn’t crash on me and keeps getting better. The new 0.9 is far superior than the current stable 0.8, so I guess the next stable 1.0 is going to be totally transparent to the users, with no real issues.
Gnome’s devs claim fiefox as a native Gnome application.
No.
Gnome is bland and horribly boring in its looks.
It’s supposed to be simple and non-intrusive. And I do think GNOME gets this right as far as themes go (although the icons should be revamped). You can install the flashy ones later if you want.
Evolution is a good email client and Gaim is a good IM app.
Gaim is not a GNOME app.
Gnome still does not have the kind of implicit and inherent network awareness that one needs to stay productive today.
No substance to that complaint, complete buzzword bullshit.
Gnome is a resource hog and therefore unusable as a Terminal Server desktop for multiple users or on low-end hardware. I believe that a freedesktop should be usable on a P-II 400 Mhz with 128 MB of RAM. There are millions of those machines still around. What’s more, XFCE and KDE perform much better on that hardware
Processor there is fine. RAM is the problem there. According to Rasterman of E fame XFCE’s window manager is very much slower than Metacity, likewise fluxbox.
Gnome uses the horribly central registry for its configuration.
Irrational bullshit based off the windows registry model. GConf is not a single big binary blob, default is multiple xml files for apps. An unlikely corruption in one of those files will only effect that app, and that particular group of settings.
Gnome’s multimedia applications crash too often.
GStreamer is getting better and better, give it a chance. The big improvements won’t be seen until we get 0.10
Gnome’s devs claim fiefox as a native Gnome application.
No they don’t. Epiphany is the official Gnome browser. What distributions do is up to them.
Gnome is bland and horribly boring in its looks.
Gnome is clean and usable in its looks, and quite nice now with clearlooks. There is a reason OSX no longer has that hideous blue aqua look.
Gnome reinvents the wheel too often. Instead of using the kiosktool that was available and expanding it to have one single tool that could manage all desktop applications, they had to invent their own tool. This not-invented-here syndrome is going away, but it is still very prevalent.
Only kiosktool I can find is a KDE application. Mixing applications from different desktops is bad for consitancy, we see this with firefox.
Processor there is fine. RAM is the problem there. According to Rasterman of E fame XFCE’s window manager is very much slower than Metacity, likewise fluxbox.
That was XFCE 4.0. The 4.2 version’s Window Manager tears Metacity a new one….
Great release, I’ve been testing out the betas for a while, and it’s worth making the switch from 2.12. I love how Gnome sports a simple interface and is easy to use. It’s easy for a new user to quickly pick Gnome up.
I’m hoping next release they rework the icons or create a whole new theme all together. The current theme is just dated.
I hope that Gnome in the near future institutes a full GUI configuration tool….. when I am using a GUI I want to configure via GUI, as do I think that most anybody in the real world would want the same thing.
If Gnome wants to keep the interface consistent and not so easy to change perhaps they could make the GUI configuration tool a root console command accessable only GUI not accessable from the standard configuration tool.
from a root console type “gnome.config” or something like that to give the user a full GUI config tool for Gnome.
this is something the average user would not know about but something the Power user would use, it would make Gnome a much more viable power user DE.
Do you mean a single configuration app full of sub-panels/windows/whatevers with a full tree of sections, and stuff?
That sounds like kcontrol, the KDE Control Center, and even KDE developers recognise it is an awful mess.
Still, I guess you can always have a single window with “pointers” to the tools, each one appearing as a standalonte window/capplet like today.
It’s in the works, actually: saw a very early version on planet.gnome.org
All I have to say is wow! I cant belive how great ubntu breezy is going to be and I cant belive how much gnome improved in one release. It feels extremely fast and this is on a live cd. The live cd can install software, can play music, you can change you sound device from one sound device to the other(I had problems in ubuntu horay), It looks even cleaner, The application installer has to be the best improvement, and is one of the best things I have used since sliced bread.
Give yourself a pat on the back gnome developers this is the best releases I have ever used, same goes with ubuntu! Any critic of gnome/ubuntu has to give the live cd a try, you will be blown away!
Gnome 2.12 looks like more “professional” than KDE (more “windows like”), more “open development” and more often released.My thanks to developers.Archlinux was one of the
first distro to have gnome 2.12 on the repros.Thinks about that when you say ubuntu and gentoo are “blending edge.
that makes GNOME big and usable…
I translate gnome to my mother tongue, but the app in gnome to use PO files, gtranslator, needs LOT of LOVE! What’s the sense of everybody using Kbabel to translate GNOME?
Everybody likes candy effects and great appareance, but lets make 2.14 the release of the usability
I totally agree with the need for Gnome to improve on its overall appearance. Gnome devs, please finally add some _real_ eyecandy. Until then, keep your eyes on the new Clearlooks theme for Cairo:
http://www.stellingwerff.com/?p=5
Merge all settings into one single preferences application. Make it more stable, apps crash quite often. Still I think Gnome is far better than KDE, and I’m already eagerly waiting for 2.14. Keep it up!
(i don’t mean van rossum)
“Gnome is bland and horribly boring in its looks.”
absolutely wrong. it’s simple and elegant.
“add some _real_ eyecandy. Until then, keep your eyes on the new Clearlooks theme for Cairo:
http://www.stellingwerff.com/?p=5“
more bad design advice.
as someone who knows a little about design, it is amazing to me how gnome has kept their design footing, and avoided the Waterworld-like mess that is K–.
yes but Windows XP is far superior to the gnome desktop
As of what I have understand, glitz is a backend to cairo so that cairo uses opengl to draw even 2D. Now to my question, how do you make cairo use glitz? I am running ubuntu and glitz is installed and I am using gnome 2.12.
me too, i read many times this question in different forums but never see an answer.
No, this is just one example from pile of hype and deliberate misunderstandings surrounding GNOME. glitz MAY be backend for cairo and gtk (cue massive wankfest of gnome fanboys on slashdot) but it is disabled (in gtk) and will remain disabled (search gtk mailinglist and see for yourself). So in fact old good XRENDER is still used and you gain nothing except for warm and fuzzy feeling of l33tness.
No, this is just one example from pile of hype and deliberate misunderstandings surrounding GNOME. glitz MAY be backend for cairo and gtk (cue massive wankfest of gnome fanboys on slashdot) but it is disabled (in gtk) and will remain disabled
No, I don’t know why people keep saying that either and it will not make your system wicked fast – quite the opposite in fact. Some people seem to think that it will be some miraculous cure for Gnome’s apparent slowness. The problem with the Glitz/OpenGL back-end is that you have to have a fully stable and working hardware accelerated implementation behind it to get any sort of benefit whatsoever. Without that there is simply no point. At this point in time, that basically means nVidia and no one else (and they’re not perfect).
Obviously, relying on closed source drivers from pretty much one vendor just to get your GUI environment up and running is a fairly bad idea considering the number of people using different kinds of hardware, and the fact that people in the Linux world heavily promote the use of older hardware and open source software.
Obviously, relying on closed source drivers from pretty much one vendor just to get your GUI environment up and running is a fairly bad idea considering the number of people using different kinds of hardware, and the fact that people in the Linux world heavily promote the use of older hardware and open source software.
Wouldn’t the best idea be to start working on this stuff for the Nvidia cards today and then apply it to all other cards when they catch up? KDE does not make me wait for the lowest end card to catch up driver-wise before it lets me use a built in composite manager.
OT
If you dont like the Linux directory structure (me too!), look for Haiku OS. Its the new beos and will surely satisfy Windows world users.
Some of these bitch rants from pro Gnome and anti Gnome people sound like the adult trumpeting going on in a Charlie Brown TV special.
Seriously, so you don’t like Gnome, so what. Seriously, take you problems to the Gnome devs, file a bug report. Join the community, get involved or STFU. Cristicisms are great, I doubt many people who could make your changes a reality are reading your posts here. Perhaps, thought I doubt it.
Anyways, on to the Gnome relase.
Way to go Gnome developers. Gnome is a kick ass Desktop. I use it, wife uses it, it works, it works well. Don’t mind the nay saying bitch-ass whiners, you do a good job and I look forward to Gnome 3.0. Thanks for the clipboard, I have wanted that for sometime now! Keep on rockin the freedom.