The first point release of the stable 2.12.x series of Gnome has been
released. This release includes the latest bugfixes and other
improvements such as updated translations.
Gnome 2.12.1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
GNOME just gets better and better, it’s just a pleasure to use.
1. Great apps, GIMP, Galeon, xchat, AbiWord, gaim,evince, Inkscape, f-spot, totem-plugin.
2. Loads of great gtk themes and easy to install.
3. Non Browser mode is great and you can even type a location from it with shortcut keys.
4. The new brower mode features are great as well, easier to move around.
5. The menu structure is awesome and easier than ever.
Agreed on all points but…
GEdit needs a great deal of work (block-select and better syntax highlighting to start with);
Speed and memory management need to be improved, as everyone mentions;
The continued lack of a GTK DTP app is worrying.
Agreed. A desktop publishing app would be a big selling point for Gnome. The current feature list is looking a bit thin (compared, obviously, to KDE). While the apps that are there are really great (and I don’t think KDE has anything like GIMP; am I correct?), bar a few issues like the additional features needed in Gedit, a few more are needed before Gnome is going to really look convincing as a full desktop environment.
On the other hand, I have no need for such things, and use Gnome every day very happily.
Agreed. A desktop publishing app would be a big selling point for Gnome. The current feature list is looking a bit thin (compared, obviously, to KDE). While the apps that are there are really great (and I don’t think KDE has anything like GIMP; am I correct?), bar a few issues like the additional features needed in Gedit, a few more are needed before Gnome is going to really look convincing as a full desktop environment.
On the other hand, I have no need for such things, and use Gnome every day very happily.
Run KDE apps on Gnome. Problem solved. Believe it or not, only geeks notice the difference. I installed SUSE 9.2 on my Aunt’s PC, and Ubuntu 5.04 on my Mom’s. I showed them how to use YaST/Synaptic, and set up Gnome for both of them.
I then get an email from my Aunt asking how to use Kopete, I use it for a minute myself then email her back and tell her. Keep in mind, she is running this on Gnome.
A few days later, I am at my Mom’s house and look at her computer. She has Gnome running with Kooka, Konqueror (granted, I installed this one for her so she could use it as a file manager, she likes it better than Nautilus) and Kaffeine running. All KDE apps on Gnome. She didn’t notice the difference.
Seeing as she isn’t a geek, she didn’t have a hissy fit over multiple toolkits being installed, and she doesn’t lose sleep over not having a pure desktop.
Hell, I recently switched to KDE. Guess what some of the apps I use are? Liferea (GTK2 feed reader), Leafpad (GTK2 Text Editor), gtk-gnutella and the Gimp.
I say use the best tool for the job (whether it be a DE, WM or Application) no matter what its toolkit is.
Well, supposedly Krita is intended as another photoshop replacement, but I just use The Gimp.
Seriously, I run KDE and my most-used applications are OpenOffice.Org Writer, Gaim, Konqueror, amaroK, and Mozilla Firefox. Only two of those are Qt-based.
Why is this feature list so thin? There hasn’t been a real explosion of apps for GNOME yet. Is it because KDE is a little older or is it due to the allegedly problematic APIs (I’m not a programmer so I am only going on hearsay with the latter)?
Gimp is not part of Gnome. It just happened to be developed using same tool kit, GTK, as Gnome. Just like apps that were created using QT that are not part of KDE.
That’s true, gtk was actually created by the gimp team and gnome used gimp’s libraries…
(and I don’t think KDE has anything like GIMP; am I correct?)
Krita is shaping up nicely – layer control, lots of plugins, very very nice interface. Screenshots:
http://linux.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Krita-Screenshot-2254.ht…
http://www.koffice.org/krita/screenshots.php
Krita is shaping up nicely – layer control, lots of plugins, very very nice interface. Screenshots:
Yer, they’ve done a really nice job with Krita with limited resources and for the time it’s been around, especially considering the GIMP has been around for ten years. It’s got to a stage now where people can really use it as an option, and any bugs you do happen to find can be filed.
I suppose it’s aimed at Photoshop people, as it has a Photoshop-like interface, and they have stated that Krita was created for people who complain “There’s no Photoshop replacement!” And no, the GIMP does not have some of the features that Photoshop migratees need despite what some people say on this forum.
“The continued lack of a GTK DTP app is worrying.”
There is a commercial one, if anyone remembers the old Atari ST and Amiga… the program is called Pagestream. yes, they are still around. They ported it over to linux and it uses GTK. There is a demo on their site. http://www.grasshopperllc.com/
There is a commercial one, if anyone remembers the old Atari ST and Amiga..
Yep, I remember it, though I was always a Professional Page man myself (Amiga user). Always wondered what Gold Disk did with the Pro Page source code ? Is the source code just gathering dust, if so it’s a shame it was a pretty good program. Still we have Scribus I suppose …
I personally have switched from GEdit to SCITE. Lots of features and lightweight.
No need to worry, there is Passepartout ( http://www.stacken.kth.se/project/pptout/ ), although it doesn’t really have the features, the momentum or the maturity that Scribus has. But it is there, if you absolutely can’t use a Qt based application.
GNOME and KDE both feel like a kludgy hack compared to OS X.
🙂
Flame away, fanbois.
“GNOME and KDE both feel like a kludgy hack compared to OS X.
🙂
Flame away, fanbois.”
On a posive note to your trolling, I dont want to pay thosands of pounds to use OSX. Gnome and KDE are free.
Mac Mini – $449 US
You get a decent machine, tiny form factor, lots of software, and a very elegant operating system.
What do your family members get when they ask for a $500 computer? Some cheap Celeron running POS Linux, that they later ask the neighborhood nerd to wipe off and install XP over?
How is that trolling? He’s expressing his opinion towards gnome, which is the topic; I don’t see anything wrong with that.
-bytecoder
How is that trolling? He’s expressing his opinion towards gnome, which is the topic; I don’t see anything wrong with that.
That’s because you’re an idiot.
— cosmo
GNOME and KDE both feel like a kludgy hack compared to OS X.
🙂
Flame away, fanbois.
Agreed. OS X is no crown jewel either, though.
-bytecoder
Yeah, definitely not. The Finder needs still needs some work IMO. It has copy and paste functions … but WHY NO CUT AND PASTE? If I want to move a file into the parent folder, I open up both folders, and drag and drop.
Overall it’s a pretty smooth ride though.
I’m sure Ubuntu 5.10 will be released with the new GNOME 2.12.1 next week, but I really hope SUSE 10 gets released with this new GNOME release due tomorrow plus GTK 2.8.6 released yesterday.
I’m thinking of trying the new SUSE, but I would be flabbergasted if they had this new GNOME release tomorrow. Since SUSE wants to compete with RH, they will have to have careful UI. Incorporating a product that has just been changed the night before is not the was to do that. There is a thing called QA–well, at least I hope there is.
Why? This release of Gnome is a bug fix release only. Most of the changes (all of which are bug fixes) will probably appear in SUSE 10 when it is released, although the version number will most likely stay at 2.12.0.
Now if they up and included a whole new version of Gnome, then I could see a cause for concern.
Why? This release of Gnome is a bug fix release only. Most of the changes (all of which are bug fixes) will probably appear in SUSE 10 when it is released, although the version number will most likely stay at 2.12.0.
Now if they up and included a whole new version of Gnome, then I could see a cause for concern.
My job is software development, and not including the latest release of GNOME, even a point release, in your distro’s next release is understandable, given that there is only one day between the two releases. Any change at all is a risk. Software must go through quite a bit of testing before managers can be fairly comfortable that the change has not broken something. I have made minor changes to one section of code that changes the formating that is applied to a string that gets populated in a text box, and the tech lead would no rebuild the code because the bug was not a showstopper. Since I changed the code, we would have to go back and perform all of our QA tests again to insure that everything was still solid.
Aside from just the potential of bugs introduced by the change, most, if not all, distros do not use the pure code as it comes from the upstream sources for major pieces of software, like X, KDE, GNOME, etc. They usually have to make some modifications such that things integrate well with their distro or to add their own features.
So, I would actually think negatively of Novell if they were to release Suse with GNOME 2.12.1 the day after that point release was declared stable.
I don’t think they will have gnome 2.12.1 or gtk 2.8.6. Most likely it will have gtk 2.8.4 and gnome 2.12.
This is great news. Does anyone know how to install it on the latest Debian ‘Sarge’ version? It comes with 2.8. I was able to update it to 2.10 on Sarge. Love to apt-get install 2.12. Anyone?
The best I can possibly think of is adding or including some experimental sources to your source.list. Since it goes stable, testing, unstable, and then experimental. I think that’s what you need is experimental sources to get the absolute latest of everything, Sorry if that doesn’t get you what you want, the best I can think of.
http://oskuro.net/blog/freesoftware/gnome-2.12-unstable-2005-09-13-…
I’m an debian/unstable user and I’m used to have to wait a couple of months to see a gnome upgrade.
I’m not going to use alioth.
unstable is not unstable enough to have pkgs uploaded at a decent date ?
It’s really frustrating to read those news saying 2.12 is great blah blah and what I can only do is to be jealous of them.
I don’t have time to change distro.
Neither to do attempts to alioth (I did in the past but I had problems, sure it was a problem of mine).
As an unstable user, this morning I spent one hour to find that /etc/X11/X symlink was broken and how to fix it, I’d like to see more updates at a reasonable speed.
I’m not saying that after gnome is relased to have it soon, but waiting many months it’s really frustrating.
BTW I will stick with 2.10, I will have to live with File Browser daily crashes hoping 2.12 will sove them.
Yesterday while working with files with Jedit , file browser crashed on the background.
I was working on the same directory.
But that’s another story.
Sorry for my OT rant.
Thought about perhaps moving to Ubuntu instead of waiting for GNOME updates in unstable?
BTW I will stick with 2.10, I will have to live with File Browser daily crashes hoping 2.12 will sove them.
That sure ain’t a 2.10 bug, because I’m also running debian unstable with gnome 2.10 and never had such problem. I work about 10 hours with nautilus, having multiple windows open on remote locations. No crash at all.
I have always wondered how hard could it be to have a drag-and-drop or even a folder style of rearrangement on menu items…despite Smeg. I mean, it was so easy on Windows (no trolling intended).
The hole idea is to have a menu that you dont need to edit, since new apps go the the relevent category. I understand why the gnome developers have not implemented a menu editor, just a simple one for 2.12.
Windows menu design is just bad and huge, no wonder you need to edit it.
The problem is that only some applications install menu entries, you should know this. Even if i’m lucky and get an entry, what if I want to move it? Choice and all that.
The windows start menu is “bad and huge”? Because you can edit it. Yeah, whatever, troll.
Well, that’s great, but I don’t want my menu to include everything. In windows I organise my menu as
start->
->internet
->multimedia
->utilities
->other
->Everything that would be on the main menu by default
Why shouldn’t I be able to do it in gnome? KDE menu editor is a lot more difficult to do that in windows.
As for why would I want to add a link to an application: open office by default comes with links to writer, calc, etc. Sometimes I want to open OO without opening any files, so when I click on a link I get the document and it opens it no matter what the document type is.
My view of the computer is completely application-centric, not document-centric, which seems to be gnome’s point of view (and koffice’s too).
His name says everything, haven’t you got anything better to do than troll?
Say something constructive or not at all, and if you dont like gnome dont use it.
Oh yes, ‘Anonymous’ is so much better. What’s even funnier is that, by your definition of trolling, you are a troll, since you’re not saying something constructive.
-bytecoder
“Oh yes, ‘Anonymous’ is so much better. What’s even funnier is that, by your definition of trolling, you are a troll, since you’re not saying something constructive.
-bytecoder”
I already have so look at the first post, it’s mine. Think before you type or just dont put your brain in gear at all.
I don’t see why people associate GTK apps with GNOME apps. It’s silly, a GNOME app integrates with GNOME technologies and initiatives (HIG for isntance).
GTK apps, such as the GIMP and numerous others don’t.
Well perhaps there is a need for more GTK apps to become GNOME apps. The HIG is a positive thing. Surely the more unified and integrated things become the better it will be for everyone. Perhaps there needs to be a lot more encouragement for GTK application developers to do this.
the vast majority of gtk apps are gnome apps, the ones that arent usually arent because either it is a commercial product, or the developer just cant be bothered to follow the hig.
You still need parts of gnome to run gtk apps, some more than others. Even the dependences of GTK+ are part of gnome and for extra fuctionallity (like gnome vfs) which many GTK+ apps use.
Also GTK+ is gnome’s toolkit, so why wouldn’t you associate GTK+ apps with gnome?, thats just crazy.
you dont need gnome to run gtk apps, you need gtk to run gnome apps. theres additional gnome libs on top of gtk, and for something to be part of gnome, it has to follow their human interface guidelines. gtk is the gimp toolkit, not the gnome toolkit.
HOWEVER, this is a matter of symantics for the vast majority of users. having it use the same toolkit makes it fit in enough not to stand out. ditto with qt vs kde apps. the main reason people make a big deal about this is if you are on a fanboi whose self worth is tied up with how many people think his DE is teh roxx0r, and feel threatend when someone praises a similar product he chooses not to use.
semantics
Simple, they want their desktop of choice to appear more mature and well supported than it is in reality. And if that means making claims on other peoples work, so be it in their mind. I have to admit I find this practice both dishonest and insolent.
Analyzing and improving GNOME startup time is of course a fine thing to do but imo fixing all the issues inside GNOME should be much more of a priority than anything else. I think a few developers should start seeing the applications and the desktop as a whole and fix the half working stuff first. Different Toolbars are still an issue, not behaving to the ‘Toolbars & Menus’ capplet is an issue, having the applications permanently crash or not work correctly is an issue, having stuff like Evolution permanently trash the sync files including startup crashes, duplicate email entries and other things (in 3.4.0 release) should be addressed, making Nautilus become usable should be a priority thing, the logout lockup or freeze (for minutes) should be addressed and fixed (session manager). Make GStreamer work seamlessly with GNOME should be an priority thing and and and, the list can be expanded in so many areas which makes me wonder sometimes how people can get serious work done with GNOME. Take a look over to KDE for example, they are of course not perfect either but their list of true annoyances are at an minimum and permanent development and improvement addresses issues so they get fixed really fast. GNOME is a never ending pit full of issues which should be addressed. At it’s current state it never surpasses Windows 95 or any other Windows version nor is it in any competition with MacOSX or anything else.
It is not so much the problems are big but that they are not being addressed quickly enough. KDE quickly went from buggy to good and added many features (probably too many) after that point, most of which actually worked. We are still addressing old bugs that should have been resolved some time ago.
I would love OSX if it had a Panel for my opened apps and konqueror (windows explorer) style file manager.
Gnome is spreading on more desktopcomputers, but many people just don’t know what eyecandy gnome is capable to. There’s a lack of eyecandy and clean screenshots on the web. Basic configurations can be found, and lot’s of messy screenshots to, but less screenshots that show how beautiful gnome can be.
Hey. Why don’t you post a couple of nice screenshots for us? I am not being sarcastic here, just curious. I have never seen Gnome match the eye-candy that KDE is capable of. I use KDE myself, not so much for the eyecandy but for the flexibility and Konqueror/smb4k combination. OK OK, I can run them on Gnome, but i just don’t see the point.
These screenshots are getting pretty old now, but anyways:
http://www.lynucs.org/index.php?screen_type=1&screen_id=14871643254…
http://www.lynucs.org/index.php?screen_type=1&screen_id=16825703504…
here’s mine
http://libera.ca/perso/Capture2.png
http://libera.ca/perso/Capture3.png
That’s a nice desktop background. Where did you get it? What’s the icon set, too?
You can look on art.gnome.org website. There are plenty theme that can match some KDE looks. Only problem is some users don’t bother to search enough.
Soon, a theme notification will be available for gnome where users can install them.