“With that rather enormous task and all of the big freezes behind us, we can put out some maintenance releases and get cracking on coolnewstuff again! After much discussion between the release team and Foundation Board reps (Havoc and Nat), we have prepared a timeline for 2.0.x releases and a proposal for the beginnings of 2.1 development. Here ’tis.” Check out the timeplan at GnomeDesktop.
GNOME 2.0.x and 2.x: The Plan
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
people are still workin’ on gnome ? i thought after that gnome 2.0.0 bashing and the poll where kde 3 was definately winner that the gnome people finally gave up.
Well, I’ve always said that you’d better wait until Microsoft releases service pack three, if you’re of a daring kind perhaps after service pack two, if you’re actually going to use their new OS. I’d say that goes for most software. It sure is true for redhat/mandrake/suse (you’ve got to love a _stable_ debian) and it’s certainly true for KDE as well.
Granted, the Gnome2 first release sucked. But the hype has been really tough. Guess they were a bit to eager to push it out the doors. Same misstake as with Gnome 1.0.
Bisedes the somewhat unstableness, Gnome2 sort of kicked ass if you ask me. I’m already looking forward to the post 2.0 releases. In the meantime I guess I’ll stick with KDE2.
Please stop the bullsh*t comments around here. Enough with these stupid flamewars about everyone and everything.
Martin, I have spotted you 4-5 times the last few days writting comments with such an attitude. Stop being an a$$hole, or you won’t see your comments posted here anymore.
And this warning is not just for Martin, but for all other readers who are here to start flames against everyone (from readers to authors of this site to whoever else).
I don’t really follow Linux but I have to agree with Eugenia.
The quality of comments around here is going way down. It’s definitely a sign that school is out. I expect to see these kinds of posts on Slashdot, where pathetic pro-Linux one-liners are modded up and constructive criticism is modded down.
If you have negative comments, at least put some thought behind it. Cite facts, reasons, and maybe provide proof. Really, it doesn’t take a lot of effort. All you have to do is think before you type.
Jeremy, email me please.
I like to see a quite definite plan
hopefully 2.0.1 will solve the current annoing bugs
HINT for the sawfish2 users:: set it in respawn mode to not see your wm dsappear w/out apparent reason ( from the backtrace seems a GNU mp assertion failed but…^^; )
I agree that the quality of comments is going way down. Maybe it’s inevitable that open “fora” eventually are drowned in flame wars and nonsense. It’s sad, because I like OSNews. Maybe the comment system has to be reworked or removed if it continues in this fashion.
Yes. the idea of removing the comments section completely was one of the things I was thinking this morning. If these flamewars continue, I will do remove them.
Martin wrote:
… the poll where kde 3 was definitely winner …
Personally I don’t care if nobody on Slashdot/OSNews/etc. likes GNOME. It’s the non-geek crowd that I’d now like to see using Free Software.
You can go back to using KDE if you disagree (or for whatever reason you chose to.)
I hope you aren’t seriously considering removing the comments section. You’re probably going to get mad at me for saying this, but the news posted on osnews.com is just a grab from the headlines of other sites (and they take it from another site, and so on). True there are plenty of original news articles, but I’ve found that most of the news on this site can be found elsewhere – The Register for example. But The Register doesn’t have a feedback feature, and OSNews does. I stopped coming here for a while because I’d always see things I’ve already read elsewhere. But I do enjoy reading the comments and opinions of other people. I can understand the need for maintaining a good atmosphere in these forums, I’ve been to and seen a web site go down the crap hole because the users were getting out of line and the site owners weren’t doing anything about it.
Have you thought about making people register to post comments rather than ditching comments altogether?
> Personally I don’t care if nobody on Slashdot/OSNews/etc. likes GNOME. It’s the non-geek crowd that I’d now like to see using Free Software.
It is not what Martin said, or if me or you or whoever else likes/dislikes KDE. Martin was just talking about
what the polls reveal. On the OSNews poll, KDE got 46% and Gnome 18%. Personally, I believe that KDE has a lot above 50% though (and they continue to rise) and Gnome has a bit less than 25%. As for the non-geek crowd, these will probably be Windows users, so they *might* be more comfortable with KDE. And now that I am thinking about it, this MIGHT be the reason KDE is so ahead in usage percentage. Because new users figure it out easier because of some of its similarities to Windows. This is not to say that Gnome is worse/better to KDE, we are just talking about the polls here.
> I hope you aren’t seriously considering removing the comments section
I am thinking a lot of things. Either remove them, or only authorize the comments that have something useful to say and they are not prone to flamewars or trolling. This is what zdnews and news.com do: only authorize the helpful comments. But I am still thinking…
I am making an effort to be more careful on my wording on things (my KDE reply above is not meant for any flamewars, it is just a discussion), and I hope the rest of the people around here will do the same.
Comments that are against other people, uniformative or trolling against myselft or other authors, and other crap like that, are not authorized. I have already deleted 5 comments today. Make sure yours will not be among the deleted ones in the future. Please.
I love the comments generally so moderation or just timely deletions would be preferred.
As to the headlines, yes many are from other sources but I come to OSNews every day *because* I can get a good feel for news items dealing with/about OS issues.
anywho, keep up the good work!
bear
What is so awful about flame wars?
I find them to be very interesting reading. So long as you’re getting two sides of an issue the fact that both sides are polemic and entrenched doesn’t mean much.
Perhaps I’m the only one, but unless there’s some operational reason (disk space? bandwidth?) for not wanting a high volume of comments, I don’t see how having some flame wars hurts anybody. If you’re worried about hurt feelings, don’t join in the war.
I’d really hate to see this site go the moderation route, where people are encouraged to allow other users to do the thinking for them in evaluating a comment’s worth. Moderation and post deletion should only be employed against crapflooding–even trolling doesn’t seem to me to be so pernicious as to merit post deletion.
Why do people get so upset about this stuff?
I like to see a quite definite plan
hopefully 2.0.1 will solve the current annoing bugs
HINT for the sawfish2 users:: set it in respawn mode to not see your wm dsappear w/out apparent reason ( from the backtrace seems a GNU mp assertion failed but…^^; )
————
See my bug bugzilla.gnome.org or get the patch to fix GNU mp 😉
here is my proposition:
Have a system where users are required to register for an account. All the accounts have a rating score. Whenever a (l)user trolls, his rating will drop down until it will be so low, his comments just won’t be displayed unless specified by the page visitor. Kinda like the slashdot Karma system except users only get modded down, not up.
I think this will not remove trolling when it gets here, it will just keep the trolling away like an electrified fence
And now that I am thinking about it, this MIGHT be the reason KDE is so ahead in usage percentage. Because new users figure it out easier because of some of its similarities to Windows.
You’re probably right. That’s the reason why I chose KDE when I first started using Linux. I was coming from Windows and found Gnome to be a bit difficult and awkward. KDE was like a glove that fits nicely.
Actually Trolltech and their QT library deserves all the praise KDE is getting. Without QT, there would not be KDE. KDE does bring some new things to the table (don’t make me give examples, I’m just trying to patronize the KDE fans) but Trolltech had the right idea from the start and KDE just inherited it.
I haven’t used 2.0 yet (since Linux or any other UNIX varient isn’t my prime OS), but I always liked Gnome 1.4 over KDE (even version 3). I always found KDE to be ugly (very chopy and non-contiguous I guess would be the best way to put it – not a case where a theme/new graphics would help; the problem is deeper; I feel this way about Win as well). Gnome seemed more complete and polished while KDE seemed to have more useless features that I would never use.
I think it comes down to personal preference. There isn’t a great difference between the two. They both work well. Gnome just seems a better fit for me.
Nah, I think KDE just got more users because it’s more modern appearance. It makes users feel “home” somehow. At least that’s what I think from many comments and my own experience. KDE1 had this, while Gnome was still a mess. When Gnome evolved (Ximian 1.4 was quite a nice package), KDE was already a step further.
But now Gnome is going the next step, while KDE is not radically changing. I expect both frameworks to stay for a while and concentrate on polishing.
>>The quality of comments around here is going way down. >>It’s definitely a sign that school is out. I expect to >>see these kinds of posts on Slashdot, where pathetic pro->>Linux one-liners are modded up and constructive >>criticism is modded down.
“pathetic pro-linux one-liners”?? That’s a flame bait, sir!
Comments on OSNEWS do get heated sometimes, but I think they remain generaly civil for the most part. I personally find the comments more interesting than the articles. Why do I read the comments? Becos:
1. They are interesting.
2. There aren’t too many of them.
3. Site design is excellent and reading comments is straightforward. Unlike slashdot, for example.
> Either remove them, or only authorize the comments that > have something useful to say
I can’t speak for others, but if there are no comments on OSNEWS, there wouldn’t be any point in coming here.
Also, in my opinion, having to authorise every single comment might be problematic becuase:
1. Censorship is always bad. Even in the best scenarios, having one or two people censor all opinions is a bad idea, even if that person is God. They are going to make emotional decisions when something pisses them off.
2. It would be too much work for the editors anyway. Filtering out the occasional stinky comment might be more workable.
3. And if the editor, the boss of the site, and the opinion police are all rolled into one and the same person, filtering opinions out on emotional grounds would be too easy. I presume this is not something Eugenia and OSNEWS would want.
hi,
please excuse if i sound like a troll or bash gnome every now and then but i think that the way i speak here anonymously is a good way. i can at least speak out freely what i think about it without having to show my real name and getting flamed for it for the rest of my life.
so far from my background, i am working on linux since early 1994 thats almost 8 years now. i was using a couple of environments these years.
i was contributing to gnome 1 for a long time. the same as you readers i had much expectations for gnome 2 but unfortunately companies like sun, ximian, eazel (now dead) got involved into gnome and turned the whole philosophy away into another direction. to much commercialism went into gnome. to much companies are getting involved into gnome and steer its direction now e.g. like sun who is caring for their own business and their own shit. like ximian with .NET and other stuff.
i see the pros of the cooperation with sun who does usability tests etc. but sun are the people that made CDE which in many situations failed. now we get nearly the same people contributing to gnome usability tests. sun is doing so much for gnome that they started to direct its evolution. now the gnome irc channel is polluted with wipro people, sun people etc. a lot of outstanding people that come into our channel every day and want to contribute seriously to gnome 2 are beeing ignored or rejected. there is no way to come up as outstanding person and seriously contribute to gnome.
i heard many stories the years back. patches for gnome that stay in bugzilla for nearly half a year. ignorant usability people that are carrying their nose pridefull into the air and give a shit about users needs etc. even during the evolution of gnome 2 a lot of people came into the channel and made valid suggestions about gnome etc. but all got ignored.
and today ? gnome 2 is released fine. its a new way, controlled by companies like sun and ximian. with a lot of new stuff and for sure not all they did for gnome 2 was right. a lot of new shit was implemented that i question myself if they are really needed.
a) windows registry
b) remove of all preferences
c) action buttons got swapped
personally i liked gnome 1 which was quite cool. sure it has a lot of issues that were simply wrong but gnome 2 has a bunch more of issues. i was pissed off the first time i tried gnome 2 so i switched to kde.
gnome for sure will grow and it may be good one day. but its (one day) the day that is unsure. we don’t know if this day will ever come. gnome 2 needs to correct its mistakes first and then go forward. but there are wrong people doing the usability stuff for it. they dont give much shit about users feedback. they only get active if someone starts a flame or a review (thats why they all got active after eugenia made that review) otherwise no one ever had give a fuck about it.
the evolution of gnome is like this. go 2 steps forward (like happened with gnome 2) and go 1 step back (because they made something wrong because of removing to much preferences and make things more complicated to users as it should be).
the development process for gnome is slow. really slow because fixing all its issues is a hard task specially if things are written in C and not in C++.
well for the normal user its usually like this. gnome looks cool, the applications look cool. everything looks cool. and why this ? because the standard foo user has no idea whats behind it. he/she doesnt see that when using mozilla under gnome doesnt make it integrate into the environment etc. the problem for gnome is it still has no real styling guides for gnome applications etc. its simply still totally messed up. people dont understand that mozilla is no gnome application, people dont understand that abiword is no real gnome application same for the gimp. gnome is an environment no windowmanager (even this people still dont understand). so why do i need a desktop environment, whose environment no one follows in style or coding. so i can better go off and use a windowmanager and X, Y, Z applications.
thats why i am so pissed off of gnome and bash it. i personally use kde because its a real environment.
> It is not what Martin said, or if me or you or whoever else likes/dislikes KDE. Martin was just talking about
what the polls reveal. On the OSNews poll, KDE got 46% and Gnome 18%. Personally, I believe that KDE has a lot above 50% though (and they continue to rise) and Gnome has a bit less than 25%.
Ah yes, I didn’t explain that enough. I was trying to say that the people on OSNews are just a small user group, i.e. geeks (taking the word very liberally.) I don’t think my mother visits this site but she’s the kind of user that GNME is targeted at.
So while I believe that your poll might have been accurate with GNOME2 being so young. GNOME might in the future get lots of newbie users and it would never show up on a Slashdot or OSNews poll.
> As for the non-geek crowd, these will probably be Windows users, so they *might* be more comfortable with KDE. And now that I am thinking about it, this MIGHT be the reason KDE is so ahead in usage percentage. Because new users figure it out easier because of some of its similarities to Windows. This is not to say that Gnome is worse/better to KDE, we are just talking about the polls here.
I think KDE is more popular than GNOME because it’s more mature. Simple as that.
Your reasoning might be valid but I’m rather sceptical about it.
Back in the Red Hat 5.2 days we installed Linux at school and quite a few people seemed to be of the opinion that Afterstep was nicer because it was “different”. When going to Linux there’s a lot of things that need to be learned again so taking a whole new desktop environment might not be such a problem.
Only the future will tell I guess. I for one, happen to be glad that GNOME and KDE appear to be focussing on different target users. It makes the situation look less silly
.
I’ll always stick to GNOME I think, I happen to like usability and GNOME’s just better at that IMHO.
that comments here in general are of a very high quality.. but then i read that Eugenia regularly deletes the ‘bad ones’.. which is fine by me.. keeps the quality level up.. and i’ll never miss something i never read..
out of sight, out of mind.. keep up the good work Eugenia.
btw: i think the register to post thing is good.. and maybe a modding system.. it’s very useful on slashdot.. i only read something that has +2 over there, so all i get is John Carmacks posts..
“pathetic pro-linux one-liners”?? That’s a flame bait, sir!
As far as your comment is concerned, he merely claims that pathetic pro-Linux one-liners exist on Slashdot. The mere existance of these posts does NOT mean that all people who are pro-Linux make pathetic pro-Linux one-liners. Since he did NOT claim this, only those pro-Linux people who actually run around making pathetic one-liners can possibly be offended by his comment.
The quality of comments around here is going way down.
(I said as much in the recent poll.)
People waste an enormous amount of time arguing about non-existent problems. Take, for example, the Windows Activation hissy fits. The trolling was so bad that even the news and review sites got involved. If you read over the various articles at the time, few of them were based on facts; most were just a massive amount of speculation packaged into anti-MS propaganda and claimed as fact.
Another example would be the article about binary RPM distribution. The first comment on the article claimed that the distribution of binary RPMs would spell the end of source RPM distribution. This led many people to write angry posts because they believed that the article was against the distribution of source RPMs, when in fact it was not. I’m not knocking the first poster; it’s just that had the subsequent posters read the article they would have known their assumption to be false.
Maybe some quick advice would help people to avoid accidental trolling:
1. Never post when upset.
2. Never post without reading the article.
3. Always verify that your characterization of the article is correct before hitting the submit comment button.
4. Never begin arguments with “everybody knows…”
5. Never make fun of people with bad grammar, unless they are doing something stupid, like talking like they are in a chat program or using wArEz KiDDi3 sP3k.
6. Always double-check your posts.
7. Never use personal insults to back up your argument.
8. Always provide evidence to back up your claims, because:
9. Never trust anyone to be honest until you can verify their points.
10. Never fault people for their personal preference.
11. Never underestimate what people will label as personal preference just to pull it out of the discussion.
If anyone else can add to this list, please do so. 🙂
Censorship is always bad. Even in the best scenarios, having one or two people censor all opinions is a bad idea, even if that person is God. They are going to make emotional decisions when something pisses them off.
No, I can’t possibly agree that censorship is always bad. Censorship is good and necessary when properly administered because: 1) it can protect the site from legal problems (i.e., find my cool illegal software *here*), 2) it can prevent a few stupid posters from offending the site’s target audience (i.e., swearing), 3) it can help to prevent flame wars (i.e., Linus is a moron). I’ve seen it work quite well on the forums at http://www.gamedev.net, which grew in a few short years to over 30,000 members and over 600,000 posts.
Hi folks,
How have the resources donated by Sun and HP and I think IBM had an impact on Gnome? Didn’t all three of them announce plans to gradually phase out CDE and replace it with the Gnome desktop?
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
And now that I am thinking about it, this MIGHT be the reason KDE is so ahead in usage percentage. Because new users figure it out easier because of some of its similarities to Windows. This is not to say that Gnome is worse/better to KDE, we are just talking about the polls here.
I have used both KDE (up to KDE 3.0.1, haven’t upgraded yet) and Windows XP, as well as Windows 2000. The default configurations of these desktops are so different. For me, I still double click on Windows taskbars to shade a window, only to see the window had become smaller
Stuff like that. They are very different, though they might look the same, but nontheless, they are very different.
I think this will not remove trolling when it gets here, it will just keep the trolling away like an electrified fence
But yet Slashdot still have a higher flamebaitish/trollish post than OSNews 🙂
My suggestion is to make everyone sign up. Most trollers wouldn’t go through the trouble of signing up, unless they are professionals, in which nothing would stop them.
I haven’t used 2.0 yet (since Linux or any other UNIX varient isn’t my prime OS), but I always liked Gnome 1.4 over KDE (even version 3). I always found KDE to be ugly (very chopy and non-contiguous I guess would be the best way to put it – not a case where a theme/new graphics would help; the problem is deeper; I feel this way about Win as well). Gnome seemed more complete and polished while KDE seemed to have more useless features that I would never use.
Might be a case of personal preferences 🙂
Personally, I find KDE’s default looks tad ugly, but KDE 3.1’s default (Keramik+Crystal) would beat GNOME’s looks. GNOME isn’t that polished actually, though a lot of work went into it to make it feel so. There are still some inconsitencies in 2.0, and a lot of it in 1.4. And then the icons look nice, but very hard to spot out unless they are big.
Wasn’t Gnome originally founded as a reaction to KDE? As in “KDE will die if TrollTech and Qt will it, so we need an all GNU GPL solution”. That may explain why it initially didn’t have much direction, except for being all GNU.
The KDE people basically knew what they wanted to do from the start (a complete environment, with productivity apps, and whatever else people come up with, equal to or better than commercial offerings). They chose Qt because it was there, it worked, it was post 1.0, object oriented in C++, and better than GTK+ AT THAT TIME. Before Gnome, GTK+ had only ONE really good application, and that was the GIMP.
Now, all things considered, Gnome has improved very, very much. GTK+ got very nearly rewritten, and much expanded. They caught up to KDE in terms of just features, and are slowly getting more polished. Gnome has real money and management, and is getting direction. I believe they will keep getting better, and I hope they never again force incomplete releases out of the door (no real company would do that).
KDE may remain a step ahead for quite a while, but maybe not forever, and eventually, BOTH will be good enough to take the desktop from the “average user”.
That’s all.
–JM
Martin is a well known troll, better known as “Aged Person”. He’s been trolling on Gnotices, KDENews, Slashdot, and now it looks like it’s OSNews turn. He often claims to be an ex-Gnome developer but always refuses to say which one.
hello tau my friend. i don’t know where you get your informations or where you want to know that i am that named person of yours. but you are wrong. i would appreciate if you could stop spreading so much assumes about people you don’t know.
to turn this, maybe you are that Aged Person, who really knows. but i don’t allow people that i don’t know to put my name into dust. i have a right to have my name untouched specially by people like you.
Without comments this site would be dull. Eugenia and Oliver and majority of other authors here are not professional journalists. Most reviews are almost asking for flames, some interviews are good but only where interviewee is willing to tell, in many cases interviews were not worth the bandwith – very amateurish.
With comments moderated by Eugenia this site is slowly degenerating to narrower and narrower audience – (“you called me a bitch, I’ll show you a bitch”). But I seriously doubt that Eugenia would want to be a moderator – there is no fun in it. I may be wrong of course – I’m not a Eugenia’s mind reader.
With unmoderated comments this place is open for trolls and flamewars. Such edgy subjects as OS and new developments attract all kinds of abnormal people.And anonymity adds extra freedom. My only complain here is ‘too much kids’ but may be I just became too old. How about age control ? Ask some simple questions before people can post comments – like “What fork is used for?” or “what cat does?”
Then why don’t you use your real name, Ali Akcaagac?
ever considered visiting a doctor ? i mean you are near paranoia dude.