A snapshot release of GNOME 2.1, the development release series leading up to GNOME 2.2 is out. Lots of nice little features like improved font control (control AA on the fly via the new, great, FontConfig as found on Red Hat 8.0), window manager selector in the control panel, panel multiscreen support, return of gdialog and lots of other goodies.The core GNOME developers once in a while here some vague rumours that some of our users wish for a different file selector than the current default one in GTK+ 2. Menheere has been working on a new improved one in conjuction with the GNOME useability project.
Jim Gettys doesn’t only work on getting GNOME some nice fonts, he mailed the GNOME-hackers list this week to say that he and Keith Packard had checked in RandR into the main XFree tree. RandR is an extension to X which will allow dynamic resize, rotate and reflect. This will for instance solve the issue of having to define tons of resolutions of your X server manually in order to be able to change resolution. Keith and Owen Taylor is already working on adding the needed support in GTK+.
Read the whole Gnome Summary.
KDE has hooked me with Keramik and various other goodies (Not to mention how Konqueror has AA fonts, unlike Mozilla/Galeon/Dillo). GNOME2 is great but the application base needs to get with the program and support GTK+2, and fast. It’s just nasty when some apps and your desktop are beautiful and the other half is just… well… old-school.
i dunno to me the gnome 2 series seems much better than kde in terms of my own preference i know u can do the same stuff in kde etc but i still end up returning to gnome. i understand when 1.4 was out and the argument was strong against gnome but now i don’t think much stands between them apart from konqurer is better than nautilus, but i hear developing with qt is easier (i am not a developer). overall i’m glad that gnome continues the way it does as i feel its important that one of the major players in the desktop enviroment hasn’t the kinda license issues with its toolkit that kde has. btw yes i understand the qt license before someone flames me about it.
also i look foward to the new enlightenment 0.17 when that comes stable has anyone tried it?
>also i look foward to the new enlightenment 0.17 when that comes stable has anyone tried it?
While it is not “dead”, the project is kinda stalled atm. Not many checkins have been made to CVS recently… Some people say that the project does not move along as fast as it should have and Rasterman (the main contributer left for the project these days) is busy with other things…
I used to use KDE exclusively and hated the way that gnome looked. My friend at work told me that Gnome was better in his opinion because you can configure it much more than you can with KDE. I started messing around with different themes and after modifying the desktop to work the way that i wanted, I couldn’t go back to KDE. Gnome was setup perfectly. I tried to do my KDE the way that Gnome is setup but it just didn’t fly. There are some things you can do with Gnome that just as far as I know aren’t possible or aren’t as good when implimented as they are in gnome. An example is that in Gnome I have my launcher button at the top along with the apps I gunna use often.. at the bottom I have the open windows dock that docks all open programs so that you can switch between them and then I have in the upper right corner an widget that shows me the current weather as well as the time.
The only thing I don’t like is that Gnome has been using Nautilus as the file/system expolorer. I have had nothing but trouble with it… although I have yet to upgrade to RH8 (i’m still running NULL) so hopefully these problems were fixed.
I do like Konquror, but that isn’t enough to draw me back to KDE.
Not to start a flame war.. I just find Gnome more useful. Now if KDE works good for you, great! Go for it! That is why I LOVE linux and wish that Photoshop and flash would be ported to it so that I could totally ditch windows. The great thing is that in Linux desktops I can configure them the way I want them. In windows, you’re pretty much stuck.. unless you get Object Desktop.. but why make windows even MORE unstable?
From all the news there, while the font tool and the new fileselector are really nice, I mostly like the RandR news. Until now, in order to change a *real* resolution to XFree (I am not talking about the CNTL+ALT++/-), you would need to logout and log back in again. From the next version, you would be able to dynamically change resolutions on XFree86.
Just like Win95 and SGI did for its X server in 1995 already.
>>Just like Win95 and SGI did for its X server
>>in 1995 already.
… and AmigaOS did in 1990. :^)
Well, I’m ready to dynamically change screen resolution in XFree86.
My present desktop is KDE 3.0.3, Keramik and Connectiva icons. It isn’t bad, but I there are definitely things to be improved.
I’ve haven’t tried Gnome since 1.4. Maybe I should check it out again.
Just like Win95 and SGI did for its X server in 1995 already.
The big difference is that in 1995 noone on XFree86 got paid to think up RandR. Now that Linux has gotten passed critical mass these kind of (difficult) projects get funded. The other R in RandR is for “Rotate”. I tested this and it is really nice. It works much the way like BeOS on the Evil-la, except that XFree86 actually runs at acceptable speeds (true, the Evil-la was grossly underpowered). Put my 22″ Iiyama on it’s side and browsed a little, nice! Too bad OpenGL doesn’t work in this mode (yet).
-fooks
Someone is working on a Konqueror derivate for GNOME
http://www.fh-wilhelmshaven.de/~akcaagaa/
Click on Atlantis in the Menu left. That’s the same guy who is been working on CVSGnome one of the wide spread Gnome-Buildsystems. The source of Atlantis is not yet released because of cleanup etc. But prebuild binaries can be downloaded already.
RandR is exactly what linux needs right now, i’ll be keeping a very close eye on it’s development. XFree86 is about to get a vitamin injection.
RandR is great, but I don’t think it will change the minds of the X11/XFree86 bashers. Their principal complaint is X’s speed.
There’s nothing wrong with X’s speed (I mean it could be better if it used message queues instead of sockets, but that would break network transparency and portability). The problem is that most of the drivers are quick hacks that don’t support much (if any) accelerated functions in hardware. In the case of some cards, the manufacture won’t even release the specs. If you run XFree86 on an nvidia card with their (as much as I hate binary only drivers) it’s pretty quick. I for one can’t wait for the release of the BSD driver from NVidia. FreeBSD is handicapped on my machine with a geforce4.
I have no complaints whatsoever about XFree86’s speed and I completely agree with your points about reversed-engineered drivers etc.
For the last time! Sockets in Linux are actually slightly *faster* than SysV messege queues. I’ve said this hundreds of times. There is a study floating around comparing the various IPC methods. I don’t feel like digging it up yet again, look over some of my older posts (or better yet, benchmark them yourself) if you don’t believe me.
if you want proof that X11 isn’t the problem…give the intel version of solaris a try, or better yet Xi Graphics Accelerated X…they ain’t free…but they have pretty fast implementations of X
ohhh well, you get what you pay for, and i suggest that if XFree doesn’t do it for you, go to http://www.xig.com…it seems expensive, but linux is free and you still end up cheeper than windows or mac os x
just my thoughts
-bytes256
We will have a special article about XFree’s speed in a few days (Thursday I thik), written by an experienced X programmer. Please come back to read it, it will be interesting.
Can change resolution without going out of X?
About time, GNOME!
Corel Linux could do that in 1998 (or whenever version 1.0 was released).
I am saddened it took that long for that feature to grow out of obscurity and make it to mainstream desktops (not that gnome 2.1 is mainstream yet
)
Eugenia – after your review of g2.0 I think it could be nice to do a review of this (BTW 2.0.2 solved most of the problems with G2)
I am running 2.1 plus some collcvs stuff and it seriously rocks
RE: apps lacking
I currently use one gtk1 app (evolution – only gui app that handles my mail)
Gtk2
Galeon (a release is being prepared – mozilla issues starting to get resolved now
Abiword – development release out
Gnumeric – gtk2 version now with graphing
firestarter
gaim
gtk
gnomedb
bluefish
(dont listen to much music but others like rhythmbox)
Couple of screenshots here
http://www.redtux.demon.co.uk/gnome/screenshot_net.jpg
http://www.redtux.demon.co.uk/gnome/screenshot_office.jpg
I might do a review when 2.2 is released.
BTW, that font you use on your desktop… well.. hmm.. *cough*
I know – but I like it (Comic sans)
Hence the reason I scream about how great Matrox drivers are. OpenGL support is great. X is very responsive and stable.
At the end of the day, Nvidia has two choices:
1) write the driver themselves
or
2) outsource the driver writing to another company, such as the one many of the Xfree86 programmers work for (the name escapes me 😉 )
We will have a special article about XFree’s speed in a few days (Thursday I thik), written by an experienced X programmer. Please come back to read it, it will be interesting.
Sweet, I am looking for it!!! Thanks!
“Can change resolution without going out of X?
About time, GNOME!
Corel Linux could do that in 1998 (or whenever version 1.0 was released).
I am saddened it took that long for that feature to grow out of obscurity and make it to mainstream desktops (not that gnome 2.1 is mainstream yet
)”
Corel Linux did NOT have this ability, because it is an inherit flaw of XFree86 which definitely was used in Corel Linux. If you think Corel Linux did have this ability, you are misunderstanding it.
This feature is on-the-fly changing of resolution without restarting X. The best XFree86 (which also means Corel Linux) could do so far is to keep the desktop-size but change between some predefined resolutions so that the desktop is suddely not the same size as the resolution. Hardly an adequate solution.
Redtux, if you like Comic Sans, you’d love Phoenix on my machine. My font setup is kinda weird (Xft2, FreeType CVS, only Type-1 fonts) so Phoenix only displays Comic Sans, no matter what font I choose…
Corel Linux 1.0 used MetroX as the X Windowing system not XFree86. And so it could.
I compile fontconfig before compile pango 1.1.1,but I can’t compile pango, it told me that I need newer version of Xft,
how can I do.
Can someone do a Fonts review/research to see what fonts look great in X 4.2.0?
nope, I clearly remember Corel Linux having a “display properties” like in win95, and you could change the resolution from that. Not like ctrl-alt-[+/-], but actual resolution change.
Have you used Corel Linux?
“””Corel Linux did NOT have this ability, because it is an inherit flaw of XFree86 which definitely was used in Corel Linux. If you think Corel Linux did have this ability, you are misunderstanding it.”””
It didn’t ship with XFree, they used Metro-X (a commercial X) I believe.
Is it just me or is that the same image for the open and save dialogs?
In regard to redtux’s desktop font, Eugenia, go suck on a Lemon 😛 The font looks fine.
Unfortunately!!!
Are you compiling everything from fcpackage v2 from http://www.fontcofig.org?
What I found the trick was to get rid of the existing XFt stuff before starting the compile then had no probs with pango
IMO, the Comic Sans Serif font is difficult to read. Judging by the screenshot it may be acceptable for menus and the desktop in general, but I’d never use it as my browser’s font (neither does redtux).
However, I know one person who uses it exclusively for everything… Arghhh!!!
“I’d never use it as my browser’s font (neither does redtux).”
Ooppss, actually he does!!! Eeek!!!
“For the last time! Sockets in Linux are actually slightly *faster* than SysV messege queues. I’ve said this hundreds of times. There is a study floating around comparing the various IPC methods. I don’t feel like digging it up yet again, look over some of my older posts (or better yet, benchmark them yourself) if you don’t believe me.”
Then either Linux’s implimentation isn’t up to snuff or people aren’t using them correctly. A lot of people make the mistake of polling instead of using signals when handling the queue. I wasn’t only talking about Linux when making that statement. Linux isn’t the only target platform for XFree86. FreeBSD’s message queues are faster than sockets if programming correctly. Message queues send structured data unlike sockets that are character streams. There is far more overhead in using sockets.
Yes, I made a grammer mistake. That should be “programmed correctly”, not “programming correctly”
I don’t mean to take this any more off topic, but this subject has already been studied to death since the late 60’s if not ealier. There was a reason why message queues were invented and implimented in most modern unices.
UNIX domain sockets aren’t even technically considered an IPC mechanism. They weren’t meant to be used that way. In some cases it’s used that way for portablity reasons, or for network transparency.
Well, there is no point in “reviewing” other people’s tastes.
How do you enable the bytecode interperter in Freetype?
Up to now I have been using the plf rpms for 9.0. I would like to install Fontconfig but that requires a newer version of freetype.
Atantis is a front-end to GtkHtml and GNOME-VFS, how is that any similar to Konqueror? I’m sure the most like feature of Konqueror is the file manager, which was brought up here (obviously, since it was compared to Nautilus).
The standard Freetype compiles without this option. To enable the bytecode interpreter, download the freetype2 source code and change in
include/freetype/config/ftoption.h (possibly) line 314:
#undef TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER
to:
#define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER
and build it with this modified source.
>There is far more overhead in using sockets.
Can you explain why? You do know about local sockets, and that they have nothing to do whatsoever with an AF_INET socket ?
You also say that mq’s are structured, while sockets are a stream, you can always implement the notion of structure/messages on top of a stream.
mq’s and sockets are just a buffer in the kernel, if they have big diffrences in speed something is damn wrong in the implementation and it should be fixed.
I think I recall reading about problems when using commercial X servers with either Gnome or KDE. Does anyone else remember that and if so, what the problems were?
There is a directory on the fontconfig webpage where you can download builds of mozilla which use fontconfig and xft2 here’s a screenshot (i just installed it so i havn’t messed around with the fonts let
http://zion.nuigalway.ie/~dubhthach/Limbo/Screenshot.png
the directory is
http://www.fontconfig.org/mozilla
Matthew G. wrote:
> Hence the reason I scream about how great Matrox drivers are.
I just replaced my gForce 2 MX 200 with a matrox g400. I see
a nice improvement in 2d image quality and the 3d (now mesa/dri) is very fast.
I have programmed for different Unixes and I have seen the whole sockets vs. message queues play out in more than one discussion. The truth is that the speed is dependent on the Unix that you are programming on. I do not know about Linux, but whatever benchmark you have seen is bound to change as the kernel is updated.
“You also say that mq’s are structured, while sockets are a stream, you can always implement the notion of structure/messages on top of a stream.”
Sockets are still character based, and thus there would be overhead parsing the stream to derive the structure. Queues allow you to simply write, for example, a C stuct to the queue, and read it back in. Since there is no parsing needed, there is no overhead.
Jeff Flowers: I think I recall reading about problems when using commercial X servers with either Gnome or KDE. Does anyone else remember that and if so, what the problems were?
There could be problems with commercial X servers, but I never heard of such complaints. Besides, Corel Linux used a custom version of KDE 1.x, so it doesn’t really matter all that much.
I installed a mozilla 1.0.1 from Texstar (with Xft) for LM9.0 and the fonts are really beautiful.
One thing though is how do you change the fonts for the UI itself (menus look too big etc..)?
Thanks.