Announcement is here and the sources of Gnome 2.2 are available for downloading. Get more info about this version, and many screenshots here.
GNOME 2.2 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
No, GNOME 2.0 was not only for developers and beta testers, and WOW, there were plenty of good reasons for using the completely new desktop environment! Awesome i18n, new accessibility infrastructure, the extensive usability work and massive improvements to the environment, performance improvements, great new font support (even in GTK+ 2.0), etc. Compare Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0 if you’re unsure what the qualitative differences are.
You are absolutely right about GNOME 1.x applications working as well in GNOME 1.x, 2.x and the other environments you mentioned. That made it easy for everyone to upgrade to the new desktop, whilst continuing to use their 1.x-platform-based applications -> there is absolutely no need for the entire application stack to be ported before releasing a new version of our desktop components.
You can see the same strategies used by major OS and software vendors -> move the infrastructure, stay compatible, roll the upgrades.
Awesome i18n, new accessibility infrastructure, the extensive usability work and massive improvements to the environment, performance improvements, great new font support all with give HUGE benefits when you have to run Gnome1 apps and libs to get something done. Wow indeed.
So, do you think it’s realistic for us to make no released improvements to our software stack without doing the entire thing at once? That is a metric fuckload of software, dude; an enormous amount of hacker time, and there are a heck of a lot of third party applications that simply could not be updated during that period.
Funny thing is, we’ve made that mistake before. What you’re suggesting, essentially, is a return to our process during the 1.x (mainly 1.4) release cycles… and why it took three years from the first mention of “GNOME 2.0” to the final release.
We are much wiser now, making iterative improvements to our software stack, and getting them out there into the hands of users and third party developers.
Jeff,
I just wish to say “thank you” for your, and those of your fellow gnome developers, efforts. Gnome2 has been the single greatest improvement in my linux desktop experience. I am currently using gnome2.1.90(w/gentoo) and I love it. I do not expect perfection, and yyes there are still may rough spots, but the look and feel of gnome2 is so much better than anything else I have ever used. Though many complain about the “simplicity” and the relative lack of easily accessible gui configurability, I find its simplicity to be sleek and aethetic. I see no immediate parallels to winbloze, gnome2 is very, very unique. I have gtk2 versions of most programs already up and running-I a still waiting for gimp, and evolution 1.3x still needs to stabilize. I also like KDE, it too has many great features, but when I fire up KDE I get this feeling, “so what”, it does not speak to me, sure it is a very good system, but it does not intrigue me, and I invariably use it for a couple of hours and switch back to Gnome. XFCE4, which is still very beta, will help with the move towards GTK2, but it utterly pails in comparison to GNOME2.
ok- now some questions/suggestions
when will the file selector be changed- is it really contigent on gtk2.4 and if so will installing gtk2.4 when it becomes available render the new file slector available to all gtk2 apps
when will “execute as root” functionality be implemented, this is a realy sore point, it forces me to run konqueror under Gnome, and even though I like Konqueror, I would prefer to stick with GNOME stuff
I can only imagine how difficult it has been to get nautilus structured for gnome2- nautilus was originally concieved to offer functionality which was not built into gnome, now that gnome2 is making the move towards integrating those features into the DE itself, I can imagine that one has had to de-construct gnome and abstract its functionality into gnome itself. how long will it be before nautilus is a program which reveals underlying functionality of the gnome2 system itself, instead of being a kludge between gnome2 functionality and its own functionality ?
and how long will it be, in your estimation, before the gesteamer multimedia context stabilizes ? the ideas behind it are great and I have heard rumors that KDE will implement it too. As of late apps are reverting back to the xine libs, becuase at least they function(rhytmbox), I am trully looking forward to a comprehensive multimedia context- and when or rather will gnome provide a top to bottom mime filetype association- and to what extent can or will gnome start really using metadata ?
File selector: It’s fairly likely at this stage that we will have a new file selector in GNOME 2.6, as GTK+ 2.4 will not be released in time for GNOME 2.4 development. It’s still under discussion, but this is the most likely outcome.
Execute as root: No idea really, it’s a fairly OS/distribution specific feature. Everyone handles this differently and has different attitudes about security. If someone managed to write an abstract infrastructure for it, we’d probably leap at it.
Nautilus: I think you’ve misunderstood Nautilus pretty badly. It was the testbed, back in the 1.x days, for a lot of technologies that only matured (some still haven’t) for GNOME 2.0. So, it has been way ahead of the curve in terms of being “GNOMEy” for a long time. It did implement many custom widgets and stuff like that, but most of that disappeared with GNOME 2.0, and even more with 2.2.
GStreamer: Whilst they need to do some serious work on stabilising the core of GStreamer, they’re well positioned to rock our world. GStreamer is in the GNOME 2.2 Desktop release, and at some stage might drop down into the Developer Platform. I’m sure you’ll see more kickarse multimedia stuff in 2.4 and 2.6.
Thanks, it’s fun answering ‘real user’ questions. 🙂
No it’s not the way you release I question, but the way you keeping on insisting that Gnome 2.0 was suited for wider public consumption when none of the applications the “wider public” needed/wanted/use was ported. Getting a stable release of the platform out to developers/third party developers are important , but the release gave the wider public nothing. When you have nothing to offer the wider public it’s not suited for them.
John Fleck I’ve been compiling regularly on RH8 for a while now – works fine for me.
Maybe you can find a place to share this with us and earn good Free Software karma? 🙂
More specifically, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, by using garnome:
http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/garnome/
Dude, the entirely new desktop environment was there for users, and absolutely useful. The applications were already there, in their 1.x versions -> they didn’t need to be ported to be used with 2.x.
So: User wants great desktop environment (check), user wants great apps (check). Both are satisfied. When the apps are later ported, the users get an even better environment, but it doesn’t matter initially.
You’re hinging the usefulness of the ‘GNOME 2.0 Desktop’ release on stuff that is not remotely involved with it, and thus missing the point.
> Awesome i18n, new accessibility infrastructure, the
> extensive usability work and massive improvements to the
> environment, performance improvements, great new font
> support all with give HUGE benefits when you have to run
> Gnome1 apps and libs to get something done. Wow
> indeed.
Morty –
You misunderstand what GNOME does and who we are. We provide
a) a basic desktop environment, with panels, terminal, file manager, silly fish, etc.
b) a tool kit that other developers can use to build their applications.
When we released 2.0, we tried to learn lessons from the chicken-and-egg problem posed by earlier releases. Developers want and need a development environment that’s out there and stable before they’ll port their apps. We provided one that gave them that opportunity, tuned to continue to support 1.4-series apps. That is precisely want made it advantageous for end users – that they could have the best new stuff while still having their old stuff work. Many end users and distributions made the choice to switch for that reason. And in the months since the release, many of the old apps people need have been ported.
@Jeff: I think you missed a good opportunity to get the good news and PR for Gnome 2.2
instead i got the message that Gnome 2.0 was …… well, don’t know (not ready? for developers, users?)
who the f* cares ’bout 2.0
the message and PR should be about 2.2 and you didn’t got it out
Perhaps you have a different idea of what constitutes a developers release? Not wrong – just different.
For example – I found that Gnome 2 was usable for me. It wasn’t a developer’s release since it did include a huge number of usability changes and anti-aliased fonts etc. The fact that major apps were not ported was an annoyance – but nothing more… So, for me it wasn’t a devloepr’s release…
Anyways – I think its just that your definition differs, that’s all.
Morty –
It occurs to me that there’s another way to answer the question of whether GNOME 2.0 was a reasonable release for end users, and that’s empirically – did end users use it? The answer is yes, emphatically, a ton of them. Plus distributors: mandrake, red hat, debian sid, dropline for slackware, suse, gentoo. Which trumps any abstract argument we might have here.
2.0.0:
I used it, loved it, as soon as I got it, I started living on the galeon and anjuta lists, waiting for _their_ Gnome2 ports because I loved it so much. Worked fine for me, greatly enhanced my user experience, and actually made file managing under Gnome with Nautilus doable. Not to mention nice pretty dialogs for changing my dekstop background (the most important of all).
Thanks for the great desktop experience fellas.
Don’t worry, our marketing work for 2.2 is certainly not restricted to the deep bowels of this web forum. 🙂
Some questions for the Ask Jeff session (if it’s still on) :
1. What is it that are holding back features like “Snap To Grid” (for desktop icons) etc, features that doesn’t depend on external stuff like GTK but still have been requested since the dawn of man? (I’m getting wrist pains moving my icons pixel by pixel so they align just right, and I know I’m not alone in doing this).
2. Microsoft ate a IM for their XP release, any IM planned for 2.4,2.6 to be included in the Gnome bundle? There are plenty of IM (Instant Messaging… just incase) apps out there but I think i’d go for the “officiall” one if any did get included, cause they usually are the ones that hardest are enforced rules of HIG etc.
3. Seen the new “Matrix” trailer? Wasn’t it awsome?
That’s about it. Oh and why didn’t you do a release/start page al’a KDE 3.1? Theirs was so neat that I almost considered switching there for awhile, the Gnome 2.2 start page is informative like no other, but sadly very dull (like the rest of the Gnome site).
Well, there are a few listed in the GNOME software map, the most updated of which is gaim. Their GTK2 port looks great and works fantastically. It’s not an “official” piece of the GNOME pie I don’t think, because it doesn’t reside in the GNOME CVS (which all other supposedly “official” apps that I know of, do). But, it definitely integrates smoothly and serves the need.
1) Basically nobody has written it yet. It’s that simple. It’s just fallen through the cracks. Patches welcome.
1) Some of the Nautilus icon view code has been a pain to work on, and was written under a lot of assumptions that don’t really help us now. Alex rewrote it to use a different canvas and work a bit better before 2.2, and the next step is really for someone to come along and do the work to add the feature.
2) The available IM apps are not very GNOMEy, don’t comply with the HIG, etc., etc. Plus, no one has proposed their IM app for inclusion in a release yet. 😉 It would be good to do, but the IM space is a bit of a mess. Like, we’d want to support the open standard (jabber), but that might not solve our users needs properly (they want to use other protocols reliably).
3) Hrm, no. I thought the Matrix was a bad, but very colourful rehash of first year epistemology. 🙂
The GNOME 2.2 release notes are pretty kickarse, but yes, the KDE 3.1 feature guide was very yummy.
I run GAIM-2.0-cvs under Gentoo. It is the closest thing to a perfect IM client that I have ever used. It supports a wide variety of protocols, including: AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, IRC, Napster, Zephyr, and Gadu-Gadu. It’s a well-written GTK2 app with a simple interface that most Gnome users can appreciate. Plus, it makes use of the system-tray-applet and has a very useful plugin system. I highly recommend it.
i dont use gnome but i sure do love reading this group. everybody
gets their feathers up. i love this place. eugenia i have to say that
if it wasnt for u i wouldnt have laughed half as hard as i have today.
remember gnome people. love everybody and everybody loves u.
arent i right eugenia
For those interested here is a replacement project for the gtk fileselector (http://students.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/gtk/)
it works very well but xmms has a bug with it
you have to encapsulate your /usr/bin/xmms into
a script such as this one
fake /usr/bin/xmms
#!/bin/sh
export $KK=$LD_PRELOAD
unset $LD_PRELOAD # or export LD_PRELOAD=””
/usr/bin/xmms.bin $*
export LD_PRELOAD=$KK
by the way the greatest feature of the actuel gtk fileselector (or the ximian one) is the regexp tab completion… it’s a shame they don’t provide a “hint button” which would have explain that before someone told me in old previous thread in osnews (6 months ago ?)
question : why noone (including microsoft or apple) haven’t provided a bookmark option in a fileselector (so the preferred dirs would be always availaible), it would have been so cool……… or something like the 10 most used directories
Djamé
ps : please apologize my poor english