The GNOME Project has announced the immediate availability of the GNOME 2.2.1 Desktop and Developer Platform. The 2.2.x series is devoted to bugfixes, translations, and general polish.
GNOME 2.2.1 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I am there!……
I’m a big GNOME fan, and am looking forward to seeing this release included in RedHat 8.1.
For all the bashing it takes at the hands of some KDE fanatics, I like GNOME 2.0 a lot. I think it looks nicer, runs smoother, and feels more simple to operate than KDE 3.0x. I think I’m qualified in saying this, as I recently switched to KDE 3 for a week to prove that neither window manager is all that much better than the other using defaults. This is true – KDE is infinitely more configurable than GNOME at this point, but I felt like I got lost with all the options. It’s possible to eat too little – it’s also possible to eat too much. KDE feels more integrated, but I just don’t seem to care very much when using it.
In addition, I like the apps that use GTK+ more than those that use QT. I’m not sure if this is just because I’m more used to them, or if it’s because they’re really better, but I don’t know how I’d ever get around without Gaim, Evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, PAN, Bluefish, and XChat. I know that good QT-equivalent programs exist, like Quanta (which I like a lot!), Konq (good, but tries to do too much), and KMail (no integrated PIM?), but I just never had as much luck with them. I always had the impression that they were doing too much, or too little.
So, the same challenge to all of you that I gave to my LUG: for the next week, switch window managers and get a feel for something new. It might give you some insight into why the “other side” isn’t so bad. In particular, if you haven’t used GNOME since 1.4 (when Nautilus sucked), give it another try – you might be pleasantly surprised.
-Erwos
Anyone know if 2.2.1 will be in Slackware 9 ?
As far as I can tell it´s already in Mandrake Cooker, and so should be in 9.1 soon.
In addition, I like the apps that use GTK+ more than those that use QT.
I actually feel completely the opposite, although I don’t really mind having GTK2 apps on the system.
I agree that gaim, Mozilla, openoffice, pan and Xchat are excellent programs as I use them myself.
KMail (no integrated PIM?)
Although I only use Kmail since I don’t need PIM features, such a program does exist–called “Kontact”. It basically integrates Kmail, Korganizer and K<something else> (I forget) together into an Outlook type of interface. From the screenshots I’ve seen, it looks very usable.
Gentoo ebuilds for it was already released when I read the news, doesn’t get much faster then that.
Had no issues with Gnome 2.2.0 whatsoever, only problems was with GTK+, so i’m waiting for GTK+ 2.2.2 rather then any new Gnome updates, should contain a nice amount of fixes for a bundle of annoyances I’m having with it.
Anyone know how to find the 2.2.1 release notes? The Gnome site seems to enjoy pointing me to 2.2.0 only.
Just to clarify, Mozilla is not a GTK+ app or a QT app at all. As far as I know, neither is OpenOffice.org… not 100% on that though.
Yeah, I have been unable to find the changelogs anywhere. Really annoying
Mozilla is very much a GTK+ (or GTK2 if you compile it that way) app.
Maybe the new ebuild will fix the gnome 2.2.0 installation I broke. Hopefully. I really enjoy Gnome, but in the time since I broke it I have also come to love KDE 3.1. I find the QT apps just look better than the Gnome ones.
The only Gnome app I REALLY love is Evolution. Gaim, is okay, but Kopete is worlds ahead. XMMS is alright, but I prefer noatun (yes the default noatun is ugly, you definitely have to skin it), Metacity is alright, but Konqueror seems more stable.
Oh well, I can’t wait to get this built!
dwilson, try pruning your gnome related dirs in your home dir. I doubt you broke gnome, but just have config problems. Deleting the old and starting from scratch may help. Otherwise I don’t think just upgrading gnome with a bugfix release is going to do much.
Similarly, e17 b0rked my fonts in fluxbox. Deleting all the .gtkrc* files solved my problem.
Mozilla is a GTK app, yeah.
Well, except for some of the widgets it shows on the screen, that is, which are done using XUL instead of GTK.
OpenOffice is most definitely not a GTK app.
Mozilla is *not* a gtk application. It uses it’s own cross-platform gui toolkit, but recent versions have gtk2 support (meaning the mozilla widgets use colors as specified in the user’s gtk theme).
I just got gnome 2.2 installed that just isn’t fair.
I think it is more than that… when compiled with GTK2 support some of the native widges are used… look at the scrollbar and addressbar… they look GTK-ish to me. Of course you need to be using the Classic theme to see this…
After Mozilla and OpenOffice being GTK apps there is yet someone missing, stating that StarOffice/OpenOffice is written in Java. 🙂
OpenOffice is not written in Java, It´s a C++ application.
I just started compiling from the sources. Take that gentoo
(you call emerge gnome compiling? hah!)
At any rate, for those holding off on upgrading, apparently nautilus has undergone a number of improvements worth taking a look at. Bins should be ready for the major distros soon, so a drop-in replacement won’t be too far off (I don’t really use distros much; never did like ’em
Mozilla is *not* a gtk application. It uses it’s own cross-platform gui toolkit, but recent versions have gtk2 support (meaning the mozilla widgets use colors as specified in the user’s gtk theme).
Yes, it is, technically. On Linux Mozilla usually uses GTK to actually draw XUL on the screen and do soem housekeeping tasks. In recent times the ability to use native widgets has been added to the classic theme – on X11 these are GTK widgets. There is also support for using GTK2 and until fairly recently QT.
Mozilla does only use the theming methods of Gtk to _paint_ its own controls/widgets in the same style as the Gtk theme.
That’s something different than native Gtk widgets
IIRC, now the scrollbar on the frame can be a GTK scrollbar, but the form widgets aren’t.
If you use Gaim CVS (aka pre-.6), you’ll notice that it has pretty much the same featureset as Kopete at this point. Not as nice-looking, maybe, but it’s about the same in usability terms, with Gaim having a few more plugins. I ought to try writing Gaim Perl scripts sometime, they look fun to use.
As for Moz, I’m pretty sure it requires GTK+ to compile at this point. That makes it a GTK+ app in my opinion.
Metacity and Konq have nothing to do with each other… perhaps you mean Nautilus and Konq? Nautilus has a few stability issues in GNOME 2.0, but fortunately, if it dies, it’ll come right back up – I can’t say the same for Konq. Also, Nautilus seems to preview more filetypes and such.
Like I said, I have a lot more respect for KDE now, but I still prefer GNOME
.
-Erwos
I hope it comes with Slackware 9.0 and Red Hat 8.1.
If it doesn’t come with Slack, that won’t be a problem just because of Dropline
n0dez
Wow. Your advice totally worked. Thanks a bunch! I guess I am just so used to the Windows way of fixing things (uninstall, delete any registry that that the program created, re-install) that I never thought there might be an easier way.
Anyways, I have GNOME again. But now I love KDE too… I am torn between two desires.
motif. Looking “gtk-ish” does not make it gtk any more than looking like George Bush makes you President of the USA.
In addition to my last comment, if you want to see some big differences between motif and gtk, have a look at the all important file selector (ctrl+o). It is clearly not gtk.
Uh… no, mozilla has not used Motif since the old 4.x codebase was dumped. You are completely wrong.
Mozilla uses its own platform independent toolkit. It draws its own widgets and the UI is implemented in XUL and JavaScript.
This must somehow be actually drawn on screen. On X11, Mozilla uses GTK for this. Just for drawing. It doesn’t use GTK widgets (except in some cases perhaps, with the Classic theme…)
So it isn’t really a GTK program (and doesn’t use the GTK file selector), but it requires GTK. They used to have a Qt version as well, but that hasn’t been maintained for a while.
Everything clear now? If not, have a look here:
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/
I’m a big KDE fan, and am looking forward to seeing this release included in RedHat 8.1.
For all the bashing it takes at the hands of some GNOME fanatics, I like KDE a lot. I think it looks nicer, runs smoother, and feels more simple to operate than GNOME 2.0.X. I think I’m qualified in saying this, as I recently switched to GNOME 2 for a week to prove that neither window manager is all that much better than the other using defaults. This is true – KDE is infinitely more configurable than GNOME at this point, and it always will be. It’s possible to eat too little – but you’d probably starve to death using GNOME. KDE feels more integrated, and that’s probably because it is. Did I mention you can actually add folders to your start menu easily in KDE?
In addition, I like the apps that use GTK+ more than those that use QT, although this has nothing to do with the window manager so it’s kind of a moot point. I’m not sure if this is just because I’m more used to them, or if it’s because they’re really better, but I don’t know how I’d ever get around without Gaim, Evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, PAN, Bluefish, and XChat — although these all run fine under KDE, so again..moot point. I know that good QT-equivalent programs exist, like Quanta (which I like a lot!), Konq (good, but tries to do too much), and KMail (no integrated PIM?), but it’s easier to pretend that they’re useless to make a point or something. I always had the impression that they worked fine, but I didn’t like them. So nyeah.
So, the same challenge to all of you that I gave to my LUG: for the next week, switch window managers and get a feel for something new. It might give you some insight into why the “other side” isn’t so bad. In particular, if you haven’t used GNOME since 1.4 (when Nautilus sucked), don’t bother using it again.
Disclaimer: Opinions are like assholes..everyone has one, and most of them are full of shit.
Erwos: This is true – KDE is infinitely more configurable than GNOME at this point, but I felt like I got lost with all the options
Now, you seem to get the idea that the extra configurablity is the cause of the lack of ease of use – you are wrong. What cause KDE’s usability problems is that it is poorly arranged thus making KDE seem more cluttered than it actually is. Arrange the stuff a bit, and viola, just as good as having no options whatsoever to configure KDE the way you like it.
Erwos: but I don’t know how I’d ever get around without Gaim, Evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, PAN, Bluefish, and XChat.
Evolution and XChat is nice, but I beg to differ on Bluefish and PAN. But to point out that Mozilla and OpenOffice.org ARE NOT GTK+ apps. OpenOffice.org doesn’t use GTK AT ALL, while Mozilla uses it as its backend (but once upon a time, it also provided a way for a Qt backend).
Erwos: and KMail (no integrated PIM?)
I don’t really like the whole integrated thing Outlook preaches… but you obviuously don’t understand KDE either. When sending emails, the only thing I would care about is addresses, and the integration is pretty much amazing.
Erwos: In addition, I like the apps that use GTK+ more than those that use QT.
Me too….. some time last year when C apps were significantlly more faster than C++ apps. But generally most of my most-used Linux apps are Qt. If they aren’t, they probably not GTK2, and I personally dislike GTK 1.
Erwos: In particular, if you haven’t used GNOME since 1.4 (when Nautilus sucked), give it another try – you might be pleasantly surprised.
When I first used GNOME 2 (a beta release), I was unplesantly suprised – I was brought along with all the hype.
Andrew: Mozilla is very much a GTK+ (or GTK2 if you compile it that way) app.
And also a Win32, Cocoa, Motif and BeOS app? No, my friend. One of the wonders Mozilla provided was a way to quickly port Mozilla from one platform to another. If it was truly a GTK app, as oppose to using it merely as a backend, Mozilla releases would take far longer to release.
dwilson: yes the default noatun is ugly
…and unstable 🙂
Erwos: If you use Gaim CVS (aka pre-.6)…
And what if you compare that with Kopete CVS?
but fortunately, if it dies, it’ll come right back up
But what happens if it dies as soon as it starts up?
🙂
Erwos: I can’t say the same for Konq.
That’s because Konq don’t draw the desktop. Konq is a front end to many things.
Erwos: Also, Nautilus seems to preview more filetypes and such.
Hah! In what dimension?
I totally agree that it is beneficial to at least give the other side a try when you have the opportunity. All you can by giving it a shot is improve your experience. If you like it, keep using, if not, go back to the old way.
I started out a KDE fan simply because it seemed more popular and was easier to find someone to help me with. Then I started like GNOME, it just felt more elegant. Then I started using solely KDE with no gtk apps for awhile. So far that is my favorite, not because GTK apps are bad, but because GTK just doesn’t look as nice as it should at this point.
However, I still experiment. Of course it doesn’t hurt that I am just someone who enjoys a change of pace every now and then. I have used enlightenment and fluxbox for a time just to try something different, and I enjoyed them both.
The 2.2.x series is devoted to bugfixes, translations, and general polish.
They say that all the time but it gets worst and some config features gets removed. I use it (gnome 2.?) manytimes but with “mixed emotions”.
…and unstable 🙂
Yeah, I have had some instability problems, but I had those with xmms and zinf as well. Anyways, lately noatun hasn’t crashed on me. I am not saying it has magically become more stable, I think I just have sub-consciously shifted away from doing things that will crash it.
Really, I think noatun could be the champ when it comes audio programs for linux if someone would put just a little more work into it. The plug-in/skinning ability is one of the best around, qt gives all the dialogs a professional look, and it can be minimized to the “system tray” as opposed to taking up a big rectangle.
Mail to me, thanks.
GNOME rocks. Looks like it was made by people for people to assist them getting work some real done. Another certain *nix DE, IMHO, looks like the developers ate a box of crayons and shat them out all over the screen. GNOME feels solid.
I really like workstation WMs, like CDE and IMD. Which is why I use Xfce and am signing up for 5wdm…
I can’t agree about organisation. The fact is, that the more options you have, the harder it becomes to find the one you want. Not even the most super-organised control panel in the world can stop that. Maybe reduce it a bit.
Moving stuff into GConf makes sense, it also gives you freedom to tweak stuff that even KDE would never put into the GUI, for instance I tweak the exact timings on autohide/autoshow panels. It just doesn’t make sense to have a custom GUI for that, but allowing it to be tweaked in gconf means it’s an option anyway.
The situation under GNOME right now is. Install it and don’t touch it aynmore. Specially not moving Icons around on the Desktop or manually wipe things in .gconfd dir. I can’t share the opinion from someone else here about ‘getting work done’. What kind of work would this be that can’t be done under a normal Windowmanager with all sorts of other tools ? Let me express this a bit more in detail. Since GNOME offers no and I mean absolutely NO tools to get any work done. I therefore have problems understanding what the other writer means. The only work I’m getting done under GNOME is configuring and fixing stuff that concerns GNOME itself. The first time I really got work done without is when using KDE. The first I ever was able to use my old GnomeVcard.gcrd file again. Simply replaced it with std.vcf and voila all my addresses where there again shareable amongst other apps (Palm Sync, PocketPC sync, Cellphone app) and editable with a simple editor because not stored in stupid db3 database. Sound, Arts may be worse as hell but when starting up KDE I at least can listen to sound without need of running gst-register and changing osssing to alsasink (as on gnome). Sound is simply there. You are ready to listen to stuff. What I’m up to say is that GNOME really needs a lot of work to reach the level of simply clicks and done as under KDE. Above examples are only a minority of detail that many people simply ignore every day but if you really pay attention to all these details then you find out that things can be done really easy.
Moving stuff into GConf makes sense, it also gives you freedom to tweak stuff that even KDE would never put into the GUI, for instance I tweak the exact timings on autohide/autoshow panels.
galaxy@ulixys:~/.gconf/apps/panel/profiles/default/objects > ls -x
%gconf.xml 00000001
00000002 0t1045946936ut537244u1000p8299r574391652k3221221196
10t1045947044ut588099u1000p8299r1837213420k3221221196 12t1045947077ut153178u1000p8299r2008922963k3221221196
13t1045947085ut211999u1000p8299r132600463k3221221196 14t1045947089ut406199u1000p8299r212512411k3221221196
15t1045947095ut48746u1000p8299r388342985k3221221196 1t1045946943ut38460u1000p8299r194410982k3221221196
2t1045946954ut338768u1000p8299r1966340181k3221221196 3t1045946961ut809743u1000p8299r1030850281k3221221196
4t1045946967ut617013u1000p8299r1840409812k3221221196 5t1045946972ut593226u1000p8299r682358534k3221221196
6t1045946978ut880274u1000p8299r676456078k3221221196 7t1045946992ut690892u1000p8299r165454082k3221221196
8t1045947028ut675396u1000p8299r2032136359k3221221196 9t1045947036ut349024u1000p8299r556325003k3221221196
menu_bar
galaxy@ulixys:~/.gconf/apps/panel/profiles/default/objects >
yes ? and how do you edit this ? I only know it belongs to the panel but that’s almost it. With all these nasty subdirs with names without sense it’s hard for one to belive that GConf is ‘the’ successor of storing configurations.
galaxy@ulixys:~/.gconf > du -sh
484K .
galaxy@ulixys:~/.gconf >
~500Kb wasted for configurations for only one homedir and only default GNOME 2.2.1 (well CVS HEAD here) installation (not all applications got started so not all configurations got created). Summed up to 10 homedirs (for admins) you get 5mb for 100 people 50mb for 1000 people 500mb. With the old way of storing things this would be only 1/3 the size. Less fragmentation on harddisk and less scratching on the drives when many users access it. KDE solved that issues better with readable files that easily can be tweaked using an editor. I repeat it over and over again. GConf may be a nice idea but the way it got implemented terribly sucks and it needs to get abandoned really fast. GConf is more of a configuration hell than dealing with all visible configurations under KControl (control-center in KDE). There are for sure situations under KDE that even I can’t stand but summed up it’s usable, I get my work done. Seamless play with other apps, Seamless integration of my Addressbook, Seamless download of 100++ links with KGet through konqi or through importing a simple listed textfile etc. Getting my Computer science crap done with Umbrello and Kivio and my presentations for PowerPoint.
Let’s assume for one second that GNOME is good but it’s missing applications that can do this kind of task (CAD, UML, PowerPoint and real production things). KDE has these apps, maybe with some smaller issues now but they are there and they are being worked on (Specially umbrello is enchancing heavily and kdevelop). When will GNOME be ready for this sort of *real work* specially when all the apps being left half, orphaned or where the development stagnates like hell ?
oGALAXYo – I see you’re still arguing with yourself in a lift then!
<sarcasm>
Since it is clear that you can wangle alsmost ANY “fact” to support your argument it is indeed obvious to me that you are a master of constructive argument.
More than that it is immediatly obvious that you are not just a ranting KDE supporter, but you are in fact 100% correct with every single point of your arguments.
Why everyone cannot see this and come round to your point of view is utterly beyond me.
</sarcasm>
Yours sincerely
drunkahol
It’s always amusing to see how people react when they are out of arguments.
So long
Arts may be worse as hell but when starting up KDE I at least can listen to sound without need of running gst-register and changing osssing to alsasink (as on gnome) Sound is simply there.
I run FreeBSD 5 with gnome 2, and sound was just there. I think you should blame Linux or your distro for that one.
no, this is not Linux or distro related and I’m only talking about GStreamer here I do get normal sound and I’m well aware of howto set sound and other stuff up correctly. After all the years using Linux this are no problems anymore. It’s related to the alsa driver within GStreamer and I have 1st hand informations from one of the developers of GStreamer that the alsa drivers still have many issues. like lockup during play etc.
Don’t worry I know perfectly howto setup and run a system these are for sure not issues of bad configuration. It’s more an issue of halffinished code (think that GStreamer is still in development and therefore not entirely included into GNOME because of this fact).
I’m really looking forward to Ximians release of GNOME 2.2.
Should be ready soon I hope.
oGALAXYo: take a look at this:
$ cd .kde/share/config
$ du -sh
460k .
$
KConfig is no better than GConf.
You forget something here KDE CVS is delivered with more applications than a default GNOME CVS installation (Which has basically NOTHING). So said GNOME with 20 apps cause more configuration waste than KDE with 40-60 apps. So bringing GNOME and KDE up on same level of applications and you will find out that GNOME still wastes more space. But ok, this still doesn’t excuse the bad naming sheme in the panel section of GConf which no one understands and no one can edit. Anyways I and many others (even hardcore GNOME users) simply don’t like GConf because of it’s worse similarity of Windows Registry, this is a bugger and pisses many people off. Say I can still load the KDE configuration files into an editor and have them changed the way I like. Specially for personal private data. Try the same with GConf and all the XML keys. Sometimes you have 10-20 keypair entries writtin in the XML files all written in one line without indentation, without format nothing. Sometimes a line is 100-5000 bytes long and makes it hard to change it with an editor.
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<gconf><entry name=”gtk_theme” mtime=”1047853308″ muser=”galaxy” type=”string”><stringvalue>Default</stringvalue></en try><entry name=”icon_theme” mtime=”1047573141″ muser=”galaxy” type=”string”><stringvalue>gnome</stringvalue></entr y><entry name=”toolbar_style” mtime=”1045946664″ muser=”galaxy” type=”string”><stringvalue>icons</stringvalue></entr y></gconf>
Do you want to edit such a file ? Written in one long line ? this one is one of the less sized %gconf.xml files. Nono this GConf crap has to be abandoned really quickly otherwise people will never stop ranting the shit out of it.
There are many more issues with GConf such as this:
you loose some gconf entries because of a system crash and re-start gnome then gconf put’s back default keys without informing the user about this. Say you are forced to use a proxy (which you have entered in the proxy capplet of gnome) and you loose this settings without knowing it and gconf puts up some default values again without letting you know that it uses default values, maybe for other keys too and you are the kind of person that do backups of the homedir every day and then 2 weeks later you by mistake find out that half of your settings that you changed to set back to default values because of a dataloss that you haven’t noticed now you also find out that you don’t have an old backup anymore because you only keep the last 3 backups of your homedir, you then are lost and need to setup everything manually again. this exactly happened here for me. i also investigated into my gconf dir then and found out that i got a lot of .bak files created automatically and wondered what caused them, this was because of the crash that i once the files got filled with binary trash and then moved to .bak by gconf and then filled with default values without letting me know.
I say it’s better having totally corrupt keys and configurations that TOTALLY let me know ‘hey user your configurations got hosed please write back an backup if you have’ than having my configurations overwritten with default values.
A configuration system shouldn’t take actions and do changes to it’s configurations manually without noting the people.
But we are getting off topic again here, I only liked to reply to Mike Hearn what I think about GConf. There wasn’t any intentions getting more into detail as I did now.
So I would be thankful if we could leave it that way.
Let’s think about it Ali: it’s better to have corrupt config files, that may even cause crashes when starting the desktop, than reverting changes to a prior state so it starts?
Well, you have a point somewhere: it would be nice if gconf warned the user that configuration was reverted. But I don’t see it as terrible as you make it look
KConfig is not any better with disk usage, that’s right. But it really is better in terms of readiability. For example, I ran KMail in IceWM and closed the menubar. Bad as it is, KMail has no option to re-activate it again, really stupid, but the config file was easy to read and change so the problem was solved very easily.
Then about the applications: I agree to oGALAXYo. Let’s first look what applications KDE provides. Konqueror for FM and webbrowsing, KMail for email, KOffice for productivity, Quanta+ as HTML editor and KDevelop for, eh, development and Notaun for multimedia.
What replacements does Gnome have? Nautilus the FM, Mozilla for webbrowsing, Evolution for mail, GnomeOffice for productivity, ? for HTML editing, Anjuta for development and XMMS for multimedia
But let’s take a closer look. Except Nautilus all these applications are NOT Gnome2 applications!
So, with my plain Gnome2 installation I can only configure Gnome, use a terminal and manage files. Not that productive.
Btw. The Consumentenbond (Dutch Stiftung Warentest) recently tested Linux distributions and KOffice better than OpenOffice. They thought OO was too bloated for the average user.
Btw2. I must admit I use Lyx instead KWord, because KWord is not very good at exporting to other formats.
HTML: Bluefish.
Browsing: galeon2, epiphany now (both in development, but pretty stable).
E-mail: apart from Evolution, with beta versions for gnome2 available, I’m using balsa2 as an e-mail client.
For a longer list of applications, you can have a look at Gnome 5th toe:
http://5toe.lyrical.net/
No, we don’t like to start it that way again.
Browsing this and that, Email this and that, for other apps here and there. I’m using GNOME for longer than just 2 weeks
and know the real problems. We need to see the system as a whole. A whole round closed working Environment with integrated applications. Many of your mentioned apps are in no way fullworthy GNOME apps. Galeon and Epiphany depends on Mozarella which on the other hand is not GNOME related. Evolution is indeed a nice PIM and I like the eMail capabilities of it a bit better than KMail. But how much will Evolution become part of the HIG since It’s an outlook clone and therefore should behave that way. The toolbar is still not following the normal GNOME 2 rules (Icons, Text, Icons beside Text, Icons below Text) and many other things (e.g. the preferences part looks differently) and and and. But this the future has to decide where it goes. The apps in 5th toe are all in all no real GNOME apps, no real development or out of competition to what the business wants.
DIA the GTK2 release officially released some days ago and still has many issues with libxslt not finding correctly. I filled a bug a couple of months ago (7-8 months) and this issue has still not been fixed in CVS so that I was forced to close this bug because it was a waste of time having it in my buglist, besides this it’s no fullworthy GNOME app.
We need to re-consider again and look at what’s there and what’s really usable for the business. I find it goot that you haven’t forgotten the fact about the tools that I mentioned earlier. That’s why I fully agree to Daan here.
I want to make you an offer:
Checkout abiword, gnumeric from CVS HEAD and then checkout koffice from KDE and update it several times a day (for over 2-3 days) and you find out that koffice is being developed heavier than the 2 alternatives for GNOME. We can argue that they fix bugs and issues there but most of the time the koffice counterparts are getting enchancements as in better plugins, better filters and so on. With this rapid progress you can see where the direction leads.
Of course there are things within KDE I personally don’t like myself (and hell there are a bunch of them) but all in all they perform and enchance better, correctly and more disciplined. They work for their users and not against them.
Look respect isn’t something you get stuffed in your butt, respect is something you have to earn and you get it earned by being nice to your fans and people.
> We can argue that they fix bugs and issues there but most of
> the time the koffice counterparts are getting enchancements
> as in better plugins
Should mean ‘the time koffice is getting …..’
Why that talk about respect now, Ali? It’s not like I was being rude, and it wasn’t my intention at all
Galeon and Epiphany depend on Mozilla, of course. It’s one of the best (the best in my opinion) rendering engines for www, and trying to implement something like that from zero would be a loss of time. I’m glad I get to use the Gecko engine in these magnificent browsers that are Epiphany and Galeon
Evolution is just being ported to GTK2, and the next versions will concentrate on things such as HIG compliance. GAIM, for example, is right now concentrating on HIG, as other apps in 5th toe that still don’t comply it fully. Then we have gthumb, balsa, gnoemeeting, pan… just read the package list in 5th toe instead of disregarding all of them. There are many good apps that can be used on a per day basis (I do).
About your offer, no, thanks. You evaluate apps when they are done, not while they are in CVS. And if you think development is going slow, then help them. Bashing gnome everytime you can won’t attract developers to it.
You know many apps are finishing their gnome2 port, and they intend to concentrate on HIG compliance once they work using gnome2. That’s the case of DIA, Evolution, Anjuta, etc etc. Gnome2 is a very recent change of concept, and right now new apps such as Totem or Epiphany are very nice though they are so young. Time will turn them into incredible programs for sure, and I don’t mean it will take years
You are missing some things here. I wasn’t criticising you for the respect thingy. I was criicising for GNOME as plattform loosing respect in general to it’s users.
As for Mozilla and the Gecko engine. You know about the XUL issues don’t you ? No natter how much glamour you add to Galeon or Epiphany, XUL stays XUL and it wouldn’t get removed for the next couple of years because it’s a platform dependency for Mozilla to have that. XUL doesn’t fit into the philosophy of GNOME.
For Evolution, I was already refering to the GNOME 2 port of Evo (which I’m using now. I in your situation won’t count much on the fact to have it HIG’ified because it will remove many aspects of it being an OutLook clone which Ximian (a company that needs to pay their employees) depend on the high dependency of OutLook look&feel but I can’t speak about their directive future so I’m just guessing here that it probably won’t get so much HIG’ified as you like to see it.
> And if you think development is going slow, then help them.
But that’s the point. I don’t want to develop on other applications whose code I don’t know. I wan’t to use them not develop them. The customers and users want to use them and not develop them. I have hard times developing my own shit these days but that’s a different point. But to inform you I spend a bunch of time creating all sorts of patches for DIA whoch I got blamed for on b.g.o and the libXSLT issue I was refering earlier is known for over 7 months and nothing happened. It would be an easy to the responsible person to get that one fixed just in time.
I also like to quote Havoc Pennington’s nice ‘fragmentation’ sentence again where he said that fragmentation is not good, so I don’t see the point developing on stagnating GNOME applications while I can *USE* powerful KDE counterparts already. Coding for fun is indeed a nice thing but forced to code and fix stuff just because you are in the urgent to need an app to get your work done is plain wrong, in urgent situations I tend to switch to KDE and use working alternatives (which on the otherhand works flawlessly already).
> Bashing gnome everytime you can won’t attract developers to it.
Exactly and doing such stupid decisions as recently went into GNOME 2.0 won’t attract me as developer either. I tried it various times and came to the conclusion that it’s just a waste of time and energy. I still do belive that GNOME becomes usable and more attractive to developers one day but I seriously doubt it because I’m waiting for it to long to become true. To make a plattform attractive for developers you should at least offer some programming manuals for it. Specially for critical parts such as bonobo and other critical things. Spending hacking GNOME apps just to throw out a lot of time I have for fun is ok but not what I consider a serious company or business should do. Time is Money.
As any technological choice, there are always trade-offs. XML happens to be superbly suited to storing preferences, and GNOME already uses XML so it’s not an added dependency. You lose some of the transparency of a pure text based ini-file, but you gain all of the flexibility that an XML-based systems brings, and with gconf-editor it’s really simple to get an overview of all your prefs.
As a sysadmin I like GConf for its administrative properties. It’s easy to set applicable defaults and to lock down certain preferences.
I’ve _never_ had GConf barf on my settings. Does that happen to you, or were you speaking theoretically (that GConf _could_ lose your settings)?
What are your issues with XUL? It’s practically hidden in both Epiphany and Galeon, so you don’t even know it’s there.
As for developer attraction and number of CVS check-ins, there’s an abundance of activity going on for a platform that you feel is a “waste of time and energy”. Gnumeric, Gimp, Abiword, Evolution, Gaim and Epiphany are all excellent, well maintained and actively developed applications.
You lose some of the transparency of a pure text based ini-file, but you gain all of the flexibility that an XML-based systems brings, and with gconf-editor it’s really simple to get an overview of all your prefs.
The point is. I and many others don’t want anything that reminds me and others to use some sort of Registry. No matter what advantages you may gain, simply the fact of a Windows Registry system drives us nuts.
As a sysadmin I like GConf for its administrative properties. It’s easy to set applicable defaults and to lock down certain preferences.
I replied to this a couple of times already and repeat it here. This is only theoretical and has never been proven to work that way. Do you use it that way ? Does anyone reading OSNews.com actually used GConf to store settings on a wide range of system ? I belive that the minority of GNOME users actually know howto use it, howto set things the administrative way. I bet that the most people simply don’t even know howto use gconf-tool from console.
I’ve _never_ had GConf barf on my settings. Does that happen to you, or were you speaking theoretically (that GConf _could_ lose your settings)?
You don’t but I did. Doesn’t happen for you doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened for others.
What are your issues with XUL? It’s practically hidden in both Epiphany and Galeon, so you don’t even know it’s there.
Well I do know it’s there AND I do see it when I go to all sorts of pages, even when you press ‘submit comment’ button below you have a XUL widget that you press, go on freshmeat.net and look at all the buttons there, they are all XUL. It’s not an issue if you know it or doesn’t know it. It’s a fact that this is XUL and therefore something different than what I’m used under GNOME.
As your counted Utilities again, it’s still missing the other applications which are not existing but interesting for business and cooperations.
Sorry but your entire reply to me sounds more like a lame and cheap excuse rather than a serious reply on understanding the underlaying things. I assume you are not in the IT business at all otherwise you would set other standards of argumentations. Evolution, Gnumeric, Abiword and GAIM are indeed nice applications but don’t expect a business person sitting behind email 8 workhours per day. He/She has other things to do and they simply need a desktop they get work done. I seriously doubt that serious business are either using GNOME or KDE for their sorts of business (as we could see on CeBIT germany again). You as user only see some fancy applications and nice icons, I like to suggest you to see the underlaying components a bit more to understand what I like to express.
Oh, and some last questions. Should a business company better use an application/desktop that Looks better or an application/desktop that works better, better integrated, better documentation for developers, rapid development due OOP and already a lot of applications for business and science related things ?
Why do you think Ximian created MONO and C# ? Maybe because Miguel de Icaza saw that they need some tool to rapid development OOP based application so GNOME becomes successful ? Why do you think the same person spent a couple of weeks in the KDE irc-channels because he wants to exchange the good weather information with others ? I bet he installed and seriously tested KDE and realized that it is really not sleeping as plattform and desktop. His conclusion even occoured on various discussion places. Hey and this from the father of GNOME.
Reference:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-March/msg000…
The answers to all sort of questions are outside, simply spent some time to find the answers
Hm… every GNOME story, here comes oGALAXYo trolling with his necessity to show the world how much he hates the direction GNOME is heading. As Eugenia says, “the 1st time is funny, the 10th time is not”.
Anyway, good that 2.2.1 is around. 2.2 is a solid release series (have I told you that’s also easier to administrate?) and is taking on the rough edges 2.0 still had.
And the best part is… GNOME 2-ed Evolution is on the wild. Faster, faster, faster and no buggy GConf 1 (GConf 2 rocks) on the way. Only I didn’t manage to use accented chars, but I haven’t dig into it anyway.
> Hm… every GNOME story, here comes oGALAXYo trolling with
> his necessity to show the world how much he hates the
> direction GNOME is heading.
While you are at it, show the world where I actually am trolling ? Simply comming here and write ‘oGALAXYo is trolling’ is not a nice attitude. Your rest of your writings are not worth anything because it’s a pro-biassed comment without any value. You know I’m obviously right and everything I post here has been proven to be correct either by other readers or because they came up on other places for argumentation.
To say with my argumentations I’m no tad differently than Havoc Pennington. He says ‘fragmentation sucks’ let’s unify the bottom framework so we have less fragmentation and a better plattform to develop on.
I say, ‘fragmentation sucks’ let’s get rid of one of the both alternatives and join teams to work on one true powerful desktop. In this case KDE is better so drop GNOME. I would even have said the same if GNOME was in better position drop KDE then. This really solves the fragmentation issues.
You see we are similar, I only went one step further, this is logical, correct, makes sense and is finally a cost efficient decision.
Do you have an alternative ?
As for Mozilla and the Gecko engine. You know about the XUL issues don’t you ? No natter how much glamour you add to Galeon or Epiphany, XUL stays XUL and it wouldn’t get removed for the next couple of years because it’s a platform dependency for Mozilla to have that. XUL doesn’t fit into the philosophy of GNOME.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/MRE.html
The fact that GConf reminds you of the Registry is not something I can help you with. Just get over it! Think of GConf as the good parts of the Registry.
This is only theoretical and has never been proven to work that way.
This is just plain insulting. This is partly what GConf was designed for, and I just said I use it that way.
You don’t but I did. Doesn’t happen for you doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened for others.
Whoa there! I never claimed it never happens to others, I asked a simple question. No need to get snippy, calm down… Besides, you’re lying! There’s no way settings would be lost unless they were being updated at the very same time that the system crashed, but that goes for any data that was being changed at the time of the crash.
I also never said that Gnumeric, Gimp, Abiword, Evolution, Gaim and Epiphany are all the applications I use at home and at work, but they do provide for all of my office functionality. I’ll clarify for you that those of us in the IT industry like to talk about office and developer functionality. You wouldn’t know anything about that, because let’s face it: you’re a troll.
A lame and cheap excuse? An excuse for what? I debunked your lies and stated my opinions quite clearly, but you just don’t listen, and you appear intent on picking a fight. I asked you a couple of simple questions and you immediately insulted me, called me a liar and threw it back in my face.
As for standards of argumentation, based on your current and previous argumentation, I should never have replied to you in the first place. All you ever do is troll around spouting off insults, lies and half truths. You never have anything constructive to say and you do nothing but insult developers and users alike.
I’ll reiterate: you’re a Troll, and that makes me a troll for responding to you. Have a nice day.
Exactly, I’m aware of this writing. As it goes for current situation either Galeon or Epiphany requires Mozilla to work. Thanks for the Facts point Troll. We can continue talking about this issue the day it get’s embedd into GNOME, Galeon or Epiphany and Not earlier.
Hey Ali!
This will never end, right?
People know what you’re thinking, so it’s necessary to repeat yourself every week. It’s your right to do that, but people aren’t interested anymore.
I’d wish that people wouldn’t answer any of oGo’s comments anymore. Otherwise, it’ll be the some procedure over and over again!
Greetings,
Christian
I should never have replied to you in the first place. All you ever do is troll around spouting off insults, lies and half truths. You never have anything constructive to say and you do nothing but insult developers and users alike.
Sorry but this is getting to far actually. Your first reply to me made no sense and now you are getting point cheap in your reply by getting personal. What’s wrong with you ? And why is always the same that when people have nothing to argue and nothing to bring up against my points become dirty cheap ?
Get over it, the day GNOME becomes usable is the day I’m going to dance nekkid on this table next to me. I spent the past couple of years into GNOME and not only talking wise even contributing wise and investigating into it. I only realized how much wasted time it was. We’ll see what the future shows. As someone else already wrote it’s the nature that the weak one looses and the strong one wins.
Think of GConf as the good parts of the Registry.
Which good parts of what Registry ? The only good Registry is Windows Registry itself and no lame immitation on a Unix plattform. Which caused more pain to developers than any good.
Miguel may have been one of the leading lights at gnomes inception, but time moves on.
Just because he has an opinion does not make it right, especially as he is concentrating on other issues mainly now.
(BTW – miguels comment about falling behind was based on reading Slashdot!)
(BTW – miguels comment about falling behind was based on reading Slashdot!)
Hm. Two excerpts on Havoc’s response to Miguel…
“It’s easy to listen to Slashdot too much.”
“I hope your mail won’t land on Slashdot or some other web
site [Note: landed here]. Slashdot (= shorthand for all similar sites) is the most evil influence possible if we really want to do what it takes for Linux (or UNIX) to succeed on the desktop.”
http://lists.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-March/msg00…
Get over it, the day GNOME becomes usable is the day I’m going to dance nekkid on this table next to me.
Well, guess what. It’s Sun’s next desktop for Solaris, and you can bet Ximian will sell its modified version of it in many enterprises (and I don’t even need to remind you of Redhat). It’s usable more than enough for use in corporations. So well, what do you want to dance? Rock, Pop, Techno, folk…?
))
I spent the past couple of years into GNOME and not only talking wise even contributing wise and investigating into it. I only realized how much wasted time it was.
And now you’re wasting more time bashing Gnome on forums with no reward at all, apart from being flamed to death. Wise
Which good parts of what Registry ? The only good Registry is Windows Registry itself and no lame immitation on a Unix plattform. Which caused more pain to developers than any good.
Again with that “Windows registry is good registry”? Everyone knows the weak sides of Windows’ registry, that aren’t in gconf. If you are still trying to confuse newbies with FUD, go ahead. Everyone with a clue knows you’re clearly lying.
Again with that “Windows registry is good registry”? Everyone knows the weak sides of Windows’ registry, that aren’t in gconf. If you are still trying to confuse newbies with FUD, go ahead. Everyone with a clue knows you’re clearly lying.
Sure, GNOME is backed by RedHat, SUN and Ximian. SUN signed a 5 years contract with whoever to support GNOME as good they can but from internal sources I know that they don’t plan to drop CDE as fast as they planned due to GNOME. Many developers and internals of SUN look sceptical to what’s going on right now. But this all is beyond what I like to express and finally what influence has SUN after all since the final decision is made by the maintainer of the module, mostly individuals. Personally I would wish that SUN has more influence on GNOME e.g. being able to push it in the right direction and work more strict and disciplined on it. This on the other hand will make GNOME less open as it used to be but what’s open at the end. SUN once wanted to hire 50 developers from wipro to have a total cleanup on GNOME before 2.0 release but the developers rejected (something like this if I recall correctly was written to the mailinglist 1 year ago or something).
GNOME could become really successful (more than it is now) when the developers start to allow other people to work on it and have it cleaned up in one rush e.g. let SUN hire the 50 wipro people as mentioned in that mail. A bit more coordination, a bit more clean direction, a bit more disciplined programming and some programming manuals which makes lifes for developers easy would really make people (specially developers) trust into GNOME again. Developers are usually the people that see behind the wall, they see if it’s worth contributing to such a plattform or not.
I hope you at least agree this part to me.
Yes for the Windows Registry, I know and many others know too that Windows’ registry has some bad sideeffects but I also pointed a lot of flaws and issues of GConf which you permanently ignored so far. The points that I brought up mails earlier and the points I brought up some months ago on various other places such as the issues with Schema files that I recall perfectly GALEON and other projects had. Still yet GConf has many issues that needs to get fixed but whatever I write here you will ignore these issues as well regardless if I’m right.
Ok if you and others still think that all my points brought up are only meant to Troll around then I can’t help it. Personally I speak from experience that I made from the past and there is no reason for me creating facts that are not true or I not belive in.
For other people it’s easy pointing with the fingers at someone and name him Troll but so far I haven’t heard anything from anyone else who could prove me wrong.
greets
You point some good facts, as I’ve said many times before. But you just mix them with FUD, trolling and unnecessary, redundant bashing.
You’ve been proven wrong many multiple times. That’s why I just skip your posts that repeat the same thing for the 20th time (yes, they do). Gconf is a nice configuration system, with very few round edges, much (MUCH) less than the windows registry. Of course you will find bugs if you just read gnome development mailing lists just to note every single complain and voice it in any forum you can post to. How grave those bugs are and if they were closed since the last time you read them is just something you hide. Up until now, the only thing I agree with you is the GConf files using one single line (and the previously pointed out Default settings restored dialog).
Oh, and about the Sun stuff: you were the one that bashed Gnome cause, according to you, it was totally dominated by corporations like Sun and it was stealing free software developers’ work. Now you say Sun should be the guide that rewrote Gnome 2.0? Nice, at least you change opinions sometimes, even if you just do it to try to win some discussion.
Sun not dropping CDE for Gnome? Internal sources? Just more FUD. Gnome 2 is already out for Solaris 9, and Solaris 10 will use Gnome instead of CDE, as officially announced. Sun engineers have done a lot for Gnome, like the accessibility project and usability studies (to name a few). It’s not like they were watching from a window while Gnome 2 was developed.
What can I say, you still use the same way to troll, including the “I am a victim, Gnome wasted my life” line. I thought you were finally awaking with your UI study for Gnome, and the new CVSbuild versions, but you’re going the troll way again. Totally disappointing.
P.S.: Trust me, you don’t want me answering your previous posts, specially the one where you bash Havoc Pennington again (looks like someone’s jealous, you know) between phrases that make you contradict yourself.
You point some good facts, as I’ve said many times before.
I welcome that you agree to this.
You’ve been proven wrong many multiple times.
All I got is replies from people that have not proven me wrong. All I got was excuses from people who counted up all sorts of applications (which are irrelevant for the main issue) to excuse the misery under GNOME. Look how many people backed me with the last GNOME thread some days ago.
Gconf is a nice configuration system, with very few round edges, much (MUCH) less than the windows registry.
Well for the one it’s a nice configuration system. For the other not. And I bet a box of beer anytime that there are a lot of people who dislike GConf the same way as I’m doing, so what’s the problem ? Calling me Troll again just because I justify my comment for not liking GConf ? Hell there are many other people outside (countless) that don’t like it either.
Sun not dropping CDE for Gnome?
NO they are NOT dropping CDE but this doesn’t mean they don’t offer GNOME as alternative as well.
Internal sources? Just more FUD. Gnome 2 is already out for Solaris 9, and Solaris 10 will use Gnome instead of CDE, as officially announced.
Well I had various conversations with SUN employees about this (known from the GNOME irc channel). That’s where I got my informations from.
Sun engineers have done a lot for Gnome, like the accessibility project and usability studies (to name a few). It’s not like they were watching from a window while Gnome 2 was developed.
Of course they did all this, I haven’t written anything else but this doesn’t change the fact that GNOME development is going on slow. HELL slow while KDE is going on FAST really FAST. Does this ring some bell in your head ? The early bird catches the worm. Do you at least understand the fact that people don’t want to wait another 2 years for GNOME to reach at least half the usable status that KDE has today ? People who met Linux for the first time will either see KDE or GNOME as the first contact and what do you think these people gonna use ? Maybe they are pleased with GNOME, but they see a lot of applications lacking and then they gonna use other apps under it such as OpenOffice, Mozilla and so on only to get things done. Others who may be more technical skilled understands the purpose of GNOME and KDE and are saying ‘bah, to much trouble with GNOME, still to incomplete and switches to KDE’.
This doesn’t mean that the GNOME developers are incapable or stupid or whatever. It only means that GNOME is stagnating like hell. To sum it up Personally GNOME 2.2.1 doesn’t make much difference for me than 2.0 from what I see and from usability and from the kick to see that things are being changed. I know from CVS and the code that there are various changes and that the people are working hard on it but this is seriously not enough. Not enough to compete with KDE.
What can I say, you still use the same way to troll, including the “I am a victim, Gnome wasted my life” line. I thought you were finally awaking with your UI study for Gnome, and the new CVSbuild versions, but you’re going the troll way again. Totally disappointing.
Well call me Troll if you like, this doesn’t change my opinion and I fully stand behind it regardless of being right or wrong. Disappointing is the road that GNOME has taken.
You must love GNOME very much to spend all your time on GNOME threads, complaining about every pixel that is misplaced and trolling in bugzilla (first in history, he he he he).
Why don’t you spend your time and do something _USEFUL_. Like, concentrate and finish your studies — you know, convert some of those F’s into C’s or if you can’t manage it D’s. Or maybe school is too boring then you could instead do something beneficial for your favorite DE !
I have a suggestion: make a CVSKDEBuild script and release it under a closed license?
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