eWEEK Labs reviews the latest version of The GNOME Project’s desktop environment for Linux and Unix and finds a faster and more polished release that further brightens the prospect of Linux as a viable corporate desktop replacement.
GNOME 2.6 Marks Smooth Upgrade
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Eugenia Loli
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I made AbiWord the default editor for .doc files, but the change hasn’t been made yet, and I can’t open any .doc files without first going into AbiWord and opening them first.
What’s with the lack of address bar in the file selector?
There are a few quirks, but everything is running great.
Yea, GTK 2.4’s file selector has some niceties, but I liked the old one better. I’ve been unable to select directories with file-roller now.
I also despise spacial nautilus (but I wouldn’t have probably used it anyway). x.x.0 releases always have obnoxious bugs, if you can’t deal with them you should probably wait until the x.x.1 release comes out or until your buddies say “w00t, three weeks and I don’t hate it”.
This has to be an issue with either nautilus, gnome-mime-data, or gconf. Nautilus is 2.6.1, not sure about the others.
I’m still *patiently* waiting for the slackware packages of Gnome 2.6 to be released. And no, I don’t wanna use damn Dropline…the system takeover hog.
Anyone have gnome 2.6 on slackware? If so…wanna share some packages? =P
The new file selector suffers from the same probs Windows 95 open window introduced.
When I look at the pic of it, I see that it still has the “see only folders hiding the files you need” problem.
The new file selector is much better than the older one. But it still has annoyances left to solve.
I can’t seem to shade any windows (roll up window option in GNOME 2.4). The GNOME team seem to be removing too many options from the default settings and it’s really bugging me now. Does anyone know if this function is still there.
I installed GNOME 2.6 and tried out the spatial Nautilus that has been discussed widely. Then I discovered ROX-Filer a few days ago and have been using it regularly. It works as a hybrid of spatial and browser-based file manager and is really easy to use. It is nimble and lightweight as compared to Nautilus and better than Konqueror as well.
I would recommend that it be made the default file manager for GNOME instead of Nautilus if there are no licensing issues. Just as Epiphany replaced Galeon as the default browser under GNOME.
To me, 2.6 feels less solid then 2.4 did… Though at least a bit of this is that GTK+ 2.4 seems a bit premature. And Dropline Gnome 2.6 screwed up bigtime, too, uninstalling packages I need without giving a replacement (like libiconv!). Perhaps in a few point-releases time it’ll be good. For now, I’ve gone back to using ROX-Session. (I’ve always used ROX-Filer. I might like the new spatial Nautilus except that it has a frigging menubar… No place for a menubar in a spatial window IMHO.)
Epiphane replaced Galeon because Epiphane followed the HIG. Rox does not. Furthermore, what advantages does ROX have over Nautilus? Having used both recently, ROX is only slightly faster, and it’s user interface is cluttered and inconsistent, IMHO.
I will refrain from explaining how KDE is much better in nearly all aspects and just say, that was an interesting review.
I would recommend that it be made the default file manager for GNOME instead of Nautilus if there are no licensing issues. Just as Epiphany replaced Galeon as the default browser under GNOME.
Firstly, Galeon http://galeon.sf.net/ as never the default browser under Gnome. Before Epiphany, Gnome http://www.gnome.org/ had no browser. (Though your distribution’s version of Gnome might have done it differently.)
Secondly, ROX-Filer could never be in Gnome unless ROX http://rox.sf.net/ and Gnome merged. ROX-Filer is the centrepiece of the ROX Desktop; it does not and never will comply with the Gnome HIG, instead complying with the ROX Style Guide, for instance. If Gnome adopted ROX-Filer, Gnome would become a fork of ROX, or ROX-Filer would lose what makes ROX-Filer ROX-Filer.
Which is not to say it’s totally independent. They both use GTK+, they both put the default button on the right, they both use instant apply, they both aim to comply with freedesktop.org’s http://www.freedesktop.org/ standards. (And the small nature of the ROX community means it’s able to move very quickly, and it adopts many fd.o standards before either KDE http://www.kde.org/ or Gnome (I don’t know what Xfce http://www.xfce.org is like in that regard).)
“ROX is only slightly faster, and it’s user interface is cluttered and inconsistent, IMHO.”
I am surprised that you find ROX-filer UI cluttered. I find that to be the case with Nautilus. The main advantage with ROX-Filer compared with Nautilus is that the former does not clutter up your desktop with a zillion windows in the spatial mode. It combines the advantages of both browser and spatial modes. And it has better eye candy to boot, if that matters.
Which is not to say that Nautilus couldn’t adopt ROX-Filer’s navigation system, of course; just that ROX-Filer couldn’t be a part of Gnome.
“Secondly, ROX-Filer could never be in Gnome unless ROX http://rox.sf.net/ and Gnome merged. ROX-Filer is the centrepiece of the ROX Desktop; it does not and never will comply with the Gnome HIG, instead complying with the ROX Style Guide, for instance. If Gnome adopted ROX-Filer, Gnome would become a fork of ROX, or ROX-Filer would lose what makes ROX-Filer ROX-Filer.”
In that case I suggest that Nautilus borrow ideas from ROX-Filer and adopt the navigation that the latter uses. Such a move can only make Nautilus better.
Have they made it so I can cut and paste files yet?
Copy and paste multiple files?
Can ROX PLEASE stop resizing every time a directory has a different number of icons in it?
There’s loads of other issues I’ve found with rox that just make it’s usability dive-bomb for me. Maybe I just don’t know how ot set it up, whatever, to me I don’t feel I should have to set up the ability to cut and paste file or copy more than one file/folder
The main advantage with ROX-Filer compared with Nautilus is that the former does not clutter up your desktop with a zillion windows in the spatial mode.
I like spatial better now that I have been using it.
Besides, you can turn it off in nautilus–it’s not like Rox does something that nautilus doesn’t.
@ThanatosNL
“ROX is only slightly faster, and it’s user interface is cluttered and inconsistent, IMHO.”
I think you’re getting confused by the fact that ROX has a different UI from what you’re used to. For instance, there is no menubar; only a pop-up menu. Because there’s no menubar, everything that would be in the menubar in a typical application either cannot exist or has to go into the pop-up. Some people like it (much, much faster—no need to aim for anywhere, just click; less screen real estate stolen; more internally consistent because there’s only one menu); others don’t (not discoverable; jarring switch from entirely context-sensitive introduced by former Risc OS pogrammers/users into Microsoft Word aka less externally consistent unless all you need to do is extract archives, manage files, view images, browse the web w/out CSS, and edit text files
.
@Anonymous
I am surprised that you find ROX-filer UI cluttered. I find that to be the case with Nautilus.
I think you’re getting confused. ROX-Filer’s iconplacement is unclutterable (that is, you can’t disable autoarrange), and by default new windows replace old ones (configurable; or you can middle click). On the other hand, have you seen it’s popup menu? it goes on till infinity (well, not really; it’s much more concise then your typical app’s menubar, but the popup six submenus, one subsubmenu (which is comparable to Nauti’s menubar)).
(Personally I’d prefer ROX to get a memory so that when on new-window-on-button-1 mode, the new window would open in the same place as the last one; unfortunately, I can’t work out how to do it.)
And it is still impossible to select files with single click in the new file selector, right? Crap! And I have big problems with the new file selector in directories with many files … very slow.
It’s annoying to have an option “activate items with single click” in gnome but have to select files with double click.
gconf is annoying too. It is annoying to delete configurations. XML for this is annoying. And gconf-editor is annoying too.
Icon selection is annoying since years. And if I change an icon on the desktop the icon in the panel doesn’t change. Annoying.
That Ctrl+U doesn’t delete (per default) the input line is annoying.
That Nautilus opens (per default) a new window for every clicked directory is annoying.
That directories are named folders is _very_ annoying. (Don’t know that there are commands like mkfol or that find -type f searchs for “folders”). But maybe GNOME likes inconsistencies like this.
The gnome-terminal has very very slow output, xterm/aterm/rxvt/konsole is 4 times faster. Annoying.
Metacity is realy minimalistic, resizing with Alt and right Mousebutton impossible.
That Mozilla is a dependency isn’t nice. I know, it’s because of gecko, but I don’t want Mozilla.
After a desktop change the windows are flickering. Annoying.
Look at the memory usage. Annoying. Start time. Annoying, but better than KDE.
It seems that I don’t like GNOME, right? Right! But KDE isn’t better. I don’t like this huge “Windows-Desktops”. They have potential, but at the moment they are … annoying.
PS: But the FAA in GNOME is very good! (:
@ThanatosNL
I think you’re getting confused by the fact that ROX has a different UI from what you’re used to. For instance, there is no menubar; only a pop-up menu. Because there’s no menubar, everything that would be in the menubar in a typical application either cannot exist or has to go into the pop-up. Some people like it (much, much faster—no need to aim for anywhere, just click; less screen real estate stolen; more internally consistent because there’s only one menu); others don’t (not discoverable; jarring switch from entirely context-sensitive introduced by former Risc OS pogrammers/users into Microsoft Word aka less externally consistent unless all you need to do is extract archives, manage files, view images, browse the web w/out CSS, and edit text files
.
This is the same case with Nautilus now. The clutter is in the configuration dialog and right-click context menus. I especially don’t like the context menus. When you right click on the desktop, you get a menu entry called “ROX-Filer” — that really bothers me for some reason.
I think you’re getting confused. ROX-Filer’s iconplacement is unclutterable (that is, you can’t disable autoarrange), and by default new windows replace old ones (configurable; or you can middle click). On the other hand, have you seen it’s popup menu? it goes on till infinity (well, not really; it’s much more concise then your typical app’s menubar, but the popup six submenus, one subsubmenu (which is comparable to Nauti’s menubar)).
Again, the problem isn’t in the icon placement, it’s in the configuration dialogs and context menus.
I do like the ability to have minimized windows show up as icons on the screen. Twm does this as well–but Rox does them better.
Have they made it so I can cut and paste files yet?
Copy and paste multiple files?
You can copy or move multiple files by selecting them (drag around them; it’s singleclick-execute by default) and then dragging-and-dropping them to their target location. Pasting is not necessary (Thomas Leonard, the creator of ROX,’s view is that copy-and-paste is basically just the accessible alternative to drag-and-drop, which all ROX apps (should) support extensively).
Can ROX PLEASE stop resizing every time a directory has a different number of icons in it?
Rightclick, (ROX-Filer if on panel or pinboard,) Options, Filer Windows, Auto-resize filer windows, Never resize.
That Ctrl+U doesn’t delete (per default) the input line is annoying.
??
That directories are named folders is _very_ annoying. (Don’t know that there are commands like mkfol or that find -type f searchs for “folders”). But maybe GNOME likes inconsistencies like this.
Ferchrissake man!
Metacity is realy minimalistic, resizing with Alt and right Mousebutton impossible.
Try alt+middlebutton.
I think you stress too much…
That Ctrl+U doesn’t delete (per default) the input line is annoying.
I’m used to Ctrl-K in nano. That’s not a default for anything, I don’t think. Ctrl+U is often paste, though.
That Nautilus opens (per default) a new window for every clicked directory is annoying.
If you want a navigational browser-like file manager, yes. Spatial Nautilus takes getting used to, but I at least like it better. How annoying is it to change anyways?
That directories are named folders is _very_ annoying. (Don’t know that there are commands like mkfol or that find -type f searchs for “folders”). But maybe GNOME likes inconsistencies like this.
Uh huh…right.
The gnome-terminal has very very slow output, xterm/aterm/rxvt/konsole is 4 times faster. Annoying.
Konsole isn’t the same speed as xterm. Konsole and gnome-terminal are about the same, anyways. xterm would be slower if it used an anti-aliased font by default.
Metacity is realy minimalistic, resizing with Alt and right Mousebutton impossible.
I think you can change that.
That Mozilla is a dependency isn’t nice. I know, it’s because of gecko, but I don’t want Mozilla.
Soon, Mozilla will have their gecko library abstracted, so this won’t be an issue.
After a desktop change the windows are flickering. Annoying.
It’s about as fast as any other DE for me.
Look at the memory usage. Annoying. Start time. Annoying, but better than KDE.
I have 512 MB RAM, and I’m not terribly close to hitting sway, with many programs running. Start time is fine.
It seems that I don’t like GNOME, right? Right! But KDE isn’t better. I don’t like this huge “Windows-Desktops”. They have potential, but at the moment they are … annoying.
Try xfce4+rox. It’s a pretty good combination.
I’m still *patiently* waiting for the slackware packages of Gnome 2.6 to be released. And no, I don’t wanna use damn Dropline…the system takeover hog.
Anyone have gnome 2.6 on slackware? If so…wanna share some packages? =P
What ever happened to configure/make/make install that the zealots go on and on about? Thought that shit was supposed to work miracles ?
The clutter is in the configuration dialog and right-click context menus. I especially don’t like the context menus. When you right click on the desktop, you get a menu entry called “ROX-Filer” — that really bothers me for some reason.
Yes… I think it’s mostly been accepted that the config dialogs and popup menus (they aren’t really ‘context’ menus, no more so then the File menu is in Windows 95 (perhaps later versions, can’t remember OTTOMH)). ROX-Session CVS’s options dialog is greatly simplified (four pages of options plus a fifth telling you that the remainder are being managed by a different program thanks to D-BUS). That doesn’t help ROX-Filer, though. And it still looks cluttered because of the side panel, which we’ve come to associate with multitudes of options à la KDE and Netscape 4 or Mozilla.
Some more of the clutter is because a lot of information/help is provided, such in the ‘Types’ page: ‘The filer uses a set of rules to work out the correct MIME type for each regular file, and then chooses a suitable icon for that type. Use the MIME-Editor application to change the file-to-type guessing rules: http://rox.sourceforge.net/mime_editor.html ‘, ‘Themes should be placed inside the ~/.icons directory.’, ‘Use the “Set Icon…” dialog box to set the icon for each MIME type. Note that icons set this way override those from the selected theme’. The idea is relative computer novices should be able to accomplish advanced feats without being afraid (that is, it’s supposed to help computer novices become more confident and able by getting them to do stuff). I don’t know how successful it is; I think it’s more likely to scare away the people it means to help by shear amount of writing. (On the other hand, it’s still more then helpful to powerusers and whatnot switching to ROX.)
And of course, ROX did (and to some extent still does) suffer from if-you-can’t-agree-add-an-option. I certainly don’t think an options page for Colors (of the name of directories/regular files/pipes/sockets/broken links/executables/doors—whatever they are—/char devices etc.) is necessary. Now that ROX-Session is adopting D-BUS, which apparently means external applications can set up other stuff, some stuff can probably be externalised (icon themes to the look and feel app, for instance). But before any ROX-Filer stuff is moved to D-BUS, we want wider adoption of it.
So in short, this clutter is a known problem, and some work is being done to reduce it, but I fear it will take some time and may result in Gnome-like sparseness. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Is there a key to hold down or something so that double-clicking on a folder will open that folder in the same window? That way for things that you’d like to be spatial can be, and for those that you don’t want a new window opened you don’t have to. Better yet, is there a gconf setting to allow the default behavior to be switched? For example, change it so that a double-click will go into that folder without opening a new window and holding down control will open it up in a new window. That I think is how I personally would prefer it…
What is the best way to install Gnome 2.6 under Suse 9.0? I downloaded the xd-unstable RPMs and, after a *lot* of manual dependency resolution / uninstalling (to get rid of my Suse Gnome 2.4 packages, many of which conflict with the -ximian versions), I managed to get it to work on my laptop. However, I am not sure this is the best way… also, the system “feels” slower than it needs be—probably slower than 2.4. Probably this is because the xd-unstable packages are experimental.
Any ideas? Thanks!
M
PS: of course I could always compile from sources. But, at least, I’d like to wait until Garnome is “officially” updated to 2.6…
# Soon, Mozilla will have their gecko library abstracted,
# so this won’t be an issue.
Nice to hear. (:
# Konsole isn’t the same speed as xterm. Konsole and
# gnome-terminal are about the same, anyways.
Here Konsole is very fast, gnome-terminal is not.
# xterm would be slower if it used an anti-aliased
# font by default.
With a bigger saveLine-buffer xterms becomes slower, slower than Konsole. But gnome-terminal is slow … ever.
# I’m used to Ctrl-K in nano. That’s not a default for
# anything, I don’t think. Ctrl+U is often paste, though.
I think Ctrl+U is emacs style and is default for most things like KDE, KDE-apps, Firefox or shells like ZSH. All things work fine with
gtk-key-theme-name = “Emacs”
but I wish this would be the default.
PS: Why GNOME tells me that it knows that I have ~/.Xmodmap, but that he will ignore it? Ignoring my options and my configuration? Well, I like this behaviour!
Are shortcuts for applications possible?
Can ROX PLEASE stop resizing every time a directory has a different number of icons in it?
Did you even bother to look in the Options menu? (Right click in -ANY- Filer window, “Options”)
Options / Filer windows / [] Never automatically resize
No, you can’t do that (opening folders in the same window while in spatial mode) because it would break the spatial model, where each window is a folder. While advanced users might not care about this, my personal experience is that a consistent mental model helps me to be more efficient, because I think less about what might happen.
What you can do though is the following:
– Hold shift while opening the folder (or use the middle mouse button) to automatically close the parent window. In Nautilus CVS the new window will be placed on top of the parent window if it has no saved position, so in this case it will act almost like opening the folder in the same window.
– “Browse” a folder by chosing this option from the folder context menu. This will open the folder in a traditional file browser window and it will stay inside this browser window (until you close it), so you only have to do this once for the “entry point”.
– Open the file browser explicitly using the “Browser Filesystem” menu option and use it just like a traditional file browser.
– Change the gconf key to always open folders in the browser again, if you really really can’t find any use for spatial folders.
There is a lot you can do and a lot of possibilities for “power users” to optimise their working habits (if they care). I really like software which allows me to work in new ways, especially when I notice that it makes me faster or more comfortable (or even both, which has been the case with spatial Nautilus).
Gnome isn’t a package, it’s an entire desktop and developer platform. You can’t install Windows with just one “command,” you have to install it all together.
Distributions in Linux catch up to source updates pretty fast for anything except for big desktops like KDE and Gnome. Of course, many distributions already have Gnome 2.6, so they aren’t all slow, but for the rest of us, we can either build it from scratch (what I did), or use Garnome.
Suffice it to say, installing Gnome 2.6 (or any version) all by yourself is exceedingly difficult, and beyond the realm of most computer users. They’re not required to, so you’ve got sort of a moot point there.
You’ve got an ax to grind with Linux users. Although you claim (and I believe you) to use Linux, I think your tendency is to use every Linux-related article as a springboard for an OS war.
In this case, if you want to compare, suppose you had the Windows 2000 source code. See if you could hack together a full Windows 2000 install. If you want a fair comparison, compare how easy it is to install a distribution shipping with Gnome 2.6 to Windows 2000/XP.
I still don’t understand why it’s such a problem that you can’t wait until native packages get updated. I don’t think it’s a tangible problem with Linux software so much as it is a personal annoyance that permits you to react to it harshly in order to criticize FLOSS.
Perhaps I’m overreacting
I think Ctrl+U is emacs style and is default for most things like KDE, KDE-apps, Firefox or shells like ZSH. All things work fine with
gtk-key-theme-name = “Emacs”
but I wish this would be the default.
Do you really think Emacs-style keybindings would make the most sense for Gnome?
Personally I like the new spatial nautilus, though reading the comments it seems like many people don’t. Most of the time I tend to access the same bunch of folders on a regular basis, everything else I use a console. I found that once I went to the trouble of opening all my frequently-used folders once, and resized them to my liking, the new nautilus turned out to be more comfortable to use overall. I can’t really bitch about performance, I’m still chugging along with a P3-450, but it still works fine for my needs, no real noticable difficulties aside from startup, but it’s not that often the computer actually shuts down (power outage?). (Dropline Gnome 2.6 on a fresh Slack 9.1 install)
I hope people here realise one thing, Rox desktop is a re-implementation of the RISCOS desktop there as GNOME/Nautilus is apparently meant to be a fusion of all the good aspects from different desktop environments (MacOS, Windows, Amiga Workbench/AmigaOS etc. etc.)
One thing I wouldn’t mind, however would be if the IRIX desktop was re-implemented using GTK or QT. Right now there is a OpenMotif version, however, it is rather crappy looking 🙁
Do you really think Emacs-style keybindings would make the most sense for Gnome?
What a really great idea! Not that it should be a default but all “navigation”, “editing”, etc commands should be abstracted so that you can plug in different modes. For example mouse would always be an enabled mode for accessing these commands and basic arrows navigation + ctrl-x,ctrl-v etc for editing wouuld be the default but creating this abstraction would make it trivial to plugin different navigation abstractions. Clearly for most people emacs hotkeys are not a good idea but I personally use vim daily and would think it was incredibly cool if I could extend that keyboard power to my de in general! I mean really that would be amazing for apps like gedit and dialog boxes in apps where the developers at that level would just worry about supplying abstract navigation hooks and when a vi navigation plugin was developed you would get all the editing and navigation for free in all these apps just like applying a new theme!
Good idea!
… GTK+ is very themeable, including keys. You can get emacs-style keys.
You’re right, ROX shows some really strange behaviour.
And if someone writes about ROX’s navigation system: I didn’t ever notice that it has one… I think I will try the newest version soon. May be things changed.
But I don’t like Nautilus either.
I like the Explorer/Konqueror-like Interface. It’s easy and fast to navigate through the file system with the folder tree (it’s faster with Explorer).
What’s the thing with this new spatial mode? Can someone explain me what it is all about? What I have understood in spatial mode Nautilus now opens new windows for folders, instead of opening the folder in same window. Is there something else to this? (btw, if not, I got a newsflash for you: this has been implemented in Windows since Win95 and also in KDE since who knows when, both prefer to open folders in same window these days though
“I hope people here realise one thing, Rox desktop is a re-implementation of the RISCOS desktop”
THATS why it looked so damn familiar! Ha! It’s been a while since I used RiscOS unfortunately but nice to see someone trying to take the GUI elsewhere. If they can keep some of the (wonderful) functionality of RiscOS with it then they should be onto a winner.
“What’s Gnome? A new window manager for KDE?”
Gnome is a development platform and desktop environment (similar concept to KDE though very different stylistically).
No, Gnome is NOT a KDE window manager.
The deal with Spatial Nautilus is simple: Each window is the folder. NOT a representation/view of the folder, but the folder itself. Furthermore, window state (size, location, etc.) is persistant, just like Real Life.
For example, if you place a book on your desk at night, it will be in the same location the following morning. Not placed back in a book case, but located where you left it.
Spatial windows are the same way. Where you last closed the window is where the window will be when you open it next. Down to the pixel. Ditto for the window dimensions, background color, columns, scroll location… (Granted, some of these are only partially supported at present, but the intention is for all window properties to be remembered.)
Furthremore, there can only be one window displaying a folder, unlike browsers where you can have N windows displaying your home directory (for example). If you tried to open your home folder twice in Spatial Nautilus, you’d have only one window; remember, the window is the folder. If you’re in another workspace/virtual desktop when you open your home folder, the window will be moved to the current workspace, in the same location, with the same window state.
Consequently, this is very different from what KDE and Windows 95 did, as both of them had no memory of window state. Where your home folder was one minute would be meaningless; it would appear elsewhere the next time you opened it.
Why’s this matter? Muscle memory. Why is touch-typing so fast? Because the keys don’t move on you, so your hands can remember where the keys are without you consciously thinking about it. The idea is for window management to be the same. If things are persistent, and only change when you change them, you can think about fewer things, and let your hands worry about it.
It also lowers cognitive effort, since things are stable and don’t change on you, preventing surprising behavior and keeping things easier for the user. This is why the original Macintosh was so easy to use, and many are angry that Apple dropped this functionality with Mac OS X.
For more information, see: http://arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.html
I realy like spatial Nautilus, it is almost like BeOS Tracker, only thing missing is right click menu navigation.
One thing that is holding me in moving from Rox Filer to Nautilus is tab completition in path navigation, you know, when you click “/” in Rox or Ctl+L in Nautilus. Rox Filer path navigation supports tab completition, and it realy rocks. Why having Ctrl+L in Nautilus when you have to remember exact path.
Anyway, new Nautilus feels like old BeOS Tracker, and ROX like Open Tracker 🙂
I know it sounds like that, but win95 din’t behave spatially. A true spatial file manager treats every object as if it was physical, so you (for example) cannot open TWO windows with the same folder. And it remembers where you place the window and its dimentions. AFAIK the only spatial filemanager was in MacOS Classic. If you find annoying to have multiple windows you can ctrl-click or left-click and choose browse.
Bye, Renato
(posted widh links, hope it doesn’t mess up)
Hi, I was under the impression that the CTRL+L popup location of Nautilus HAD tab completion, just like ROX.
Bye, Renato
If you drop the trash icon into an application, nautilus crashes.
# Do you really think Emacs-style keybindings would
# make the most sense for Gnome?
In this case? Yes. I think Ctrl+U is easier than End, Shift+Pos1, Delete. But there are no problems with having both.
@Jonathan Pryor:
# just like Real Life.
(This is against “folders”, but your posting was about the spatial mode in nautilus.)
Folders are not like in real life. Do you ever have seen links between folders in your real life? Are there hidden “documents”? Are there folders in folders in folders in folders in the real? I never mounted a shelf in a folder/book. I don’t understand why it is necessary to force this (clearly wrong) analogy/inconsistency.
Too bad for you this isnt a direct comparision, just a review. You seem like you are just itching to knock down such a wonderful project… I suggest that you invest some time on the various GNOME boards through out the net, and explain to the users of those boards your opinions on GNOME.
Just to have some fun…
Links between folders? How about links in general? Those exist; read any legal document, and you’ll see “links” (references) to other, pre-existing documents (contracts, previous rulings, etc.). The computer version is certainly easier, but the concept of a “link” exists in reality.
Hidden documents? Surely you jest. 🙂 Parents hide things from children (pr0n collections?), people hide information from others (or do you give out your SSN to everyone that asks?), people place purchases within car trunks precisely so that they’re hidden from public view. Then there are easter egg hunts, where the easter eggs are hidden. 🙂
Folders within folders? Actually, I have folders within hanging folders at home. But I’m a freak. 🙂 However, reality does have somewhate equivalent structures that nest — rooms have book cases have shelves have books…
Mounting a shelf in a book? I can imagine painting a bookcase to look like a book, in which case I could “mount” a shelf in the book case. 🙂 This is surely a stretch, but not too “out there”; I’m sure someone has a children’s library where book cases would be painted like books, if not other things.
I will agree that some things are different on computers than in reality. And they should be. Compare computer volume controls with the reality equivalent (knobs of some sort); trying to mimic reality on the computer screen is a horrible idea, though it’s been done. Ditto for calculator functions, where SHIFT, FN, and assorted keys are needed in reality to keep the keyboard small; the computer can be more intelligent about it.
That being said, when there is a close equivalent between reality and what computers do, then reality should be followed. If they’re similar, but different, it will confuse people. Better to be completely different (thus reinforcing the differences) than to be similar enough, but different, which can cause users to make reasonable assumptions about behavior (based on prior experiences) which are incorrect on the computer.
In short, things should be as consistent as possible… But don’t get carried away with it. 🙂
>Hi, I was under the
>impression that the CTRL+L popup location of
>Nautilus HAD tab completion, just like ROX.
Ooops.. it has 🙂 I swear when I tried last night (after upgrading Gnome to 2.6 from broken Fedora Core’s 2.5) it didn’t work?!?
Directories are only lists with names or inodes, but they have no content. A file isn’t a content of a directory because directories have no content! A file can appear in two directories at the same time without beeing a copy.
Real folders have content but are no lists. That’s exactly the opposite of a directory! It is impossible to have a document in two folders at the same time. And it is impossible to hide some documents in this folder (all or nothing).
This analogy is crap and – that is the point – it is not necessary. This inconsistency to the unix world and unix terminology isn’t necessary. And therefore I really don’t like it.
Anybody know of any distros that have gnome 2.6 already or will have an implementation of it soon?
“I like spatial better now that I have been using it. ”
Me, too, and it only took me a few minutes to get used to it. It punishes people who were burying commonly used files 50 directories down, but if you were taking a more normal approach to storage, it’s pretty spiffy. If you just want to find a file, there are much better ways of going about it.
Then again, I grew up using a Mac Classic as my personal computer, so I naturally lean towards this sort of thing.
-Erwos
Your understanding of files and directories, while strictly correct, flies in the face of what most computer users care about. It’s also unix-biased.
As far as most users are concerned, directories hold files. How that’s implemented is irrelevant. The mere fact that I can link a file into multiple directories also doesn’t change much, as very few people use hard links. (Source: out of my ass. I know I haven’t used hard links, but I use symbolic links all the time. From what I’ve heard of others’ behavior, they’re in the same boat. The fact that hard links can’t cross filesystem boundaries probably contributes to this. Then there’s the 90%+ of the world using Windows, which doesn’t expose a way to create hard links, as FAT doesn’t support them; NTFS does, but again, you’d need to have Unix utilities installed to actually use them.)
Furthermore, I’m not entirely sure what knowing how the filesystem is implemented buys you. So you know that a “directory” is actually a file that contains a list of file names. On ext3, anyway. FAT does something completely different, IIRC. So “knowing” how it works isn’t portable knowledge; you can’t use this knowledge on an arbitrary computer.
Directories as a container for files is portable knowledge; every widely used OS supports the concepts, no matter how the concept is actually implemented.
And just to be utterly pendantic, “content” is “that which is contained; the thing or things held by a receptacle or included within specified limits.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=content). “[L]ists with names or inodes” would count as “content”, as it’s contained with the directory file. Thus, directories do have content. 🙂
As for being unable to hide documents in a folder, I still think you’re not being creative enough. Ever hear of a false-bottomed box? Why not a false-edged folder? Certainly, you couldn’t hide much within the folder’s false-edge, but you could hide something.
Though being this creative is probably going overboard… Or a reason to go into the spy business. Hmm….
As for the analogy being crap… A number of people (Apple) have found the analogy useful. I have seen few attempts to come up with a better analogy that has had any major success (“success” being defined as “in lots of use”, being defined as “something I’ve heard of before”).
If you don’t like the analogy, fine. Obviously no amount of debate will change that. However, until a alternate interaction mechanism comes along that is equally useful, I’ll be sticking with the current analogy.
Spatial Nautilus is actually pretty cool, now that it’s better explained (as far as it keeping proper memory of where the windows/folders open up to.) Of course the issue I have is that I have three monitors connected to my computer, so getting used to something that pops open a new window each time I open a folder… well, I guess that’s what links on the desktop are for, for the most used folders. Didn’t the Amiga also save the windows where you last closed them? (I know the Atari ST did. Though I think the ST only saved the last 10 windows to be opened, and it wasn’t a per folder setting, but more just where the last 10 were opened…)
# How that’s implemented is irrelevant.
Yes, but therefore it isn’t necessary to use a wrong terminilogy. For example it is disastrous if you are using Unix permissions. In the real world documents are save, if you seal a folder. But directories are no folders and documents are not save.
If you burn a folder, all documents are burned too. If you delete a directory, all documents can exists anymore (for example hardlinks or because files will be not overwritten).
Only examples, that’s not all.
And I think that every newbie knows what a directory is (my experience). If he didn’t know it, he knows it after 5 seconds. They have no problems with directories, therefore folders are not necessary. More … they are a stupid inconsistency, they are wrong and they are not exact. They are absolute useless.
# Thus, directories do have content. 🙂
Sure, but the files are not content of the directory. Only metadata is content, nothing else.
# Why not a false-edged folder?
Yep, that’s realistic!
# If you don’t like the analogy, fine.
… and inconsistency. mkdir, rmdir, find -type f, dirent, ls -d, ls -l (d like directory), etc.
# Obviously no amount of debate will change that.
I am sure it will not. <:
cirad, you are missing the entire point of desktop environments like GNOME or Mac OS. The idea is to represent directories as folders to the user and the technical implementation doesn’t matter _the slightest_ to the user interface.
This is not at all trying to be consistent with “real directory” handling on your terminal, you have to see graphical folders as a mental abstraction layer on top of directories, just like C is an abstraction layer on top of assembly.
The goal of GNOME is not to become yet another Unix window manager to be a graphical replacement of a dozen terminals, but to make computing easy and fun. It seems very obvious that this is not what you are looking for and that’s fine. I’m pretty sure that you even understand that, but don’t want to stop arguing just yet.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m convinced that GNOME is a great environment for Unix geeks and hackers, but you have to be open minded about new concepts and accept that the Unix framework is nothing but the technical backend to this. It is still good to know how to hack this technical backend.
# The idea is to represent directories as folders to the user
# and the technical implementation doesn’t matter _the
# slightest_ to the user interface.
I know, but it is not possible to use Unix permissions or ACLs if you have only a real folder in your mind. That’s one of many problems (inconsistency it the other big problem). And yes, the newbie has to use permissions too!
And there is no reason to rename it in folder and to have this inconsistency, because everybody knows what a directory is. I don’t say dog to a cat only because it has 4 legs (and I wouldn’t if Microsoft or Apple do so).
# I’m pretty sure that you even understand that
Yes, I know. But “folder” doesn’t simplify things, it complicate them. Already said: inconsistency and a wrong image how things work. Such things make users stupid!
The other thing is gconfd. Why gnome has it? Because Microsoft has it? Yes, you can add comments but nevertheless it’s not easy to find keys or to delete the configuration for an application.
Don’t understand me wrong. I THINK GNOME HAS THE CAPABILITY TO BE A GOOD DESKTOP, that’s the cause it bothers me. I had installed it only to get an own opinion and to see, what’s new, what’s good and what’s bad, but not to use it as my main desktop.
But back to an earlier question again: is it possible to start an application with a shortcut? Maybe you know something. (Either the feature doesn’t exists or GNOME isn’t easy enough for me. *g* )
# but you have to be open minded about new concepts and
# accept that the Unix framework is nothing but the
# technical backend to this
There are new concepts? Maybe in the background, but not in the GUI. For example I would like to see ‘tabs’ (like the tabs in pwm or pekwm) … but … I know, GNOME users are to stupid for this. <:
If the WM would have this features, the gnome-terminal or other applications needn’t to implement it. I can’t understand such things.
And there are many things to do, for example I wanted to drag a picture to my root-window to use it as a wallpaper. Nothing happened. In an earlier version this works, if I remind me correctly.
And there are gnome applications with low quality. For example the icon selector or the gnome terminal, since years! Therefore I don’t think GNOME is “that perfect piece of software” what some reviews suggest. Maybe it’s the best “newbie desktop” Unix has, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. *g*