Ximian’s Dave Camp posted a draft Gnome Roadmap for versions 2.8+. Issues up for discussion are Mozilla/Epiphany, incorportation of peer to peer filesharing, blogging, addition of more media widgets etc. Also, ULB Gnome 0.8.0 for SuSE & Dropline Gnome 2.6.1 for Slackware are out.
Draft on the GNOME Roadmap
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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A lot of this new proposed Gnome stuff is exciting. I think they should also adopt Waiema (did I spell it correctly?) as window manager while they adopt Cairo in the long term.
Yeah lotsa sweet stuff… Evolution integration, rhythmbox CD burning, Gnome Storage in the long term, … lotsa goodies.
Please do me (and linux) a favor and merge the Gnome and the KDE projects! I don’t care about the technical reasons why you can’t merge or how it will kill innovation if they merge. (is see no real innovation anyway) I don’t even care which one is better. Just plan to merge them in the future. Please!!!!
I personally prefer standardization over chioce. Especially on this level of the operating system.
My $0.02.
Although I agree that standards are often better than choice, you might as well ask for a stairway to the Moon, as it’ll be about as easy to do, and cooler to boot…
Is this just me or has anybody else got the feeling that they slowly start to think every single gnome desktop release should be even more exciting than the previous one, but lacking feature ideas just plan to pump it up with useless apps till it bursts?
Just get your desktop right guys, an got it really right, and then go into some stable maintenance mode or whatever, and let the people develop their apps in peace.
Gnome Devs seem to be suffering from featuritis, it seems.
The best possible choice as far as I can see would be an agreement upon a standard api interface to the modern tool kits. Yes there are difficulties with this too, but movement away from applications being specific tool kit dependent would be good.
I would like the developers toolkit choice to have no influence on mine.
Of course, this is really just a dream.
The draft says something about patent problems with multimedia stuff (I guess they mean video&audio codecs). But isn’t that the whole point of GStreamer? To have a modular framework that supports only free codecs out of the box but makes it easy to add mpeg&co through plugins?
BTW Ogg Theora seems to be almost at beta status, so soon we will have a fully free video codec!
Firstly, the P2P is probably in reference to Rendevous-based sharing and iFolder, which is very useful on the desktop.
Secondly, “GNOME developers” is such an odd, mistakenly collective way to refer to the people behind the GNOME desktop. There are people working on stabilizing and refining the desktop. There are also people interested in pursuing the integration of new services and features. This _will_ be done safely and sanely, as it has been in the past. Rhythmbox, evolution, and totem weren’t rushed into 2.4/2.6. The maintainers of those projects made good decisions. When these P2P and blogging technologies are ready, the maintainers of the related projects will work to integrate them into GNOME. Until then and even after that, the other individual developers will be refining current technology and ensuring the desktop is polished. This isn’t a small team of guys led by a manager. This is a dissociated group of people working on projects that interest them.
Touché! That is a brilliant retort. I am plenty informed, so I guess I am an idiot.
Nice
I was simply stating my wish. I know in reality this will never happen but I can dream can’t I. Close minded individual like yourself would never let it happen.
If the Gnome project can set a goal to convert thier source to Java or C# (a complete rewrite correct?) they can certainly call up the KDE people and meet somewhere in the middle.
The opinion that choice is everything in the OSS world is wearing thin. Quality, openness, and standardization should be the Holy Grail.
Please don’t attack me for my opinion.
People are choosing Firefox because ofthe great plugin support, of which Epiphany has zilch.
I applaud the GNOME folks for trying to go native on a browser, but trying to play catch-up with the Firefox plugin list is pointless.
Also, Epiphany’s bookmarks are RETARDED. What do you do if you already have well maintained, sensible bookmark hierarchies that you would like to preserve???? Too bad, the Epiphany authors “know better” than you. Riiiight.
Are they talking about ifolder?
The epiphany devs are experimenting with other ways of handling bookmarks – some of which are quite innovative (automatic hierarchy generation and such). Also, there actually is an API for extensions to Epiphany, some of which are quite neat – mouse gestures, etc. However, the point of epiphany is to be a simple browser that gets the main goals of a browser right. And I personally think they are doing an awesome job accomplishing those goals.
NVM Brad awnsered my question
I believe so, yes.
I share your preference of Standardization at least for now. However, I am glad both platforms exist. For one thing, there is nothing lost in terms of application support, as long as QT and GTK are installed.
Furthermore, both platforms sort of exist to fulfill seperate goals. Gnome seems to have moved towards providing a standard, simple, consistent desktop. The kind of thing you are begging for.
Meanwhile, KDE seems to favor choice and customizability.
I think more exciting things are happening in Gnome and i see no reason to switch, but i’m glad that both platforms are there if for no other reason than to keep the other platform moving in competition.
In conclusion, there is nothing at all to be gained by major effort that would be required to merge the projects, and it would actually encourage stagnation.
I started with KDE, Gnome, XFCE, and now i use IceWM and Fluxbox. I do everything I did before, only faster. The Desktop Environment is obsolete IMO, it’s a waste of valuable resources, that could be used for speed and new development for more efficient apps.
In IceWM, i got icons on the taskbar, a clock, the date by running the cursor over it, a cpu monitor, a net monitor, a zillion themes, and SPEED. I ain’t got time for eye-candy, or titillating little birds in the sky, i just wanna get fast to my apps and do the job at hand.
In every newsgroup, you always see countless problems with KDE, GNOME not working … what a waste!
I agree that there are plenty of apps for both platforms, but don’t you think we would all be better served if they existed on one platform? Why should I be in the position of having to choose between 2 excellent apps, one KDE based and one Gnome based, because of a desktop environment?
I also do not want to confuse customizability with standardization they are not mutually exclusive.
I don’t think the effort lost to the merge is any more than the effort lost to redundant projects.
Thoughts?
I use Epiphany as well as Firefox. Don’t use many plugins, so I don’t get excited one way or the other. Epiphany seems to find any Mozilla plugins I’ve installed, anyway.
I do like Epiphany’s way of handling bookmarks better than Firefox’s, especially the automatic sorting.
Frankly, for folks with lots of bookmarks, all browsers are annoying. Once you get beyond a certain number, chaos insues. However, I do wish someone would allow me to enter short synopses of each bookmark, which would appear when I cursor over it at a later date. Bookmark names are limited in their descriptive ability.
I agree that there are plenty of apps for both platforms, but don’t you think we would all be better served if they existed on one platform? Why should I be in the position of having to choose between 2 excellent apps, one KDE based and one Gnome based, because of a desktop environment?
Well, simply demanding people to choose a platform at the expense of another one is not a viable path to take, HOWEVER, what should be pushed is the idea which the back end code is independent of the GUI, meaning for example, we have the Pan USENET client engine with a modular front end where by at compile time the user/distro can choose between either using KDE/QT or GNOME/GTK for the widget set.
This would allow two platforms to be supported and ensure that there is no duplication in efforts in regards to applications on different desktops.
With that being said, GNOME ultimately looks like its going to win, not because of technical superiority but because of the weight that the big players, SUN, IBM, HP, Red Hat, Novell/Ximian etc. have behind the project.
I totally agree with the suggestion of a unifrom GUI and especially xzgv.
stop wasting time/effort on stupid eye candy, how the start menu is organized, and all that childish aspects to impress kids/teenagers.
get a standard environment that is fast, clean, stable and easy for development.
in the goals its pretty apparent they are trying to steer Gnome into new directions, things that havent been done before.
peer to peer data sharing isnt just the standard downloading music and getting the latest “day after tommorow” cam/ts/whatever.
I think they have some interesting ideas and they feel its the future. time will tell.
people always say KDE is for power users. i disagree, i respect KDE etc, but i prefer gnome for its simplicity (but i use openbox 3 cause i want a right click menu on the desktop damnit!, preferablly a customized one). kde is just to busy for my taste (and dont flame me for that, its my preference, and dont even try to give me options, im happy with my setup and im productive in it.
the newer gnomes impress me, the tight integration of information. its not all there yet, but they have direction and thats cool.
im also pleased with novells position and influences. i hope they dont get in the way of the OSS, which i doubt they would. they seem to be embracing it to add to their business. which is excellent.
okay my rants over.
You’re statement “there are plenty of apps for both platforms” is misleading. You can run apps from either platform on EITHER DE. There’s no reason to force people to choose because you don’t lose anything either way. I can run Kdevelop from Gnome or Gnumeric on KDE.
With the GTK-QT project, even the themes will be appropriate. I think Freedesktop is right on encouraging compatibility between the two, but not forcing them to merge. That way we get all the benefits none of the drawbacks.
IpaqMan asks:
>Why should I be in the position of having to choose
>between 2 excellent apps, one KDE based and one Gnome
>based, because of a desktop environment?
Why is there more than one brand of cars? What do you do when you need to buy a new harddisk? Why is there more than one kind of chair? They are all functionally the same.
This obsession with only wanting one kind of every program is silly. Nothing will be gained from merging desktops or programs. Everything will go up in flames because people who work on different programs have fundamentally different ideas about some things. Also, you will end up with a lot of compromises instead of more perfect solutions to each problem (perfect as in an idea implemented fully).
If you can’t deal with choice, you may be happy with moving to China where you can have the government make all the choices for you (apologies to all the Chinese).
Nah, merging will be a problem… Its pointless the projects are far too different, I would prefer to see API wrappers instead, QT wrapper so that I can emerge KDE apps without having to use QT, that would be much more fun! Oh and the other way around too…
“Why is there more than one brand of cars? What do you do when you need to buy a new hard disk? Why is there more than one kind of chair? They are all functionally the same.”
I agree with all of what you said but, do we not use standard bolts, screws etc to create all of these items? Even a product as complex as a car shares subcomponents across brands and models. It would be different if the DEs had divergent goals from one another but they do not.
My point is the Desktop Environment is like the standard screw, nail, or bolt. Why should the end user have to deal with 2 widget sets or 2 similar file dialogs? This gives distros an amateurish feel.
“This obsession with only wanting one kind of every program is silly. Nothing will be gained from merging desktops or programs. Everything will go up in flames because people who work on different programs have fundamentally different ideas about some things. Also, you will end up with a lot of compromises instead of more perfect solutions to each problem (perfect as in an idea implemented fully).”
I never said I wanted one kind of every program I just want the core to be standardized.
“If you can’t deal with choice, you may be happy with moving to China where you can have the government make all the choices for you (apologies to all the Chinese).”
And for China, those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. America is hardly as free as you claim it to be. It’s not China but Ashcroft can only do so much in one term.
—-
“Nah, merging will be a problem… It’s pointless the projects are far too different, I would prefer to see API wrappers instead, QT wrapper so that I can emerge KDE apps without having to use QT, that would be much more fun! Oh and the other way around too…”
Barring their language choices and different source are they really totally different ideas? Last, time I checked every distribution, that contains both DEs, manipulates them to look almost exactly alike. At this level how are they different?
You would seriously prefer wrappers? (I think your being sarcastic but…)
.
THey are really different. I don’t know if you’re a programmer but the APIs GTK and QT are very different. To try to port all programs to one common api is stupid especially considering YOU CAN RUN QT APPS FROM GNOME OR GTK IN KDE!!!
Just stick with Gnome, they are employing the kinds of standards you’re talking about. That is good. But there’s no need to merge the KDE project into it because some people like what KDE is doing and all apps are compatible with all DE/WMs. I don’t know if i’ve made that point clear enough yet.
Also, there’s a project to make applications from either toolset appear to be native with proper themes and widgets.
I’m not going to post anymore because i don’t think you really understand the futility of your argument. I suppose you want to abandon all other windows managers too.
GNUStep!!!
I’ll let it rest here as well. I am not trying to antagonize you I just want to push the discussion beyond some of the technical minutia. I think sometimes we get so focused on the details that we don’t see the forest for the trees.
There is nothing you have said that isn’t true and I don’t claim that my point is right or good. Unless one project fails miserably, I know full well we will have multiple WM for many years to come.
I just think overall things get too complicated and I guess I am on a simplification kick.
Good discussion.
“I just think overall things get too complicated and I guess I am on a simplification kick. ”
be specific. how do you expect two different toolkits to merge?. what can be standardised is being done on freedesktop.org. as far as having a single wm, this is not likely to happen.
Guys,even Windows uses a billion different widgetes…What we need is standardisation.Make a commong DEFAULT theme,same file choosers,similar HIGS,same position of yes and no buttons,and everything will be OK in the land of linux…
Um…both desktops are already working on standardization: It’s called FreeDesktop.org.
Standardization does not mean they have to merge, just make their DE’s interoperate.
“I agree with all of what you said but, do we not use standard bolts, screws etc to create all of these items? Even a product as complex as a car shares subcomponents across brands and models. It would be different if the DEs had divergent goals from one another but they do not.”
They do however have mini-goals that are different.
“My point is the Desktop Environment is like the standard screw, nail, or bolt. Why should the end user have to deal with 2 widget sets or 2 similar file dialogs? This gives distros an amateurish feel. ”
Because what’s embodied in those “widget sets” and “file dialogs” are two things. Looks, and behaviour. You’ll have the same “widget sets” and “file dialogs” when the underlying decisions are the same. Anyone remember the [YES], [NO], [CANCEL] discussion we had awhile back, and all the noise that generated? A simple decision that will result in a divergent dialog box, and as we all know, widget sets, and DE’s are more complicated than that.
I realize that the majority which come from that “other” environment may have some difficulties. But this is OSS (remember the BSD’s?) and things are different here. The rules are different, and the culture is different, and we welcome you as long as people respect that.
Be great, not having to have QT installed but just be able to compile QT developed apps for GTK. Don’t want to have to have QT libs installed on my system but at the moment cause all the decent music apps use it, I have to.
Interoperability I think is the most important issue here and they are working towards it.
As much as I love gnome, it’s a push to mention the mime interface as something they have improved. Sure it’s a bit better, but it’s still useless. My gnome is gradually filling up with file associations that don’t work; but that I can’t delete easily until the next UI upgrade…
” * GNOME is currently implemented in C, with language bindings
implemented for use in third-party applications. There is some
consensus in the community that adoption of a higher-level
language and runtime would be beneficial to the development of
the desktop.
Java and C# have been proposed as alternatives. The community
is currently discussing the technical, political, and legal
ramifications of adopting these languages into the desktop.”
Java is slow and not entirely free. C# is a Java clone and an idea of M$. Why not use C++ ?! g++ is a mature C++ compiler, C++ is not interpreted (therefore fast) and Gnome already hat GTKmm (C++ wrapper).
C++ is one important reason because KDE developers are more productive. It is stupid to use plain C to make object-oriented GUIs when C++ is more adequate.
Another reason not to merge is the developers. I have this feeling that KDE is about how stuff is done, and GNOME is about what stuff is done. The two projects are evolving in completely diffrent directions.
I like the GNOME way, and I just can’t stand KDE (god knows I’ve tried). I think I even speak for many KDE-lovers when I say that we don’t want developers from the other project contaminating the “feel”.
When it comes to widgets and applications.
I would love it if applications where developed abstract and semanticly enought to actually be usable in ION.
Why must all GUI application embrace the window paradigm?
Why do we have application at all?
Is there a reason for every “collection of file manipulation toos” to come bundeld with (and locked to) its own workarea and file renderer?