In this GNOME 2.9.2 development release is the new ‘gnome-menus’ module, which you will need. It is a new XDG spec compliant menu system.
GNOME 2.9.2 Development Release Available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Any Screenshots of this development release available?
It still looks same, but it has some new icons. GNOME 2.9.2 is broke without gnome-control-center 2.9 tarball, unless you fetch it from CVS if it will build with new nautilus 2.9.1.
1. some app that lets you intergrate IM contact list with email program. think how msn messenger links up with outlook express.
2. some space trading game (doesn’t look hot but never played it)
3. gui for managing crontab.
pic here:
http://gaute.eu.org/stasj/cronconf/system-config-schedule.png
links to info on the above are here:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.9/desktop/
some of the links from the list of features point to sites with pictures.
I couldn’t see any info on gnome menus though.
*sorry can’t seem to get urls to auto-parse
but i tried all i could and they still don’t show as having been parsed in the preview*
Those modules are only proposed, this means that they might or might not become part of the desktop release. They are not supposed to be “the new features”.
It’s redraw rates and overall slugish feel is something that to me is holding it back. Despite the fact that KDE is the swiss army knife of DE’s with the kitchen sink thrown in to add further clutter KDE still managaes to feel faster then Gnome. I do love Gnomes one app for each task and sane defaults approach which KDE is sorely lacking though.
I’m of the other mindset. I think Gnome is faster than KDE, especially Nautalis compared to Konquorer when opening directories with thousands of files or directories with thumbnails turned on. And all my Gnome apps start faster, sometimes much much faster, even when starting in KDE. But I’m a staunch KDE user. Gnome looks dirty/grimy and KDE looks clean and bright. On my fastest machine and my usual desktop, the difference between KDE and Gnome’s speed isn’t that great. So I end up using the one I think looks the best and that’s KDE.
However, the more I use Gnome, the more impressed I am with hom much it’s improving. I think KDE is ahead of the DE race ATM, but Gnome is really catching up and you can tell they are thinking about what they are doing and I have a feeling Gnome will eventually surpass KDE and Gnome and it’s successors will be the next generation DE’s.
Gnome looks dirty/grimy and KDE looks clean and bright.
But ain’t that just a simple matter of changing the theme – and of personal taste too? Besides, I think that it is still much easier to switch themes in GNOME than in KDE (only problem that I’ve noticed being that if you have dozens of themes installed, the GUI theme switcher might not work properly, or at least it used to have problems then a couple of GNOME versions back, not sure if it still does that?).
A couple of my personal fav GNOME themes:
http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/594/
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=15785
Anyway, I think that it could be a high time that the GNOME designers start to think of updating the default icon theme. I suppose it looks ok already but not as unified and coherent icon theme set like what KDE has. Just switching to 100% SVG-based icons might work miracles in order to unify the default icon set look too.
Gnome looks dirty/grimy and KDE looks clean and bright.
Huh-wha? You’re not kidding? Wow, it really is matter of taste…
GNOME is the one that looks clean and bright, while KDE looks like some kid ate to much candy and vomited on my screen. Its even more a mess of gaudy miss-matched poorly-spaced widgets then even Luna on WinXP was. Its painful to look at, and although I tried to give it a fair shake, it was painful to use it was so cluttered and poorly designed.
xfce is gnome done right…
what happened to KISS??? (keep it simple stupid)
gnome forgot that philosophy…
xfcd did not forget…
Please, excuse my ignorance, but is it possible under Gnome to have a global Mac-like menubar at the top of the screen?
go to http://art.gnome.org/themes/metacity/
DarkX is a black version of the Mac menubar. Looks fantastic.
Currently it isn’t supported, but the mailing list post below seems to indicate that they want the option to do this, but it would have to be incorporated into Gtk first.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2004-September/msg00193.ht…
Metic and Devon, you are very correct that it’s a subjective perspective. But I don’t use the default themes either. Kerimack(sp?) is like AMC Pacer ugly. It’s a horrible theme.
I use a modified Plastik theme with crystal icons and lots of simple blue backgrounds. From the Lilo boot screen to the desktop it is the same simple blue background, with working progress bar graphical boot and shutdown, all the same and very elegant in it’s simple look.
My Gnome desktop is setup almost completely identicle to my KDE desktop (some differences like KDE has improved their interface (ie taskbar2 and systemtray2) so now my KDE desktop looks different).
But if you put them side by side, KDE is way more clear and crisp looking than Gnome. Especially on this monitor, which is a 19″ Viewsonic PF790. But whatever renders KDE renders the fonts clearer and in general makes for much brighter colors.
Of course, this is a milage may vary situation too. I’ve heard others say that both KDE and Gnome were bloat hogs and fluxbox was better looking. It’s all subjective. Just in my case, both desktops being nearly identicle looking in themes and colors, on this monitor, KDE looks much better.
However, I have to agree with cheapskate that Xfce is Gnome done right. If I wasn’t using PCLOS, I would be running SAM just to have the nice intergration of Xfce. But as it is, I have KDE and that’s good enough for me.
Some needed featuers for Nautilus in Gnome: default spatial mode nonsense to off; bring back the ability to customize toolbars in Nautilus via XML files in home directory; display bookmarks tree options in sidebar of Nautilus. Also, add a decent GUI to edit mime types. Current way of digging into .desktop files is not quite user friendly.
I tried both KDE and Gnome in FC3 and Gnome is measurably faster opening GTK applications. Also it runs programs like Mozilla Firefox more reliably since GTK is native on Gnome. But in actual use I use neither environments and chose the light weight XFce4.2. It offers the best of both worlds and you can run Gnome services at startup to improve compatibility with Gnome.
Yes! GNOME desperately needs a Mac-like menubar. It has most of the trappings of the Mac classic UI, but is sorely lacking this critical option. I hope it makes it into GTK+ in my lifetime
I like the spatial mode. Obviously the developers like spatial mode. There’s no reason why they’re going to go back and undo it. Turn it off if you don’t like it. Why do people love to complain about this so much?
Also, if you go to Applications -> Browse Filesystem then that gives you non-spatial mode. This is such a non-issue.
“But if you put them side by side, KDE is way more clear and crisp looking than Gnome. Especially on this monitor, which is a 19″ Viewsonic PF790. But whatever renders KDE renders the fonts clearer and in general makes for much brighter colors.”
You’re seeing things. Both KDE and GNOME use the system fontconfig / freetype2 libs to render fonts.
I’m running on a flat panel LCD and don’t really see much difference between Gnome and KDE in terms of crispness and brightness. Until it went phffft and emitted a small cloud of smoke, I used the monitor you have, a PS790, and I remember it as having a brighter, albeit less stable, display than this LCD.
I also own one of the original flat-panel iMacs. Neither Gnome or KDE, on either monitor, approach the brightness and clarity of that display. Icons, in particular, stand out in detail.
Pet peeve: The title bars of windows in both KDE and Gnome are too thick for my tastes. That’s especially true for Plastik. I’d love to see an option to reduce their vertical height, or to have them adjust their size in response to font changes.
I’ve found nautilus to be particularly fast-loading when it’s in spatial mode… when you throw it into browser mode, it chugs down a bit…. Spatial mode is almost like browser mode, but you just have to get used to the way it works…. control+L takes you to a hidden “location” bar… and, if you wanna go back, you just click on the directory name on the bottom-left of each window, and you can back-track more/less….. Personally, I like OSX’s file manager… i feel it’s more intuitive…
I love gnome’s interface… but I also love KDE’s… the only thing that gets me is the speed factor… and both have Achilles heels…
Gnome is slow in drawing/refreshing its apps… I didn’t notice this until switching to GNOME for 5months, then going back to KDE… drawing aside, apps like Konsole and Kedit… are blisteringly fast compared to their Gnome equivalents….
KDE is slow in file extraction… and, for some reason, slower than GNOME in samba-related file transfers… (when using konqi or nautilus in their respective environments)…
I really like GTK’s new file dialog…. KDE’s is decent… but GTK’s feels cleaner to me…
The one thing that really ticks me off is…. I’m a purist… in the sense of toolkits… I only want to have *ONE* loaded…… be it GTK… or QT…. I don’t want both…. I’ve got better use for resources than to have more than one toolkit….
But each toolkit has its contribution to the “killer app” pool that the other is lacking… e.g., K3B has no true gnome equivalent… and Gaim doesn’t have an equally strong KDE equivalent (kopete is *ok*, but it’s far from gaim in stability, features, and AIM protocol support)….
I agree that competition and choice is good… but I just want to be able to CHOOSE a COMPLETE environment… w/o having to bite pieces off of another competitor’s progress….
If I could make a quick note, I too have seen the slowness of GNOME, but I think it has nothing to do with the load times, panel, or Nautilus. I feel like it takes a bit of time for Metacity to actually -draw- the themed frames. In xfwm4 (or other wms), switching desktops with multiple terminals is instantaneous, flipping through them quickly is flash/flash/flash/flash. Etc.
In Metacity, you have to wait for the frames to pop at each desktop change (mass window hide/show). I’m not saying its 100% Metacity, but even though Metacity has some gorgeous themes out there for it, it seems very slow and featureless.
If I could make a quick note, I too have seen the slowness of GNOME, but I think it has nothing to do with the load times, panel, or Nautilus.
There doesn’t seem to be one thing that makes Gnome slow – however you define slowness. Redrawing does seem to be a bit of a problem, but the problems really start coming when you start using quite a few apps all at the same time and really start using the desktop fully. A lot of the slowness is down to the amount of memory the whole desktop and applications use as well as GTK, but it can’t all be GTK.
Certainly Gnome does consume a heck of a lot of resources, especially in terms of memory. I’ve recently spent some time doing some parallel development as I’ve been using .Net at work, so I thought I’d use Monodevelop, Mono and GTK# alongside just to see. It hasn’t been that bad development-wise, but if Mono or Java is the future of Gnome development then prepare yourselves…..
Applications and parts of Gnome itself written with Mono, Java and GTK are going to require Longhorn-esque and above levels of memory and system requirements. Factor in things like eye candy and transparent windows etc. and the desktop and tools now as they stand and it just escalates from there.
That is something that is sorely lacking with Gnome. If redhat’s icon theme is not installed you are left with a rather old and incomplete icon set from the old Gnome 1.x days. KDE right now has Crystal which matches well for it’s desktop despite looking to childish IMHO. Gnome needs a good but orginal OS-X photo realistic type icon theme since it is closer in feel to MacOS. Something that is full and complete with application, device, mime-types, etc.. icons and does not make it look like a child’s OS.
#44767: Option for recursive file permissions (chmod -R)
#113480: Burn CD/DVD without a temp iso file
#137664: Path in spatial nautilus
#147252: Impossible to deselect files in single click
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8384
Is it possible to get ebuilds for gentoo?
Yes,
http://breakmygentoo.net/
YMMV 😉
> The title bars of windows in both KDE and Gnome are too thick for my tastes. That’s especially true for Plastik. I’d love to see an option to reduce their vertical height, or to have them adjust their size in response to font changes.
Sorry? I can tell from own experience say that Plastik adjust its sizes in response to window title font changes.
That is something that is sorely lacking with Gnome. If redhat’s icon theme is not installed you are left with a rather old and incomplete icon set from the old Gnome 1.x days.
The default Gnome icon theme is not from the 1.x days. It follows the Gnome look and feel very well. It is also far from incomplete. Browse here:
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-icon-theme/
and come back and tell me what icon you think is missing.
Gnome needs a good but orginal OS-X photo realistic type icon theme since it is closer in feel to MacOS.
The photo-realistic thing is not Gnome’s style, and never has been. Personally, I think it makes for hard-to-use icons, because they’re difficult to identify at a glance. Read Chapter 9 of the HIG.
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/
To those of you who play with the development system, I ahve a few quick questions:
1. Is the multimedia system being improved as promised?
2. There was talk of having the rubbish bin icon always visible and also having the ability to drag anything (including unwanted icons) into it. Has this functioanlity been added?
3. Is there a block-select in GEdit or must we continue to wait?
4. There was a cry for help from the GNOME team recently about a need for more volunteers to resolve the huge list of oustanding bugs in Nautilus. Has much progress been made?
5. Is there anything else we should know of?
Thanks.
I was wondering if anyone knows if this release will be a lot faster than 2.8 e.g. will the developers do memoryprofiling or something like that. Will gtk 2.6 be incorperated?
Also, are there new features proposed that make use of the new xorg features, like translucent windows, dropshadows, etc?
I agree completely.
I would love to use GNOME as it’s cleaner than KDE, simpler, elegant, with attention to good non-bloated UIs and usability.
But I can’t accept the lack of speed in GNOME and its applications. And the fact that nothing seems to be done about it, they apparently don’t care, despite the constant and ongoing massive complaints (everytime there’s an article about GTK+ or GNOME, there’s a flood of “GTK+ is slow” posts).
A big part of the slowness is really GTK+ 2.x, which is still terribly slow and I’m afraid this will be very hard to fix, as the whole toolkit is slow – it’s not just the notoriously famous poor resize/redraw speed, although that’s indeed the most visible problem.
I can attest to the fact that KDE feels faster than GNOME. I like the way GNOME is going, don’t get me wrong, but I just feel the icon/widget themes are really drab, and that the speed of redraw/app launch/etc is really poor.
Even comparing AMD64 optimised distros like Ubuntu against my 32bit Mandrake 10.0 desktop, KDE feels faster.
I’ve looked for various icon/widget themes before, but couldn’t find anything that I like as much as KDE’s Plastik theme and Crystal icon set.
Gnome 2.10.x will use GTK 2.6.x and yes there have been a lot of performance improvements made to GTK for the 2.6.x series. The GTK developers have done memory profiling and optimized a lot of the code.
Metacity has support for composite built into it but it is currently pretty slow so if you want that feature with gnome get xcompmgr from freedesktop.org and run it to see all the eye candy with composite and renderaccel enabled.
Pet peeve: The title bars of windows in both KDE and Gnome are too thick for my tastes. That’s especially true for Plastik. I’d love to see an option to reduce their vertical height, or to have them adjust their size in response to font changes.
Metacity does this with all themes which don’t enforce a certain height (only few pixmap based custom themes do this). It’s one of the reasons why I like Metacity a lot, although other WMs like XFWM feel snappier.
1. Is the multimedia system being improved as promised?
Well, I was finally able to play some mpeg file correctly with gstreamer lately, so I assume there is some progress.
From reading the weblogs, the video part of gstreamer has been worked very hard on lately. Too bad that I can’t use it for much as there is no DivX (or WMP) support. Hopefully it will be possible to add this from a third party source soon. :/ But I could be missing something.
2. There was talk of having the rubbish bin icon always visible and also having the ability to drag anything (including unwanted icons) into it. Has this functioanlity been added?
The trashcan applet seems to be part of gnome-applets now, so you can put the trashcan on the panel. Can’t move a lot in there yet though, only files and other desktop icons AFAICT.
3. Is there a block-select in GEdit or must we continue to wait?
I think you must continue to wait.
4. There was a cry for help from the GNOME team recently about a need for more volunteers to resolve the huge list of oustanding bugs in Nautilus. Has much progress been made?
There was not “a need for more volunteers to resolve the huge list of outstanding bugs”, there was just a rally call to focus on fixing bugs and stability for this release cycle. From following the mailing list, it seems to have worked well, lots of little bugs were getting patches.
Gnome 2.10.x will use GTK 2.6.x and yes there have been a lot of performance improvements made to GTK for the 2.6.x series. The GTK developers have done memory profiling and optimized a lot of the code.
Unfortunately things aren’t that simple, as I’m convinced it isn’t just GTK. Optimising a toolkit and the surrounding system takes a great deal of dedicated time and effort, and sticking it through a profiler isn’t enough. There are issues to consider with the architecture as well as just optimising code. There’s also the issue of a legacy codebase based on how GTK and Gnome’s core libraries do things currently, and because of that any fundamental change (that is required) in here is going to cause large parts of the desktop and applications to be re-written. A company like Microsoft has the resources to take a 12-pound sledgehammer to Windows and panel-beat it into shape until it sort of looks OK (and that is how Windows has been developed). No one else has that.
By the time this can all be done Qt 4.0 will be well on its way and have development features and a level of performance well in excess of GTK (as it does already), any of the proposed complete development environments for Gnome (Mono, Java et al) or Microsoft’s .Net. One of the things I’ve learned with .Net is that it is an absolute memory hog for no good reason whatsoever (you could do exactly the same things with COM in VB6, just as easily, with less resources). Thank goodness it depends on native core Windows libraries, something many people totally misunderstand when they say that .Net and managed code is fast.
as far as I have read is pango one of the biggest bottlenecks
but pango is very important so
well, I’d like to have
gnome-mime-application-x-ruby.png
for .rb files
Something that is standard and accepted across all GNOME applications.
What benefits will be achieved by the new GTK under Cairo?
That’s GTK 2.8.
Thanks for picking me up. How will Cairo integrate with this? What benefit will end users see?
Thanks.