GNOME 2.10 is going to be the latest and greatest thing from the GNOME Desktop Project this March 9th. Here is a sneak peek of some of the things that are currently in the GNOME 2.9 development snapshot.
A Sneak Peek at GNOME 2.10
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Shouldn’t it be 2.91. I can understand going from 2.09 to 2.10.
10>9 isnt it? There is your answer.
Its goes :
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Not:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 91
😉
WOW! that was underwhelming
Finally! Proper panel applet transparency!
The new, more flexible menu layout will be nice, too.
i love gnome.
what about mac style menus thou? wasnt that part of a game plan?!?!
its the missing link.. i swear! 😀
I have heard that GTK cannot support Mac-style menus yet. I still don’t have my Lotus Smartsuite floating palettes yet, either…
Is .10 of a million more than .9?
I don’t think so.
I especially like the samba integration but I’m left with one major thing. What about wireless network stuff. Currently wireless network support is lame to say the least.
I want to be able to view all the networks. I want to be able to choose the priority of each one. I want to be able to enter a WEP key. All missing. ifdown, ifup, and an text file with inteface settings isn’t my idea of an ideal way of doing wireless.
Still some nice improvements. And if you were expecting more then realize that it’s 6 month release cycles, not five year ones. Considering how much they’re adding in six months color me impressed.
<<what about mac style menus thou?>>
If it was implemented, it would be broken from the start. Only GTK+ apps would be able have the MacOSX style menu.
So apps using GTK1, XUL(firefox, thunderbird, etc), QT, wxwindows, etc would not work.
Its been brought up a lot and this is the reason.
Check out NetworkManager, its what I use.
http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/NetworkManager/
To this end, Rob Love has actually coded netapplet, which is still a bit experimental but works quite nicely for most of the stuff you’re talking about.
http://people.clarkson.edu/~chavoumd/images/netapplet-gentoo.jpg
There’s a screenshot. And here’s the debian package:
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/netapplet
You’ll need to get a package (either debian or ebuild at the moment) to use it on a non-SUSE system, since in Robert Love’s version there are calls to yast, since this is meant for consumption by SuSE/NLD users.
This still doesn’t suit my needs in terms of wireless, so I actually ended up writing a bash script to do what I wanted and display status graphically via zenity. But netapplet’s pretty good, even though it is a misnamed program (it runs in the notification area, even tho it should be an applet).
Enjoy.
Agreed but these are not percentages.
I think the point that needs to be made though is that some people on this site have been confused by the numbering, so heaven help the general public. Perhaps a new versioning scheme should be developed and no, I do not mean along the lines of a marketing gimmick like calling a product “XP” or “ME.” Maybe simply calling it v2r10 for Version 2, Release 10 would be better or 2005-stable1 would be clearer, whilst still providing adequate infomraiton as to which release it is.
“I think the point that needs to be made though is that some people on this site have been confused by the numbering, so heaven help the general public.”
I think the idea is that GNOME is all about “the general public” as you call it, and that’s precisely why they don’t deviate from the standard non-math versioning scheme. The general public is never, ever, ever going to be downloading and compiling GNOME on their own. Companies like Redhat and Novell package GNOME and integrate it into their distribution so that “the general public” doesn’t have to worry about it.
OK, quick quiz: what version of Windows Media Player is your grandmother running? 8.23.45.07 or something? Does she know? Does she need to? Of course not.
Woot. They’re upgrading the dictionary applet. Obviously I am not the only one that uses it after all.
Currently the multiple back forth window thing is a bit annoying.
Looks like there is new stuff for every taste once again.
The “.” is not a decimal point. It’s just dividing the major version number from the minor version number.
Just imagine the “.” is a “-” or a “,” or a “/” if it helps.
Perhaps OSNews needs a short and sweet article on version numbering. This question comes up every time some piece of software jumps from x.9 to x.10!!
Don’t say it’s dividing, or you’ll just confuse them further. It’s a seperator.
Well 2.10 sure looks lesser than 2.9 this is because Maths is so ingrained in our minds and in maths number 2.10 < 2.9
I would use 2.09 if i have to go in 2 digits in minor version number.
Im very excited about this realise, GNOME just keeps getting better, Congratulations to the GNOME team.
For those interested… all these things are available already in Ubuntu Hoary, their devel branch. Quite stable too, although it IS the devel branch, so it will fluctuate.
Just for the impatient I guess, like me ^_^
I wish, GNOME would run as fast as XFCE and interface was as responsive as KDE, currently it is too sluggish for me on P4 1.7
I wish Keyboard layout selector actually worked
I wish metacity removed those squares when moving windows around and redrawed windows correctly
I wish Gnome-terminal ran faster
Hopefully that’s all for now. Can’t wait for the new release. Cheers to developers !!!
The real future of Gnome is outside of Europe and North America. That comment about “Linux is free if your time is worth nothin” is true in more ways than one; however, everyone on this list knows that there are “payware” Linux distros that don’t require up any more of a user’s time/frustration than Windoze (arguably, less). But, coming back to my original point: when you live in a country in which the average daily wage is less than $1 per day, the possibility of large scale contributions to overall code development for open source systems (both in terms of small businesses with paid employ and non-profit enterprise) becomes really clear to you. This point never come up in debates about KDE vs. Gnome, but the fact is that if even 0.01% of the population of India starts using Gnome (which is ahead in Indic language support) *everyone* who uses Linux will benefit from increased development. Whereas it is very expensive to just “hire six coders and start up a small Linux software company” in Europe, you can do this in most of Asia at a very low cost (due primarily to low salaries).
I wish, GNOME would run as fast as XFCE and interface was as responsive as KDE, currently it is too sluggish for me on P4 1.7
That’s odd that it is so slow on your system; I’m running it on a Duron 1.0GHz with 256MB RAM and a Radeon VE 32MB video card. It runs very smoothly on my system. Of course, GUI responsiveness is largely a matter of opinion.
I wish Keyboard layout selector actually worked
I’ve never had a reason to use that, so I have no idea.
I wish metacity removed those squares when moving windows around and redrawed windows correctly
Ok, this may be a video driver issue for you; I’ve never experienced that problem, and I’ve run Gnome 2.2 through 2.8 in the past couple of years on several different machines.
I wish Gnome-terminal ran faster
I’m with you on that one; I hate a slow terminal. I’ve messed around with custom configs for aterm, which solved this problem very well. Read the man page for aterm and you’ll get some good ideas for making it a good replacement for gnome-terminal.
Hopefully that’s all for now. Can’t wait for the new release. Cheers to developers !!!
I’ll wait for the stable Hoary release of Ubuntu myself; 2.8 does everything I need and then some. The new stuff does look cool though!
<<what about mac style menus thou?>>
If it was implemented, it would be broken from the start. Only GTK+ apps would be able have the MacOSX style menu.
So apps using GTK1, XUL(firefox, thunderbird, etc), QT, wxwindows, etc would not work.
Its been brought up a lot and this is the reason.
well.. KDE did it for QT.. Gnome can do it for GTK.. im not tryin to start a flame war here.. but gnome apps are gtk based.. so.. firefox = bleh.. galeon or watever its called will work.. and qt/wxw/gtk1/xul.. who cares.. it still would be a nifty feature if it existed.. it would encourage people to get off their gtk1 arses and update their programs, i imagine 99.98% of the gtk1 programs can be updated.. look at xmms, cute.. real cute… but bmp is better 😀 just me two cents. write me off as a troll if you will..
What do you guys mean with ‘Mac style menu’s’? Is it the bar on the bottom, just like gnome-starterbar or something else? Thnx in advance!
i wonder where i can get the desktop backgrounds shown at the end of the article?
Are in a menu bar at the very top of the screen. Only the menu bar for the active window is actually displayed.
Think of it this way – take the standard split panel setup from Gnome, and then move the current application’s menu bar into the top panel.
why is it that everytime there is a post on gnome 2.10, people stop complaining about the versioning number. Is it so hard to understand 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 2.10 2.12.
Why are there people who are keen to see Apple style menus in GNOME? As an Apple user, I think the way OS X handles menu bars is broken. To see what I mean, try using OS X in a multi monitor situation. Even if your app is on the second monitor, the menu bar will *still* appear on your primary monitor. Talk about being unintuitive.
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-backgrounds/
That is the area in CVS where they’re stored. Just click through the folders and “view” the individual images.
Does anyone know when gnome storage will be integrated? Thanks.
I’d love it if Gnome implemented mac style menus. I use a few Gnome apps in a KDE environment, and the Gnome apps stand out by *not* having mac style menus. Fitts’ law people
Then again, I haven’t yet figured out how to make QT apps (that aren’t KDE apps) have mac style menus either.. So in truth I don’t use mac style menus much, ’cause everything gets inconsistent. Gnome apps supporting it too would probably cause me to go back to them.
I thought the plan was to consider implementing mac menus in future
versions of GTK. However some people made a good point: What happens
if someone uses the “focus follows mouse” option? It seems to me that
Mac menus only work with the “click to get focus” way…
That said, I really like Mac menus… but maybe that’s just a bad habit 🙂
Another question…
Does anybody know if (or when) there will be a audio cd burning tool integrated in Gnome? Are there even plans to overcome the current lack of such a tool? K3B *is* a really good program though, but I would prefer a more gnomish solution even if it had less features.
Just a thought, what came first?
Muine
http://muine.gooeylinux.org/muine.png
or
Goobox
http://www.gnome.org/~paobac/goobox/screenshot-001.png
The thing I don’t like the most about OS X is the menu’s when I run multiple apps, I find it annoying to have to click on the window to activcate and then go back to the menu at the top. That’s why I use focus following mouse, It saves clicking to activate the window.
just my $0.02
I agree. I like all these changes, but a decent burning app should have been part of Gnome ages ago.
Their plan is to include Audio CD burning capabilities in Rhythmbox. I read it’s already implemented in the CVS version.
Probably we’ll get it in GNOME 2.12…
And the version numbering scheme confusion appears to be mainly with native english speakers, as many other languages use a comma as a decimal sign, so a full stop can only be interpreted as a seperator.
> Just a thought, what came first?
> Muine or Goobox?
Is it somehow important? 🙂
What’s really nice with Muine is, that you don’t recognize that it is an Mono application (in contrast to any Java stuff).
What’s really nice with Muine is, that you don’t recognize that it is an Mono application (in contrast to any Java stuff).
—-
thats because muine uses gtk# sharp bindings while java uses its own gui layer
Their plan is to include Audio CD burning capabilities in Rhythmbox. I read it’s already implemented in the CVS version.
Yes, but i think that’s not the proper way to do it. It means that, in order to burn an audio file, you have to add the file to your library first. Imagine you record something with GNOME and save it as a *.wav file. If you want to burn it to an Audio CD, you have to add it to your library, burn the CD and then delete the file from your library. It’s not nice. I’m not complaining that Rhythmbox should’t have Audio CD creation, but I believe it should not require Rehythmbox in order to burn a CD. For example, GThumb allows you to burn a CD from a bunch of images and photographs, but you can also burn a CD with photographs with Nautilus.
Rhythmbox doesn’t even support multiple libraries.
What’s really nice with Muine is, that you don’t recognize that it is an Mono application (in contrast to any Java stuff).
You may use Java-Gnome and have apps looking exactly that way too:
http://java-gnome.sf.net
Victor.
Will the new gdk/gtk include functionality to use the xcomposite entension features? i.e. transparent windows/widgets.
“Is .10 of a million more than .9? I don’t think so.”
but that only applies to math … i mean, you can’t have 2.10.1 in decimal math … people confuse the x.xx with floating point numbers when in fact is not … if dev started using for example “|” instead of “.” this would be clearer … you would have 2|0, 2|1, … 2|9, 2|10 etc … is major version.minor version.whatever
No. It wouldnt. xcomposite is buggy and disabled by default in the latest xorg release
hey, it’s not 2.91 but 2.9.1, else it’s a typo. Even numbers are for stable releases, odd for development ones, i. e. 2.9.1 is from the development series which is the to-be stable release, which will be 2.10 (perhaps 2.10.x, where x 1,2,3, …)
If its buggy then don’t choose use it. I’m sure any implementation of an api wrapping composite would check to see if its enabled or not.
Just because somethings buggy shouldn’t mean that you shouldn’t use it. Nautilus used to be pretty buggy back in the gnome v1 days.
Just because somethings buggy shouldn’t mean that you shouldn’t use it.
—-
for a library, we shouldnt use buggy features. gtk stable tree
wont integrate buggy extensions
“Nautilus used to be pretty buggy back in the gnome v1 days.”
nautilus wasnt the gnome file manager during 1.x days. it was gnome mignight commander. nautilus was just a experimental thing done by Eazel and since it wasnt a library or key component it might have been acceptable at that point
libraries shouldnt waste time integrating experimental features that are likely to be revised heavily in the STABLE tree. thats the whole point of having a development branch
“nautilus wasnt the gnome file manager during 1.x days. it was gnome mignight commander. nautilus was just a experimental thing done by Eazel and since it wasnt a library or key component it might have been acceptable at that point”
That’s incorrect. gnome midnight commander was the official file manager through GNOME 1.2. Nautilus, however, was the official file manager for GNOME 1.4 (and beyond).
~Andrew
That’s incorrect. gnome midnight commander was the official file manager through GNOME 1.2. Nautilus, however, was the official file manager for GNOME 1.4 (and beyond).
And thats when I started using ROX in gnome as my file and desktop manager.
What themes are they using in those screenshots?
Mist is the theme
The screenshots speak volumes. What an ever increasing sized OS GUI already accused of becoming total bloatware needs is another specialized browser just for the help.
Can I download this version somewhere?
Actually a good helpbrowser is exactly what Gnome needs. A help system is a very specialized piece of software, with quite different demands from a your regular webbrowser.
In a Unix(-like) environment with all the different standards for helpfiles. It’s good to see they took the effort to make sure you can have a single accesspoint to all the help information. Gnome lacked in this department.
Let’s hope that now that there’s a good help browser, there will come good gnome specific content as well.
There’s a specialisated browser for help in GNOME, Windows and possibly Mac OS X (never used it), yet I have never seen a complaint on them… I don’t see any problem with a new help system as long as it’s useful. In my experience, it’s okay in Windows but not really useful in KDE.
Are those shadows in the screens from XComposite, or did he edit the screenshots? I sure hope the former is true, because the screens look great.
“Greatest? No.
OSS interfaces are so ugly and difficult to use, why don’t we work on that, m’kay?”
Oh, we do likes it, and we do uses it and we do works on it, yes, preciousss yess….
And I DO think it looks much, much better than Windows XP’s interface, and it runs MUCH faster (when compiled with optimisation, that is).
Yes! Complete applet transparency, nice!
It would be nice if they integrated or added gcursor to the default installation as well.
Hope they make it in time before the next FreeBSD ports freeze though
(and it’s not that hard to compile gnome, I basically hopped into the gnome2 port directory and hit ‘make install’. It DOES take a lot of time and/or bandwidth)
As a KDE user, a lot of these features look familiar, but there are some interesting ones…
1. configure shares in Samba and NFS
This dialog looks much nicer than the one in KDE. I hope it actually works.
2. Improved interface to add alternative keyboard layouts to GNOME
Nice touch to add a visual preview of the layout.
And some useless ones…
1. Mozilla style typeahead in Open/Save dialogs and other trees
You should be able to do this in any folder/file list by default. The text box is just a waste of space. Makes the feature a bit more visible I guess but this has been a standard feature in other desktops for ages.
. = delimeter.
marketingspeak/real versioning:
windows 2000/nt 5.0
windows xp/nt 5.1
windows 2003/nt 5.2
this is just how versioning works. when you see http://www.osnews.com do you get all bent out of shape because periods dont belong in the middle of sentances. of course, they could go with a random two letter combo like windows likes to use, but imho that causes more confusion then anything else. i think a large portion of the population is still rather fuzzy on the three terms “Windows Millenium Edition” “Windows ME” and “Windows 2000”
make me want to put Gnome on this comp. Good job, whoever did them
”
Fitts’ law people
”
Of course, the Mac menu means that the close button isn’t effected by Fitt’s law either!!
I don’t understand how non-GTK applications are the reason why a Mac-style menu feature won’t be added to GTK. In KDE, when that feature’s enabled, applications that don’t support it fallback to having a regular menu. Why is that not possible for GTK? And with all the GTK integration going on in Firefox, will it really be completely impossible to make that work with Firefox if such a feature was added? Regardless, besides Firefox, I use all GTK applications anyway so it seems rather unfair that such a feature won’t be added just because people are afraid of how a QT application or whatever will look.
Focus follows mouse does not stop you using a mac style menu, all you have to do is have a small delay before a window is given focus when the mouse passes over it. This worked fine under GEM on Ataris (a GEM that wasn’t totally crippled like PC GEM for those who don’t know it)
i believe its patented, which was the reason it wasnt in win95. not 100% sure on this one though.
Mozilla style typeahead in Open/Save dialogs and other trees
You should be able to do this in any folder/file list by default. The text box is just a waste of space.
***************
I belive u don’t uderstand how it works,
this text box appears only when u type something,
and disappears when u select the item (or after a period of time)
Does anyone know if the ability to drag any toolbar or other object to the trash can has been incorporated? This was mentioned in an earlier bulletin from the GNOME developers.
Why can’t GNOME have Mac-style menus? At least make it an option. KDE has had it for ages. I would like to also use GNOME, but the lack of this feature keeps me coming back to KDE.