There has been a lot of commentary recently about Gnome, and a common source of confusion seems to be Gconf – what is it, how does it work, and so on. Some people even seem to confuse Gconf with the registry database in Windows. I will attempt to clear some of this confusion and give an overview of Gconf, and why it looks the way it does.Dot files
Most applications in Unix or Unix-like systems use “dot files” as the way to set and save configuration information. These files are saved in the user’s home directory (and can be a whole subdirectory of files if the app is complex). In addition, many apps support the idea of system-wide defaults, with a separate configuration file that sets defaults when the user has not set any preferences themselves.
This system would be simple and straightforward, but it has some limitations.
First, every app has its own file format. Many apps have a variant of “keyword = value”; others use tab-separated (or comma separated, or colon-separated…) values. Applications that are programmable (including bash, Emacs and Vim) favor having config-files that are scripts, executable by the application. As a user, I need to keep track of dozens of different formats (and a few small programming languages) if I want to do any serious reconfiguration. And creating a front end to all of this would be very, very difficult.
Second, these files are all in my home directory, intermingled with my other stuff. Individual apps are becoming pretty good at organizing themselves (more than half of my one-hundred or so dot files are actually directories), but it would be nice if the config stuff could all be collected in a subdirectory of its own. If nothing else, you would know that anything there is a configuration file, not image caches, logs or whatever.
Third, system-wide defaults are spread out all over. Some apps put them in /etc, some in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 somewhere, others are in their /usr/share directories. Some do not even support the idea of system defaults. Again, it would be preferable to have them collected under one directory somewhere.
So, what we would like, really, is to have text-based config-files, in a common format, and organized in a directory hierarchy. Also, the system-wide defaults would have the same structure, and reside in one place. Add an API for easy application development, and user tools to handle these without having to edit stuff by hand.
Enter Gconf
Gconf really is three things: structured storage of settings; an application API for changing settings and getting notified about changes; and user tools to edit their settings in a more convenient manner than editing dot files by hand. These three components are largely independent of one another. One could have a different storage mechanism (as tables in a company-wide database server for distributed access, for example); different API:s for other desktops; and different or complementary user tools (see Gnome-Extra-Setup for one example).
Current Gconf storage is exactly as described in the previous section: dot files in a common text format (XML), in a structured hierarchy of subdirectories (under ~/.gconf for each users settings, and /etc/gconf for system-wide defaults). An application using Gconf will use the system default unless the user has set it differently locally, just as for most dot files. The user’s Gconf directory will in fact only have those keys that have been changed from the system defaults.
In addition, there are “schema files”, which is just installation defaults for all the settings, and are copied over to be the initial setting when the application is installed.
Again, all of Gconf is editable by hand. If you want to, you can treat it as just another variant of a dot file, with the benefit that a lot of apps share the same file format and organization.
Gconf Tools
Of course, with a reliable organization and a rich back end format, we can do more than just treat them as uncorrelated dot-files. We can have settings that apply for more than one application – or for the whole desktop – and be confident all affected applications can read them.
We can have an easy API for applications to set and read settings – no need for every app to use an XML parser (or any dot file parser for that matter). We can also let applications tell what settings they are interested in, whether their own or system-level settings that may affect them. That way the app can find out directly when a setting changes and act accordingly.
To do so, we have a daemon (gconfd) waiting for changes to settings. When it occurs, this daemon checks what apps (if any) wants to know about this, and tells them about it.
We also have some user and administration tools. gconftool is a command-line tool, mainly meant for use by installation scripts and other automated tasks. For interactive use, we have gconf-editor (usually called “configuration editor” or something similar in the menu) as a clean way to present all available settings for the user to edit, and not jsut those chosen to be exposed by the author.
Since the storage format is rich, gconf-editor can present the options in a manner very much like a dedicated settings window; it knows what data type an option wants, and it can show help texts for the individual options. And since we use Unicode, we can have these texts translated as well. Since Gconf is the way for apps to store all their configuration data, it means we get a nice, organized way to edit even the most obtuse options.
A separate question is of course what options should be available directly in the application’s own config dialog, and which should be accessible only through the configuration editor. Some options are obviously needed in the main config dialog; others are just as clearly not. For the remaining, ambiguous ones, the decision of course ultimately comes down to the maintainer of the individual application. No matter what his or her decision may be, though, the configuration editor allows anyone to edit it in a painless way.
To recap, Gconf really is three different, but related things. It is an organized way to store configuration files; it is an application API to handle settings in a transparent manner; and it is user tools to examine and change any setting an application may have, with instant feedback and help.
About the Author:
Jan Morén is a translator for the Swedish Gnome translation project, and currently resides in Japan.
Is useless without a search feature.
> Second, these files are all in my home directory, intermingled with my other stuff. Individual apps are becoming pretty good at organizing themselves (more than half of my one-hundred or so dot files are actually directories), but it would be nice if the config stuff could all be collected in a subdirectory of its own.
Good point. And it is what Base Directory Specification is all about. Visit http://freedesktop.org/Standards/basedir-spec . Seriously, let’s keep everything under ~/.gconf doesn’t cut it.
I LOVE XML.
system wide config files for 3rd party apps in /etc/gconf –
yeah right. I LOVE LINUX TOO.
OSS world is becoming diseased. Someone need to cure the HIG, XML and XChat-defaults-to-UTF-8-ness out of OSS!
gconf-editor has been very useful for me! I never missed a search function although it may be nice to have.
Now please stop this FUD. If you want to suggest the addition of a search function do so. Don’t just assert that it is useless without a search function when you know it is not true. “USELESS” is a very strong word.
$0.02
Yeah something the author was missing:
Some strange cases where GConf will blow up everything on your system. Imagine this situation, you are activating a P2P software and download some huge files over night. Unfortunately you didn’t notice whether your harddisk still has enough space or not. Over night while you are sleeping your harddisk fill up and the next morning you wake up you noticed that your harddisk indeed filled up. You clean up some stuff and reboot (or you reboot first and cleanup then). After you loaded up your beloved GNOME every of your setting is blown away with 0 byte files. Exactly this happened to me not long ago. Thanks to the beloved GConf and it’s notifier system.
I am tired of all the people who want to sell me GConf as the ultimative solution for jesus being. It might be a nice idea but it has as many disadvantages as other software has too and in the next 1-2 years we are again talking about new solutions even better and more enchanced and then the same people stand up who previously were hyping the advantages of GConf now start bringing up what the disadvantages were and why everyone should use the next new system.
By the way isn’t Havoc Pennington already working on a new SuperConfig (or how it’s called). I heard people talking about it on freedesktop every now and then. A clear sign that GConf can’t be that good.
The KconfigXT system KDE uses achieves the same effect using similar means and also allows for the settings dialog to be automatically generated from the config options, see:
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/tutorials/kconfigxt/kconfigx…
Somebody explain me this:
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Some people even seem to confuse Gconf with the registry database in Windows.
[/quote]
[quote]
Gconf really is three things: structured storage of settings; an application API for changing settings and getting notified about changes;
[/quote]
Shave my legs and call me grandpa, but for me this means that GConf == Windows Registry. If it isn’t so, then what are the *real* differencies?
as long as we dont get the config rot of windows along with what at first hand looks like a clone of the windows registry ill be happy, but then i prefer kde over gnome for no reason…
Of course the major win for GConf over traditional dot files is in commercial/enterprise/large scale deployment scenario.
Say you have 100 machines, and you need them all to use the same proxy server. By telling gconfd to read keys from a networked path or from LDAP, you can configure mandatory proxy server paths, change the default desktop wallpaper and fiddle the layout of the default panel, all in one place with gconf-editor.
Being able to lock down certain preferences, and change the defaults of others trivially, is a *major* win.
Clarification on many points are found here:
http://perkypants.org/projects/gnome-2.0-interviews/gconf/
el chupacabra, you are obviously unaware why people don’t like the registry. As a structured storage of key/value pairs for applications, the Windows registry isn’t bad. The problem is that Windows uses the registry as a hardware configuration database, a driver database and to store the UUID->name mappings for COM. This means that all of Windows depends on a single binary file, which is easily corrupted, and impossible to recover from if it is corrupted.
I still recall the days where people was fighting between BonoboConfig and GConf. I wished they went for BonoboConfig that time.
Currently there is a lot of bad in the implementation, I have complained many times about it but always get flamed. Here are the three main problems at the moment.
1) Its currently a GNOME technology
2) The primary manipulation interface looks like the registry editor (which is BAD.
3) The GNOME HIG is confusing and thats why people complain about options being hidden and having to use gconf-edtitor (see 2).
What needs to happoen to make GConf great isto rewrite gconf to remove GNOME depandancies and make it a Freedesktop.org standard and encourage everyone including Mozilla, KDE, XFCE, OpenOffice.org etc to use it. Then dump gconf-editor and replace it with an sane UI. Finally, amend the HIG to stop abuse of hiding ESSENTIAL OPTIONS such as metacity low resources mode and browser nautilus.
> Freedesktop.org standard and encourage everyone including
> Mozilla, KDE, XFCE, OpenOffice.org etc to use it
What gras did you smoke ? This would be the worst nightmare that could happen.
How delete/copy/share (or even create by hands) all settings of one aplication called “foo”?
.dot-files – rm, cp
gconf – How???
How to set permissions (rw,r,-) on particular key/subtree?
How to edit configuration by hands? (My favorite editor has much better interface than very simple gconf-editor – but a tool to export/import into rc-file/ini-file/properties/etc. may help in this case).
i found gconf to be a pain in the ass compared to kde’s (and other desktop apps’) simple ini-files. in order to use gconf you actually have to learn a whole new system compared to just a new file format. so it doesent simplify things as long as other dot files are still there. and treating the gconf files like just some other dot-files is not possible with the current xml-backend — there’s just too many badly formatted and messy xml-files (and why does every file have to be in its own directory?).
There is a command line program gconftool.
One of the very important things with gconf that the writter missed was the fact that gconf also allows for easily ‘locking’ down settings so that certian settings are not allowed to be changed by other people.
Also, a system administrator can add a fodler to keep ‘new’ system defaults, so if a package gets updated the system defaults get updated based on the pacakge (including the schema) except for whatever settings that the administrator set in a different entry.
The differences between gconf and the windows registry is:
a) the registry is all one big monolithic file. With gconf, each application has its own xml file, so mayhem and corruotion with one file is pretty hard. Also, if something does go wrong, you just need to recopy the schema xml files and that should set most of it back up again.
b) for a programming interface gconf and the registry are not even in the same level. I have used both and the registry is a heaping pile of crud, while the interface for gconf and the functionality it provides (notification, easlly going into sub ‘folders’, support for lists, etc… all things that are either very difficuly with the registry or impossible) is amazing compared to the registry.
The fact the the gconf-editor which is a generic editor for gconf looks bad says nothing about the underlying technology.
RE: Me (IP: —.dip.t-dialin.net)
So you mean you lost some personal settings because of some weird accident that I am having a hard time understanding how you got 0 byte files (where you still using gnome programs when you where out of room?) and would of also happened if you were using dot files?
Also, great way of mentioning some obscure ‘superconfig’ without information and then making ass-umtions because you don’t know what it is? Great idea!
Ross, you hit it right on the head. If Gconf stays out of the hardware and driver portions of the OS and remains purely for Application and User settins, it will be much more powerful than Reg32. I’ve come to accept both the good and the bad of Reg32.
I posted my last comment before I read yours. You make some great points too. To those who complain about the interface, give it time.
Man oh man, people want something to be the end all be all, before it becomes beta these days. Patience people !!!
Easy, GConf “registry” is XML based where as Windows registry is binary, which Microsoft claims provides an “extra kick of speed”, one could argue that if they wanted speed, there would be a nicer way of implementing it, possibly via a small data or using XML.
Would this be what you’re talking about? http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/CFG
Let me tell you as a developer, GConf is a zillion times better than the piece of crap gnome_conf thing we were using before. And it’s infinitely better than seeing yet another wet developer wasting his time rolling his own system, that in the end is likely to turn out crap anyway. With GConf all I have to worry about is maintaining a single schema file that keeps tracks of its own default values (allowing me remove a lot of checks from my code) and is fully translatable. That it happens to be XML is just a product of the times we live in. The biggest failure of GConf is a PR one, if they hadn’t included that regedit lookalike and only the command line gconftool most non-developers wouldn’t even know what GConf is.
Of course there’s room from improvement, and Havoc is the first to admit it. KConfigXT has had the benefit of seeing GConf and other systems evolve, if it wasn’t better I’d be quite concerned. It’s inevitable that GConf will be succeeded by some better system, hopefully a system that is developed in cooperation with KDE and QT at Freedesktop.org.
>> Of course there’s room from improvement, and Havoc is the first to admit it. KConfigXT has had the benefit of seeing GConf and other systems evolve, if it wasn’t better I’d be quite concerned. It’s inevitable that GConf will be succeeded by some better system, hopefully a system that is developed in cooperation with KDE and QT at Freedesktop.org. <<
i just hope the people that will be developing this realise that by adding a new system without replacing all old dot files is _adding_ a layer of complexity — _unless_ the old dot-way of editing things is still there.
also, dot files doesent mean that every app-dev needs to “roll his own system”!
What drives me nuts about all of the XML fetis^H^H^H^H^Henthusiasm is that, in the name of an arguable human readability requirement, we duplicate information across lots of files.
I, for one, would prefer to have the option of maintaining this information in an RDBMS, and publishing it as XML, if it makes sense. SQLite is an _excellent_ tool for this kind of application.
Since you’re a fan of rm and cp, you’ll be happy to know that deleting/copying ~/.gconf/apps/appname (and restarting gconfd, since the values are cached) is exactly the same as operating on dotfiles with said tools. If you’re in a serious environment I don’t recommend playing around like this, learn to use schema files instead, in fact, you should probably use gconftool to do most of your editing.
As for setting permissions, you can in fact just chmod/chown both the schemas and the individual app xml files. This only gives you granularity to the subtree level, not per-key AFAIK, and is likely to produce A Big Fucking Mess and you have to do it per-user which no respectable sysadmin will do, it’s exactly like dotfiles in that regard. So feast your eyes on this instead: http://www.gnome.org/learn/admin-guide/latest/gconf-0.html The sysadmin’s guide to GConf. With gconftool you can set per-key defaults and lock down the whole thing. Look for the bit about “mandatory preference values”.
sorry – despite the alleged solutions gconf provides to alleged problems, i can’t endorse the trend that gconf represents and therefore resufse to use gnome.
human readable, human editable, non-binary, editable in an emergency (eg non graphical single user recovery init 1), is the only way.
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In my opinion, the presentation of the drawbacks of the dot files is intellectually dishonnest:
1- dot files do not interfere with other files since they are hidden. This is the very point for the dot.
2- The fact that they are all using different languages is not a drawback. If the applications provide graphical ways to be configured, no one needs to edit the dot files. It is like saying that the existence of various programming languages is a drawback, and should be suppressed and reaplced by one (C#). Or like if all languages should be replaced by one (english). Then you either loose the flexibility of the varity or have to build a bloated all in one format.
3- the location: there are efforts done on putting all dot files in a .config directory. This would solve the “problem” of the presence of the many dot files in the home directory. Although this is not a problem.
Maybe Gconf is nice and has many interests/quality, but presenting highly biased arguments agaianst the dit files will not bring anyone to adopt it.
I don’t use GNOME much anymore either, a result of the treat-users-like-idiots philosophy (I’m much happier on GNUstep). However, this line is quite inaccurate:
“human readable, human editable, non-binary, editable in an emergency (eg non graphical single user recovery init 1), is the only way.”
XML files are human-readable and human editable, that’s the point of XML. And it is quite easy to edit these files from the console with your non-graphical text editor of choice, such as emacs, nano, whatever.
gconf was not intended for the widespread audience called users. I, personally, is sick and tired of the disability to set local configuration settings in the application where they belong, and global configuration seting where the user is supposed to do that (in a setting tool for gloal settings).
users have needs, why not respond to that and meet their need instead of hiding all options behind gconf which wasn’t made to be used by the common man ?
i just hope the people that will be developing this realise that by adding a new system without replacing all old dot files is _adding_ a layer of complexity — _unless_ the old dot-way of editing things is still there.
I just don’t see how you’d accomplish something like this. GConf is a rich featurefull system, presenting it in the form you’re accustomed to is not necessarily possible. It then becomes a matter of tradeoffs, are the benefits of the more complex platform greater than the simplicity you’ve lost? I say the tradeoffs are worth it, I can still grep and awk my configuration files if I so desire and I’ve recieved much needed complex functionality like synchronization between backend and UI which allows me to for example do instant-apply in all new GNOME apps.
also, dot files doesent mean that every app-dev needs to “roll his own system”!
I didn’t say it did. The old gnome_config system was using simple dotfiles. But you can’t deny that a lot of (non-gnome perhaps) apps have been reinventing their own configuration systems over and over again. I have nothing against dotfiles, they’re the right tool for the job in a lot of cases. In my opinion they’re not the right tool for a complex system such as GNOME.
I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about. GConf is simply the configuration system that is available for programs in the GNOME platform.
Two nice things, compared to regular home-made dot files, are change notification and documentation of the keys by schema files.
KDE has it’s own system and people have been talking about a config system based on D-BUS.
GNOME could easily have a KDE-like control center with all options visible and KDE could just as easily use hidden options that are only accessible with a separate tool.
I don’t think the technology behind settings management should be blamed for real or perceived flaws in behaviour of applications or policy regarding options.
JUST like the Winodws registry. Why they would advocate it’s use to change a simple setting like “non-spatial-view” is dumb.
“This means that all of Windows depends on a single binary file, which is easily corrupted, and impossible to recover from if it is corrupted.”
Actually windoze keeps a backup of the registry, if something gets f*cked you can revert back (i think) by pressing F8 and using some boot option or something like that. Having two registries (one for system settings the other for apps) would be better of course.
This means that all of Windows depends on a single binary file, which is easily corrupted, and impossible to recover from if it is corrupted.
No, the Windows registry it not a single binary file and all of them are backed up regularly by system restore.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=256986
i’d like to hear some peoples opinions on the kde-ini-file way of storing settings. personally i like it because i am able to edit a rc file in .kde/ (user setting) or in /opt/kde (global). i can also set mandatory values using these rcfiles. i think keys are cached somehow by a daemon. the files are also easily editable using the kde api.
a drawback is that whan i have used it the apps dont seem to have been notified when a rcfile has been changed, but couldn’t this be accomplished using for example FAM and DCOP (in the future DBUS)?
could gconf get a more friendly file format which is easily human readable and changeable? if so i for one would be satisfied because gconf wouldnt get in my way and force me to learn a hard to use command line tool.
Good article, but not from a user perspective.
When I open gconf, it doesn’t give me a clue about what I’m supposed to do next. So, it is effectively useless. I am not going to go off trying to find and read the right documentation just to tweak my desktop. I’ll just use something else on my desktop that is less obtuse than Gnome.
If gconf really is not intended for users, why is it on the Gnome menus?
It is becoming very apparent that some non-gnome users are very vocal in complaining and FUD slinging about GNOME. This tells me one or more of several things is true about the whiners:
1. They don’t Grok GNOME and the GNOME policies and will never Grok it since they think they “know better” than other GNOME users and developers.
2. They are jealous and want to sabotage the image of GNOME to new users.
3. They have another hidden agenda. A “waiting for the other shoe to drop” syndrome.
So why don’t y’all just tell us the real reason why you are so vehement about GNOME. It can’t be just because spatial nautilus is default or because of GConf. The passion with which the hatred is expressed indicates that it has to do more with love (actually Eros) for something else that is negatively impacted by the progress of GNOME. Don’t lie by claiming that all your comments are made for the good of GNOME. What are your real objectives for these negative non-constructive criticisms? There is no indication from the comments that it could be aimed at making GNOME better.
Otherwise, we’ll be seing constructive criticism, recommendations, concise bug-reports etc.
So, if you think that you can stop the progress of GNOME with your cynical and negative remarks, think again. All you’ll do at the end is tarnish your image because nobody can change the truth. MS, SCO and AdTi couldn’t do it, and neither can you. So next time you are faced with the truth, accept it. You can only ignore it, resist or endure it for so long.
He that has ears, let him hear.
gconf was not intended for the widespread audience called users. I, personally, is sick and tired of the disability to set local configuration settings in the application where they belong, and global configuration seting where the user is supposed to do that (in a setting tool for gloal settings).
You’re right, gconf-editor is not intended for users — it’s primarily a developers tool. You’re criticizing the Gnome HIG, and that has nothing to do with gconf.
good point, I also prefer KDE’s ini files, since they are much easier to edit by a human.
I understand what the point of GConf is and, as a sysadmin, I appreciate the potential. However, the implementation is terrible. So bad in fact, that I do _not_ understand why Sun is allowing themselves to go with Gnome.
I tried to use Gnome/GConf in a school lab. Six Linux machines that authenticated against NIS and mounted their home directories over NFS on a Sun box. At the time I was trying to use RH9. Guess what? GConf doesn’t work well with NFS mounted home directories! It leaves lock files all over the place, has strange timeouts that keep the filesystems mounted longer than they need to be, and the errors that these lock files cause were completely baffling! OAFD errors, OMF errors, it was pathetic! I e-mailed RH about this, they said it was a gconfd problem. The bug got passed around a bit and was left unresolved. I ended out using XFCE4 because it was lighter and had none of these problems.
The reason for all of this complexity and extra file locking? The Gnome developers were worried that if a user was logged into two machines he/she may run into problems when they try to change settings on both systems. Personally, I’d take the chance of strangely applied changes any day when the alternative leaves applications in an unusable and even un-runnable state giving errors that no user would ever hope to understand.
The thing that really gets me here is that KDE uses a similar scheme yet has _none_ of these problems. That Gnome works poorly because of GConf in the exact setting that the majority of large-scale customers need is absolutely unacceptable. It’s a good thing that XFCE worked out, though I was still occasionally bitten by the problem when users ran applications like Evolution or even Gnome-terminal. Yes, in 2004 we were reduced to xfce and xterm because of Gconfd. Until they completely fix these bugs I’ll take dot files any day.
Why oh why aren’t there a way to specifie the type in Gconf. Then it would be possible to have dropdown menues, and it would be possible to limit values (eg netowrk 255.255.255.255) or font size 100 or someting.
It is really annoing when you got an option, and a description – but you have no ideas what ‘codewords’ that the option takes.
I agree wholeheartedly with you on this one.
Last week (or was it before) started a series of religious trolls on Gnome as I never saw before. You could smell astroturfing.
Even here, one accuse Gconf of putting his personal settings at 0, when actually, his P2P program caused the disaster (forgetting to say that if that happens, your desktop will be back to the defaults, and you will still be able to work). And even then, I cannot understand how it could happen, as the settings would have been saved long before his FS was full.
Some talk about the GConf system not being readable !!!
A lot of others say GConf Editor is difficult !!!!
Well, the fact is that the first time you start it, it displays a big warning, you just cannot miss it, and you have to disable it manually for it not to spring each time.
Using GConf Editor difficult ? I never even read the manual, I just opened the 3 or 4 trees that it present, and all settings are sorted by application ! That is in no way difficult.
Sure, some search tool would be great, and I have found that not all default keys are listed. It’s not perfect, but way better than before. It has only improved, nobody said it was perfect, but it has only improved.
As for gconftool, I used it once, when a bug in XFree would prevent Gnome from setting my keyboard correctly. I used only the man page and the error messages gconftool spate, and I was able to grasp the tool in 5 minutes !!!!
Each time I hear all this whining, I feel like I am a genius, from seeing what I can do with so few knowledge, and I know I’m not a genius.
That GConf clears your settings when the disk is full is a bug. A bug which can be fixed. There’s nothing in the design that prevents it from being fixed. It’s just that, due to the lack of manpower, and because it’s so rare, there hasn’t been any real efford to fix it yet.
Saying that we should ditch GConf just because of an implementation bug is like saying all cars should be destroyed because Ford made a bad car. Your post is a perfect example of why developers rarely listen to OSnewsers and Slashdotters.
I like the modularity of the traditional dot files. I think one of the reasons Linux is more secure and more efficient when it is running is because of its modularity.
> That GConf clears your settings when the disk is full is a bug. A bug which can be fixed.
Right, but it still leaves the question unanswered whether the implementation (GConf) is worth to be fixed or if it’s better to replace it with something non-Windows-Registry like.
> It’s just that, due to the lack of manpower
There is no problems with manpower, this is a general issue within the GNOME development team for creating new stuff and then leave it half for ages.
Hi gnome guys,
Your gconf single configuration directory is awesome except that there are .gconf/ .gconfd/ .gnome/ .gnome2/ .gnome2_private/ in my homedir right now. Will there be more of these when someone comes up with a new idea? I would’ve thought .gnome/ would’ve been enough.
how about a ~/.configurations.sqlite file that is just an sql lite database with ALL your configuration data in it? and a nice configuration api for abstraction so that apps can just use the api and you can set what format you want your configs in and it just works even if you change the backend configuration format.
the database could be really simple too
create table programs(id int not null auto_increment primary key, name text);
create table settings(id int not null auto_increment primary key, program int, key text, value text);
searchable and sortable to the max .
and why stop there.
~/.config/
configurations.sqlite for configs
thumbnails/ for image caches of ALL applications making thumbnails
bookmarks.xml bookmark file for ALL applications that make use of bookmarks.
and even more than all this an actual database server backend like mysql would be great. so that if i have multiple programs open and edit a bookmark in one i don’t have to work about file locking from another and the update is visible immediately in the other browser.
One nice thing I like in many programs for UNIX is ability to set configuration options from shell, like “LANG=en_US.UTF-8 gedit” or “http_PROXY=http://localhost:3128/ wget”.
Is support for such method of setting options from shell (eg. “GCONF.system.http_proxy.host=http://localhost:3128/ epiphany”) planned for gconf?
You gnome die hards keep getting upset at non users for complaining about gnome. Well maybe there’s a reason they don’t use it. I for one am a KDE user and on occasion I check out gnome to see what all the excitement is about. It *seems* that every time I do, it still proves to be less stable and less usable then before. I’ve played with GConf and I have to agree with some of the notes posted here, it’s just too difficult to change lots of settings that lots of users want to change.
It’s one thing to change app defaults since those trees aren’t that hard to find, but try to change some DE setting and you have to figure out which subsystem controls that setting in order change it. That’s a real dog. Basically, this is a systemic problem with gnome development, and the sooner the gnome DE dies the better. (I’m not referring to GTK+, Pango, and friends etc, those are fine for people that use them, I just don’t like the gnome DE).
When Gnome 2.0 hit, many previously existing configuration options, from the 1.x series, had been removed, allegedly sacrificed on the altar of ‘user friendliness.’ The real purpose of Gconf, is to inject some of these configuration options back into Gnome, given that they never should have been removed in the first place. Consider how often KDE has been repeatedly trashed for having too many options to configure, especially in the control center. Gconf is a way to allow just as many configuration options as KDE, with the extra added benefit that all of these Gnome configuration options are now hidden in Gconf, which again, is done allegedly for the sake of ‘user friendliness.’
Yet, we have posters saying things such as the following regarding Gconf:
“When I open gconf, it doesn’t give me a clue about what I’m supposed to do next.”
I would be very interested hear how Gconf furthers usability, given these conditions, particularly from those who claim KDE has ‘too many options.’ At least the KDE options are easily altered, without having to use some hidden, misunderstood tool such as Gconf.
You gnome die hards keep getting upset at non users for complaining about gnome. Well maybe there’s a reason they don’t use it.
I get upset about complainers who obviously used Gnome for about two minutes and think they’re experts.
A fictitious composite example of an annoying complaint:
“GConf is bad because it looks like the Windows Registry. I hate the Registry. I don’t know anything about the Registry either, but I had a Windows 98 computer that always had problems with the Registry. NT? XP? System Restore? Never heard of them.”
“You gnome die hards keep getting upset at non users for complaining about gnome. Well maybe there’s a reason they don’t use it. ”
There may be a reason. Complaints don’t mean they were GOOD reasons.
“I for one am a KDE user and on occasion I check out gnome to see what all the excitement is about. It *seems* that every time I do, it still proves to be less stable and less usable then before. ”
Opinion noted.
“I’ve played with GConf and I have to agree with some of the notes posted here, it’s just too difficult to change lots of settings that lots of users want to change. ”
Well considering your perspective is of someone coming from a DE that has the “config everything” as one of it’s base premise. That’s not unexpected.
“It’s one thing to change app defaults since those trees aren’t that hard to find, but try to change some DE setting and you have to figure out which subsystem controls that setting in order change it. That’s a real dog. ”
A sorted setting, is a sorted setting, be it Gnome or KDE.
“Basically, this is a systemic problem with gnome development, and the sooner the gnome DE dies the better. (I’m not referring to GTK+, Pango, and friends etc, those are fine for people that use them, I just don’t like the gnome DE).”
Thanks for sharing your opinion on why Gnome should die.
And to the person(s) who keep hitting the “report abuse” button. Remember they log your IP.
…I am having a hard time understanding how you got 0 byte files…
Easy. Gconf re-opens XML file in write mode, Linux conveniently truncates the file, subsequent calls to write() fail. Yay! Another argument against files.
What drives me nuts about all of the XML fetis^H^H^H^H^Henthusiasm is that, in the name of an arguable human readability requirement, we duplicate information across lots of files. I, for one, would prefer to have the option of maintaining this information in an RDBMS…
I agree completely. The Unix culture is full of foolish fears and ideas, the biggest being binaryphobia. I cannot think of ONE good reason why I would want to convert my configuration variables to ASCII with syntax and delimeters and lots of pointless redundancy, which leads to more errors which should not even exist in the first place! The obsession with ASCII is also culturally ignorant, for it ignores linguistic needs outside of the US (Unicode is almost as bad). The fact is, ASCII is simply another binary format, ALL DATA in a computer is in a binary format. If data formats are kept simple and open they are vastly easier to read and write, and it goes without saying that they are superior in speed and size to ASCII files such as XML.
Thanks for the link to SQLite, I have been looking for something like this. I love the relational data model but I don’t like big complex database servers, I would much prefer a small library.
Is to give you a single interface to changing or getting settings when you’re writing a program in Gnome. Gconf only resembles the windows registry in the most common advanced app for tweaking options (Gconf Editor) looks and works rather like regedit.
You can write another application to tweak options that would be more user friendly and present options more clearly, and there are several already, that have been linked to before in this very string.
What I don’t understand right now, is why people who don’t use gnome, and who use and like kde complain about gnome all the time. I don’t go around complaining about KDE all the time, why would I? I never have to use it, or look at it.
>but try to change some DE setting and you
>have to figure out which subsystem controls
>that setting in order change it. That’s a real dog.
I don’t follow, could you be more specific about what Desktop Environment setting you were trying to change?
Most of those are already exposed through Gnome’s other configuration tools.
I’m one of the gnome diehards who _dislikes_ KDE
and yet I can see the crap that is gconf. I like Gnome’s UI better but why would they put an option for hidden files in there? Spatial navigation? Come on, that’s 2 check boxes, and a few less complaints..
The utility gconftool-2 can be used to change the gconf entries. For example, to change the background picture:
gconftool-2 –type string –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename /home/joe/porn.jpg
However, the effect is global and not limited to current and children contexts like with environment variables.
“What I don’t understand right now, is why people who don’t use gnome, and who use and like kde complain about gnome all the time. I don’t go around complaining about KDE all the time, why would I? I never have to use it, or look at it.”
I will be perfectly happy to tell you why I don’t like Gnome. It will be up to you to decide whether my reasons are legitimate or not. Gconf is but one very minor issue.
When Mandrake 7.0 came out, I first used KDE 1.x.x version & it was ok. I didn’t really mess with DEs & window managers at that point, still being stupefied as to how Linux worked and tied up with learning that.
Later, KDE hit 2.0 and became S-L-O-W! I ditched it so fast. I think I was on Redhat then. So, I switched to Gnome and became absolutely addicted! I mean, every little thing, in the 1.x Gnome series was configurable. I couldn’t even count all of the possible config options in Sawfish alone. And the themes! Holy friggin jeebus! Maybe KDE could do pixmap themes back then, but you just didn’t see alot of them around. But Gnome had themes from everywhere, in every imaginable style. I was hooked.
Well, then Gnome 1.4 came out & Nautilus was S-L-O-W! No prob, I just disabled it, somehow and continued to use gmc. So I was still set & happy with Gnome. (Ximianized Gnome – 140MB download over dialup – those were the days!)
Then Gnome 2.0 came out. I didn’t recognize it anymore! And I sure didn’t know what happened. All I knew was they screwed it up completely. Where were all of the config options? The themes? Why coudn’t I turn Nautilus off now, etc. Gnome 2.0 was NOT the Gnome I had fallen for originally.
I won’t use Gnome 2.x because:
1. I detest Evolution. When I delete an email, I want that email gone. I don’t want it sent to the trash & I damn sure don’t want a line drawn through it & still sitting in my mailbox, uglifying my mail and making it far more difficult to read the titles of the mails that haven’t been ‘deleted,’ if you can call it that. Why even make drawing a line through a deleted email an option? Shouldn’t the default be press delete, email disappears to the trash, at a minimum? Plus, I am too impatient to deal with apps that have splash screens. (I know, I know KDE has splash screen on startup too. I don’t start KDE often though. I stay in it. Kontact has one too, but doesn’t start slow enough to warrant a splash screen.)
2. Why can’t I install Gnome without Evolution? I don’t want it, so don’t force it on me. Can I DO_NOT_COMPILE=”evolution” ?
3. Why are the Gnome file manager and web browser seperate apps? I find it convenient to have one app do both, particularly with tabs, and most especially with tabs whose windows can be split. And what is up with Epiphany bookmarks anyway? Last time I saw it, bookmarks no worky. I guess they do if you don’t have years worth of bookmarks separated into who knows how many different folders & sub-folders. But if I throw all of my bookmarks into one bookmark panel, I wouldn’t be able to find my way around the net.
4. That minimize app thing – the huge black square frame that shrinks when you minimize a window, slows your machine down in the process and does absolutely nothing – what is that and why is it there? How does it add to user friendliness? It’s annoying.
5. What’s the deal with the menubar across the top of the screen? I don’t mind having two panels on the desktop, but the one across the top is 75% empty unless you place a taskbar on it, so what’s the point?
6. Whatever the problem is between the GTK toolkit and that X extension, that makes it draw so much slower than qt. I know this is not GTK or Gnome’s fault. But regardless of where the fault lies, I want a lightening fast, quick drawing desktop.
7. I tried it. I tried hard with Gnome 2.0. It’s not Gnome to me. It is nothing of what I know about Gnome and I am not sure it ever will be.
I just don’t see how anyone who used Gnome 1.x could possibly stick with it through 2.x, nor can I understand how it has been made more “user friendly,” since it annoys me endlessly. I have often wondered would I find it so annoying had I never used Gnome 1.x. But at the same time I say that, I admit it is my opinion only and there are plenty of other people who look for different things in a destkop than I do, so none of this is either here nor there.
I have come to the conclusion I just don’t like DEs at 2.x series, since I felt very much the same way about KDE at 2.x. As soon as E17 comes out, that’s where I’ll be, but still with my KDE apps. I refuse to try Gnome again until 3.0.
It is not correct assume those who presently use KDE have always used KDE and trash Gnome without reason. Some of us were VERY happy with the direction Gnome 1.x was taking and still can’t understand what happened with 2.0.
A standard settings format, that I am actuall able to parse without having to write a custom parser? Hell yea. It also acts as a notification system to boot.
I love GConf, and I am so happy that someone finally created a standard system to hold user settings on a *nix system. Years of writing parsers for configuration files has made GConf a big welcome. I only wish that applications like apache and samba would go the way of xml-based configuration.
I think that any application that requires a non-standard config file format should at least know how to read/write its own configuration files – without botching any comments that I add in the process. This is extremely hard, and a good reason why a standard config file format is important. With GConf, developers only have to worry about making one perfect configuration library, not a whole host of libraries.
I just checked my windows xp C:WINDOWSsystem32config directory, and it’s not just one file. It seems it’s quite different from the win9x registry.
Sorry, that point is not clear to me. That means I need to wade through the tags to find a simple text entry for items not covered under GConf, like adding and deleting items from the Gnome menu. Why can it not be in plain text? XML is no better IMHO.
3. Why are the Gnome file manager and web browser seperate apps? I find it convenient to have one app do both, particularly with tabs, and most especially with tabs whose windows can be split. And what is up with Epiphany bookmarks anyway? Last time I saw it, bookmarks no worky. I guess they do if you don’t have years worth of bookmarks separated into who knows how many different folders & sub-folders. But if I throw all of my bookmarks into one bookmark panel, I wouldn’t be able to find my way around the net.
I was looking into Epiphany’s bookmarks recently – apperently the Epiphany team feal that organizing bookmarks into a heirarchy of folders is too difficult for non technical users and that organizing them into ‘topics’ which (at least for the moment) can’t have subtopics is better. I think they did this because if they did allow subtopics than there really wouldn’t be any difference between topics and folders and so they’d start to look like they’re talking a lot of nonsense (but I think they’re talking a lot of nonsense here anyway).
I thought I had a low opinion of non techical user’s abilities, then I came across the epiphany team. If a user finds the ability to have folders and subfolders for bookmarks too complex I would really start to worry.
What kde, gnome, and other environments for X really need is a central filetype handling database. If I chose a setting once I want it default for all other filemanagers too, and for Mozilla and for every other goddam app in the system. They should develop a nice multiplatform api for accessing it too.
“What kde, gnome, and other environments for X really need is a central filetype handling database. If I chose a setting once I want it default for all other filemanagers too, and for Mozilla and for every other goddam app in the system. They should develop a nice multiplatform api for accessing it too.”
Props to you for one of the most intelligent posts I have seen throughout this discussion. Whether it should be in database format, I can’t say. But how much easier things would be if there was a central format for configuration options, at least for user apps across all desktops and window managers. (I don’t know how apps such as squid would work with this idea.)
gconf-editor is not intended for end users. It is often suggested as a stopgap for setting that really should have been exposed or to keep people from complaining about settings that have been intentionally removed. GNOME’s habit of removing setting is a SEPARATE issue that doesn’t have anything to do with gconf. gconf-editor is great for developers and testers to use (i.e. before a preferences front end has been created). It may also useful for sys admins, but anything commonly done by sys admins really should have a “proper” interface.
RE: Why XML?
The use of XML is really a convenience. XML provides a simple, known, heirarchical format. Most non-XML setting tools I’ve seen are heirarchical anyway. Lots of tools are available for XML (most code editors know how to highlight XML). The use of plain text files would still require a format of some kind like “MySetting=MyValue” so I don’t really see how plain test files are better than XML. Users shouldn’t have to manually edit these files anyway.
> I love GConf, and I am so happy that someone finally created a standard system to hold user
> settings on a *nix system. Years of writing parsers for configuration files has made GConf a big
> welcome.
But this is not true. You and others are acting like there wasn’t any standard configuration system before. Before GConf there was quite a lot of standard configueation systems and even GNOME had one it was called gnome-config and people/developers on the GNOME architecture were using it. There was no such thing like writing everyday an own propritary thing to parse configuration.
With the arrival of GNOME 2.0 there was a little fight between Havoc Pennington and the Ximian people because the Ximian ones wanted to manifest BonoboConf that time. It was quite nice too but somehow everyone was kissing the back of Havoc like he was some sort of messiah and thus they went for GConf.
You are acting like GConf would be the ultimative in configuration systems, like some sort of George Washington a messiah in configuration solutions. But you can believe me that even GConf has quite a lot of disadvantages. It’s one of many configuration solutions sadly throughly overhyped.
We are watching ‘Cow & Chicken’ aren’t we? 8)
I love the show!
Offtopic but couldn’t resist..
It seems that we had some similar experiences. When I started using linux (with Phat Linux way back, phat was the first that ran side by side with windows on one partition as far as I know) I used KDE 1, primarily because thats all that was included. KDE worked ok, but it was really rather like windows, which then, was alright with me, since I still used windows for just about everything. Later as I got better, used better distros, I expermented with Gnome 1.x, KDE 2.x, but neither one really did it for me. So I used various ‘gateway drug’ interfaces, in an attempt to get away from the windows world. I used BeOS, I used the BlackBox, I used Rox Filer, I used qnx. Finally I ended up paying serious attention to two development projects, E17 and Gnome 2. I tried out both, E17 was awesome looking, but was a pain to use, and was really slow in the devel process (it still hasn’t been officially released), Gnome 2 was fast (faster than kde and older versions of gnome, slower than bb) and was easy enough to use, reminiscent of various other interfaces without looking like a blatant rip off, and was different from anything else. Rather than just trying to look like XP and OSX, looked good enough, and it was released. When Dropline Gnome came out, and I could get a stable underbelly of slack, with an easy to update UI, I was sold.
1. Don’t really know anything about Evolution, using it isn’t a requirement of using gnome. I know theres an initiative to simplify evolution and integrate it more into gnome, but considering that it will be broken into parts it doesn’t bother me.
2. I don’t see what the problem is, of course you can install/compile/run gnome without evolution.
3. The file manager and the web browser are two different apps because they are meant for performing two entirely seperate tasks. Nautilus is made for managing files, Ephiphany is made for browsing the web. They’re both optimized for two different things.
As far as bookmarks go, I’ve always unloaded bookmarks that I don’t use for a few months into a seperate html file. Although I agree, it would be nice to be able to create sub-categories within Epiphany’s bookmarks.
4. I’m not sure if this is accessable through a UI (probably is now) But theres a Gconf key called “reduced resources” that deals with this, and a couple of other resource hogging annoying UI elements.
5. My panel across the top is only about 20% empty, without a task list. If you don’t like the panel layout, change it. Theres nothing forcing you to keep Gnome’s default panel layout. I always remove the bottom one.
6. This is largely a hardware issue, and is being sorted out with Cairo. It also depends on why themes you’re using, the metacity gorilla theme, and the industrial theme are much slower than say, tigert crack. Similarly, the Reduced Resources option sorts this out as well, although probably not in a way you’d like.
7. Gnome is Gnome, for everything more high performing, gtk based, and more configurable there is XFCE. You could always start a third desktop based on GTK, all the pieces are definately there.
I used Gnome 1.x fairly lightly, there were things I liked about it, things about the way the UI worked, the style of the art related to it, and yes, the configurability of it (I’m still annoyed that I can’t make a workable vertical taskbar since 1.4). I guess that with 2.0, I liked the way the interface worked even more (sure theres a couple of things that bug me, especially in 2.6 (mount menu gone!)), I still like the style of the art and especially the look of gnome, and Gnome is still fairly configurable, perhaps not as much as 1.x, but its still far more configurable than OS X or XP.
One problem with GConf that is rarely brought up is that it is only a partial solution. It only deals with preferences, and nothing else. But applications need access to other type of structured storage as well, so they end up having their own custom solutions for things like “recent files”, bookmarks etc…
According to the GNOME developers, you are not supposed to store anything but preferences in GConf (it’s not even guaranteed to be writable), but they are themselves violating that rule (storing things like the run dialogs history).
Mozilla has a much better way of doing this. They have a concept of “data stores” that can be anything really. It does not define the actual storage back end, only the API for accessing it and receiving change notifications.
They use RDF instead of XML (which is a MUCH better fit for this kind of data), and it integrates with XUL really well.
I wish i could explain this better, but if you are interested go to mozilla.org and read up on mozilla technology. They have some seriously cool stuff there that could (should!) be the back bone of a well integrated desktop. Some things that Gnome does in 500 lines of macro-heavy C code mozilla can do in 50 lines of XML and 10 lines of Javascript.
There was talk of integrating more mozilla tech in gnome, and i hope we’ll se something come out of that but i wouldn’t hold my breath. Gnome seems comitted to reimplement everything mozilla has done, only a couple of years later and not as good.
@Me: You sound a lot like oGALAXYo (a well known anti-GNOME troll), but I’ll give you the benefit of doubt and answer your critique.
> > That GConf clears your settings when the disk is full
> > is a bug. A bug which can be fixed.
>
> Right, but it still leaves the question unanswered whether
> the implementation (GConf) is worth to be fixed or if it’s
> better to replace it with something non-Windows-Registry
> like.
That’s preposterous. You’re suggesting throwing away the whole of GConf because of one alleged bug, and the fact that gconf-editor looks like the Windows Registry. Do you ever listen to yourself talk? Did you even read the article?
> > It’s just that, due to the lack of manpower
>
> There is no problems with manpower, this is a general
> issue within the GNOME development team for creating new
> stuff and then leave it half for ages.
That’s completely untrue – there’s nothing half-implemented in the GNOME D&DP. You’re spreading FUD for the sole purpose of making GNOME look bad. If you don’t like GNOME, don’t use it — problem solved.
xxxxx
And as for the complaints that “GNOME 2.0 removed all my options”:
1. This is orthogonal to gconf, and a different discussion altogether.
2. What specific options from G1.4 are you missing? The “Drawer hide speed”-option? The “Launcher tile border width”-option? The “Fast but low quality scaling of button icons”-option? or possibly some other crack-rock option? Many of the G1.4-options were work-arounds for bugs. When the bugs were fixed, the work-around options were removed.
3. G2.0 was released two years ago – GET OVER IT!
> That’s completely untrue – there’s nothing half-implemented
> in the GNOME D&DP. You’re spreading FUD for the sole purpose
> of making GNOME look bad. If you don’t like GNOME, don’t use
> it — problem solved.
Haha, I only wish your kinds would know more about GNOME but you don’t that the problem. No, not everything inside GNOME is bad but the majority of stuff is simply half, half working, half fixed, half polished, half implemented, half <add your other thing here>. And don’t get me started on pointing you at all the stuff, this will end in yet another flamewar between someone who knows (me) and the rest of the ordinary crowd that just defends rather than listens.
I’m getting angry with all those gnome zealots latley published on OSNews who tell us how great everything is and that it is the users fault not to see how great things are.
The issue is not gconf, the issue is the frigging gconf-editor. As someone who doesn’t use gnome on a very regular basis I allways have a lot of problems finding something I am looking for in this mess called gconf-editor. And to all those oh so clever gnome usability experts: You need to know a lot more about the way gnome works (for example that nautilus does more in gnome then just browse files) to even stand a chance to find the option you are looking for as a non-geek user. And contrary to what you are telling us, normal people do have to use the gconf-editor.
So please, stop telling us how great everything is, stop constantly dodging the real issues, take the critic of users seriously and start making gnome the great DE it has the potential to be.
“And contrary to what you are telling us, normal people do have to use the gconf-editor.”
But THAT is the problem, NOT gconf-editor. Users SHOULDN’T have to edit gconf. Part of the problem is that a lot of GNOMEers use gconf-editor as a copout. Rather than defend the choice to leave out an option or agree that the option should be added, they say “just change it in gconf-editor”.
Also, the idea that GNOME developers are somehow trying to deprive the users of choice is silly. Being a developer gives you the right to make decisions about how the software works. Users can try to convince the developer otherwise, but ultimately the choice belongs to the developer.
Get over it people.
I use gnome on my linux desktop and I like it. Use what makes you happy but stop posting all this Gconf=Win Registry garbage. They are nothing alike.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should have a hard look at their interpretation of reality because it seems completely warped.
“What kde, gnome, and other environments for X really need is a central filetype handling database.”
This plus all the crap about the pros and cons of each configuration system — and yet no one has said anything about the X configuration database.
There IS a configuration database which a) is kept binary in RAM and b) is common for ALL applications (so if you change the background color it is changed everywhere) plus c) it is network aware, so if you start a program on a remote computer it uses your LOCAL settings NOT the ones where the application reside.
I am of course speaking of xrdb. It was fine and everybody used it. Sure, it is not for storing application data, only the GUI parameters but so what? It did that job great. But for some reason the gtk guys thought it wasn’t fine enough for them. So now we’re left with all this crap with .gtkrc which hardly works at all.
And don’t get me started on XML. There is a UNIX plain text culture where you use comments to describe each file for humans in a very practical way, just ascii and nothing fancy. People should be shot for using XML for this.
Hello M..er, Ralph.
“I’m getting angry with all those gnome zealots latley published on OSNews who tell us how great everything is and that it is the users fault not to see how great things are. ”
As opposed to all the people telling us how terrible everything is. Gee, well I guess everyone’s unhappy then. Looks like it’s “Gordian Knot” time again.
“The issue is not gconf, the issue is the frigging gconf-editor. As someone who doesn’t use gnome on a very regular basis I allways have a lot of problems finding something I am looking for in this mess called gconf-editor. ”
Uh, huh. Doesn’t regularly use, and lots of problems finding something. If I stuck you in front of a W2K workstation, do you think you’d have no problems finding out how to use the monitoring functions? How about the rest of it?
“And to all those oh so clever gnome usability experts: You need to know a lot more about the way gnome works (for example that nautilus does more in gnome then just browse files) to even stand a chance to find the option you are looking for as a non-geek user. ”
Oh, like what? Play music? View pictures? Burn CDs? How about “sort folders before files” or changing “backgrounds and emblems”? Guess I need to know heaps there.
“So please, stop telling us how great everything is, stop constantly dodging the real issues, take the critic of users seriously and start making gnome the great DE it has the potential to be.”
Ladies an Gentlemen, that’s known in the OSS world as volunteering.
1. No, though I am also from Germany I am not the guy you are refering to and if you bothered to read my posting you should know that.
2. Who cares about all the people telling you how terrible everything is? I have issues with certain things in gnome, as a lot of people have and I dare to criticize what I don’t like. People like you who seem to be unable to distinguish between criticizing something to make it better and fud are the real problem.
3. And what is the point about w2k? Do you really think everything is fine as long as gnome is as usable as w2k? I thought one of the main points of gnome was to make it easy to use and I still think that the gconf-editor is unnecessarily hard to use.
4. In case you didn’t know, nautilus also draws the desktop in gnome and this is reflected in the gconf-editor. So if an user drops into gconf-editor and wants to change something that is managed by nautilus he has to know that it is managed by nautilus in the first place and that simply isn’t something a normal user should not have to know.
Some selected comments:
Fredrik wrote:
> But applications need access to other type of structured storage as well, so they end up having their own custom solutions for things like “recent files”, bookmarks etc…
glytchbinary wrote:
> and why stop there. ~/.config/configurations.sqlite for configs, thumbnails/ for image caches of ALL applications making thumbnails, bookmarks.xml bookmark file for ALL applications that make use of bookmarks.
Maciek wrote:
> What kde, gnome, and other environments for X really need is a central filetype handling database. If I chose a setting once I want it default for all other filemanagers too, and for Mozilla and for every other goddam app in the system. They should develop a nice multiplatform api for accessing it too.
Now…
Go freedesktop.org and read some specs. If you have written some applications, please participate in discussion and support these specs!
freedesktop.org Specifications Home
http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/Home
Recent File Storage Specification
http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/recent-file-spec
Thumbnail Managing Standard
http://triq.net/~jens/thumbnail-spec/index.html
Shared MIME Database
http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/shared-mime-info-spec
The point is…
There are needs, and there *are* people diligently working on those needs. Even if you are not a developer, read proposed specs and send suggestions, criticisms, etc. to the mailing list. People will appreciate it. It is about 1000 times better than whining on OSNews.com.
It is becoming very apparent that some non-gnome users are very vocal in complaining and FUD slinging about GNOME. This tells me one or more of several things is true about the whiners:
1. They don’t Grok GNOME and the GNOME policies and will never Grok it since they think they “know better” than other GNOME users and developers.
2. They are jealous and want to sabotage the image of GNOME to new users.
3. They have another hidden agenda. A “waiting for the other shoe to drop” syndrome.
This attitute tells me one thing: Run away!
I do not use Gnome even as I have it installed on both my Linux boxes. I simply find I like KDE more. But the way Gnome developers believe they are GUI gods proves to me that Gnome is simply doomed. I prefer to spend my time doing something more useful than learning elitist user-unfriendly crap ideas of GUI maniacs.
Luckily Mozilla, a project I care deeply about, seems to have solved the strangehold of GUI maniacs after mozilla.org took over from netscape.com (AOL owned). Probably after some of them were fired by AOL they stopped working on the project altogerter. I have a sneaking suspiction that they work now on the Gnome desktop 🙁
Uh ya that’s great for you. So use KDE and stop complaining about GNOME! It’s called choice! Why do you think there’s choice in the first place? Do you want to kill other peoples’ freedom to choose?
Leave GNOME to the people who do like it. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean everbody else doesn’t like it.
Uh ya that’s great for you. So use KDE and stop complaining about GNOME! It’s called choice! Why do you think there’s choice in the first place? Do you want to kill other peoples’ freedom to choose?
Leave GNOME to the people who do like it. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean everbody else doesn’t like it
You did not get my point. I do not take back your choice of using Gnome, KDE, Windows or whatever. But it is very bad for a software pjoject if the developers take the choices from end users. This is exactly what UI direction Gnome now takes. The “spatial” file managing with no GUI to opt out is a good example. The attitude of the message I cited is another.
You are right. I do not need to use Gnome. I’m fine with KDE. But as a open source fan, I find it sad when a good OS project is being killed by bad development decisions. This is what I see happening with Gnome. Yes, it’s really depressing.
Of course, you (and everybody else) are still free to use Gnome as much as you want.
I do not use Gnome even as I have it installed on both my Linux boxes. I simply find I like KDE more. But the way Gnome developers believe they are GUI gods proves to me that Gnome is simply doomed
Oh thank you so very much Mr. Non-gnome user for caring for the interest of gnome-users. Thank you very much for watching our back and protecting us from the very evil gnome developers whose code you don’t even use.
I prefer to spend my time doing something more useful than learning elitist user-unfriendly crap ideas of GUI maniacs.
You certainly put in alot of time into gnome-bashing which appears to be more useful for you than learning to use gnome. I wonder what “use” you get out of it. Since our time is so precious to you, you will have to be brain-dead to engage in an activity that has no marginal utility.
Are you intellectually honest enough to admit what you gain out of gnome-bashing?
After about 30 minutes with gnome2.6, I opened the gnome dictionary and entered ‘usability’ to make sure I still knew what it meant. The new gnome is hardly usable by any standard i’m aware of.
If gnome2.6 is ‘revolutionary’ it is in the same sense that Mao’s ‘cultural revolution’ was revolutionary: it is a grotesque step in the wrong direction.
I have no problem with GConf as long as you can provide an intelligent interface for it. When I want to change one setting in one program, I shouldnt have to manually dig through every changable desktop setting!
I really like many gnome applications. I regularly use evolution, pan, straw, gnome-terminal, gaim, and many other small gnome utilities, but I cant stand Gnome as a desktop environment. The HIG, in general, seems counter-productive. I like massive configurability, and lots of powerful keyboard control. I am often told that I am an exception to the rule, (the exact words used are usually ‘f*cking crazy’) but I think Ion3 is the absolute pinnacle of modern usability!
GConf contributes to the problem in one major way: having a central location where all configurations can be made gives the developers an excuse to not provide configuration dialogs. This, however, is NOT a problem with GConf, its a problem with stupid gnome developers.
I will continue to disdain gnome and its developers until tabs are added to nautilus, and ruby/python scriptability is added to metacity. (I’m assured by many that the latter will never transpire.)
Many of these points i have heard before from win-camp, defending superiority of registry over /etc
But agree whit gnome developers here gconf is beter than milion .somethigs.
Gconfd is like a virus or spyware, everytime Mozilla is running it’s there, using up memory, resources.
I just want to run Mozilla, why do I need gconfd for that?
The fact that Gnome2 apps depend on it is a horrible thing on its own, one thing broken breaks everything else.
This kind of design is something that only Microsoft would do.
Gconf like Windows registry? Well, if it walks like a duck, quaks like a duck then it is a duck.
And don’t tell me it isn’t because even the most clueless grandma can tell it’s exactly like Windows registry, not only because it looks like it, but because it works like it and because it affects the rest of the Linux system just like the registry affects the rest of Windows.
Yes, it is exactly like Windows registry with the only difference being the file format, binary for registry, XML for Gnome, and the difference is realy minor, XML is rarther hard to read and edit in a simple text editor.
Ever had a Windows registry corrupt? Well, happened to me with Gnome configuration too.
For no reason when using the gconf tool, it said something about crashing, it crashed and after restarting Gnome the whole pile of shit called Gnome was reset to it’s defaults and took several minutes for the splash screen to disappear.
And all that after spending half hour configuring Gnome to make it somewhat usable (which is realy pointless because it’s not usable at all).
I don’t understand how can Gnome hope to get on people’s desktops in it’s current state with zero features, next to none capabilities, half finished throughout the DE, and being on the level of Windows 3.1 from 10 years ago?
If I show Gnome desktop, with Nautilus as its star app to even moderatly experienced Windows XP user he will lough in my face and the only argument I’d have might be that it’s not from Microsoft.
The only DE I’d dare to show a Windows XP user might be the latest version of KDE and even then I’d be carefull not to brag too much about Linux’s DE since KDE is lacking some basic features that Windows users have been accustomed since Windows 95.
Even Windows Explorer has slightly more features than Nautilus, you can at least customize the toolbar in Explorer.
The excuses of Gnome developers that features and configurability are confusing to users and that they are designing Gnome so that even a grandma can use it are so transparent that realy even grandmas can see through them.
They are excused to cover up incompetence and lack of ideas for proper design that would complement Linux’s modularity, reliability, and elegance of /etc and plain text config files. So what do they do, give us the Windows registry.
Besides, how many grandmas do you know that use a computer?
It’s just a poor lie for an excuse.
It’s been appereant that since the first Gnome 2, the Gnome has been deliberatly impeding the Linux DE progress.
I think the alterior motives of Gnome developers and some of the Gnome zealots should be more closely scrutinized to determine how exactly they affect Linux and OSS software and its adoption on computer desktops because when someone is claiming a progress but it’s clearly appereant that a regress is taking place then one has to be suspicious.