Below are the latest set of tarballs for the GNOME 2.7 development branch. It has entered its API/ABI, Feature and Module freezes, with a modules decision to be finalised next week. The biggest change in this release is the new MIME system.platform:
tar.gz: 44M total
tar.bz2: 31M total
desktop
tar.gz: 142M total
tar.bz2: 102M total
bindings
tar.gz: 13M total
tar.bz2: 8.1M total
so what are the killer features for this gnome release?
i’m hoping totem ships standard, and that evolution 2.0 is well integrated (with it’s new evoluation data store system).
anything else really nice coming out for it?
http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/
its good that gnome is getting easier to use.
I agree. MIME types were an area that deffinatly needed improving. It looks like they are on the right track.
i dont want GNOME to keep adding applications like KDE = boltware. i hope they keep it simple (even remove galeon) so that i can use/install whatever i like and dont want someone else to force a application on me. that what linux is about.
>> Killed start-here
Finally!!
>> Easier to use user interface, including removal of the
>> “Erase CD” checkbox
Could someone explain to me how the removal of the “Erase CD” checkbox would make it ‘easier‘ to erase CD’s?
(or is there some other option or button for doing that?)
And wasn’t HAL/gvm added to this desktop release as well?
While the new MIME stuff is very good, I think the inclusion of HAL and gvm is a much bigger addition to the desktop.
I really hate to mount/unmount any device myself (don’t even start about kudzu, automount, supermount, megamount and friends), it’s just so awkward that we Linux users still had to do that until now.
@newbie: Galeon is not a default application in GNOME and isn’t even included (?)
<quote>i’m hoping totem ships standard</quote>
Gstreamer is not ready yet,
so we’ll have to wait some time for totem and rhythmnox to appear in gnome release.
Replying to myself here, but according to [ http://www.gnome.org/start/2.7/desktop/ ] gvm is indeed included, yay!
“http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/
its good that gnome is getting easier to use.”
It looks great, indeed, but the dialog to select an application (task 3/task 4) really needs to become more user-friendly. Both Windows and KDE present you with a list of installed applications, yet Gnome invites you to search for the binary in /usr/bin yourself. That’s not that user-friendly.
i compiled gnome 2.6 on gentoo box and it installed galeon (and installed mozilla also). i may be wrong though.
<quote>gvm is indeed included, yay!</quote>
Not yet,
but probably will be.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-July/msg0020…
Gentoo by default installs everything for Gnome and KDE. If you don’t want something you have to edit the ebuild for it and remove the packages you don’t want.
Gnome seems to be getting worse:
>> Easier to use user interface, including removal of the
>> “Erase CD” checkbox
WTF?
I think you mean bloatware…
Well, if you don’t use every KDE app included, DO_NOT_COMPILE them.
It’s really really easy in Gentoo:
DO_NOT_COMPILE=”juk kaboodle kmid noatun kopete blah blah blah” emerge kde
there seems to be a problem with gnome and taskbar that shows applications are running (i dont know the technical name). so every user application that is running has a task bar clickable area (rectangular box) to focus that application. however sometimes the box or whatever it is called doesnt size properly – it extends all over the taskbar – it is very annoying and really inconsistent.
i agree that KDE doesnt seem to have such minor insistency but then again it very confusing to use. the most i hate is the file browser for KDE. when i tried KDE for first time – it was like “EEEKSSSS ! what that hell”. Maybe its something like experts preffer KDE more than gnome ?
there seems to be a problem with gnome and taskbar that shows applications are running (i dont know the technical name). so every user application that is running has a task bar clickable area (rectangular box) to focus that application. however sometimes the box or whatever it is called doesnt size properly – it extends all over the taskbar – it is very annoying and really inconsistent.
I think this is because of the way GTK handles internationalization and automatic resizing. There is no default size of the taskbar application “buttons”.
If you think this is important, file a bug report.
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/nautilus/ChangeLog?view=markup:
2004-05-13 James Willcox <[email protected]>
..
Add desktop item editing support
Wohoo! No more need to delete & recreate launchers!
http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1889
http://lists.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-July/msg003…
Major changes since 2.7.1 are:
* Added spatial/browser pref to the prefs dialog
This will hush alot of whiners, yaaay
Was a disgrace! They had it right with 2.4, then they went and messed it up. I installed 2.6.whatever w/ Gentoo and I couldn’t do simple things like dragging files to GAIM or double clicking a wav file. It was pathetic, the developers should throw the 2.6 codebase in the trash and move back to 2.4.
How the heck do you upgrade Gnome? I have Mandrake 10, and tried to download all the source packages (since I can’t find any RPM’s for Mandrake) and nothing worked. Just a bunch of dependencies missing, even after I compiled and installed each package in the order specified on the Gnome homepage. It gets a bit frustrating.
I think the only viable way to get the latest gnome is through cvsgnome or garnome. I haven’t used these ones though. Curently the only big distro shipping Gnome 2.6 is Fedora which is a pity. Somehow, other distros are not so excited about gnome to include the latest version as they do with KDE.
Also try Unofficial Gnome 2.6 (Fresco Fresco) For Mandrake 10:
http://wwwra.informatik.uni-rostock.de/~waschk/Mandrake/GNOME2.6/RP… But I did not have success with this method either.
slackware 10 also ships 2.6 i believe.
…and it just works sweetly
Just apt-get install gnome and everything will be taken care of by APT, the awe-inspiring package mechanism that powers a debian system…and of course, don’t forget the power of dpkg based package management!! rpm still needs more extensive development to be comparable to dpkg system….
Alas…but the problem is, it is not easy to throw away old and familiar things and accept new things…so it will be hard for many users to trash their redhat based linux distros and replace it with debian system…However, if you are daring, I recomment give Debian a chance. And see how the life can get easier.
PS: If you are more daring, you can use Gentoo.
Yes, Slackware 10 ships with 2.6.
Onebase has Gnome 2.6, and has olm for dependancies. For the Mandrake user they’re is a lot of easy configuration tools for you to use as well. And of course you can utilize arch in source compiling which Onebase supports fully.
It’s really really easy in Gentoo:
DO_NOT_COMPILE=”juk kaboodle kmid noatun kopete blah blah blah” emerge kde
Hey, thanks. I’m not a big fan of KDE but that does address one of my major complaints about it. I’m personally using gnome-light because of all the crap like epiphany, the games…
“http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/
its good that gnome is getting easier to use.”
First a disclaimer, I run gnome and gtk apps exclusively. And yes things are improving. But it’s the details that are still not being addressed. At the bottom of the above link there are screen captures of how XP and MACOSX do mime associations. Note how cleanly the OSX menu is organized. Note also how in the gnome version (when there are more than six applications associated) there appears an Open with… submenu and in that submenu; Open with “An Application”. So linguistically we are told to Open with… Open with… “An Application”.
If it’s important enough to do, it’s important enough to do right, little things like redundancy in menus add to the overall feeling that gnome/kde/linux is not thoroughly and carefully wrought.
And it particularly burns my toast cuz it seems such a trivial thing to fix.
I guess I’ll file a bug once it happens 😉
GNOME project 2.6 is bloated 2.8 will have 3000 4000 new code line,umm good we will have 2 new features only…
kde have more features and is much user oriented.
it’s not good have every major release only few thing
switch over kde is the only chance who want be productive
on linux.
gnome project take world ? pffff
This is great news. It looks like Gnu/Linux are *finally* getting a desktop professional, simple, speedy and uncluttered enough to make it into common business use.
After using Linux every day for years, it became necessary to convert my work machine to Win XP and I bought a Powermac for the house.
After some months, I managed to sneak a dual-boot on my work machine so I could spend most of my day in a Linux environment again. I had one little surprise: the KDE interface suddenly seemed cluttered to me. Just too much stuff in my way. I’m not knocking KDE: it’s a mature and well-integrated desktop. It’s what I’ve always used.
But I went ahead and loaded up Gnome (2.4). To my surprise, I found it more comfortable: clean interface, everything easy to find, modest graphics. Gnome has come a long way since the last time I tried it.
I don’t particularly like Evolution — it’s too slow for my tastes. And I find Epiphany’s bookmark management to be a bit eccentric. I’m currently running Firefox and Thunderbird.
Dunno what happened to me. i’ve probably been spoiled by the regularity and organization of the OS X desktop.
Now I’d like to try Gnome 2.6. I opted for Mandrake 10 Official rather than risking Fedora Core 2’s famous dual-boot bug. If anyone has a suggestion regarding a well-behaved dual-booting distro with a more recent Gnome release, I’m up for suggestions.
They should look into the Run Application dialog for task 4. By default it lets you type in a command you want to run (an application you want to open the file with…) and then below that there’s an arrow to toggle a list of known applications. Although I’d think it’d be better to have that list be visible by default for lesser experienced users.
Is Mono included by default in this release?
Gnome is great and all, very polished, etc… but slooooooow. I think they should dedicate some version of Gnome entirely for performance tuning. Seriously. Just take a look at KDE… much faster.
I love Gnome, but just can’t stand the slowness of it (and my machine is not an old one).
Victor.
They should look into the Run Application dialog for task 4. By default it lets you type in a command you want to run (an application you want to open the file with…) and then below that there’s an arrow to toggle a list of known applications. Although I’d think it’d be better to have that list be visible by default for lesser experienced users.
—
This would too much a clutter. its better left as it is
Is Mono included by default in this release?
—–
No. There has never been a plan to.
Do you think Suse, Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros who define the ease of use category for Linux distros all defaulted on KDE because its “cluttered”?
Yes. That’s why i’m not using this crap.
No, they and most other distros use KDE by default because its the most professional and the best available.
Uhuh. Really?
I still don’t understand why Metacity and not Sawfish.
Because sawfish took a while to get ported to Gtk2, and by the time it did, Metacity just had more momentum.
Personally I want to see Waimea simplified a bit and used as the default WM for gnome, or at least for Metacity to get the same features as far as the usage of render, cairo, and glitz go.
Why can the teams of KDE and Gnome not work togheter the bring us KNOME-X. So we are all happy.
Mainly because “GNOME” contains 80% of the GNOME name, and only 33% of the KDE name. A more fair distribution would be KDOME, which is 60% and 66%.
Seriously, though, the two projects have quite different goals, organization, and priorities. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to merge like everyone keeps suggesting.
>Seriously, though, the two projects have quite different
>goals, organization, and priorities. It wouldn’t make any
>sense for them to merge like everyone keeps suggesting.
Both are building a FREE Unix desktop for home and business users. That is enough. With Novell buying Suse (wich is KDE dedigated in a sense) and Ximian (wich is the Gnome business unit in a sense) there is hope. It would certainly speed up developemt and it would be a step in desktop unity.
There is a project going on wich is actually trying to do this…i am not sure where its hosted.
cus they would havto go back to scrach gnome is mostly c and builds on gtk and kde builds on c++ and qt you could hardly use any of that code if you were to merge the projects.
and if you forced all kde and gnome devs in to a room and told
them that they couldnt get out until it was merged they would probobly kill eachoter and there would be none left
Here’s some reason.(not in order) I believe most of them are fairly obsolete by now, however…I am a gnome user right now after those years spent with gnome…and one’s habit, once firmly established, cannot be changed easily
1. KDE was a pain in my ass whenever came to multibyte character handling….I had to apply seperate patch to qt to make it working nicely with my ko_KR locale. With gtk+, it was designed to be i18n compatible, and had much superior asian language support. (Still, I feel enormously thankful to those gtk+ developers about this…The world is diverse, and language is many)
And I can still remember how ugly qt apps was using multibyte east asian locale like ko_KR…and this is the second greatest reason. I didn’t like kde… I’ve heard that today’s kde/qt has lot of improvement about Asian lang handling…but…well, it’s too late for now to make me using kde/qt.
2. KDE’s library was so huge that I wasted my precious hard disk space…but anyway…gnome’s individual library seems smaller, but hell yeah, if you combine all of gnome’s library, then it will be comparable to kde’s….this reason is really obsolete.
However…gtk+ can be compiled within an hour. While qt needs more than 3 hours to compile itself…
3. I didn’t liked KDE’s control panel…and still I don’t like it.
4. KDE on the computers (quite old P-III things) in my computer lab was so slow that it took few secs even to launch terminal emulator.
With gnome (until 2.4) it was slightly faster than kde.
5. I honestly disgusted by KDE 1.x’s Windoze-wannabe look and feel…I think that’s the main thing which made me hate kde….yeah, I know kde’s look and feel changed considably now, but…still…I do have residue of that allergy. Quite foolish of course…but I can’t help it!!!
6. One of my friend used KDE and he was a zealot
I liked him but hated his KDE propaganda. And I think that’s the third reason I became hating kde….:P
7. I don’t use C++….mainly I use C and PERL. In my Programming Languagae class at my college, I nearly messed up my GPA with C++ session….now I hate it. (laughs) Anyway, still I don’t need the urge to become C++ advocate…maybe I’m just a hobbist who programs tiny programs only for my server.
Still, I am sometimes annoyed by gtk+’s slow redraw/resize algorithm…and still-not-really-true, spatial-wannabe spatial nautilus. (But I got used to it though
)
However…I think gtk+ has imhangul2 module and really cool asian lang support, and that’s why I’ll keep sticking to gtk+
“http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/
its good that gnome is getting easier to use.”
Just want to echo, that mockup (?) looks amazing. What does the central mime type thingy look like though? (you know, in windows it’s tools->folder options->file types…)
I don’t like Gnome but it’s very nice to see advancements like this.
It;s like music, people always want others to like what they do, or they want others to try it out, etc. Also there are lots of Gnome users who hate KDE and don’t like the clutter (hey I like KDE and I agree!
). In the end it’s both sides, but if they’re both improving, then people will still choose what they like the best, then go rag ont he other side 
[I myself find GTK/Gnome just sooo ugly…sorry had to say it! lol)
(really like gnome in terms of usability but KDE will improve there I HOPE!!!)
in my exp. Gnome is also very much slower than KDE, xfce4, etc [and why is this, xfce4 is gtk and its so much aster!)….so I like to recommend KDE to others becuase the other DE are very minimal (not bad, just not for newbies ya know!)
Both are building a FREE Unix desktop for home and business users.
By that logic, we should also merge Ford and GM! The two projects have differences that cannot be reconciled. For example:
1) In GNOME, there is an official, elected, leadership, and decisions can be made centrally. In KDE, leadership is de-facto, and decisions are arrived at by concensus. The GNOME approach allows them to be more agile with respect to design. For example, the GNOME HIG would not have worked the way it did in KDE. The KDE approach has the benefit that it tends to keep developers happier and minimize conflict.
2) GNOME’s recent design issues have been focused towards targetting entry-level users, while KDE has continued to target intermediate users. GNOME’s UI philosophy is more orthodox (classical Mac UI design), while KDE’s is less so. GNOME’ers tend to believe that the UI should do the “right thing”, while many KDE’ers believe that it’s not always clear what the “right thing” is, and so the user should choose.
3) GNOME, as a project, tends to act like it’s building a product. Their marketing and PR reflects that. There is a tendency in the KDE camp to look at KDE less as a product and more as a base for ISV’s (SuSE, Lindows, etc) to build on. Their marketing (or lack thereof), reflects that. Just compare the “About GNOME” page to the “What is KDE page”:
http://www.gnome.org/about/
http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/
The GNOME one is very slick, and user-oriented. Of the 7 paragraphs on the page, only 1 is developer-related. Most of the KDE page is developer-related. Indeed, the first two paragraphs talk more about UNIX than KDE, the third is entirely technical, and only the fourth could be considered vaguely user-related (though even it can’t avoid a technical term like KParts).
The basic premise of “merging” KDE and GNOME is flawed. Even if you merged the projects, they’d quickly fork due to fundemental disagreements in design and organization. They’d do so for the same reason we have Coke and Pepsi, Ford and GM, or Apple and Microsoft!
1. KDE was a pain in my ass whenever came to multibyte character handling….
This was mostly fixed in Qt 3.x, with Qt 3.2 cleaning up the remaining deficiencies, which was handling of Indian character sets.
However…gtk+ can be compiled within an hour. While qt needs more than 3 hours to compile itself…
The reason for this is two-fold. First, the primary reason is that g++ is just a really slow compiler for C++. Second, Qt, by default, builds a lot of examples and tutorials that GTK+ does not.
3. I didn’t liked KDE’s control panel…and still I don’t like it.
This is a legitimate complaint, if you like the more minimal GNOME style panel.
4. KDE on the computers (quite old P-III things) in my computer lab was so slow that it took few secs even to launch terminal emulator.
With gnome (until 2.4) it was slightly faster than kde.
KDE app startup times are a bit slow, but with prelinking, they’re pretty tolerable. From a speed perspective, this is the primary deficiency in KDE.
5. I honestly disgusted by KDE 1.x’s Windoze-wannabe look and feel…I think that’s the main thing which made me hate kde….yeah, I know kde’s look and feel changed considably now, but…still…I do have residue of that allergy. Quite foolish of course…but I can’t help it!!!
KDE 3.x is very different in look-and-feel, and most importantly, can be customized to feel however you want.
7. I don’t use C++….mainly I use C and PERL. In my Programming Languagae class at my college, I nearly messed up my GPA with C++ session….now I hate it.
So? KDE has a bunch of different bindings. The PyKDE ones, in particular, are awesome. Python, of course, kick’s Perl’s ass any day of the week
Dude, your points are largely incorrect.
1) In GNOME, there is an official, elected, leadership, and decisions can be made centrally. In KDE, leadership is de-facto, and decisions are arrived at by concensus.
The only elected “leadership” in GNOME is the GNOME Foundation which is explicitely defined to not make technical decisions. GNOME’s decisions are made by consensus, but the buck stops with the various module maintainers and project leaders. The same is true for KDE.
2) GNOME’s recent design issues have been focused towards targetting entry-level users, while KDE has continued to target intermediate users.
GNOME’s not targeting “entry-level” users, it’s targeting “humans”. Your last comment, that GNOME chooses “the right thing” (or “Just Works”) and KDE putting the burden of choice on users is true, but we say it differently between the projects. 🙂
3) GNOME, as a project, tends to act like it’s building a product. Their marketing and PR reflects that. There is a tendency in the KDE camp to look at KDE less as a product and more as a base for ISV’s (SuSE, Lindows, etc) to build on.
We certainly market GNOME as a product, but pretty much everyone in the project regards the project as a technology engine for distributors (commercial or volunteer). We would be nothing without our distributors.
But indeed, the premise of merging GNOME and KDE is flawed. Interoperability is so much more important, because we can solve every use case the projects are aiming to satisfy, and still work together (which is something that doesn’t happen often in the proprietary world).
The competition and sharing between the developers is really good, but the ankle-biting and flaming between the users (and some developers, recently), is extraordinarily annoying.
Everyone else – don’t flame the Free Software developers who WORK FOR YOU.
Some of you, spoilt brats, act like your parents paid free and open source software developers to code for you. It gets rather annoying, really!
How about constructive criticisms, for once? Lets see your bug reports, lets see your patches, lets see your constructive reviews, lets see your meager contributions, before we hear your, “Ooooh it’s so slowwww, ooooh it sucks, ooooh Mac does it better, ooooh it’s not windows, ooooh I want it to be KDE” mantras.
5. I honestly disgusted by KDE 1.x’s Windoze-wannabe look and feel…I think that’s the main thing which made me hate kde….yeah, I know kde’s look and feel changed considably now, but…still…I do have residue of that allergy. Quite foolish of course…but I can’t help it!!!
Yeah, I know that that was darned silly thing to say…hehe…
Of course, I’ve seen how KDE’s look and feel evolved since 1.x….and when KDE2.x came I said, “Hoooah! They finally decided not to mimick Windoze!!! Yeah!!)
(And of course, GNOME can be themed to become a Windoze wannabe too.)
But….as I said before, I’ll stick to GNOME; probably until the wrath of KDE god finally smite me down and –force-convert me to KDE follower…but, then again…the mighty of GNOME may shine and drive the dark spell of KDE the Terrible…hehehe….:)
because metacity is “good enough”
The difference is really simple! Its hidden in the about pages of both projects. Not in the text, but in the pages. Look at that menu on the KDE page and compare it to the GNOME page… that’s it.
@Mystilleef
I don think all OSNews readers are coders. You can’t tell people that they can’t complain unless they can do it better.
Dude, your points are largely incorrect.
Hence the reply, I presume
.
GNOME’s not targeting “entry-level” users, it’s targeting “humans”.
I’m glad you think that’s who you’re targetting
. I think everyone knows the users that Gnome is trying to target, and they are the easy way out. Working towards good overall usability, and looking at what people actually do with their desktops, is much harder.
The only elected “leadership” in GNOME is the GNOME Foundation which is explicitely defined to not make technical decisions. GNOME’s decisions are made by consensus, but the buck stops with the various module maintainers and project leaders. The same is true for KDE.
Afraid not, and I think we both know that the Gnome Foundation wields quite a bit of input technically. Blaming the project leaders and maintainers doesn’t help. Even if you don’t have a CVS account for KDE, if you put in some effort and submit some patches you can get things committed. With Gnome there is seemingly ten dozen layers of bureacracy and ‘project leaders’, many with agendas. And then there’s the technology… I really admire the vast majority of Gnome developers making small commits and improvements across the board (not the corporate people), in their spare time I hasten to add, because I sometimes wonder how things get done.
We’ll have to see how any fork turns out in all of this.
Your last comment, that GNOME chooses “the right thing” (or “Just Works”) and KDE putting the burden of choice on users is true, but we say it differently between the projects. 🙂
Unfortunately, “Just Works” has a different meaning the further afield that you go. If you read any good usability textbook, you will find the immortal words “Put Users in Control”. Obviously a compromise needs to be found depending on your requirements. Working towards good usability is extremely hard, it has to be done by consensus, especially in an open source project, and is slow deliberate work.
Another thing that you may read in any good usability textbook is that having Human Interface Guidelines guarantees absolutely nothing, and working towards HIG compliance guarantees even less. That isn’t usability I’m afraid. Crucially, usability has to be grounded in the practical world. Many of the usability enhancements to Gnome have been good and positive, especially early on when usability became a bigger factor. Now, however, most of the usability ideas, such as spatial browsing, are pulled straight out of a theoretical textbook with no thought for the practical difficulties (i.e. within an office environment, five days a week, 9 – 5) whatsoever.
We certainly market GNOME as a product, but pretty much everyone in the project regards the project as a technology engine for distributors (commercial or volunteer). We would be nothing without our distributors.
Just how many commercial distributors are there, apart from Red Hat and Sun?
Interoperability is so much more important, because we can solve every use case the projects are aiming to satisfy, and still work together (which is something that doesn’t happen often in the proprietary world).
That is certainly good to here, and it’s good to hear that you have a set of use cases somewhere. The important thing is how those use cases were arrived at.
…but the ankle-biting and flaming between the users (and some developers, recently), is extraordinarily annoying.
I quite agree
.
Everyone else – don’t flame the Free Software developers who WORK FOR YOU.
Definitely, but certain developers can help out a lot there too
. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a handful of people who thought they were going to go off on a Magical Mystery Tour and somehow take over the world single-handedly. I think over the past few months, especially since about December, the shine has been taken off that idea.
The only elected “leadership” in GNOME is the GNOME Foundation which is explicitely defined to not make technical decisions.
I was thinking specifically of this statement on the GNOME Foundation page: “The Foundation will act as an official voice for the GNOME project, providing a means of communication with the press and with commercial and noncommercial organizations interested in GNOME software.” In general, this sort of centralized voice is not something you find in the KDE project (whether that be a good thing or a bad thing).
From a technical point of view, the GNOME foundation also steers the overall course because of another statement on the foundation page: “To achieve this goal, the Foundation will coordinate releases of GNOME and determine which projects are part of GNOME.” If you take a look at the software that is a part of the GNOME 2.x platform, you’ll see that the choices are designed to mesh with the technical philosophy espoused by the GNOME project, manifested in it’s HIG.
Heck, consider the text of the HIG itself: “Both specific advice on making effective use of interface elements, and the philosophy and general design principles behind the GNOME interface are covered.” Presumably, somebody had to define what the “general design principles behind the GNOME interface” were. GNOME’s UI isn’t an amaglamation of the varied UI philosophies of all of it’s developers. Rather, it’s a clearly-defined and clearly-designed philosophy that was created in some centralized manner. It is this centralization that characterizes the differences between the KDE and GNOME projects.
GNOME’s not targeting “entry-level” users, it’s targeting “humans”. Your last comment, that GNOME chooses “the right thing” (or “Just Works”) and KDE putting the burden of choice on users is true, but we say it differently between the projects. 🙂
This is the ideological difference we’re talking about. The GNOME project has decided that there is a “right thing” for “humans.” Further, they’ve decided that the “right thing” is a classical Mac-style UI. The KDE project has so far refused to make that sort of sweeping statement. What the GNOME folks see as “Just Working”, the KDE folks (to use a broad brush) see as “Overly Constraining.” It’d be pointless to consider the relative merits of each camp’s argument. My original point was to show the ideological differences that seperate the two camps, and your post illustrates those differences quite well.
We certainly market GNOME as a product, but pretty much everyone in the project regards the project as a technology engine for distributors (commercial or volunteer). We would be nothing without our distributors.
I never said the GNOME project disregarded it’s distributors. But the fact remains that GNOME *is* marketed as a product (in the traditional sense), while KDE is not. From a technical standpoint, this has many ramifications, not the least of which is GNOME’s increased emphasis, compared to KDE, on the “out of box” experience. In KDE, since an ISV is presumed to have customized to software before it reaches the end user, increases emphasis is placed on the ease of this customizability. From an organizational standpoint, this means that a merged KDE and GNOME project would be completely unfeasible, because there would be a sharp disagreement on the project’s place in relation to other entities.
But indeed, the premise of merging GNOME and KDE is flawed.
That was my whole point, and your responses only strengthened that point.
Working towards good overall usability, and looking at what people actually do with their desktops, is much harder.
Absolutely – no one said what we’re attempting to do is easy, particularly in the context of FOSS development.
Afraid not, and I think we both know that the Gnome Foundation wields quite a bit of input technically. Blaming the project leaders and maintainers doesn’t help.
As a Foundation Board member, I can tell you for certain that this is entirely false. Participating on the Board involves a heck of a lot of self-questioning and hand-wringing to make sure that the Foundation does *not* get involved in technical issues – it ends up being a kind of guilt complex. The only area where this may be a little confusing is where release-oriented decisions (such as making schedules and summarising the community consensus as to what should go into a release) are delegated away from the Board. The Foundation Board does not get involved.
Can you point out a technical decision made by the Foundation Board?
It’s not a matter of “blaming project leaders and maintainers” – that’s support you’re hearing, not blame – that’s where the final decisions *should* be made.
Working towards good usability is extremely hard, it has to be done by consensus, especially in an open source project, and is slow deliberate work.
Usability in the context of FOSS is definitely hard, but ask any usability or HCI engineer about whether “consensus” is the right way to deal with these issues. We take that into account as we attempt to build usable software in the context of FOSS development. It’s fucking hard, you don’t need to remind me. 🙂
Just how many commercial distributors are there, apart from Red Hat and Sun?
Wow, heaps. Beyond the usual (FOSS or commercial) *nix distributors there are countless consultants, local integrators… there are plenty of companies out there with a commercial interest in GNOME or who distribute our software.
I was thinking specifically of this statement on the GNOME Foundation page: “The Foundation will act as an official voice for the GNOME project, providing a means of communication with the press and with commercial and noncommercial organizations interested in GNOME software.” In general, this sort of centralized voice is not something you find in the KDE project (whether that be a good thing or a bad thing).
That’s right, the elected members of the Foundation Board represent the GNOME Project. You’ll note that this has nothing to do with technical decisions or direction. You can guarantee that if someone on the Foundation Board said something out of step with the consensus of the project, they’d get a lot of stern questions about what they’re doing. So, very rarely does it happen, and the election process ensures that consensus is at the top of everyone’s mind.
From a technical point of view, the GNOME foundation also steers the overall course because of another statement on the foundation page: “To achieve this goal, the Foundation will coordinate releases of GNOME and determine which projects are part of GNOME.” If you take a look at the software that is a part of the GNOME 2.x platform, you’ll see that the choices are designed to mesh with the technical philosophy espoused by the GNOME project, manifested in it’s HIG.
The Foundation is responsible for ensuring that it happens, not actually doing it, so all the administration there is delegated to the GNOME Release Team (who set schedules, but we now have a very reliable standard for those, and who also attempt to summarise and finalise the community consensus about which software to include in the release).
We agree on a number of topics raised in your comment, but I’d like to suggest that it’s unfair for you to comment on the operation of GNOME or the Foundation – without flagging your comment as an opinion – when you are not sufficiently informed to do so correctly.
No KNOME-X or KDOME is not good enough. Richard Stallman and friends would be rioting in the streets and forums.
Because it does have the G in GNOME as in GNU.
It would have to be GNU/KDE
or GNU/KDOME
😀
Well, I’m sorry, but they would *all* come out of the room.
The eternal figth between GNOME and KDE only happens on the user side. Developers of both projects talk a lot, and share a lot of experiencies (believe me, I follow one of the GNOME lists and there is plenty of KDE developers there, even suggesting new things to GNOME).
The G in GNOME actually stands for GNU.
You don’t need to be a coder to make GNOME better.
We agree on a number of topics raised in your comment, but I’d like to suggest that it’s unfair for you to comment on the operation of GNOME or the Foundation – without flagging your comment as an opinion – when you are not sufficiently informed to do so correctly.
It is implicit that all statements are opinions unless specifically flagged as facts. Beyond that, very few of my statements were opinions at all, or require any knowledge beyond what is readily apparent. In general, I think you’re reading shades of criticism into my comments that aren’t there. Consider my original statement (which is presumably the point of contention):
1) In GNOME, there is an official, elected, leadership, and decisions can be made centrally.
There is no doubt that this is true. Note, I do not make any claims about what kind of influence this leadership has — I only note that it exists. The existance of the GNOME foundation by itself is enough to show the differences between the two projects. Since my aim is only to show differences, not to criticize, there is no point in trying to impart additional meaning onto that statement.
In KDE, leadership is de-facto, and decisions are arrived at by concensus.
Again, this is true. Also note that this does not imply that in the GNOME project rules by fiat, only that the KDE project does not. In conjunction with the previous statement, it suggests that the KDE project requires a broader concensus, but I think that quite obvious to any observer. In particular, the GNOME foundation enables GNOME to have a clarity in its public relations that the less formalized structure of the KDE project really does not allow.
The GNOME approach allows them to be more agile with respect to design. For example, the GNOME HIG would not have worked the way it did in KDE.
This is definitely an opinion, but arriving at it requires no knowledge of the inner workings of the GNOME project. It is readily apparent from the development of the GNOME 2.x platform that there is an ability, and a willingness, within the GNOME project to centralize design and decision-making to a greater degree than is done in the KDE project.
The G in GNOME actually stands for GNU.
Yeah that’s what I mean’t. Maybe I didn’t phrase it correctly.
I can’t help myself but since version 2.6 I feel GNOME significantly faster then any of the latest releases of KDE. Startup time of desktop or gnome apps, working with menus, windows repainting etc. Tested on PIII/1.1 GHz 256MB RAM and P4/3GHz 512MB RAM.