The first point release for the stable 2.10.x series of the GNOME Desktop & Dev Platform is out. This is the first in a series of stable releases containing bugfixes, translation updates & other improvements.
The GNOME Desktop and Developer Platform 2.10.1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Is Yelp updated? The new version was dropped from 2.10.0 at the last moment.
Also, what happened to the graphical CRON frontend? I can’t find it anywhere in Fedora 4 Test 1.
Also, what happened to the graphical CRON frontend?
It’s on the TODO list.
http://live.gnome.org/SystemToolsBackends
Thanks mate.
The announce link “qui-va-bien” :
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2005-April/msg00…
I have been trying to figure out why there is no graphical equivalent of runas in Gnome while it is available in KDE. If I have a script that needs to run as root how can I popup an input field asking the user to enter the password before running? Seems like a pretty common function. In KDE you can right-click a file and set the property to runas.
There are a number of su/sudo frontends that use gtk. For example the one ubuntu uses is gksu ( http://www.nongnu.org/gksu/ ) which seems the most active.
There is ongoing discussion on gnome on how to add support in a generic manner (i.e. use pam on RH/Fedora, sudo on ubuntu, its own suid binary on Random Joe, etc…) but I don’t know if something came out of it.
Uh, call it with gnomesu, the same way you would do with kdesu?
probably at the end of april
the kde team right now is busy switching from cvs to svn
So why was the new Yelp dropped from 2.10? Isn’t it completely stable yet?
It was dropped because the new gecko-based backend has serious accessibility regressions that need to be addressed.
Lobby for it. The issue has been raised in discussion forums and on Bugzilla. Sooner or later, it will be included if enough people desire it.
There is time to discuss about Gnome 3.0. I think that it is time to create Gnome using Java programming language.
There is need discussion forum for Gnome 3.0.
> There is need discussion forum for Gnome 3.0.
http://gnomedesktop.org/node/2227
http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero
Sorry for being offtopic, but I was wondering if anyone knows when the roadmap for the unstable gnome on gnome.org will be updated to 2.11, b/c atm it’s still 2.9? Thnx!
(and yes, I know there’s some sort of draft on live.gnome.org)
I suppose one benefit of a Java-based DE would be reduced load time for other Java apps and applets. As it is I prefer avoiding Java app(let)s when possible.
I kinda doubt Gnome’s gonna go that way, though.
Have a look at http://www.gnomejournal.org. There is an article with all the changes of 2.10 and it seems that you can run something using “Gnome SuperUser” via “Open with”.
In Debian it’s gksuexec. Don’t know about other distros.
How about turning some Gtk apps into GNOME apps. That way GNOME isn’t just a desktop environment with a bunch of Gtk apps that are pretending to be GNOME apps. Let’s finally have some consistency! If I need to change an application’s settings, I know where to go – under Edit. Although that’s not the best place for it IMO – there should probably be an “Application” menu, and settings/preferences should be under there. The Edit menu is more for editing whatever document I’m viewing.
More speed! On my AMD64 with 1Gb and a 6600GT, it is far less snappier than Windows. But you all knew that anyway.
I would like an option adding to the theme manager that lets me select whether I have two bars (one at the top and one at the bottom), or whether I have one like Windows. I don’t like losing screen real estate to the second bar, so I usually have to spend time re-configuring things.
If Epiphany is going to be the standard GNOME browser, give me folders in the bookmark menu and give me a drop down box for the address bar, so I don’t have to type addresses by hand. The developers may think this is the best way (bookmarks and addresses), but I don’t.
Fix GEdit – it’s so slow to start up and shutdown on older machines when I have lots of files open in it. Also, I prefer the layout of Kate, so how about a file list down the left side of the app, from which I can select open files.
Oh and hurry up with Anjuta 2 already! Anjuta 1 is just painful to use.
Improve the usability of the developer site. I did a test and tried to find documentation on how to open the File browser from a GNOME app, and failed abysmally.
Get rid of Glade, and create a GUI designer like QTDesigner, which is a much better approach (create window, run the GUI compiler to generate a class, and then inherit from that class for your app. Much cleaner!
Just my thoughts and preferences, so feel free to ignore .
If it hasn’t been done until now then what makes you confident that this will happen anytime soon in the near future ? Even if GNOME jumps from v2 to v3, the stuff won’t show up over night.
I hope here are some Gnome-Hackers, does Nautilus support the “Thumbnail Managing Standard” version 0.7.0?
I don’t expect it be done anytime soon – did I imply that? Don’t be so arrogant and stop trying to be so smart.
These are just some things I would like to see improved in the future, i.e. in 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 or whenever.
> Don’t be so arrogant and stop trying to be so smart.
Is this a general behavior from the GNOME fraction ? No need to become insulting here.
I am pleased with progress of GNOME. Today, it has the cleanest, simplest and most consistent user interface of any desktop platform. Most impressively, it continues to strive for usability. GNOME 2.10 has also seen a lot of optimizations and performance improvements. On my 1.4GHz Athlon box with 256MB of RAM it runs snappier and smoother than Windows XP. It also consumes less memory.
Kudos to the GNOME community. You have your heads on top of your shoulders. I hope more free software developers continue to develop applications for this great environment. There is already an impressive list of GNOME applications at gnomefiles.org. What is discussion about desktop environments without pretty screen shots?
http://www.deviantart.com/view/14282547/
I think I shouldn’t feed feed the troll but…
If the gnome is so bad, what desktop do you like? KDE? The guys of KDE think Gnome has very good ideas and they are implementing it for KDE4.
mmmm…
Just trolling, isn’t it?
Anonymous: “What progress ? In what areas since GNOME 2.0 (till 2.10.1) had the feeling to still use the same Desktop with the same stuff.”
http://makeashorterlink.com/?I1FE11AEA
Anonymous: “How comes we have three different Window types in GNOME, how come we have apps written in GTK+, apps written in GNOMEUI and apps written in BONOBOUI ?”
Are you a programmer? There is no relationship between the libraries you mentioned. I suggest you refrain from discussing issues you know little about. It makes you look silly.
Anonymous: “How ?”
By providing an environment that is easy to use, aesthetically satisfying and consistent. By being anal about usability and productivity for all users.
Anonymous: “You can’t see optimizations so your explaination is wrong. Optimizations can only be codewise and these things you don’t see, you can only measure them by time.”
You can. Designers have been optimizing and refactoring user interfaces for years now. Optimizations are not exclusive to code.
Anonymous: “And their mouth tied up their bunghole. Why ? I mean people shouldn’t waste their time.”
Happy trolling.
Gnome & KDE
Pears & Apples (the fruit)
there both good just there is no need to get rid of any.
Stop with all the bad talk.
“A”
“How comes we have three different Window types in GNOME”
We don’t. Bonobo and GnomeApp are deprecated. Everybody uses GtkWindow now.
I’m not part of any faction smartie pants.
“If Epiphany is going to be the standard GNOME browser, give me folders in the bookmark menu and give me a drop down box for the address bar, so I don’t have to type addresses by hand. The developers may think this is the best way (bookmarks and addresses), but I don’t.
“
Actually you can have subfolders. Try importanting your firefox bookmarks, and if you have subfolders there they will be translated into subfolders in Epiphany.
I haven’t tried manually creating them, but if they can be imported then I bet they can be manually created. I shall try this when I get home and have an opportunity.
The global menu bar is an unpopular user interface paradigm that made sense in a era when running multiple graphic user applications concurrently was impossible, or limited. Besides, apart from geeks, and hardcore Amiga/Macintosh users, most users will find the idiosyncrasies of the global menu bar surprising and confusing. I do not believe the aim of GNOME is to surprise or confuse its users and potential users.
> The guys of KDE think Gnome has very good ideas and they
> are implementing it for KDE4.
What do you think they want to implement in KDE4 that comes from GNOME ?
> Are you a programmer? There is no relationship between
> the libraries you mentioned.
Exactly, they have no relationship to each other, but yet they provide functions to generate GUI, the GTK Application Window behaves differently than for example a GNOME UI Application Window and also differently than a Bonobo UI Application Window. They have no relationship to each other but yet they provide three different and still commonly used ways to generate visible user interfaces.
So speaking about ‘consistency’ and ‘aesthetics’ in this context is quite misleading if none of these three types of Windows behave similar or look similar.
> I suggest you refrain from discussing issues you know
> little about. It makes you look silly.
I can guarantee you that my ‘little knowledge’ as you might want to make it look like has a years solid background knowledge about GNOME development.
> You can. Designers have been optimizing and refactoring
> user interfaces for years now. Optimizations are not
> exclusive to code.
He was refering to speed issues and not aesthetical issues. Drawing 5 buttons more or less in a Window gives no huge noticable speed improvements except in critical applications of course. Putting Button A from top left to bottom right doesn’t give you any optimizations either.
give me a drop down box for the address bar, so I don’t have to type addresses by hand. The developers may think this is the best way (bookmarks and addresses), but I don’t.
”
Yeah I have the same problem with Epiphany.
and I want an option to not hide the stickies when I press the ShowDesktop applet button.
> We don’t. Bonobo and GnomeApp are deprecated. Everybody
> uses GtkWindow now.
I am aware of this situation. Please go ahead and tell that to the dozens of people who wrote their application using the deprecated stuff. Once BonoboUI and GnomeUI is fully deprecated people start over rewriting huge leaps of their applications. Specially those who embedd Bonobo controls will have a pain to sort these things out using GTK+ we end up in major application rewrite. The rewrite that could have been better spent to improve the application rather than rewriting it over and over again. I speak from personal experience here.
normal users will find anything outside of windows paradigms “suprising and confusing” (i would have actually used “alien and scary”). that users are not used to it really isnt a good enough reason not to do something.
that being said, i personally think that the gnome guys need to go all out, and do their own implementation of the spatial paradigm across the board. OR decide its not a good idea and carry on with the way everyone else does it. I find the whole hybrid thing they have going now more trouble then its worth.
“that users are not used to it really isnt a good enough reason not to do something.”
I have to disagree with you on that point. I argue it is better to strive for an interface that is familiar to a larger percentage of users, than to come up with novel paradigms to require relearning new concepts and breaking old habbits for no significant gain. No evidence suggest that a global menu bar quadriples on average any users’ productivity. All I hear are fanatical ramblings about Fitts law from geeks that are religiously connected to Apple’s interface paradigms.
“that being said, i personally think that the gnome guys need to go all out, and do their own implementation of the spatial paradigm across the board. OR decide its not a good idea and carry on with the way everyone else does it. I find the whole hybrid thing they have going now more trouble then its worth.”
I do not believe the global menu bar reinforces the spatial paradigm. I also do not find it prudent for GNOME to be a land mine of experimental ideas. A new project is better suited for that. However, I agree GNOME needs an underlying user interface identity. However, they need to be based on current trends and studies, not decade old usability studies. And definately not to satisfy some nostalgic Amiga/Macintosh geek.
Personally, I think the global menu is a bad idea for GNOME, and its implementation isn’t flawless on the Mac either.
And I want a distro that include MONO and all its cool applications too.
Anonymous: “Exactly, they have no relationship to each other, but yet they provide functions to generate GUI, the GTK Application Window behaves differently than for example a GNOME UI Application Window and also differently than a Bonobo UI Application Window. They have no relationship to each other but yet they provide three different and still commonly used ways to generate visible user interfaces.
So speaking about ‘consistency’ and ‘aesthetics’ in this context is quite misleading if none of these three types of Windows behave similar or look similar.”
API frameworks usually provide more than one way to accomplish tasks. But that has nothing to do with consistency and aesthetics that end users, like my Mother, are exposed to.
And if you were so knowledgeable about GNOME development you wouldn’t have listed deprecate APIs as a means to illustrate inconsistencies in the GNOME APIs. Sheesh, there are hundreds of other glaring examples. As an end user, I don’t give a damn whether an apps uses GTK, GNOMEUI or Bonoboui to window shells. For all I care, the developer can rewrite his own library in Glib.
Anonymous: He was refering to speed issues and not aesthetical issues. Drawing 5 buttons more or less in a Window gives no huge noticable speed improvements except in critical applications of course. Putting Button A from top left to bottom right doesn’t give you any optimizations either.
It does, the less widgets you have on screen, the less system resources you consume. Duh!
As an end user, I don’t give a damn whether an apps uses GTK, GNOMEUI or Bonoboui to window shells. For all I care, the developer can rewrite his own library in Glib.
True that, as an end user I dont really care eather.
> But that has nothing to do with consistency and
> aesthetics that end users, like my Mother, are exposed
> to.
Unfortunately your mother is the huge minority of the overall audience using this desktop.
Anonymous: “Unfortunately your mother is the huge minority of the overall audience using this desktop.”
Windows, the most used desktop environment in the world, does not expose its APIs to end users. So what’s your point? Do you understand the objectives of GNOME?
http://www.gnome.org/about/
You guys really have to come down and learn how to discuss in a respectful manner.
Other than that the comments here have really made me laugh!
> Windows, the most used desktop environment in the world,
> does not expose its APIs to end users. So what’s your
> point? Do you understand the objectives of GNOME?
That is right, but telling the audience outside that GNOME has reached the level of features and usefulness of Windows is simply a lie and I am speaking as a developer to you and not as a user. So as a developer I do have a solid background of proper development and due my involvement inside GNOME I know what I am talking about. Your former replyers are usually nitpickers who want to ride on banalities trying crush my arguments while I do assume they and many others know good enough what I am up to.
When I see that one guy above hyping GNOME then it’s his good right while his writing easily reminds me of marketing talk than what a normal user would say. This person uses terms like ‘clean’, ‘consistent’, ‘usability’, ‘accessibility’.. Things a normal user (which you refer to) don’t know about. So I tend to assume that this user is not so normal as he wants to make himself sound. Your mom or the others persons mom don’t even know what Linux is. This kind of audience usually runs into a store throws his or her 1000 euro on the counter and buy a normal PC with Windows and Office pre-installed. This special kind of ‘moms’ you are refering to are usually that kind of moms who have children involved into Linux and who are talked to death by their kids to use Linux and who get Linux installed to use it. Other moms are the technical moms who have a solid background of IT or even programming who use Linux but these kind of moms usually contribute code or do other technical stuff. The amount of ‘moms’ versus amount of hardcore technical linux geeks doesn’t weight the moms are still the huge minority. And yes, if your mom doesn’t care and only want working applications then why does the GNOME people run so much behind HIG and other stuff going in that area ? The HIG and all this usability bs is there to offer your mom a clean non irrtating application to get their work done. But your mom would feel confused if she sit on her chair and ponders why one of her Toolbars has a deatachable drag handle, the other not and she ponders why one Toolbar has Icons+Text and the other Icons only and she ponders why things don’t work out similary as on other GNOME applications. Aesthetics is one major part of the HIG and sadly these things wont apply on the majority of applications.
> And I want a distro that include MONO and all its cool applications too.
SUSE 9.3? But I wouldn’t call this Alpha Beagle which had to be disabled by default cool.
Anonymous,
My Mom is not a geek. She does not ponder about detachable tool bars and she does not nitpick about icon versus text placements.
Furthermore, all GNOME applications look, feel and behave in a consistent manner. Heck, even 99% of GTK+ applications look, feel and behave in a manner consistent with GNOME applications, although many of them do not adhere strictly to the HIG.
Finally, I did not say my mother is illiterate or uneducated. She does understand the concept of usability, consistency, accessibility and aesthetics. You don’t need a doctorate degree in software engineering and interface design to spot applications that are hard to use, and those that are easy to use. Accessibility, consistency, usability and aesthetics are not terms restricted to software, you know. Their usage spans several fields of human knowledge.
Anonymous,
An environment that is useful to one user may be useless to another. So calling me a liar because I find GNOME as capable as Windows, if not more, is both short sighted and narrow minded. If you do not find GNOME useful, that is your prerogative, not mine. It still does not destroy the fact that it strives to be a clean, consistent, usable and aesthetically pleasing environment. I can’t say the same for Windows.
“The global menu bar is an unpopular user interface paradigm that made sense in a era when running multiple graphic user applications concurrently was impossible, or limited.”
Wrong. A global menu bar has been proven to be faster to use than a floating menu bar that can appear in any position. It’s hardly “unpopular”–you’re just projecting your own Windows-raised beliefs.
The Amiga and other operating systems that weren’t single-application also used global menu bars. Is that the sound of your argument crumbling?
“Besides, apart from geeks, and hardcore Amiga/Macintosh users, most users will find the idiosyncrasies of the global menu bar surprising and confusing.”
Wrong. Usability studies already show that users find floating menu bars that can appear anywhere to be confusing and slower to use, forcing them to slowdown their mouse movement and pinpoint the menu. Global menu bars are practical, faster, and there is no reason not to use them. People are just defending their Windows-raised beliefs.
“I do not believe the aim of GNOME is to surprise or confuse its users and potential users.”
Then it had better adopt a global menu bar.
Have a look at http://www.gnomejournal.org. There is an article with all the changes of 2.10 and it seems that you can run something using “Gnome SuperUser” via “Open with”.
Thanks, I ended up downloading the source for gnomesu and compiling it to run on Fedora Core 4. Gnomesu is exactly what I was looking for. It is too bad it doesn’t come with Gnome. I like the way KDE allows one to right-click on a script and set it to open using a runas property. It would be nice if Nautilus would allow a runas property also.
Maybe you guys prefer menu systems that have already been proven to be up to two times slower to use, but I prefer using the best out there and not settling for what Linux and Windows tell me is the Right Way(tm). I guess you guys want to fly in the face of usability studies and Fitt’s Law. Have at it!
I’d like to see these studies showing people use computers faster with global menu bars. I understand people will be able to get to the menu faster, but that doesn’t mean the whole experience would be faster.
> So calling me a liar because I find GNOME as capable as
> Windows, if not more, is both short sighted and narrow
> minded. If you do not find GNOME useful, that is your
> prerogative, not mine. It still does not destroy the
> fact that it strives to be a clean, consistent, usable
> and aesthetically pleasing environment. I can’t say the
> same for Windows.
But you are lying if you tell everyone that GNOME is clean, consistent, usable and aesthetically pleasing because it’s not true in many cases. You base your knowledge on sibjective things that you see with the first view on things. I base my solid background and knowledge of what’s behind the hood. So by knowing that people use different ways of creating an application window I know that the result at the end can’t be identical and stuff that are not identical can’t be consistent and aesthetical.
You are right that I am refering to deprecated things such as BonoboUI and GnomeUI but yet the majority of GNOME components still use them. A theoretical knowledge that these libraries are deprecated doesn’t give the fact that every GNOME application is changed or has changed in the moment as we speak. That’s why I said earlier, if it hasn’t been done by now then what makes you sure that it will happen with GNOME 3 ?
Even if we speak about GNOME 3, then we still need to make ourselfs clear that a GNOME 3 won’t have all changes necessary to get rid of the deprecated stuff (while it is indeed urgent needed to do this to make GNOME as you say, consistent, clean and aesthetical looking).
We are in the process of huge changes in the code again and the process seeing something new will stagnate again. The current applications that come bundeles with GNOME are maybe nice looking but not really functional for daily praxis (one example the new filechooser that nerve the guts out of people).
Assuming this, with GNOME 2 to the day were GNOME 3 starts to be hacked on, we stepped 10 steps forward with GNOME, sadly due to heavy rewrite needs of CORE elements getting rid of the deprecated junk we dont step forward another 5 steps, no we go back 5 steps with GNOME because we reach a process of destability again due to rewrite of code and don’t really proceed with new code and new features that people call for. Then there are also plenty of people who still keep using GNOME 2 for at least another 1-2 years before they switch over to GNOME 3.
Saying that GNOME offers the same functionality as Windows is simply a lie because GNOME doesn’t offer the same features as Windows offer, this includes hardware configuration from the Desktop, configuration of your Network from within your Desktop, Installing new drivers from within your Desktop and many other things starting from getting exactly these applications to get the work done. I don’t speak about kids toys here I speak about serious work with a shitload of cash in its back, work where I need serious applications for. Applications that I like to see acting, working, feeling similar to the rest of the Desktop that I am using. Not to forget that there are no RAD applications for GNOME to create new applications in a valuable short time. Cost is an important keyfactor here. People want a lot of solutions hacked together in the minimum possible time (something not really possible with GNOME). Another lie from your side that I really like to crush is that GNOME is as good as Windows. It’s not because Windows is a full Operating System, a Kernel a IPC mechanism, drivers, hardware accelerating drivers, Support, Desktop, Applications. We would call such a collection a Distribution on Linux or BSD, but since GNOME is just the Desktop Environment only it’s not compareable with Windows. But if you still want to continue believing that GNOME already bet the hell out of Windows then KDE must be already miles ahead of Windows and GNOME alltogether.
The only way we can get code ported over to new an non-deprecated widgets is if we have contributors enough to get the actual work done. If not it’s a slow going process that might take us another release cycle or two. Why not chip in seeing as you come from a background of GNOME development and have a deep understanding of the code and “what’s under the hood”?
A lot of work has gone into the latest release to remove deprecated widgets like GnomeAbout, and others, but there are only so many hours in a day and we still need more developers to get there at a faster pace than what you see now.
I also think some of your arguments wrt comparing Windows with open source desktop environments are a bit off target. Sure Windows contains hardware accelerated drivers. In our software stack they belong in and are available in X. Same thing for kernel related things. There are desktop related projects that work on tighter integration with the kernel subsystems like HAL, but we’re not trying to supply a kernel here. Why does that make open source desktops a worse alternative than Windows? We already have a kernel for crying out loud.
You might want to check out the new modules in GNOME 2.10.x too since it seems you’ve missed the fact that you can configure network connections etc in GNOME now.
Add bookmark, new topic
Voila new sub-folder
Anonymous,
Who’s the liar? GNOME does not have system adminstrative tools? Ever heard of gnome-system-tools?
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/
GNOME does not have RAD tools?
http://glade.gnome.org/
http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/
How can claim to have so much knowledge of GNOME’s architecture, you even make it sound like you have written a couple of GNOME apps, yet you have never come accross the tools I listed above?
Dude, you’re full of shit.
First of all, even with bonobo, gnomeui, and a ton of apps still using gtk1 (for the speed), gnome is by far the most consistant environment for linux.
Saying that GNOME offers the same functionality as Windows is simply a lie because GNOME doesn’t offer the same features as Windows offer, this includes hardware configuration from the Desktop, configuration of your Network from within your Desktop, Installing new drivers from within your Desktop and many other things starting from getting exactly these applications to get the work done. I don’t speak about kids toys here I speak about serious work with a shitload of cash in its back, work where I need serious applications for.
unless you are an admin, serious work does not include fiddling with drivers. that can keep you from your work, but a comparison of the way windows and linux handle drivers is another subject. personally, i find using a five year old operating system (windows xp) a royal pain to set up, as all the drivers for even older hardware are either not there or very old. i have found linux to be completely painless from the driver side of things, but all my hardware is fairly standard.
Applications that I like to see acting, working, feeling similar to the rest of the Desktop that I am using.
gnome is about as consistant as windows was back when you could tell the difference between MFC and that borland ui toolkit. if you really want consistancy, buy a mac, they are lightyears ahead of everyone else.
Not to forget that there are no RAD applications for GNOME to create new applications in a valuable short time.
RAD is one of those buzzwords that are thrown around alot. I have heard java described as a RAD environment before. If you are talking about vb, then there is GNOMBAS which is aparently quite cool. If i need to rapidly develop an application for some small thing (the only situation i have ever used vb), i will turn to python or perl, which are cross platform and blow the pants off any basic implementation.
Cost is an important keyfactor here. People want a lot of solutions hacked together in the minimum possible time (something not really possible with GNOME).
I’m sorry, that doesnt make much sense. Are you talking about the need for vb? i had honestly thought upper management had gotten over its vb infatuation, but i guess there is still a market for it. try python and a toolkit binding, you will find it much more powerful, stable, speedy, and all around more enjoyable to work with and maintain.
Another lie from your side that I really like to crush is that GNOME is as good as Windows.
the only ones who think there are “sides” are zealots. i can explain to you why i like gnome, but i am talking about a tool i use, not the country i come from or the religion i am a part of.
It’s not because Windows is a full Operating System, a Kernel a IPC mechanism, drivers, hardware accelerating drivers, Support, Desktop, Applications.
Thats just gold. Kernel and OS are the same thing, IPC is a part of the API, drivers have existed in every os for decades, “hardware accelerating” drivers dont exist, support isnt a part of the os (and windows support is abysmal), by desktop i assume you mean a GUI, which has been in virtually every os for decades, and applications, which have been around since before operating systems (in the modern sense of the word).
It seems like you just pulled random generic os components out of thin air without that great an understanding of what you are talking about, and then used that list to describe what windows is.
We would call such a collection a Distribution on Linux or BSD, but since GNOME is just the Desktop Environment only it’s not compareable with Windows.
Actually, even though you are picking at straws, you have brought up the biggest problem with linux, the DE will never have complete control over the environment. I would love to see some reiser4 functionality start comming into the linux desktop space, but that wont happen when the DE has to support operating systems that dont support it.
But if you still want to continue believing that GNOME already bet the hell out of Windows then KDE must be already miles ahead of Windows and GNOME alltogether.
Well, the design goals of kde/gnome are remarkably similar to windows/macos. KDE follows the windows belief that complexity is something to be embraced, not minimized, and does so quite a bit more efficiently then windows in the vast majority of areas. There is a strong emphasis on technical stuff (ask a kde user why its so cool, and chances are stuff like KIO will come up).
gnome on the other hand follows the mac philosophy that design should happen from the ui down, and that all the features in the world are pointless if its a pain to use them. very, very, very different take on how to make a good os. just from a user experience point of view, both beat windows hands down.
what is really cool is that the two major DEs have both stopped bickering, and instead have taken alot from each other. kde is getting more usable with every release, and gnome technology is getting better and better.
…which makes the jihad that the users seem to be infatuated with all the more confusing.
i like global menu bars.
they save a few pixels.
they work well if a window is to small for a full menu bar
they let you have the standard file management menus on the desktop (ie, if you are in nautilus you can do file->new folder. on the desktop you can’t)
whats with the gimp having two file menus? one in the toolbar and one in the document window?
they are quick (according to fitts law, which says thing are easier to click on if they are either big or on the edge of the screen)
they could be optional (i think kde has them as an option)
ok, there are problems when people have 2 monitors, maybe someone can figure out the best way to deal with that fairly uncommon situation. (apple let you choose which screen to put them on)
As recently as a week ago, I had never heard of Fitt’s Law. Now I wish I could *stop* hearing about it
There’ve already been arguments from both sides in
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10327
IMHO enough counterarguments came up that simply citing Fitt’s Law now is unconvincing.
The biggest counterargument being that Fitt’s law will get you *to* the global menu bar, but it won’t get you *back* to the application you were running.
>The biggest counterargument being that Fitt’s law will get you *to* the global menu bar, but it won’t get you *back* to the application you were running.
but after you have selected a menu option something happens (eg mail is check, file is saved, file is opened). this takes at least a few seconds, so the time after you select a menu item is dead time.