GNOME 2.0 was released less than two days ago and while I was using its betas on and off, for some time now, I was anticipating this final release with impatience. The project was supposed to see this release almost a year ago, but GTK+ 2.0 was not ready in time, dragging Gnome’s development down as well. But now it is here, so let’s see what this new release brings to the Unix desktop.
As many users pointed out in forums, the new release is mostly a rewrite of the Gnome desktop environment to the GTK+ 2.0.x API. The new version of the popular C-based API brings some nice new features, like doublebuffering, smooth resizing (with medium success I might add, when compared to MacOSX and BeOS 6-Dano’s algorithms/techniques), a nice-looking tree view, native support for anti-alias fonts and more. Gnome 1.x applications are not compatible with the new library, so in order to take advantage of these new features, the application will need to be massively updated to the new GTK+ API. Possibly this is the reason why there are not many Gnome applications yet ported to the new framework, neither the Gnome itself includes many applications or preference panels as it used to. For example, the memu panel, merely includes 3 options. Same goes for the other setting panels (when available), they lack the flexibility and number of options found in the previous version of Gnome.
The Gnome menu panel now resembles a bit of MacOS. It sits on the top of the desktop, and no matter what I tried, I can’t change its position. The window list can be found on the bottom of the screen. So, you get two gnome panels, one on the top and one on the bottom. I found this default configuration, bone-headed, at best. The panel on top only includes an ‘Applications’ and ‘Actions’ menu, then you get a huge unused space and then, at the right most side, you get the clock, and a menu which is equivelant to a chooser/finder as found on MacOS. It was a matter of time, before I deleted my bottom window list and embedded it on the main panel, to use all this unused space (note: I use a 1280×1024 resolution).
People will always argue that we are lucky that there is an option to do so, but the main point is, that the default configuration is what most people use. It is common knowledge that only a small percentage of users actually change (or have the right to change, in a business environment) their desktop and add/remove icons, themes or configurations. If the default configuration is not intuitive, most people will still live with it. Or they will switch to KDE. Or go back to Windows or MacOS. That’s the reality.
Among the obvious configuration options missing is a prefs panel to configure your screensavers, or a single place to get all your system panels. They are scattered either on subdirectories on Nautilus ‘Start Here’ page, or on ‘Applications’ sub-menus. Also, by having settings scattered to different panels it does not make it very clear where you could find some options. For example, you get two different panels ‘Desktop Theme’ and ‘Theme’ under the Desktop Preferences submenu, and then you get a ‘Desktop Theme Editor’ option on your System Tools. Now, which is which and what each one does? Good question.
I am sorry if I sounded harsh about the ‘bonehead’ word earlier, but this is 2x boneheaded. Every UI designer will laugh at this default setup of menus and even for the panels themselves, for not being able to configure themselves in one place in a clear manner, but having other theme panels for icons, other theme panels for GTK+ and other themes for the window manager etc. scattered throughout the memus, without giving a clear indication which one is which. And then, you get the Meta-Themes panel, which is supposedly here to fix this problem, by providing a service that can configure all these themes at once, but it loses itself among the other ‘theme’ panel offerings. The idea is good, but the way it is being presented, it is a UI disaster (same goes for KDE’s zillion theme panels as well, but at least they are under the same ‘umbrella’ in the Control Center).
The new Gnome 2 environment starts up much-much faster than Gnome 1.4 used to! It loads on my dual Celeron 533 in about 2-3 seconds, and this is indeed a major improvement. However, the speed ends there. Overall, Gnome 2 feels slower (and I compiled it with -03 and -march=i686 using gcc 3.1.1-CVS on my Mandrake Cooker). On Gnome 1.x if you needed some speed, you were just telling Nautilus to not draw the desktop and everything was fine. But if I turn off this option on the new Gnome, there are no icons drawing on the desktop anymore and I have no desktop context menu. I quite like the Nautilus drawing option, and I believe it was sensible for the Gnome project to pick Nautilus for the job, but some optimizations wouldn’t hurt.
And speaking about Nautilus, I am very pleased to see it coming of age. I can clearly see some BeOS-like elements into it, and of course this is of no surprise, as one of the Eazel developers that worked on it, was Pavel Cisler who also designed BeOS’ Tracker, and who today works at Apple on Finder.
My only problem with Nautilus was the inclusion of GTKhtml 2 as the main HTML renderer. GTKHtml is still extremely buggy. Its font sizes chosen are making the webpages unreadable, while it can’t browse links that have relative destination even if these links are on the same server (eg. comment.php instead of www.osnews.com/comment.php). While I understand that GTKHtml is far from done, the fact that is not done yet it should have been a good reason for not using it as the default HTML renderer on Nautilus. As far as I know, the guys over at CodeFactory haven’t touch its code almost for a year now (‘we are focusing on Mr. Project now‘ they told me back then) and the only real update that code have seen since then is its port to GTK+ 2.x.
Speaking about fonts, the new fonts coming with Gnome, like Nimbus, are great! Coupled with the AA engine, they give a really sexy look to the environment. Unfortunately, when launching Gnome for the first time, it picked as default an ugly sans serif font that it was also extremely small for the job (size 10). This is weird, because my Red Hat installation of Gnome 2-beta on my other machine, picked Nimbus correctly. Nimbus plus AA, looks like the default BeOS font. BeOS users will feel at home in this respect.
Gnome 2 comes with the Sawfish window manager as default. Everyone was raving about Metacity though, so I thought I should give it a go, and indeed I did so. Metacity seems a bit more lightweight than the feature-packed Sawfish. It does not have as many configuration options, but it works well and it plays well with the MetaThemes engine. For example, each time you change the GTK+ theme, the Metacity will pick it up and will adjust the color of the window manager. I am not sure if this is window manager’s job, but each time there is a new popup window, I would like it to get focus, but I found no such option anywhere to turn on. So, when I get IM’ed on the net, I do not even see the message windows, as they popup on the background. Pretty irritating to say the least. However, I like the simplicity of Metacity. Its themes are simple XML files and not always have accompanied images.
Gnome 2 does not come without its problems. I do not have sounds on my Gnome 2. I think that Gnome 2 assumes that you have Gnome 1.4 installed, and while I do have the libraries needed to run older GTK+ apps, I do not have the full installation, therefore, it can’t find the actual .wav files. The Sound panel argues that I should install the gnome-audio package, but a look at the 2.0 directory on many FTP servers, did not reveal such a package at all. On another note, Galeon stopped working from the moment I installed Gnome 2.0. And where are Pango’s multi-language settings to select another language for my keyboard? And where are the system tools for networking, or maybe a universal media player? Also, why the included system monitor can’t pick up both my CPUs? Oh, and I lost almost 2 paragraphs from this review, by typing it on the GTK+ 2.x updated Gedit text editor (which is also the default Gnome text editor). When I just place my cursor on the text, and then move my mouse away in order to type there, the program seems to think that I still have my button pressed and it keeps selecting my text. It happens so often that I was not always careful, and there go two full paragraphs. I changed my mouse settings from its Gnome panel, but it did not help the specific situation. Please note that the Kedit or Kwrite editors do not have the problem. Plus, scrolling this very document with Gedit is shamelessly slow when compared even to itself (or GXEdit) of the Gnome 1.x series.
These are small (or big, depending on the user) faults. As far as stability goes, I experienced on the final version individual crashes of some preference panels and applications that come with Gnome 2, but I have not experienced any true crash of its memu panels or Gnome itself that could take X down.
Gnome 2.0 is utilizing GConf, a Registry-like editor. Despite many of our readers getting shivers when hearing of the Windows Registry, I got to say I love GConf. It is a good idea and it is so easy to manipulate its values than the Registry itself. Partly this is because there are not many GTK+ 2.0 applications yet to populate its tree, but overall, you can find some cool options that you can’t find in the config panels. For example, if you want to be able to detach (tear-off) the menus of an application on Gnome 2, you need to hand-edit GConf.
The other important problem is the largely unfinished Help included. Only a handful of topics are discussed. A shame really. A commercial company would have never ship an OS or desktop environment with no real Help files. If this is how open source works, there would not be a chance that I would recommend any of this to my friends or family. Of course, such things prove right the people at MSNBC saying that Linux (and the rest X-based OSes) is not ready for the desktop. I am only here, to my dismay of course, to prove their conclusion right. (KDE has its own problems too, and I will come to that soon…)
The big question on any new release is ‘Whats New?’ or ‘What does it do more?’. In the case of Gnome 2, it does less, not more. GTK+ developers will of course be happy with the new API, and users will possibly enjoy the AA fonts, but other than that, users will not gain much more from this desktop environment. Hiding behind the ‘this is a mostly a release for developers’ excuse is not good enough for me. Gnome is around for years, and the GNU project was not able to deliver an outstanding version yet. Is this the best that the GNU project can offer to the Joe User who wants to switch away from the commercial option of OSX or Windows? Well, nice try.
I usually start my reviews with the positive points of a product and then continue with whatever I found as ‘bad’. In this case, I just can’t hide my dissapointment about the new version of Gnome. As a user, I expected more, and I want more. The new version removes the flexibility found on Gnome 1.x and it does not introduce anything really new or spectacularly interesting in its UI design. Gnome 2 fails to impress. It is not intuitive. It feels limited and not done yet. While it is not solidly stable yet on all of its respects, it is stable enough. But the ‘not done yet’ refers to the feature-set of the environment, not to its actual stability. It needs more work, it needs more enrichment at most places, and it needs even more refinement on the GUI and its scattered setting panels or on the small icons feeling ‘glued’ to the text on the menus. Because of this re-write of the Gnome environment, I keep feeling that this is version 1.0, and not 2.0. Except the name Gnome, not much are similar to Gnome 1.x, unless you are willing to re-configure all these panels away from their defaults. The non-similarity would possibly be a good thing (Gnome 1.x had UI flaws too), but in this case, it is not *yet*.
Overall: 6 / 10
> Whether you care to admit or not, you didn’t install GNOME 2.0 correctly.
What the f*ck are you talking about? I have installed everything that is available. I have also used the Garnome (recommended by the Gnome Project!!) and CVSGnome scripts on my other machines. They are exactly the same as this one. Don’t be stupid. Please.
Mandrake and Red Hat will have Gnome 2 in 6 months. Should I wait till then to write the review? And what do you think these distros will have differently? They will only have different menus. And maybe some configurations differences.
But the Gnome Project is primarily distributes SOURCES. And that is what I did. And as I said, Garnome/CVSGnome are looking and behaving same too.
this review i’ll sum up as:
“One person installed gnome2 and felt it wasn’t like Windows XP or BeOS.”
EOF
ps. i think Be is kinda neat too.
I wish this reviewer had put more time and energy into this review. For example, he complains of focusing issues in Metacity, when in actuality, Metacity hasn’t always had this issue, and most likely only does because it’s currently _unfinished_. It should also be noted that major companies like Red Hat, Ximian, and IBM all like and are pushing the GNOME 2 desktop forward, whereas, as far as my knowledge goes, KDE only has the support of various Linux users, and almost no corporate support.
>>Because it is FREE? I am sorry, but I got that G4 Cube for free too. And I got XP PRO only for $30…
Hey! Where can I get a FREE G4 Cube?
I want one if it’s free!
XP Pro? naaaahh, I don’t want it! I’d consider taking it if get $100 bucks with it.
Otherwise forget it.
ciao
yc
> “One person installed gnome2 and felt it wasn’t like Windows XP or BeOS.”
Stop trying to write what I never said and put mud on me. Talk like a man, not a rat.
I said that I want either a good traditional UI (in my preference something like as I wrote on the above comment), OR a new, FRESH IDEA about UIs. Gnome failed in both.
actually…
“I am talking about default configurations here cowboy. That’s the whole point of creating a successful and user friendly desktop. If you are expecting people to spend 20 mins to configure things, or 1 hour for first-time gnome users to configure stuff”
“For me, the best UI would be something between BeOS and XP.”
now then,
each of these statements are your personal preference,
so a UI, as you say, should be exactly what the $USER (in this case you) prefers without having to configure it.
“What the f*ck are you talking about? I have installed everything that is available.”
and mayhap an issue? curious why there was a /release directory along with the sources in 2.0.0
(see previous metatheme observation.)
” I said that I want either a good traditional UI (in my preference something like as I wrote on the above comment), OR a new, FRESH IDEA about UIs. Gnome failed in both.”
again that phrase “my preference.”
so something that works and looks like windows XP, BeOS or your other favorite desktops, or a fresh new *undefined* idea that you would like.
“That is the reality of the “Desktop”. If you want to have perplexed desktops, you better stay with the command line. Seriously.”
i’m sorry, but that’s just loopy, isn’t it? the statement doesn’t mean anything… oh heaven forbid you can configure how it looks and reacts… that’s a no-no… but oh, erm, it has to do what i’d like it to do right away though…
you seem to be saying the ‘defaults’ should be precisely
what you like, without having to do a lick…
so again i state, sounds like one person installed gnome2 and felt it wasn’t like other desktops they did like..
oh and also wasn’t like a magical salmon that danced and sang ‘God save the Queen’ in a cheerful voice while marching about the master bath. (that’s a fresh idea for UI design, wouldn’t you say?)
be cross at me if you like, but gnome seems fluffy to me, as does current KDE with the assortment of Window Managers i like to use. i personally don’t like how XP or OSX looks, and that’s all before we talk about stability and features. all of which, is what *i* prefer. perhaps i should write
an article, but i don’t see where i would find the time to become so ill-informed.
your review seemed that of a rank amateur and poorly researched.
also my opinion.
“Stop trying to write what I never said and put mud on me. Talk like a man, not a rat. ”
you can imagine me beating about on my chest and belching
while watching football on the telly it it helps.
ps. i’m not fond of cheese either.
> I have also used the Garnome (recommended by the Gnome
> Project!!) and CVSGnome scripts on my other machines.
not entirely true. it’s recommended by the gnome project because the author of garnome is the release coordinator of gnome who tries to push his buildsystem. usually jdub ignores and flames of cvsgnome which you can also read in the rc1 and rc2 release notes. all buildsystems got mentioned but cvsgnome got ignored. instead mentioning it to help other people getting their gnome 2 system set up and running he ignores it. either way it doesn’t help gnome at all. gnome developers are ignorant assholes after all. thats what i recall after all the years beeing along with them.
i also don’t share your opinion about cvsgnome beeing the same like garnome. cvsgnome imo is more advanced.
it goes a couple of different way and has a lot of advantages over garnome.
advantages:
– one single script, no dealing with a shitload of dirs.
– easy to understand.
– embedds a really big FAQ section that helps you solve all issues.
– cvsgnome keeps the tarballs when downloaded.
– cvsgnome downloads the tarballs first and builds afterwards. this is a big pro for people on dialups and no flatrates.
– cvsgnome has the capabilities to build either from CVS or TARBALLS
– it builds gnome AS IS. garnome usually adds patches to release tarballs. patches that no one confirms or verifies.
patches ? to a final release ? why ?
lemme explain disadvantages about that. look if you use CVS you can actually say. date this and that problem this and that. if you grab tarballs you can say that you found a bug in libzvt-2.0.1 for example then it’s easy to review or easy to report problems. but if someone applies patches to it and you get a problem with exactly this module. problem that probably goes through all the other apps e.g. if a library got patched then if something fails and you report it to bugzilla how will you ever figure out if its a real MODULE related problem or if it’s because of the hacked patch ?
aside from gender issues….
< from slashdot >
Most of his UI complaints seem to center around metatheme, the “Desktop theme editor” etc. Guess what? Metatheme was dropped from the GNOME 2.0 release about 4 months ago because it was deemed sufficiently unusable. While we plan to eventually have a single “themes” desktop preference page (that will, of course, replace the widget theme, etc, we’re not going to be duplicating menu entries), we decided to for GNOME 2.0 because Metatheme’s interface sucked so badly. It needs to be totally redone. I agree 100%.
It seems like 3/4 of his rant against GNOME usability is based on things installed by Metatheme. It is absurd to complain about GNOME’s interface based on something that was dropped from GNOME 2.0 because we knew it sucked.
-Seth (GNOME Usability Project Lead)
<from slashdot>
i only mention this because i pointed it out twice and no one seemed to care…
I have metatheme installed indeed (but I *do* use Gnome 2.0 Final), but I never changed or used anything from that panel. I fail to see how a single preference panel can change my opinion and the outcome of a whole review, of a whole desktop environment. Get real.
As for Seth the GNOME Usability Project Lead, who wrote the above, we are already exchanging emails, as we speak.
This place is so sickening.
Thanks for all those providing interesting comments and the short UI discussion. This is what I’m interested in, learning new stuff, discussing how to make things better.
Hopefully I’ll find a forum one day where this is actually the expected attitude.
I wish osnews would keep posting news and stay away from the flam… errr opinion articles, then it would be perfect..
> I wish osnews would keep posting news and stay away from the flam… errr opinion articles, then it would be perfect
A review is an opinion and a description of an experience.
When you will be settled with this fact, you will be happier.
I agree completely with all the arguments stated by Eugenia.
Gnome is not yet done. I won’t qualify it as elegant software. Gnome developers need to use heuristics methodology in the design of the user interaction part, and define better defaults preferences / behaviors. High-quality, reliable systems are produced by high-quality architecting, engineering, design, and build, not by inspection, test and rework.
I’m curious…how many folks participating in this discussion do have at least *some* basic knowledge about UI design? This discussion sounds to me like people who don’t know what a MMU is talking about kernel development.
Why should you use Gnome or an X desktop of any kind when you can use XP or Mac?
You insist on something revolutionary from Gnome or Kde. I don’t find anything revolutionary about XP or Mac OsX. There has been nothing revolutionary about desktops since the early Apple and Amiga. It’s just been evolution. Variations on the same old thing, at higher screen resolutions requiring more hardware to push the pixels around. People make too much of a big deal about desktops.
There are a lot of really good things about X – easy use of multiple desktops, configurability, separation of the OS from the interface, etc. I do not expect you to acknowledge these things, though, because after visiting this site for a week I’ve concluded that you have a strong emotional bias against free software. It shows through in almost everything you write. Why, I’m not sure. It may be the failure of BeOS, causing you to hold Linux responsible for lack of sales of your favorite proprietary OS. It was not Linux but MS that ran BeoS out of buiness with its bullying of vendors to prevent BeOS preinstallation.
One good reason to use X was less bloat until quite recently when both Gnome and Kde started competing with Windows XP in hardware and resource requirements. Still, XP is the clear winner in that category followed closely by OsX.
Again, cost. So you got some hardware and software gratis for reviewing products. But applications on these systems aren’t free. And these systems are not free for most people, unless they want to do illegal things. As a reviewer you should consider more than your own selfish, personal needs.
Finally, freedom. I hope you have been reading the stories on Digital Rights Management that you print here (Palladium) and that you are prepared to surrender even the illusion that you actually own any of the proprietary software on your systems. No. You merely rent that software, under very restrictive licensing terms. In the future expect all proprietary software to require product activation and approval from Microsoft or a Microsoft proxy before it will cooperate with your hardware which you didn’t pay for either. You will have to install each proprietary system on a different box, so unless your sponsors are prepared to be a lot more generous, you might have to choose between Beos, Mac and Windows.
Which side do you want to be on? The side of corporations and governments trying to control every aspect of our lives or the side of freedom?
You have made your choice, and continue to reaffirm it here shamelessly. Everyone has his or her price. I suppose yours is some free hardware and proprietary software to run on it.
I didn’t even mention security issues with proprietary systems. But evidently you are also trusting in Big Brother to take care of that issue for you with even more restrictions on what software you can install to curb your own instincts to compile software, experiment with different operating systems, and review products. Those things which you hold dear will become illegal if your proprietary sponsors have their way. The existence of this web site depends on free software and a free internet. Having closed your mind to that reality and hardened your heart, you won’t miss the many benefits of freedom you now enjoy untill you lose them. There will be much weeping an gnashing of teeth when you realize the consequences of choices you have made.
One can’t hold Joe User responsible for passively going along with whatever terms Big Brother offers, but I hold you to a higher standard, because your web site can have some influence in how things turn out. Even Joe User can only be pushed so far, though. Unlike you he has no vested interest in the failure of free software and the promotion of what is not free.
I do not wish for this to be seen as another negative rant, but I really-really need to say this.
One of the two paragraphs I lost when writting this review with GEdit was about the Open/Save dialogs of Gnome 2.
Compared to XP, KDE, OSX and BeOS Tracker’s Open/Save dialogs, the Gnome 2 one is exactly the same as Gnome 1x’s: Primitive.
To get to a directory somewhere you have to click your way through and scroll and click and scroll and click. There is no way you can have favorites, or “shortcut places” or just autocomplete the path on a text input form. This is really primitive, it works like with the Win 3.1 apps.
The second paragraph was about the lack of a menu editor for the creation or deletion or editing of the Application menus.
“A review is an opinion and a description of an experience.”
Everyone has an opinion… It’s bad enough that people fight about their preferences whereever they can, website editors should _not_ encourage them or even take part of it.
The “experience” part of your review was actually quite good IMO (I didn’t even knew about the new font) and has (or should have) lead to some interesting discussions (especially about how to make things better). The “opinion” piece was pure flamebait though…
Please try to stay constructive next time. If you don’t care for something, then don’t write about it! If you care about it, then provide suggestions for improvements instead of simply stating it would be worthless.
For example the “bone-headed” panel config. I asked you why it’s bone-headed because you didn’t in your review. A discussion about this could probably lead to some improvements. Just putting it down and then don’t react to questions about it anymore isn’t constructive in the slightest.
I also quickly want to answer two other people…
Pez: “”My way or the highway” is not welcome around these parts, Spark. A design that is intuitive for *you* and that works for *you* does not necessarily work for *all*, nor is it necessarily the best way to do it bar none.”
I’m sorry if it sounded like I wanted to defend “my” way of doing things but that wasn’t the case. I’m just interested in interface discussions because I’m constantly looking for better setups. You _can_ try to discuss objectively about this issue if you try to keep your learned behaviour away from it. I thought the arguments from Anonymous where quite interesting so I thought about them but found also arguments that speak against some of the proposals (like a topmenu), nothing more, nothing less. I’m always open to completely new suggestions although I also found that “just making it different” won’t work.
digerata: “This is the *EXACT* attitude that will prevent Linux from ever being a desktop replacement. Saying it is unfair to compare a free solution to a commercial one when that free solution is trying to replace it is absolute hogwash!”
Again, you completely missunderstood me. My point is, that Free Software has nothing to do with commercial or freeware. So if you compare a freeware product to a commercial product, you could say that freeware doesn’t work but you can’t say that Free Software doesn’t work. There _are_ commercial products based upon the freeware Free Software that is Gnome 2, namely Ximian, Mandrake, Red Hat, etc. They all deliver commercial quality distributions of this software, complete with support and “user readyness”. Free Software is _not_ opposed to commercial software, it’s opposed to proprietory software and nothing else.
“I fail to see how a single preference panel can change my opinion and the outcome of a whole review, of a whole desktop environment. Get real.”
no, just invalidates it further, if that’s possible.
note: metatheme is rather more than single preference panel,
but hardly matters now, does it?
i’m not at all that interested in a change to your review.
just pointing out your review lacks any real merit.
a fluff opinion piece on a non-default installation of a product that was installed in a questionable way by a soul
that didn’t like it very much.
“A review is an opinion and a description of an experience.”
this one is.
in general one looks for educated opinions from qualified
persons, and a non biased description of the experience.
this one is not.
“As for Seth the GNOME Usability Project Lead, who wrote the above, we are already exchanging emails, as we speak.”
i would imagine…
What are you people talking about? I use gnome 1.4 (ximian) everyday. It runs great. It works better and looks better than the other desktops I have available (KDE, WIN/ME/2000) and much better than my experiences with XP. Help files in commercial software? Are you serious? Google beats the crap out of the Office 2000 help system.
Eugenia,
You should’ve seen me 5 days ago when I was trying to install gentoo properly on my home PC. My f*cking rebuilt kernel wouldn’t recognize my USB stuff properly, but I’ve got it sorted out and I’m back in love with it.
It seems you wrote this article, while you still felt like I did back when I was struggling with the kernel… Not an objective, or reasoned position to assess a product from…
As kirby said, one looks for educated opinions from qualified persons, and an unbiased description of the experience.
You might (I’m unsure) be qualified, but I won’t be looking for any more opinions from you, as they are definitely biased. To be honest, you sound genuinely angry with the results the developers of this product produced and with the experience you were forced to endure in trying to assess this product.. And who were you reviewing this for? I don’t think that most of us are newbs, and Gnome 2.0 isn’t ready for newbies. As a product it’s only available to (and packaged for) us bleeding-edge techie types?! A little premature on the review, or at least for an audience this product isn’t packaged for yet…
Perhaps, as some have suggested you should have waited for Ximian or Redhat to provide a binary build in a commercial state. Heck, I just got it out of gentoo, and it looks great so far.
Note to the author:
When taking screenshots to post them on the Web, don’t use JPEG. The format is lossy, and it makes the images blurred. Instead, use PNG.
JPEG is for real pictures, like those taken with a digital camera. PNG is better suited for artificially-generated images, like screenshots or vector graphics.
I posted this initially on slashdot, but I devoted so much time to it, that I decided to also submit it to the root of this evil piece
Lots has been said about Eugenia’s errors. I’ve found other ones, plus some omissions I don’t want to go completely unnoticed. Some may repeat what others have said here or on /. but make me so angry I have to dissect them.
Eugenia says: “The big question on any new release is ‘Whats New?’ or ‘What does it do more?’. In the case of Gnome 2, it does less, not more”
Well, if you omit the new stuff from the review, it’s easy to present that conclusion. Here are the omissions, so numerous and noteworthy in what is supposed to be a review that I find it hard to not see intention. All of those and more stuff can be easily found in the press release http://www.gnome.org/pr-gnome20.html and in the release notes http://www.gnome.org/start/2.0/releasenotes.html. I’d expect that a reviewer reads those docs.
No mentioning of atk, the accessibility toolkit. atk makes gtk+ accessable to , e.g., screen readers and gives it full keyboard navigability. This is a major improvement, since it makes Gnome usable by users with certain disabilities, and it makes it possible to be used in certain organizations like governmental agencies that are required by law to only use software that has this feature. And keyboard nav is good for everybody
Only a brief mentioning of pango, the internalization library, in context of not finding a config option. This is unfortunate, but isn’t doing justice to the importance of pango. It furthers internationalization, e.g., by giving gtk the ability to use right-to-left languages, languages with ligatures and those with reordering. You can now mix different languages and scripts in documents. This opens up Gnome to hosts of new users, e.g., in arabic speaking countries. I’m rather surprised that Eugenia, being Greek, presents herself ignorant to pango’s importance like one has come to expect from lots of americans.
Then there’s the factual errors and stuff I just found stupid. I’m too lazy to separate those here, I’ll just list them as I go through the article:
Eugenia: “The Gnome menu panel now resembles a bit of MacOS. It sits on the top of the desktop, and no matter what I tried, I can’t change its position.”
IIRC one can’t change it’s position in MacOs either (and neither could one in Gnome 1.4), so I fail to see how’s that surprising. Moreover, on rightclick (known from Win) it’s easy to see how to remove it, given that there is a very clean context menu. She can’t figure it out even so, but still manages to complain earlier that “the memu panel, merely includes 3 options.”
Then she finds a reason to bash the default panels because they are rather empty and in the next paragraph says “People will always argue that we are lucky that there is an option to do so” [change the defaults] “but the main point is, that the default configuration is what most people use. It is common knowledge that only a small percentage of users actually change (or have the right to change, in a business environment) their desktop.” So, why then complain earlier that she can’t change the menu panel’s position? I thought nobody tries or wants to do that anyway?
I also wonder how long she played with Gnome 2 at all, for if she had actually opened some apps, she would have noticed that the bottom panel populates
quickly with buttons controlling the open windows, like in those other OSes people will supposedly return to because the G2 panel setup is so terrible: “If the default configuration is not intuitive, most people will still live with it. Or they will switch to KDE. Or go back to Windows or MacOS.” Hm, what exactly can be found on the Win task bar after a fresh install?
Eugenia: “Overall, Gnome 2 feels slower”
A clear indication that something is seriously wrong with her installation. Nautilus is so much faster that it’s not even funny anymore, and the rest is certainly not slower, except maybe for the slow initial loading of the main menu icons.
“On Gnome 1.x if you needed some speed, you were just telling Nautilus to not draw the desktop and everything was fine. But if I turn off this option on the new Gnome, there are no icons drawing on the desktop anymore and I have no desktop context menu.”
Please, did she even use Gnome 1.4 as she claims? This has been so forever. Or maybe she f****d up her gnome 1.4 install as much as she did this one and had both nautilus and gmc running, so that after killing nautilus she got the see the gmc icons on the desktop.
Eugenia: “My only problem with Nautilus was the inclusion of GTKhtml 2 as the main HTML renderer. GTKHtml is still extremely buggy.”
True in a way, but what were the options? Writing a non-sucking html widget for sure, but failing that, what? Another indication that she had no experience with Gnome 1.4, because the fully featured mozilla renderer used in the old nautilus was awfully slow. The compromise is ok as I see it: a quick loading basic html widget for the occasional *.html file on the HD with the option to launch the fully-featured one via context click or by the (painfully big and ugly) sidebar buttons that appear when a html file is viewed in nautilus.
Eugenia “And where are the system tools for networking”
Applications->Preferences->Network contains some simple ones. Ximian Setup Tools, which were present in earlier Garnome releases seem to have been removed from the release. I think Ximians plans are rather unclear on what they plan with them. They realized that most distros have their own config apps (drake tools of mandrake, e.g.) and have some time ago announced that Debian is their new reference platform, since it is most in need of such tools. Maybe, when and if (they’ve been aleady a looong time in the making) they are ready, they will be added by the distros that need them by the time the distros ship with G2. Most probably won’t because they will place their own tools in the Preferences menu. So again something of no concern to the users she supposedly writes for.
Eugenia: “or maybe a universal media player”
This seems to me to be an app and responsibility of the distro. BTW, Garnome includes the Gstreamer Media Player that’s meant to be exactly this
Both her probs with the text editor, gedit, “When I just place my cursor on the text, and then move my mouse away in order to type there, the program seems to think that I still have my button pressed and it keeps selecting my text.” and “scrolling this very document with Gedit is shamelessly slow” I can’t reproduce and IMO point again to a borked compile (remember, she used gcc 3.1.1-CVS) or install
All in all, she does have lots of valid points I won’t repeat here, but intermingled with so much either ignorantly or maliciously false information and based on a seriously incompetent review procedure that the piece is IMO completely worthless as a basis for discussion or further work. If one wanted to be unfriendly one could maybe even call it a rather well constructed troll, and a rather successful one given the 503 responses on slashdot in this topic at the time of writing.
I just hope that it goes away soon and we can concentrate on the work and discussion needed to move G2 further and fulfill its, as I see it, big potential
No wonder Gnome 2 dissapointed you, because you expected from it what it wasn’t designed to provide.
Much like Mozilla is intended to be a “browser framework”, upon which other programmers can build enduser-oriented browsers (i.e.: Galeon), Gnome 2 is a desktop environment framework. If you want to review the real thing, wait for Ximian to release the packaged version.
I grabbed these pictures as PNG. But there were 3 times the filesize.
Do not worry, I have saved Jpeg with 20% of compression only. The shots have a good quality.
Also, older IE, Netscape and Mac people will have trouble with PNGs.
In general, when the filesize is smaller than jpeg, I use either gif or png (especially when we are dealing with non-reality pictures, or many-color shots, in which case jpeg is always better). But in this case jpeg is a better choice. Bandwindth costs money you know…
> If one wanted to be unfriendly one could maybe even call it a rather well constructed troll, and a rather successful one given the 503 responses on slashdot in this topic at the time of writing.
Or simply an indication that something is wrong with Gnome and people have just been shaken up. Take it as you like.
Gnome is made by hackers, for free, without corporate giant financially backing it. But I still think its better than Windows.
Hmmmm, Sun?
You want to see a bloated DE, log into KDE and watch your system resources. Its obscene, considering KDE3 is barely better than KDE2, yet way more bloated. So there.
Actually, I held to that opinion before trying KDE 3.0. Firstly, it uses much less memory than KDE 2.2.2. Secondly, it is way faster than 2.2.2 (and this is not even the optimize version I compiled). Thirdly, it has so much improvements feature-wise over KDE 2.2.2, it is hard to use 2.2.2 again. I found it more configuratable, found things more customizable and so on. In KDE 3.1, the new look meant for 3.0 but didn’t make it for 3.0 is coming out, Keramik. The CVS version of it (not the latest, I have one one and a half weeks old) with Keramik and Crystal (the new default icon theme for 3.1), it blows the GNOME 2.0 (I’ll admit, I’m using RC1, but Final haven’t change in terms of features and UI wise, only stablity wise, but RC1 never crashed..) default look out of the water. 🙂
well this response brings your article sharply into focus for me. you seem to fall into the “i just want to click ‘Next'” catagory.
I can’t remember Window Maker having any wizards…. (IIRC, she uses that as her default wm)..
OEM xp eh? so you really don’t know default configurations
there either..
Actually, OEM XP has default configurations. If you make a with Microsoft, you could buy in bulk configurations made for your company 🙂
i can’t say i’m surprised. although it does do a bit of explaining why your review smacked of ignorance.
Forgive her for thinking like a newbie would, and not read incomplete documentation and found most things can be done in an unintuitive way.
The average user will use Ximian’s builds, especially on Redhat/Mandrake, because they are by far easier to manage.
Unless they have Red Carpet, they would go to Cooker. On GNOME website, click on Mandrake and they would send you to the cooker.
“One person installed gnome2 and felt it wasn’t like Windows XP or BeOS.”
*Sigh* all she was saying the UI wasn’t as great as it sounds and for a long of things aren’t done properly, UI wise. Personally, i think RC1’s UI is great, unless you don’t like the default look. What I wish is that this “Advance” icon in preference, so it wouldn’t overwhelme new users just wanting to change a thing or two, while power users could change stuff via Advance, instead of scripts and commands…
I wish this reviewer had put more time and energy into this review. For example, he complains of focusing issues in Metacity, when in actuality, Metacity hasn’t always had this issue, and most likely only does because it’s currently _unfinished_. It should also be noted that major companies like Red Hat, Ximian, and IBM all like and are pushing the GNOME 2 desktop forward, whereas, as far as my knowledge goes, KDE only has the support of various Linux users, and almost no corporate support.
See KDE League’s website. Sun and HP are supporting GNOME mainly because GTK+ is LGPLed.
i’m sorry, but that’s just loopy, isn’t it? the statement doesn’t mean anything… oh heaven forbid you can configure how it looks and reacts… that’s a no-no… but oh, erm, it has to do what i’d like it to do right away though…
you seem to be saying the ‘defaults’ should be precisely
what you like, without having to do a lick…
But then again, there was no graphical easy way to configure the panels? Plus, there was no way to configure the preference to make it more intuitive? And this is why Linux is still no at the desktop.
your review seemed that of a rank amateur and poorly researched.
You apparently didn’t even read the title of the article haven’t you?
You insist on something revolutionary from Gnome or Kde. I don’t find anything revolutionary about XP or Mac OsX.
Let’s see. In XP, my favourite feature that is new is the new start menu. It list the programs I use most often, and normally is a easy way to get to my programs. In OS X, it is essentially good parts of Mac OS Classic plus good parts of OpenStep with some bad parts flying from OS 9. From a Mac user’s point of view, this is indeed revolutionary. For my (Linux user) point of view, this is different cause there is no UI that does what it does, and it seems everyone is trying to copy them.
Plus, she is not expecting something revolutionary from KDE and GNOME. To quote, “I said that I want either a good traditional UI (in my preference something like as I wrote on the above comment), OR a new, FRESH IDEA about UIs. Gnome failed in both.”
So, get a life 🙂
And who were you reviewing this for? I don’t think that most of us are newbs, and Gnome 2.0 isn’t ready for newbies. As a product it’s only available to (and packaged for) us bleeding-edge techie types?! A little premature on the review, or at least for an audience this product isn’t packaged for yet…
But then GNOME’s website said computing made easy. She is just testing out the default GNOME.
Please, did she even use Gnome 1.4 as she claims? This has been so forever. Or maybe she f****d up her gnome 1.4 install as much as she did this one and had both nautilus and gmc running, so that after killing nautilus she got the see the gmc icons on the desktop.
Oh great, now you want her entire Nautilus experience on GNOME 1.4?
I don’t understand these people. All she wrote of was her experience with GNOME 2.0 as a enduser perspective. So live with it. Can’t you people live with some critism? But Eugenia is not without fault, I think waiting for Ximian packages is a wiser choice. Counting experience from previous GNOME releases, Ximian’s version is normally more consumer-orientated.
as you quoted me, i’d thought id respond to that bit.
“”i’m sorry, but that’s just loopy, isn’t it? the statement doesn’t mean anything… oh heaven forbid you can configure how it looks and reacts… that’s a no-no… but oh, erm, it has to do what i’d like it to do right away though…
you seem to be saying the ‘defaults’ should be precisely
what you like, without having to do a lick…”
But then again, there was no graphical easy way to configure the panels? Plus, there was no way to configure the preference to make it more intuitive? And this is why Linux is still no at the desktop. “”
either you didn’t read this properly or were being misleading.
when pointed with her idea that a desktop should be configured as one wanted, but not require 20 mins to 1 hour
configuration by the end user, she had said if a desktop is to complex, you should stick to the command line.
which makes my comment, now in context make sense.
and there is a difference between a user’s impressions and
a fisrt time amateur.
I used to work as a UI designer in UK. Maybe this is why some people do not understand why I do not like the Gnome UI.
Example. Look at this screenshot:
http://www.osnews.com/img/1280/gnome5.jpg
This is a quick draft I did in 5 minutes, and it is already miles better than the default look and feel of that preference panel. This is only one example and only a quick thought. The Gnome applications, pref panels, dialogs and menus are full with such UI snafoos. I could go on for days trying to analyze them all.
Someone said why don’t I propose something instead of just… bitching, so here is a small contribution from me.
I am a bit of perfectionist. I want everything to be pixel perfect and I want everything to be as usable as it goes, and I want it to be under control at all times. That’s how I am. I want the best for my desktop environment. If a product something falls short of my expectations, it will get hammered. Be it CIA-OS, NSA-OS, Windows, or BeOS or Gnome or whatever…
Another thing I’d like to mention:
Any time you change a setting somewhere, all apps are automatically notified _as soon as you change the setting_!
No more clicking “apply” or “ok” (which is it), or closing the window like in MacOS9 before the settings take effect.
I know Gnome isn’t revolutionary, but they’re really trying hard to do the right thing.
> Any time you change a setting somewhere, all apps are automatically notified _as soon as you change the setting_!
Yes, BeOS is doing this on my desktop since 1996. This was not the “revolution” I was looking for, as it is already living on my other partition.
But yes, overall, GConf is a Good Thing (TM).
Eugenia –
I need a little more information to diagnose the problem, but clearly your suggestion that GNOME2 shipped with “largely unfinished Help” is in error. Essentially every user app in the entire release is covered by documentation, making GNOME2 one of the most completely documented free software projects around. The only possibility I can think of is that you did not install the gnome2-user-docs package, which includes a significant portion of the documentation.
– John Fleck, head, GNOME Documentation Project
John, I will send you a screenshot and info later tonight or tomorrow.
Well, of course this sound recorder preference dialog looks terrible ugly… But this is unfair again because you obviously picked one of the worst examples. I did never see this before because I don’t use the sound recorder. It’s no preference dialog of Gnome, it’s a preference dialog of an optional Gnome app. Of course it’s bad and it’s a good idea to help the author to get it right, but things like this can slip through. You will always find some applications that have terrible UI design, how can you judge a complete desktop by that.
And BTW, your comment about the Gtk open file dialog… What do you mean with no tab completion? The Gtk file dialog always had tab completion and still has. You can open a file just like you would do on the konsole or you can click your way through the directories (or both). I would agree that it looks ugly though… But which functionality is missing? Besides, I really like the concept of the ROX desktop, not to rely on those file dialogs anymore but using the filebrowser for opening and even storing files. I think there was a discussion in the Gnome list about this one day. So maybe we are going slowly away from those file dialogs. I hope so.
Eugenia says somewhere above: “Give me a GOOD REASON why should I switch away from my XP PRO and my MacOSX machine, and use Gnome. WHY?
Because it is FREE? I am sorry, but I got that G4 Cube for free too. And I got XP PRO only for $30, as OEM. So, I did not really paid anything for them. Other users did, but I did not. So, again, tell me. Why should I use Gnome, when it works WORSE (as an overall desktop environment) than XP or OSX? ”
First, to get this out of the way, not everyone is fortunated enough to receive G4s for free. But much much more importantly, some of us value our freedom in the sense defined here http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#TOCFreeSoftware and here http://www.debian.org/intro/free (and here http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html ), especially in the light of DRM, .NET and Palladium. Personally I prefer software that makes me the master of my machines and whose license terms lets me share and collaborate with my friends, colleagues and neighbours. I won’t sell my soul just to avoid having to learn. That this same software grows and gets better at an exceptional speed while letting us all remain human beings is testament to the power of this idea, but not the only, or even main, important thing. Still, remember that the GNU project started in 1983, Linus released kernel 0.02 in 1991, and Gnome 1.0 was released in 1999, with KDE 1.0 some time before that. To give some sense of time: MS DOS 1.0 was 1981, Windows 1.0 was 1985, 3.0 was 1992. So we have 10 years from the first usable Windows to XP. In 11 years, Free Software has gone from “no kernel” to linux 2.4/KDE 3/Gnome 2. Project the ever accelerating development pace (and massively parallelizable dev model with nearly unlimited resources) five years into the future and be happy. Or scared, whatever.
“Forgive her for thinking like a newbie would, and not read incomplete documentation and found most things can be done in an unintuitive way.”
A newbie goes and compiles from sources? It has been stated umpteen times, no newbie will ever see the version Eugenia “reviewed”. Newbies will get G2 when their distributor or Ximian packages and ships it, which is months away
I’ve been laughing so hard I’m crying! Someone writes a review of a release. People say the reviewer is incopetent, biased against, of all things, free software, that the review has no merit. And it was even suggested that the reviewer should have waited until Gnome 2 has been in the hands of distributors…which leaves me to the conclsion that there should be no reviews of Gnome 2 until then, that nobody should comment about it at all, even though it’s been released and is there for use. In this thread, there have been some nuggets of insight and useful information, in both for or against the thrust of the review. But the anger and bullying toward the reviewer has been exponentially greater than any anger the reviewer displayed in the review. And that anger or disappointment was directed toward a piece of software, not a human being. Software is an object and should be objectified. Human beings are beings and should not be objectified. Yet, how easily it is done when hiding behind a keyboard and monitor. Yes, software is an object and, because it is, you can say anything about it, tear it to shreds or praise it to the skies if you want to and that is what the discussion should be about. Look at the length of this thread and, yet, I still cannot tell for sure if Gnome 2 is fast or slow because discussion of one simple aspect of it has been obscured by personal attacks, questionings of people’s motives and agendas. This is just a piece of software! And yes, as someone said he ought to do, but, no doubt, will not, yes, write your own review – step by step, installation, good things, problems, suggestions, etc. Unfortunately, many here can only bring themselves to the level of smugness, of know-it-all-ness and of not being able to discern the difference between an object and a human being.
So, maybe this can be begun again. What is Gnome 2.0?
The gtk file selector receives much warranted criticism. It is hard to figure out. Gnome will have a new one in 2.1 or 2.2 probably. In the meantime, keem in mind that the gtk file selector was designed with people in mind the have extensive unix shell (and motif, a commercial offering BTW) experience. If used as intended, it is very fast and powerful (and it’s not intended to be used with the mouse). Here comes a short guide to using it efficiently:
You can make gtk fileselector show hidden files by putting a dot in the Selection box and hit tab. This also works for every other character (or combination) of course, so to show dirs and files starting with “A”, enter A and hit tab. * and ? works too, so entering *k*.html and hitting tab shows fookbar.html, barbakz.html and so on. (*=any number of any chars, ?=any char) In short: use tab completion as in a shell.
Eugenia, I understand your call for more innovation in Gnome. Still, I think it’s maybe the wrong expectation. G2 as I see is mainly about building a sound platform to build on for the next years. Ease of use will hopefully come and is a stated goal. After all, it’s what Sun and HP want. But, it will mainly evolve around the traditional style. And to be honest, even OS X ist not very radical. If you want innovation on the WIMP front, may I suggest to have a look at some of these assorted window managers: http://www.plig.org/xwinman/others.html , all of which can be used with gnome and KDE, some working together better, some worse. Some ar bad in their own rights, but some are highly innovative. I highly recommend to try Ion, http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/ , a radically new wm without overlapping windows and built for keyboard control. It has problems with some of the available applications, especially with dialog popups and multi-window apps like The Gimp, but is still a pleasure to use. But be aware, it shurely is no newbie thing, needs some tweaking if used with gnome and needs reading of a (short) man page. It has a plugin for gnome-session, so can save the desktop state on logout. I recommend to run xnest in one of its windows.
This way, you can run a Gnome session with Ion as the wm, configured to use 4 desktops. In one of those you can have a xnest session running fullscreen. Inside this session, you can run another instance of X with a different wm, say, Gnome with sawfish (or maybe PWM http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/pwm/ ), with again 4 desktops. There you can run multi-window apps and the like. With this setup, you have it all at the tips of your fingers.
I doubt that you can do this with those G4s that get dumped at your door.
As for the need for desktop icons and a file manager when you want that extra speed and turn off nautilus, I may recommend the rox filer http://rox.sourceforge.net/
Eugenia: “Or simply an indication that something is wrong with Gnome and people have just been shaken up. Take it as you like.”
No. Nearly nobody has even tried it yet. It’s slashdot, after all
Jay: You are my HERO. If I wasn’t a cash strapped student, I’d give you a cookie and much more. Why arn’t there more intelligent people like you?
“look at the length of this thread and, yet, I still cannot tell for sure if Gnome 2 is fast or slow because discussion of one simple aspect of it has been obscured by personal attacks, questionings of people’s motives and agendas.”
Which is largely the fault of the review, which was based on a probably faulty installation and had lots of factual errors. Now you come and blame the people pointing out those blunders? I don’t say it should have been reviewed now. It’s released, go head! but review it under real-world conditions. Don’t say that’s the way it presents itself to typical end users, because it doesn’t. That’s the way it presents itself to people who rush out in the night to compile a .0 release from sources, for christ’s sake. Then do what those people are expected to do by common sense: Clean out old Betas, read the READMEs, don’t use a compiler from cvs (3.0.x releases ok, but not 3.1.x-cvs), ideally create a new user for the tests, … This is how all knowledgeable users conduct a first personal test of a nuge new project like Gnome. How much more is it needed for a review! (you know what is said about bug hunting: reproduce, localize, … how do you do that with such a borked system?)
She would have found enough to talk about and enough to criticize. Her comments would have been much more valuable and the thread, though maybe shorter, would have been able to concentrate on these issues. And the good points.
Knuckles: “I don’t say it should have been reviewed now. It’s released, go head!”
Um, sorry, this should have read “I don’t say it shouldn’t have been reviewed now. It’s released, go ahead!
Sorry, it’s 7 a.m. here and I’ve been at my comp the whole night because of this
BTW, the software osnews runs needs to be updated to slashcode or something, this replying business gets really tedious
This is just a piece of software!
No it’s not. It’s something people devote countless man-hours to, in their free time, mostly after a hard day of programming at work or at another job. I have contributed only a tiny fraction, and nothing important, but I know that I have spent at least 2 hours a day for the last months discussing, writing to mailing lists, hunting and filing bugs etc. This does not mean that I has to get rave reviews if it’s a POS. But it deserves a fair, competent review and according criticism
Faulty installation eh?
Well, I got two installations of Gnome 2 and they are pretty much the same.
As I am writting this, I am compiling Gnome 2 for my Gentoo Linux partition (same machine). And this time, is Gentoo that decides that gets compiled and how. Gentoo’s Gnome 2 ebuild is linked in the Gnome 2 download page on gnome.org, and it has been “approved”.
I just started the installation, it should finish in about 6 hours from now.
hate to break it to you, big guy, but the review didn’t answer your question “what is gnome 2” either. that was rather the problem, wasn’t it? the faulty information the review was based on combined with negative attitude added to the sour responses to comments on her work spawned nasty replies.
tap dancing lord, she’s making screen shots to justify her opinion for god sake…
thus, note the many comments to that end…
yes we need more intelligent people like jay.
no really.
i’m not being smug.
seriously…
now back to work on that detailed objective review of gnome2 because i am very eaisly baited.
still serious.
really.
I also just emerged it into Gentoo (gave me some time to read my book….). It’s running pretty great and I’m beginning to think that maybe Gentoo can really make a little difference in speed (it’s even running on my slow harddisk).
What I’m missing though is this Nimbus font. Any ideas where I could get it?
I have a 1700 Athlon XP with 512 MB RAM, I don’t believe it took that long to get Gnome 2.0 installed. I have seen 1 bug with Galeon where it refused to connect to any site. But it’s not doing that now. No config dialogs have crashed yet.
I haven’t figured out how to change my menus yet, but I will be customizing them… or making drawers with all of my apps (which is what I’ve traditionally done).
I am in the middle of installing openoffice, or I would be working on the menus… BTW Galeon 2.0 is great. It blows mozilla away IMO, at least so far. The tab behavior is so much better, and I’m loving the bookmakrlets… (Slow scrolling? Sweet…) I can edit my bookmarks directly in the toolbar Nice!
The Nimbus comes with my installations of gnome on Red Hat and Mandrake… What I mean is, if you got mandrake and red hat, gnome will possibly pick it up automatically. Want me to try to find them, zip them and send them to you?
My Gentoo is on my slower drive too. But I do not expect much difference in speed, because while Gentoo has a better patched kernel than Mandrake, my Mandrake installation runs on a much faster drive and it compiled Gnome with GCC 3.x. So, I guess it will be pretty similar, and I even expect my Mandrake partition to be faster. I did a small test the other day and I found Konqueror to be so much faster when compiled wth GCC 3.x !!!
> I have a 1700 Athlon XP with 512 MB RAM, I don’t believe it took that long to get Gnome 2.0 installed.
Sweetheart, you have a faster AthlonXP than I have (I got a walmart 1600+ beside me) and you have 512 MBs of ram.
I am compiling Gnome 2 on a dual Celeron 533 Mhz and 256 MB of RAM. Do you know how much difference that is?? Especially when Celerons have 66 Mhz bus.
Hi Knuckles! The kind of comments that you made right after my post are what is needed here.They were excellent. I am sorry if I sounded like I was belittling all the work that has gone on in Gnome and all other open source projets. I’m an OS junkie too and we are passionate about it. I want Gnome to be tremendous. Eugenia is an OS junkie and is passionate about it. Her disappointment in what she had some expectations of and her expression of her disappointment shows that she cares very much.Ultimately, that is the essence of her review, whether one agrees with it or not. She reveals herself in her review and in all she does here.She deserves a lot of credit and she shows herself as a person, not a dry technical manual. You are right though, something that people have poured their hearts into is not the same kind of an object…as an ashtray, for example. So, I understand the passion. But the questions raised – possible faulty installation? Other possible problems? Good things? All of these questions and issues could have been raised in the same demeanor that are in your wonderful posts. Eugenia is a person though, a human being. Human beings are not to be treated as if they are objects and that is what happens so often on the internet because it’s so easy to do. It is, in fact, the easy way out. It is like cutting corners and writing crummy software. I am an old man in this area, I’m fifty years old. LOL, I’m older than Bill Gates and Steve Jobs! I’ve been using the internet since I first starting computing at the age of thirty four, with my Apple IIe and 300 baud modem <g>. So, I was an old man in computing terms when I started. All these years I’ve seen this on the internet, the flaming, the insults, the objectifying of human beings. It is the easy way out, believe me. To the young people here, don’t take the easy road, but always take the high road. You do it in your passion for software – please, always do it in your dealings with other people. I can tell you, if you do, you will sleep well at night.
I hear you, Jay.
I’m a developer, and I’m only 30. I’m the type of person who stupidly places two radio buttons on top of each other when a horizontal arrangement would be better. I’m the type of person who could cause a software delivery to be over 1 year late. I’ve suggested and pushed for major module rewrites many times in many projects when code proved unwieldy or unable to solve the problems we were tasked to handle.
I’m the type of person who would be called a bonehead by people like Eugenia. The characterizations she made about the people who created this product, in her original article aren’t useful to the processes I go through to produce software for people.
They’re hurtful…
My point is that she wrote this review, and she blasted people who truly made an effort I’m sure. I’d really like to know why.
Respect
> My point is that she wrote this review, and she blasted people who truly made an effort I’m sure. I’d really like to know why.
Because the product was not good enough. There is nothing else to say about this.
When something is wrong, heads are going off. I know that I sound like the big bad capitalist here, but I live in US. And Gnome 2 was not what it should have been and I WANT to see a Free desktop be GOOD for once. But it wasn’t. Therefore, a hammer will strike from reviewers. It is to be expected.
I have nothing personal against the Gnome people. In fact, after some emails back and forth about this review with the project lead of usability on Gnome, I invited him to my home tomorrow, as we are having a small party here, and I would love to meet him in person.
Thing is though, if I get too sensitive and say “hey, this is just Nickolas from Sweden who coded that part in that preference panel, I know he is a student and doesn’t have too much free time as the Gnome release was at the same timeframe as his school’s exams; I will overlook that crash…” I am losing the whole point of the review.
If something is wrong, I HAVE to write it, and if something is terribly wrong, I will be a menace. It is the only way that things will get better and people realize that if they want to get a piece of the computer Desktop market, they need to play with more rules, not just theirs.
For example, if a UI designer that works for KDE or Gnome says to his developers: “always do this that way”, damn it, do it that way! No matter if it is not too similar with what you like or with what was before! And this paragraph is a hint……
Did everyone ignore my post or is there no one qualified for UI design? Well, we know Eugenia used to work in UI design, and I may inform you that I enjoyed lectures on UI design as part of my studies (if anyone knows a good place for a HCI master’s course, please tell me).
But please, if you don”t know what you’re talking about , leave it. You only embarras yourselves.
Eugenia is right. There are some serious things wrong with Gnome, and they can only be improved if someone talks about them loudly (like she does here). The claim that you can configure everything to make it better just shows once more that it was wrong in the first place. If it was right from the start, you’d need no configuration.
On a side note: If GNU/Linux had proper deinstallation routines, there wouldn’t be the need for Garnome.
Argh, can’t we go on IRC somewhere?
<rant>
I know that I sound like the big bad capitalist here, but I live in US.
Oh, you’re so f*****g tough. While we softie europeans can’t say or take the truth and therefore produce crappy stuff. Come on. Being in the US you probably got told by your boss you’d generate 1 million hits the next day or you’d be fired in the evening. So you thought “a gnome blasting troll should do”.
Yes this is a joke, sarcastic, but a joke. But please get off your high horse.
Because the product was not good enough.
I don’t know your expectations, but mine were met. Sure, I would’ve liked that the font-properties wouldn’t crash just as they didn’t in RC1. Well, shit happens. There was no extensive testing. This isn’t MS. Who cares? We are the Quality Review department. We, who download .0 source releases. That’s the price we pay. It’s our job to give the input to make this thing rock when it hits end users. As stated 100 times, this is when Ximian and the distros roll out the binaries. Some freak off-by-one error by some red-eyed developer is totally irrelavant. Hell, they built probably millions of lines of code. This it is to judge at this stage. On a technical basis. Don’t like it? Wait for your distro, and then bash them, if it doesn’t work. Hard. That’s what they are there for, their only reason of existence. Integrate, test, smooth out. Build a f*****g product
I am losing the whole point of the review.
Your loosing the point of the review had nothing to do with unjustified softness or whatever. You had logical and factual errors in your review which I have pointed out in my first posting. But you choose to ignore that. If something is wrong, I HAVE to write it. Right, do that please. And do unto you what you do unto others. I’ll be happy when your new compile is hopefully representative of what gnome looks like atm. Lets discuss it. There’s a lot to discuss, and I’m sure you can give valuable input. Hell, I know to have read stuff from you I agreed with, and stuff where I was impressed by your writing and your online personality. This is not one of them.
I WANT to see a Free desktop be GOOD for once
If you want it in CAPS, then lend your expertise to a project of your choosing and help them out. Making snappy remarks and calling people boneheaded is of no help. Nick does need a lot of support. File UI bugs in bugzilla with sound reasoning. Everybody will be happy
If a UI designer that works for KDE or Gnome says to his developers: “always do this that way”, damn it, do it that way! No matter if it is not too similar with what you like or with what was before!
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the process works. You can’t command what people do in their free time. They can be convinced, persuaded, exposed to peer pressure, driven by a culture that sees UI bugs just as grave as poor algorithms. Gnome 2 is a glowing example how the direction of a project can be changed that way. Sure it was the dictate of facts, by the huge amounts of corporate code contributed. But I believe much more important to keep all those people working for free on board (and they are insanely important) was the work, the arguments and the personality of people like Havoc an Seth.
Best regards
> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the process works. You can’t command what people do in their free time.
If the UI designers of a desktop environment can’t “command”, or at least make sure that whatever they have decided about the UI MAKES it to the release version, then my friend, here is where the whole problem lies. The problem of how Free Software works, the problem of why Gnome 2 was bad, why KDE is not so good – even if it has Trolltech behind it, a commercial company – , and why your attitude is so bad.
Because you are doing it in your free time, for free. If there were no expectations about it, I would agree that your free time has created something invaluable.
But now that there ARE expectations and Linux is strugling to make it to the desktop, and companies like Sun and IBM and TrollTech etc are into the game to try to bring Unix forward and Gnome is one of the big and important pieces of software to do that, I expect more. As Eugenia, a reviewer, and a Unix user, I expect a piece of software that can compete head to head with OSX and WinXP. If this “more” is not there, I will critisise it.
Live with it. And do not talk dirty please.
Come if you want on openprojects.net irc server, on #osnews.
I will be there only for the next 15-20 mins (UTC time).
The claim that you can configure everything to make it better just shows once more that it was wrong in the first place. If it was right from the start, you’d need no configuration.
Now it’s getting ridiculous. I’m all for this discussion, there are things to do, but those people commenting on the G2 UI should at least have seen it, ideally have seen the 1.4 one and be informed of the state of discussion. Do you have any idea of G2? Obviously not, whatever your UI credentials which I do not doubt. Do you know that Havoc and Seth have worked ceaselessly to remove, and to convice people to remove, configuration clutter? Do you know that there is an outcry from parts of the traditional Gnome user base against removal of options? You are arguing here what has been the prime UI focus for G2 anyway. You and your expertise would have been needed. Bitching after the fact buys you nothing. But hey, in Free Software land it’s never too late! Join in at all times.
FYI, here’s the Gnome Usability Project http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ and here an essay by Havoc (sorry, google cache, site doesn’t seem to respond right now)
http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:m_WX30exRL8C:www106.pair.com/r…
On a side note: If GNU/Linux had proper deinstallation routines, there wouldn’t be the need for Garnome.
This i don not understand. Or you don’t. Once again: This stuff is not packaged by distros yet. Ther will no probe with installation and deinstallation whatsoever when it is, technically speaking. The UIs for that might need work too, but I prefer Ximians RedCarpet to any offering I know from windows. Proper deinstallation routines are something completely unheard of in the windows world. “foo.dll may be used by another program. I have no idea. Do you want to remove it? Something may break” And this is for released binaries! Problems similar to this common Windows scenario has not happend to me on Linux since I stopped using Slackware, what, 6 years ago.
Eugenia, reading all this crap makes me want to screw everything and say FSCK the idea of becoming popular. Fuck the company support and the marketshare. Tell me one thing… What does a Gnome contributor get for all this marketshare? You guessed it, NOTHING. But besides this not-so-unimportant fact you state that he should accept bashing and demoralization? Why? Tell me. There are things I rate higher than success and those include respect for the work of other people.
This has absolutely _nothing_ to do with ignoring problems. As already stated a few times, I had nothing against your objective review of what happened to you when trying it (although some of this is really weird, like your gedit problems and others are just questionable like the “bone-headed” rating of the default panel config), your emotional and personal comments were what made me angry.
Bashing all the hard work of the people involved. That’s plain sickening. At least it’s sickening that you refuse to accept _any_ of your faults and even continue with the bashing. Fine, I will “live with it”, just as you will have to live with our criticism. I think it’s just natural for people to defend the free work of other people.
Do you know that Havoc and Seth have worked ceaselessly to remove, and to convice people to remove, configuration clutter? Do you know that there is an outcry from parts of the traditional Gnome user base against removal of options? You are arguing here what has been the prime UI focus for G2 anyway.
I know that, and that’s why I like Gnome a lot more than KDE – from what I can see, KDE is aiming at “the more features, the better”.
However, we did read “you can configure it” a dozen times here as a response to Eugenia’s review, which leads me to the conclusion that there are still enough things left to be done.
You and your expertise would have been needed. Bitching after the fact buys you nothing. But hey, in Free Software land it’s never too late! Join in at all times.
FYI, here’s the Gnome Usability Project
Been there, done that. I used to be on the GUP mailing list (as well as I used to be on the KDE usability list), and I have my reasons why I think participating there is a waste of my time.
This i don not understand. Or you don’t. Once again: This stuff is not packaged by distros yet. Ther will no probe with installation and deinstallation whatsoever when it is, technically speaking.
OK, let me try to elaborate:
Here (http://www.hadess.net/idoru.php3) are precompiled Gnome2.0 binaries for Debian PPC. Thanks to Debian’s package management, all I have to do to install it is to add one line to my sources.list and enter apt-get install nautilus (or gnome-terminal or whatever I want) and it will download nautlius and all the packagaes it depends on. That’ll be roughly 150MB of disk space.
Now, after a day of playing with Gnome, I decide that I don’t like it and that I have better use for those 150Megs. How do I get rid of them? apt-get remove nautilus will only remove the nautilus package, but not the large number of packages that came with it. How can I go back? How can I remove Gnome as a whole, taking all the things with it that I don’t need any more? Don’t say “disk space is cheap”, as this is ignorign the problem, unless you volounteer to buy me a new 2.5″ HDD.
“However, we did read “you can configure it” a dozen times here as a response to Eugenia’s review”
Hmm, where? I know for sure I didn’t and wouldn’t and didn’t see anyone stating this. Maybe something like “if your personal preference differs, you can still change it” but not like “ok, so the default sucks but you can change it”.
“How can I remove Gnome as a whole, taking all the things with it that I don’t need any more?”
apt-get remove libgtk2?
I don’t see your point, you can’t simply delete explorer and everything that is the shell in windows either. You can easily remove parts though and all parts that depend on it. There are also APT tools to find library packages that aren’t in use anymore so you can delete them.
However, we did read “you can configure it” a dozen times here as a response
well, I don’t feel inclined to review the context, but dare to say that some configurability is good. The panel configuration has brought me to gnome and kept me there, and always drives me away from KDE when I try it. (haven’t 3.0, though). And in my view, G2 approaches a very reasonable state in this regard. It’s hard to image for me, since i use it since 0.30, how it is for a newbie. But if feel that in nears a state where you can comfortably use it as is. And sometimes you click by accident on some part you never clicked at, and up pops a menu with “ooooh” neat stuff. This is a state I very much like. And the fact that this can go on for a long time. Unlike in windows, where there is nothing much to learn aside from the obvious. And the windows wm is really the most basic imaginable, and I loath it every day.
And with gconf there is an infrastructure for configuration that is only scratched with gconf-editor. Havocs suggestion for new ways to handle it is something I like.
One the whole, for me it’s ok when Gnome moves to being simple, as long as I can use the libs and apps in my usual setup with Ion + occasionally xnest. (Oh how i long for the time when release time is over and i don’t feel forced to use sawfish to know what’s going on
This also fits with Havoc’s multiple-code-path observation, that really isn’t adressed by sticking all options in gcong-editor.
Been there, done that.
I see
How can I remove Gnome as a whole, taking all the things with it that I don’t need any more?
learn your Debian ;o)
man debfoster, man deborphan
debfoster is too much for me, but deborphan is good to handle
Sorry, apt-get remove libgtk2 will not remove everything I got when installing Nautilus. What’s missing is a reverse command to “apt-get install nautilus”, but there is none. There isn’t even a function to undo the last n apt-get commands. The only thing left is writing down all the packages the first apt-get install puts on my disk and then deinstalling them all my hand when I don’t like Gnome any more. This can be improved.
Now I know why there are so many replies. Now I know why most of the replies show that the author of the replies haven’t read the review in full. This news storis is on Slashdot!
Slashdot folks, I think Slashdot is a better place to rant than here 🙂
Oh the irony! You’re slagging of slashdotters for not reading through to the end, completely unwarranted as I may add, for I can’t remember outright stupid postings here (and mere disagreement or different weighing of points in the review is no reason to deride someone because of his choice of hangout). But you yourself were disagreeing to what I said in my very first posting in which I say right at the beginning, that I already had posted my rebuttal on /.
Now I know why there are so many replies. Now I know why most of the replies show that the author of the replies haven’t read the review in full. This news storis is on Slashdot!
If you look at the names of the commenters you may find out that most of them unfortunately are regulars
Personally I think Eugenias critisim is motivated, BUT it’s presented in an a bit insensitive way. Going on to hard just starts negative bashing. The same goes for all MS-bashers out there.
About the Gnome project itself I think it’s great – but not as a complete desktop environment. IMO Gnome has always been best at providing customizable panels as complement to various WM’s and providing good applications and frameworks. They should stick to that idea, cause it’s this whole desktop environment idea that has gone wrong with Gnome.
So to the Gnome people: Let KDE provide unix users with a DE, and target on all others instead.
Cheers
Why a free project cannot be criticized?
Hey, If it’s a free project, nobody gets paid and nobody is rushing the developers, why release such a raw version? alway liked gnome better than KDE and I’m now using gnome2, but I still hate crashes and minor issues!
Eugenia is 100% right and Her purpose of comparing a Free desktop with XP or OSX is the way to go, the only way that in a year or two we can get a better open source desktop.
Why a free project cannot be criticized?
It can
If it’s a free project, nobody gets paid and nobody is rushing the developers
You’re confusing free beer and free speech. It is free speech, but companies have an interest in it. I do not say that Sun or Ximian rushed it, though, as I have no idea
why release such a raw version?
Ever heard of “release early, release often”?
Eugenia is 100% right
I have shown in my first posting where she is provably wrong. In other points she is right, but that doesn’t make it 100%
Hi there!
I’ve run into a show-stopper error trying to compile GNOME 2.0 with GARNOME 0.12, it’s like this:
/usr/include/libintl.h:35: parse error before `__const’
and many alike (all with the same file), libintl.h is part of the glibc-devel-2.2.4 package in Red Hat 7.2, but the error does not go away even when I upgrade to another build of the package !! I’m stuck, please help me if you ran into the same problem. Thanx.
Greetz from Argentina, home of Tango, Maradona & Dulce de Leche!
webdev
Ever heard of “release early, release often”?
You aren’t seriously calling Gnome2 an early or a rushed release?
I not mean early, but the last candidates where too often released so I could’n even try them all! and like me there are lots of people,
If Duke nukem forever is released today it may be not finished and rushed at the same time is late (just an unfair comparison I know, don’t flame me for that!
)
my point is, even if I like the gnome feel and look and won’t trade gnome for KDE (in my second machine I use fluxbox but don’t tell anyone) I can’t hide my disapointment with gnome 2. OK, no one to blame, it’s a great efford and everyone worked very good, but sometimes feels like there is no real lead and that’s a bad thing.
BeOS desktop was excellent and don’s tell me that the development of that desktop took as many hours/man as gnome + gnome 2!
Im I wrong?
BeOS desktop was excellent and don’s tell me that the development of that desktop took as many hours/man as gnome + gnome 2!
Im I wrong?
Psst…I’ll tell you a secret: Less is more. What made BeOS’ desktop good compared to KDE and Gnome is that they implemented less features in their destktop but did them well-thought and properly.
Eugenia –
It’s clear from what you sent me that the problem you cited, a lack of help documentation, was the fault of the distribution you chose to install rather than in GNOME 2 itself. By failing to make the distinction, you’re missing a good opportunity to discuss an important issue that is relevant to OSNEWS readers.
Integration between new *nix/GNU/Linux software and existing platforms is a significant issue. In GNOME 2, we have built a new dashboard for your car. To work right, it has to be bolted on and wired up correctly to Fords, Chevys, VW’s, etc. That is, from our side, a hard problem, because we cannot possibly anticipate all the configurations of important infrastructure that will exist on users’ machines.
There are two solutions. One is available now, and one requires a little patience on the part of users.
For users to grab GNOME 2 now and get it running on their desktop, they have to take responsibility themselves for getting the bolts and wiring right. A number of people are working hard to help get it right on their platforms, including Mandrake and Gentoo. Lots of people have used Garnome to get it right (that’s what I use – it’s dead simple).
The second approach is to wait. The OS equivalents of Ford and Chevy (Red Hat, Sun, etc.) will release versions of the GNOME 2 dashboard set up to work with their cars. To pass the “Grandma test” (so simple my late Grandma can use it 🙂 users need to wait until the integrators get their hands on it. To suggest otherwise, and criticize the project for therefore failing, is to misunderstand the integration problem. But of course as a journalist who covers OS issues you already understand this.
For your review to be of real use to OSNews readers, you need to distinguish the problems in GNOME 2 itself from the problems of getting it wired up right. Get it set up right first, and by all means share with your readers the problems associated with the integration problem[1]. But make sure the speedometer is plugged in before you criticize GNOME for not having one.
Cheers,
John Fleck, head, GNOME Documentation Project
[1] I am no free software zealot in this regard. I freely admit that Microsoft has a much easier time with the integration problem, because when it builds a new dashboard, it only has to bolt onto a single model of Chevy. There are undeniable merits to that approach.
John, Gentoo is listed on the “download” page of Gnome 2. Even if you think that both my manual installation and CVSGnome’s were faulty, well, Gentoo have the same problems with Help too and that was not my manual installation, but the system’s.
I am sorry, but if all these different efforts to build Gnome always outcome problems with Help, then something is really wrong.
Gentoo is a distribution and Gnome 2.0 has been “umasked” on their portage tree and it is now used as default. If they have problems (and they DO have other problems too!) then this is not my fault. I used their distro, I see bugs or half Help, I write about it.
And darn it, I have the same result on all my installations of Gnome. So if something is screwing up for all these different scripts and code and distros, how would that be my fault? I have 3 different ones here, different machines, different distros!
The GNOME project shipped tarballs. Installing straight from tarballs is a pain in the ass, so we also included pointers on our Start page to integrators who have a variety of build systems set up to help you. You’ve chosen build systems set up by people outside the GNOME project, so I can’t help fix their bugs.
The fact that those bugs exist is, as I said before, a problem with integrating GNOME into existing systems, not a problem with GNOME itself.
It’s pretty clear that your problem is that ScrollKeeper and the gnome2-user-docs are not properly installed.
But, for the sake of argument, lets ask what might happen if what you’ve uncovered is some intrinsic problem with the GNOME 2 help system. One of the beauties of an open/free software project is that you can build early versions, see problems, report them, and get help fixing them. If you were building this beast in beta, seeing this problem, and not reporting it or seeking help from the GNOME community in getting it set up right/fixed, you have only yourself to blame at this point. Help works for those of us who have been using and testing it regularly. We’re not mind readers. If you’ve got a bug, the only way we can sort it out and fix it is if you report it.
And I was a bit shocked that panel etc. are less customizable then 1.4. Why? I use gnome and not kde because the first is more customizable. So after a quick switch to kde3 I am back to gnome 1.4, BUT I am using applications of gnome2.0 which are A LOT faster.
[i]Psst…I’ll tell you a secret: Less is more. What made BeOS’ desktop good compared to KDE and Gnome is that they implemented less features in their destktop but did them well-thought and properly.[i]
exacto! all the bloat sinks the boat!!
4 years ago I wished that in 2002 we were using a more consistent OS, now when you refer tu linux you have to mention not only what kernel number (not really an issue anymore) but what distro, what WM etc..
I think I’m dissapointed with linux for my desktop and can’t think in BSD as an alternative.
“…can’t think in BSD as an alternative.”
Why? I have done it that’s why I ask.
Mario: And I was a bit shocked that panel etc. are less customizable then 1.4. Why? I use gnome and not kde because the first is more customizable.
stew: Psst…I’ll tell you a secret: Less is more. What made BeOS’ desktop good compared to KDE and Gnome is that they implemented less features in their destktop but did them well-thought and properly.
See, Mario complains about lack of options, stew complains about too many, while failing again to appreciate that G2’s main point in the UI changes is exactly the same one he makes (although I’ve already given pointers to the relevant docs detailing this, I might add)
And Eugenia demands that the default setup is exactly right to here, and this means by extension exactly right for everyone.
It’s impossible to meet all these expectations, so don’t bash developers for not managing it.
Mario although he is disappointed by the UI says BUT I am using applications of gnome2.0 which are A LOT faster., which is also the experience of everone I’ve ever talked to about G2, but which is again the opposite from what Eugenia says. For her it’s not. I still fail to see how she can’t notice the fact that nautilus now is usable, but was not with G1.4 on my k6/450/256, other than by suspecting borked compiles, again. I know it’s futile
You aren’t seriously calling Gnome2 an early or a rushed release?
I didn’t, alepe did. I merely tried to say (rather non-eloquently I admit) that there’s no point in holding off release until the last bug is fixed, because then you would never release. At some point you have to do it. (It’s the same for proprietary software, really. It’s just that free software is open about this sad fact of life). And it’s (and I’ll say it another 3 times if needed) a fundamental misunderstanding of the process to complain about such hiccups in tarball releases. Those adventurous people who compile from sources the days/weeks after a new major release (and they prove to be adventurous by doing so) are part of the Quality Review process. This is how it is with Free Software. They have to test and report bugs if they want it to get better, and most of them understand and accept that. It’s always only a small minority who insists that the stuff they just got as a present has to be absolutely flawless, or they’ll bash you no end. And I don’t want to know such people in real life, and neither do I find their attitude ok online.
If you don’t like that, and it is legitimate to do so, wait for your distributor, whom you pay for to do that (hopefully), to test, polish and release binaries. If those have issues, you have every right to complain to them.
I not mean early, but the last candidates where too often released so I could’n even try them all
You know what, i just did a bugzilla query on [email protected] and on .com.ar for bugs reported under those email substrings. And bugzilla told me “Zarro Boogs found.”
So, it may well be that you report bugs with another email than you use to post to public forums, I know that I do. But honestly, how many bugs did you report during the beta phase?
I wished that in 2002 we were using a more consistent OS, now when you refer tu linux you have to mention not only what kernel number (not really an issue anymore) but what distro, what WM etc..
Free Software will never be totally unified, accept that. I do feel that as it consolidates, it gets a stronger center, witness, e.g. the Unit Linux effort, but it will never be totally unified (at least not as much as Windows with only, what, 6 or 7 versions in use).
And I consider this a good thing. I love to be able to stay with kernel 2.2.x on my servers, which does everything I need and is totally absolutely rock stable. I do not want to be forced to upgrade because some desktop users want USB 2.0. I love my elaborate Ion window manager setup as described above. I don’t want to be forced to use a dumbed-down wm as windows’, because MS commercially needs to lure newbies to buy PCs and the easiest way is to reduce its functionality to resize/open/close/max/focus-follows-click/focused-window-in-front (yeah I know about tweakui, it’s just an example). The moment this choice is taken away from me I switch distros, and if this is tried on a grand scale, user groups will simply fork.
Yes, also democracy is more varied, more complicated, often slower and less focused than some autoritarian regime. Which one do you want to live in?
http://www.unitedlinux.com/
I compare Linux comunity with the socialist partys in my country (argentina). lot’s of good ideas but always fragmented because of so little things. meanwhile the big partys (microsoft) always win.
I agree with you in lot’s of things.
(Off topic:
what I hate about the Open source comunity is that people just can’t see any good thing from microsoft. I hate them, but give’em some credit! Those stories about people installing Win2K with 1000 of problems or XP hanging every 5 minutes are bullshit. they later tell that their grandmo just installed linux in a 286 in 4 minutes and everything work like a charm.. that kind of extremism makes me sick. )
United linux is promising, I hope they get a good share of the linux market. Just I don’t think they are aiming to the Desktop user, an I wrong?
gonna give BSD a try, any suggerences? Freebsd? netbsd?
I will use it just for the desktop (my own server is still a RH 6.2 without monitor)
If a documentation system is called “ScrollKeeper“, and the developer community who came up with this name had great difficulty understanding that there is already an existing population stereotype* with computers where the word “scroll” refers to vertical movement within a window (as opposed to a form of media that hasn’t been in widespread use for hundreds of years), do we honestly think that this developer community is going to be capable of designing usable user interfaces?
*Population stereotypes are the long-term habits and well-ingrained knowledge that we have about the world. See http://webword.com/moving/population.html for more info.
http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/983984049/984280651/addPostingForm
hello John Fleck
i grabbed two sentences from two different postings made by you. i don’t want to leave these lines uncommented since i feel myself beeing offended by them.
i know that eugenia has choosen ‘cvsgnome’ to build her gnome 2 system. i am the author of ‘cvsgnome’ therefore i need to comment your lines.
> It’s clear from what you sent me that the problem you
> cited, a lack of help documentation, was the fault of
> the distribution you chose to install rather than in
> GNOME 2 itself.
there is nothing wrong by choosing ‘cvsgnome’ and it is definately not the fault of ‘cvsgnome’ for not supporting documentations. as you and me know that every gnome tarball, either nautilus, gedit, gnumeric, … when build from tarball are also building the documents. that is every these tarballs contain their documentations that will be made and installed during compile time. you are refering here to gnome2-users-documentation tarball that i left out because it has a reason. i don’t see the point to install the documentations another 2nd time. we are both long enough into this gnomebusiness to know whats needed or what not. now how did you reply to her if she or someone else did a manual build on her/their own ? you offered the tarballs so it’s valid to build your own gnome. if you want a valid review of things then ship a complete gnome 2 as kde 3 does where everything is put into one big module. in this case you make sure nothing is missing. wasn’t gnome 2 meant to be a slim system where the user has the ability to install whatever he/she wants ?
> You’ve chosen build systems set up by people outside the
> GNOME project, so I can’t help fix their bugs.
what bug ? what f*cking bug ? you want bugs then let me point you to a bug. the biggest bug is withing gnome itself. by ignorant people like you that bash other peoples work. you can’t stand a review by someone and push your incapabilities to someone else like me and my damn buildscript. it’s the freedom of anyone to use it or not there are always alternatives. how did a review have looked if you used packages from your distribution where you was able to select the packages you want to install ?
now one last line. the reason why i made ‘cvsgnome’ is because i don’t like ‘garnome’. as eugenia pointed out some postings before. ‘garnome’ and ‘cvsgnome’ does nearly the same thing. they grab some shitty tarball files from the gnome ftp server and builds them. the only difference of ‘garnome’ is it builds 3-4 different programs more like gstreamer or mrproject but ‘cvsgnome’ does cvs builds too.
now how did a review have looked if someone used ‘jhbuild’ or ‘v-b-s’ ?
now explain me one point, why was ‘cvsgnome’ in no way mentioned as alternative buildsystem in either the ‘rc1’ or ‘rc2’ of gnome 2 ? because it was made by that ‘troll’ galaxy. you are more concerned in who the person is instead in what the person is able to do for the community. with my work i was trying to help people and trying to offer them an fair alternative to build and setup their gnome 2 system. i know from many mails every day that i have a userbase for my buildscript and that there are a lot of happy people outside that gonna like it.
gnome may be an openproject that everyone can use but the developerbase is so what closed. with other words. openproject and closed user-/developerbase.
with friendly regards,
Ali Akcaagac
Whoa there. Down boy.
Simple problem here. Eugenia complained that GNOME 2 didn’t have docs. She thought that was a problem.
You say your build scripts, which she used, intentionally don’t install docs. That’s fine, that’s your choice.
You object to me calling that a bug. OK, let’s agree to disagree. I think not installing user docs is a problem, Eugenia thinks not installing user docs is a problem. I’ll cheerfully retract the word “bug”.
The main point here is that the reason Eugenia’s GNOME 2 didn’t have user docs is because your build script didn’t install them, not because GNOME 2 doesn’t have them.
And Eugenia demands that the default setup is exactly right to here, and this means by extension exactly right for everyone.
It’s impossible to meet all these expectations, so don’t bash developers for not managing it.
From the article, Eugenia asked where is the UI to customize it? I’m using RC1 (sorry, no time no upgrade), and it can’t be configured as much as 1.4.x did through a graphical front end.
I compare Linux comunity with the socialist partys in my country (argentina). lot’s of good ideas but always fragmented because of so little things. meanwhile the big partys (microsoft) always win.
I agree with you in lot’s of things.
And the corrupted regimes win? 🙂 No offence 🙂
gonna give BSD a try, any suggerences? Freebsd? netbsd?
I will use it just for the desktop (my own server is still a RH 6.2 without monitor)
FreeBSD is best for newbies from Linux 🙂
It is the easiest too.
Someone said he can’t stand Open Source because of stupid “Linux rocks and M$$$$$$$$$ suckssssssss” zealots but that is unfair, zealots are no problem of the developers.
Best example Ximian, they see something they like (C# and .NET development plattform) and create a free implementation of it. Some zealots calling them traitors or course… But who cares…
I also understand now why cvsgnome wasn’t mentioned…
And now I’m really curious. Was the missing documention an installation problem or is there really some documentation missing? I hope Eugenia will tell us about the problems they encountered, so we can try to reproduce them.
“And the corrupted regimes win? 🙂 No offence :-)”
unfortunately yes, lot’s of people share the same ideas but can’t make a concesion or two to make a common block. results? the best organized wins everytime.
in OS world linux has only 2 % or less of the desktops (I know, in servers linux rulez! but we are talking about a window manager here). You can’t beat the price, so what keeps users from using linux is linux attitude kicking newbies out.
if only more programs come with installers like mozilla/openoffice/ximian then we can get a bigger force. of course you may download the sources and compile with your favorite compiler and flags, but for the end user that would be great.
rajan r, i will try freebsd, but is it ready for desktop really? (webcam, scanner, printer, flashcard reader…)
Someone said he can’t stand Open Source because of stupid “Linux rocks and M$$$$$$$$$ suckssssssss” zealots but that is unfair, zealots are no problem of the developers.
Best example Ximian, they see something they like (C# and .NET development plattform) and create a free implementation of it. Some zealots calling them traitors or course… But who cares…
sorry if I was not clear. I can stand Open Source!!!, just can’t stand some people attitude. Basicaly we are saying the same, but my english is so poor…
some developers also have the same attitud because they are zealots also, but I can’t blame on them, no one is paying for they work so can’t complain.
There are always some black sheep.
Ive been anticipating GNOME2 for a while, I installed GARNOME and kept track of it, and was thoroughly disgusted by GNOME2, Ive scrapped that and now have Debian’s experimental packages.. Im still disgusted with it :/
Its been dummed down sooooo much it makes Win95 look overly complex.. examples :
The little yellow popups that appear whenever you move your mouse over anything, e.g. the workspace switcher (WS).. they cant be turned off.. now any user no matter how dumb after about an hour of using G2 will now KNOW thats the WS rendering the popups pointless, yet they cant be turned off.. i find them very distracting and annoying
The window list (WL) applet has had all its configuration options removed as to make it retarded.. ive always had 1 48 pixel high panel at the bottom, and used to make the WL use 2 rows, now i just have one very fat row that randomly changes size depending on the length of the title.
The clock is also dodgy.. even tho the font is smaller than a 24 pixel panel (quite considerably too!) their is so much useless grey border that it stretches the panel…
And im not going to even go into Metacity and the fact it cant even remember window sizes/placements/attributes
Ok they are all relatively little niggles that im probably going way over the top on.. but what is the long term plan here? Create such a dum desktop that it drives long time gnome users away?
And no, im not turning back to 1.4… and why? Cos Im in love so bad with the AA fonts
>Mario: And I was a bit shocked that panel etc. are less customizable
>stew: Psst…I’ll tell you a secret: Less is more.
>And Eugenia demands that the default setup is exactly right to here,
>It’s impossible to meet all these expectations, so don’t bash developers for not managing it.
Yes, but it is a open project, so they can e.g. ask users with a poll. Anyway it is better to have more customizations.
>Mario although he is disappointed by the UI says BUT I am using applications of gnome2.0 which are A LOT faster.
Yes. I am surprised about Nautilus. First versions where ridicolous slow and bloated. Last gnome 1.4 version was “usable”. But now it is very fast, expecially on images rendering, which is as fast as gliv, which uses opengl to zoom.
Thanks Eugenia! We end-users really need credible people to speak up so that future releases of Gnome and KDE steadily improve.
> I also understand now why cvsgnome wasn’t mentioned…
i don’t …. please explain and enlighten me.
Anyway it is better to have more customizations.
See, this simply isn’t true. Do me a favor and read what others who claim to be UI experts (and I don’t doubt that) have said in this overly long thread. I even quoted stew in the same posting you are replying to, but which you conventiently leave out. I also posted a link to a writeup by Havoc Pennington concerning this, I’ll post it again for your convenience http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html
The gist is: every option has a cost both in debugging probs (multiple codepaths that can’t reasonably be debugged because there are bugs triggered by some special combos of esoteric options) and in UI probs (e.g. sawfish 1.0 preferences panels)
it is a open project, so they can e.g. ask users with a poll
Are they your babysitters? bugzilla.gnome.org is open, if you have an issue go there, write hat you want to say, provide logical reasoning and add the keyword “usability”.
It /will/ be taken care of. I know that, as I have done the same and I received attention. Not everything is done as I want, not everything is done immediately, but /always/ somebody looked at it and thought about it and contacted me. Bugzilla is an continuous open poll What more can you want? or go to irc.gnome.org if you like that better
>>Anyway it is better to have more customizations.
>See, this simply isn’t true. Do me a favor and read what others who claim to be UI experts.
I am sorry but I am an “UI expert” too. The first thing you study is that there is not the “perfect ui” but an UI that match a specific user. Now the Windows marketing departement tells windows developer that typical windows user is a “brainless lamer”. But the typical linux user is more heterogeneous so a lot of customization are “recommended”.
I understand that more code=more bugs anyway.
>>it is a open project, so they can e.g. ask users with a poll
>Are they your babysitters? bugzilla.gnome.org is open, if you have an issue go there, write hat you want to say,
I will surely go there and explain my opinions. But how many people knows bugzilla?