“GNOME 2.16 Beta has been in Edgy Eft (Ubuntu 6.10) for the past few days [or even a week or so]. It is functioning extremely well. I’ve seen some occasional crashes with Epiphany and Nautilus but I hope that it will be fixed soon. Other than that, there are lots of new things in GNOME 2.16“, read the pictorial review here.
Edgy Eft (Ubuntu 6.10) & GNOME 2.16 Features
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Thanks for the review. Nice one.
But I wonder… Every time I read a review from a new release of Ubuntu it’s said to be much faster and use less memory than the previous one. Yet still when I try it myself I feel it slower and heavier (memory wise) then the previous. Am I the only one?
Some reviewers should install Warty release now and compare. I bet they’d be impressed by its speed and low memory usage compared to Dapper and probably Edgy.
same thing for me, alway use more memory and slower
same thing for gnome
anyway, i prefer kde, use less memory, faster, more quality program
Correct me if I am wrong, as I have very little idea about this (I know ery little about this).
I used Dapper on an older and a newer computer (I basically bought a new one), and I noticed that when it had the extra memory, it would take it, but when it didn’t, it wouldn’t try to use as much. But when it loads extra programs, the newer computer wouldn’t use as much more memory as the old computer, and the old computer would use more extra memory then the new one.
Could that account for why it seems to use more memory?
Programs use as much memory as they need.
anyway, i prefer kde, use less memory, faster, more quality program
That remains to be seen i think.Unless you compile both Gnome and KDE from source you will never know.On one of my boxen i have Gentoo installed.Compiling Gnome gave less error messages during the ride than compiling KDE from source.I used to use solely KDE but Gnome since 2.14 has become a lot “snappier” and is tightly integrated in Ubuntu which i prefer to use from day to day.
“Unless you compile both Gnome and KDE from source you will never know.On one of my boxen i have Gentoo installed.Compiling Gnome gave less error messages during the ride than compiling KDE from source”
It’s well known that compiling GNOME is troublesome. I think that was the reason Slackwared doesn’t provide GNOME packages anymore.
“I used to use solely KDE but Gnome since 2.14 has become a lot “snappier” and is tightly integrated in Ubuntu which i prefer to use from day to day.”
I used GNOME before changing to KDE. Now I feel KDE is snappier with each release, unlike GNOME that gets heavier. And KDE is more integrated than GNOME. You should try Kubuntu; you know, ‘sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop’ and if you don’t like it, just purge it.
Where is your proof that gnome has got heavier?, 2.14 is lighter and faster than previous and smaller.
As for slackware, it has it’s own versions of gnome, that lifts alot of work off one person. Gnome is easy to compile if you know the order, same goes for KDE. More intergrated, how did you work that out?
Edited 2006-08-17 21:10
“Where is your proof that gnome has got heavier?, 2.14 is lighter and faster than previous and smaller.”
I used GNOME since year 2000. Last year I switched to KDE because I noted that with each release, GNOME gets heavier and KDE gets faster. It’s my opinion, what I’ve noted, at least in my usage. What do you expect? That I do benchmarking for you?
“KDE. More intergrated, how did you work that out?”
I use it everyday. You should try it, and then come back to tell me it’s not integrated. If there’s an integrated desktop, that’s KDE. Is not perfect, but is well integrated.
I’ve used KDE-3.5, whats more intergrated?, you still have not answered the question. KDE only got faster since KDE 3.4, gnome got faster in 2.14 so whats the big deal?
“I’ve used KDE-3.5, whats more intergrated?, you still have not answered the question. KDE only got faster since KDE 3.4, gnome got faster in 2.14 so whats the big deal?”
KMail is well integrated with KAddressbook, also integrated with Kopete. Konqueror integrates a file browser with internet browser, image viewers, text file viewers, KPDF viewer, etc. KOffice is well integrated, better than OpenOffice. Is not KDE, but it’s a KDE suite. If you browse with konqueror, you can agregate feeds into Akregator within Konqueror. KGet is also integrated with Konqueror, if you choose to download files with it. The complete desktop, through its libraries is integrated.
GNOME _may_ be alright to compile if you know the rather esoteric order and diverse dependencies.. for one box.
It’s horrendous to package however and distribute to a customized multi workstation environment (say to a large university running on AFS). KDE on the other hand, while certainly more work than packaging fluxbox et al, is miles ahead in that area.
I should know, the situation above is a big part of my job, and trying both was how I came to these conclusions.
Can we have a gnome or kde article be posted without someone trying to start a flamewar? seesh!
“Can we have a gnome or kde article be posted without someone trying to start a flamewar? seesh!”
Flamewars are interesting. There’s nothing wrong with them.
“Can we have a gnome or kde article be posted without someone trying to start a flamewar? seesh!”
Shouldn’t have flamewars between gnome and kde.
Because xfce kicks both their butts. 🙂
+1 from me for havin the nads to speak the truth
I disagree on the gnome part. They’ve been doing alot of great work getting the whole thing speedier and less resource intensive. I have been having nautilus problems, though, I’m still using 2.14. I haven’t had a chance to upgrade to 2.16. I hope the nautilus crashes the reviewer is reporting are specific to Ubuntu here (I use FreeBSD). I’ve been hoping that, once I do the upgrade, the nautilus bugginess will stop.
i prefer kde, use less memory, faster
You are joking? KDE uses less memory and is faster than GNOME?!
I also prefer KDE to GNOME, as it has more features and the included apps are generally better, but no way is it faster. Get a grip!
not really,
KDE (suse) after boot with nvidia takes 95MB what about Gnome?
Cold boot time 45sec on AMD64 3000 2GB RAM, dual core lappy (2.0Ghz/!GB RAM) 1min :15sec)
not really,
KDE (suse) after boot with nvidia takes 95MB what about Gnome?
Cold boot time 45sec on AMD64 3000 2GB RAM, dual core lappy (2.0Ghz/!GB RAM) 1min :15sec)
wooow, a new brain marble
measuring DE speed by comparing two completely different machines from cold boot???? Could somehow something be even more ludicrous than this claim?
Both KDE and Gnome take few seconds from login to usable point. At least my gnome does that.
Now be a good boy and tell you don’t even have the same distro on your computers and you win.
You must be blind
I have shown KDE times and memory usage on two different boxes. I did not compare Gnome to KDE.
The point was to show that KDE is neither slow nor memory hungry.
I have no idea where have you got the idea that this is some sort of comparison.
actually, try both on some really old hardware, the difference is clear (in favor of KDE). I did on using debian on an old B&W G3 (350Mhz PPC). While no speed daemon, KDE was actually usable. GNOME on the other hand was awful (I’m talking speed here).
I’ve booted a few days ago into my old Hoary installation (now using Dapper), and was very impressed by its speed.
I’ll still use dapper, but I’m wondering what is going on.
You need to use a distribution that acutally has optimized code. Fedora core 6 beats all at the moment. I’m running it on a k6 500MHz for emacs 22 and sbcl for numerical modelling and watch videos sometimes. I got this box as a giveaway. I’m happy I can turn it into something of use.
It is faster and uses less memory for me. Dapper uses the least memory of all the ubuntus yet at 86 MB at boot. Hoary used to be 130 MB for me. Dapper is also way snappier.
I think you are really just trying to make up stuff about GNOME becuase you like KDE.
I haven’t been using ubuntu in a while, but comparing releases on Arch… Gnome itself has gotten faster and faster each release.
And the OS will try to make as much as possible of the ram used – the ram isn’t usefull if there is nothing stored in it… The ram that the programs don’t need will be used for “cache”, data temporary stored in ram so that accessing it will be faster the next time (it’s faster to get it from ram than from a harddrive).
To find out how much of it is cache, use the “free” command.
I threw together my impressions as well after looking around the web for a bit more information on it here:
http://www.breakitdownblog.com/2006/08/16/gnome-216-livecd-and-feat…
Which kernel is included in Edgy Eft?
A version of 2.6.17 currently. check distrowatch http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu and look under snapshot
It will ship wwith 2.6.17, too.
Lots of talk about speed improvements:
“As usual, GNOME Terminal has also undergone some speed improvements.”
“GEdit is also very stable now and it has a much faster startup time”
“As for Ubuntu Edgy 6.10, there have been speed improvements in terms of booting”
“Totem-Gstreamer has had some nice speed improvements as well”
“As for OpenOffice.org, it has the latest 2.0.3 Version. It is indeed faster, and I have been able to open documents faster in OOo than in AbiWord”
None of these statements are backed up with any form of measurable proof. And honestly, is execution speed really the most interesting thing in computer software?
This one is priceless:
“Yelp, finally! (2.15.91): Looks normal. I don’t use Yelp as much so I don’t know but it looks faster.”
Looks faster? Say what?! He even admits he doesn’t use Yelp, yet he claims it looks faster. That just takes away any credibility of the previous so called speed improvement claims.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for actual code optimization and speed improvements. Writing efficient code is a good thing, especially in core operating system components. But this constant talk about perceived speed improvements is getting boring.
Percieved speed is sometimes more important to the user than actual speed. I haven’t seen many reviews of software that include benchmarks, but I’m sure there are places where you can find this info. Anyway, anyone who has accidentaly clicked help in gnome knows how slow it is (used to be?). I’ll agree that the review does seem rather unprofessional, but don’t damn the whole system.
Ubuntu fanboys don’t need logic and facts to back up their claims.
Ubuntu is simply TEH BESTEST and if you argue, UR A MS SHILL AND WRONG!!1!`
Seriously. Ubuntu is fat and bloated, and feels far from snappy. XP on the same hardware feels snappier.
Aktually, Ubuntu iz even Teh More Bestest.
Oh crap, I forgot. You’re right …
UBUNTU IZ TEH MOST UBER BESTESTEST LUNIX DISTRO EVAR OMGROFLCOPTERWTFBBQ!!1!`
Your post is a big flame and full of spell errors, but I do agree. I never liked Ubuntu, when I use Ubuntu for a while and use Slackware after that it feels way better, much faster, more responsive and more fun to work with.
Ubuntu has really become a distro people use because everybody is using it and if you say bad things about it it’s never Ubuntu’s fault.
Talking about gnome, I can’t see any (visual or userfriendly) progress. I’m sure a lot of bugs get fixed, which is very important but the screenshots are still the same as 2 years ago. gnome really needs to put it’s WM to a whole other level, believe me i’m a Linux fan and MS basher but it doesn’t even get close to the Windows XP gui, after all those years.
Compare Nautilus to the Windows explorer and you’ll know the difference. Is it really that hard to make a good folder/file browser?
Slackware after that it feels way better, much faster, more responsive and more fun to work with.
I’m glad it works for you 🙂
Ubuntu has really become a distro people use because everybody is using it and if you say bad things about it it’s never Ubuntu’s fault.
I think you are degrading the users capability of decision,about what actually works and what doesn’t or simply isn’t worth the time and effort.
Once you have installed LFS,Gentoo,Slackware,FreeBSD,OpenBSD,Solaris and whatnot,and tweaked it until everything possible relevant worked,the fun is rapidly gone the second time you have to install.Than it’s quite logical you would want to install as fast as possible so you can work/play with the machine.
gnome really needs to put it’s WM to a whole other level, believe me i’m a Linux fan and MS basher but it doesn’t even get close to the Windows XP gui, after all those years.
I overclocked my AMD64 3000+ to 2.4GHz.It has 1024MB memory.Every distro i throw at it runs well.
XP also runs great on it.I like the <hide inactive icons> feature a lot.Especially when the firewall and/or virus-scanner taskbar icon is hidden.Is it running or not lol.
Vista is an exeption though it runs like a PIII 600.
The spelling and grammar errors were intentional. 😉 I was poking fun at the Linux fanboy kiddies who use !~!1`1!! everywhere, as well as words like “teh” and “bestest”.
I think (I hope) he knew that and was just kidding himself. Oh…
“OMGROFLCOPTERWTFBBQ!!1!`” nice touch!
… Wow, where did that post go. Can you link me to where I said that?
Oops? Did I respond to the wrong post?
No, not at all. I remember writing that, but now I can’t find the post.
Fascist moderators for the win!
actually (if anyone nowadays) that’s more the language of die hard windows gamerz (and teenie boppers on chat (who probably don’t even know what a “linux” is))… not people who are serious about running a unix-like free operating system.
but then that’s less fun to troll about eh?
Look on the typical Linux forum and find me people who “are serious about running a UNIX-like free operating systeM”, rather than people who “hate MS and think they are now l337 hax0rz”.
Look on a typical forum for enthusiasts _any_ OS platform and you will find folks that fall in all sorts of categories, from the serious, the experienced, the beginner, to the “I hate X, Y friggin rules!” types…
However, maybe you didn’t get the memo, GNU/Linux is fairly mainstream now, operating the backend of much of the world’s industries, governments, enterprises, universities, etc., with (albeit less) inroads on the desktop here and there as well. It’s pretty unfair for you to just lump all those folk under a single stereotype now isn’t it?
Sort if like I said all windows users were incompetent idiots who go into panic attacks if big brother microsoft hasn’t ok’ed every little computing decision for them, “foxfire, lyenucks, what’s that? can you run MSN/AOL with it?” Pretty stupid when the tables are turned right?
As far as I know, university sysadmins stay away from Linux like the plague.
I hate to say it, but the BSDs and Microsoft still have quite a stronghold in the governments and enterprises …
I’m not sure where you heard that one…
I’m a sysadmin at one of the top research universities in the US, and guess what, we heavily use Linux (and Solaris). Go to cartel conferences (cartel is the grouping of the big names in CS universities, MIT, Stanford, CMU, etc.), and you’ll notice that Linux is far and away the trend. There certainly is an MS presence (same at my place) but it’s fairly secondary to the real backend. BSDs? I’m not aware off hand who’s using those (though certainly somebody must be somewhere. I think I heard one of the cartel schools did have a (NetBSD?) presence).
Now sure, your small community colleges could be a different thing altogether. I know the one I went to was dominated by MS zealots, who scoffed at Linux (without having much of a clue what it was). But that’s fairly typical of “sysadmins” with a limited range of tech ability, more concerned with keeping their hold on their job than with providing the best technology.
As to enterprises, fortune 500s and all that, I don’t live in that world so I’m less qualified to comment, but from what I understand, it’s roughly divided between traditional UNIX (solaris etc.) and Linux (primarily RedHat), with again, some MS pockets here and there.
Where MS is big, is on the lower end (small businesses, etc. where some consultant set up a server or two for them) and on the desktops of course. But on the high end where you have dedicated IT divisions and such, it’s still largely a *nix world (with Linux quickly becoming the frontrunner), exceptions granted.
“Ubuntu has really become a distro people use because everybody is using it and if you say bad things about it it’s never Ubuntu’s fault.”
Well, partly. Of course there’s a lot positive talking going on about Ubuntu, and thats also the reason why I decided to try it out a few months ago. But if it had not flawlesly worked on my computer from the very beginning, I would not keep it because “everybody’s using it”. I’ve been using Gentoo before (a great distro, I learned so much using it, really loved it), but then I installed Ubuntu, _everything_ worked right away, I just configured Gnome a little to fit my needs better, and I was happy. Ubuntu is definitely great. The one thing I don’t like is this damn slow Gnome rendering…it’s looks awful sometimes. But I use Xgl now and it’s soooo much faster.
Now that really depends on how you define “snappier”. I run Ubuntu on my box, and my wife runs XP on her box. They are similarly configured (i.e., ~2 GHz CPU speed, 512 MB RAM, identical 160 GB hard drives, etc.). When running a single task, yes, XP does feel snappier or more responsive. However, when running more than one task, there is no question that Ubuntu is much snappier and more responsive. It really depends on your computing habits.
So do tell me what tasks you’re running that feel snappier on Ubuntu. I’ll be sure to test this out.
it’s just a bunch of screenshots. not much of a review.
Yes it’s not nippy like gentoo or slackware or even SUSE for that matter. Dont blame this on gnome people, i’ve got more memory free than XP has with gnome 2.15.91/Gentoo and it’s very nippy.
It’s cold?
Seriously tho’… I never had problems with memory when running gnome (or kde for that matter) on older versions of ubuntu, gentoo, mandrake, etc. Haven’t run the latest versions so cannot comment. I do however agree with the poster’s who are calling for hard #’s more than perception-based testing. Those numbers should include average memory use when performing the same, scripted tasks in the same amount of time, application startup times, gimp rendering, etc.
Both Gnome and KDE get a little faster with every new releases. However they both still are …not that fast…
I myself prefer KDE over Gnome because it got more quality apps (Amarok vs Rhythmbox, K3B vs ???, Konversation vs Xchat, etc.) but I admit that Gnome is a bit more faster these days. On a older computer, it’s faster. At least on my gf comp! But I don’t care, even if Gnome was uber fast, if it doesnt fit my needs it doesnt matter much.
Both these DEs need a new .0 release. They are getting old and need some re-engeneering. Gnome is really Metacity (a really simple WM…too simplistic) with 2 panels. It sadly needs more features and a centralized “control panel” instead of 10 zillions different config panels. KDE needs a new design based on some usuability studies. The interface is too cluttered. Oh and it needs faster drawing…but I think QT4 can do this 😉
“KDE needs a new design based on some usuability studies. The interface is too cluttered. Oh and it needs faster drawing…but I think QT4 can do this ;-)”
The interface in Kubuntu is nice. They have made things really usable, without clutter. I’m waiting for KDE4 with its Qt4 improved rendering. But overall, KDE is great.
you like that? 😉 it’s funny cause though I really like KDE, I really don’t like kubuntu’s hack of it. if anything it feels more like kgnome to me.
what I appreciate about kde is that it offers a fine set of sane defaults out of the box as it were (vanilla compile from scratch) which would keep most ordinary users happy, but it’s incredibly customizable and versatile for folk like most of us here who are more demanding on these things. customizable that is without having to work too hard for it (eg. gconf editing…)
“you like that? 😉 it’s funny cause though I really like KDE, I really don’t like kubuntu’s hack of it. if anything it feels more like kgnome to me.”
So that’s why you modded me down?
I find that these improvements to memory usage and speed in regards to Gnome is much more noticable in distro’s that ship/package very vanilla versions of the software.. or perhaps it has something to do with the underlying system.
For example, Gnome on Slackware, ArchLinux, FreeBSD, Gentoo and various other “non-user-friendly” distro’s seem to be nice and speedy… though this is obviously due to the fact that these systems are very barebones in comparison to Ubuntu’s default setup.
Does anyone know if Edgy has working NFSv4 Support?
(Working being the case where ACLs nad LDAP groups work properly, and it automagically uses the ticket specified by KRB5CCNAME).
If you hang arround the Linux community as long as I have you will see that there are a bunch of people that are just fanboys (girls) for whatever is the latest en vogue distro. Right now that distro is Ubuntu, so most of the reviews of Ubuntu are just puff pieces and cannot be trusted. Everything is getting faster and using less memory. Even though it is logical that as computers become faster and have more memory, the code that runs on them becomes bigger and slower since it no longer needs to be small and fast. Bugs are only ever fixed and once they are fixed they stay that way. New hardware becomes supported and all old hardware still works. Even though regression is a fact of the software development cycle and will not be eliminated anytime in the near future.
Yeah, not much of a review.
Well. I wonder rather its possible to get WPA-PSK support out of box today(year 2006!). I tried Drapper it failed.. only WEP is avaible. And for a joe user like i am, its very hard to get wpa-psk work for my wlan. Considering speed, and being snappier.
OSX worked faster than any linux distro i’ve tried till today (suse, redhat,ubuntu)
OSX was faster, snappier and excellent… heheh wifi didnt work over it as well, except that. everything worked fine on my compaq x1000 laptop. I suppose on being a bloated OS, OSX more bloated than Ubuntu or Gentoo.. But its faster than all even on PC.. funny but true
Yeah, I hear you re: WPA out of the box. It’s hard to believe Ubuntu still doesn’t have that :/
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=191557
Eugenia, Tom,
This silliness has to come to an end.
I propose you add a filter that, when checked, blocks all messages containing the strings “KDE” and “Qt” in threads related to Gnome and GTK, as well as messages containing the strings “Gnome” “GTK” and “GPL” in KDE related messages.
With that in place, peace-loving KDE and Gnome fans could happily read their information without being stomped on by idiots that tirelessly repeat the same old shit. You might even earn the Nobel prize for peace!
I propose you add a filter that, when checked, blocks all messages containing the strings “KDE” and “Qt” in threads related to Gnome and GTK, as well as messages containing the strings “Gnome” “GTK” and “GPL” in KDE related messages.
Nice sentiments, but unfortunately not practical. As long as KDE, Gnome Mac and Windows exist people will give their opinions on why they think one is better, and as long as the issue of Gnome’s speed and memory usage is brought up it will still be pointed out that KDE and Windows are better in that department.
Edited 2006-08-18 20:01