Submitted by “OpenSUSE has been driving innovation on the Linux desktop, and in today’s serial we’ll be discovering just what has been happening on the GNOME front. Among other things, openSUSE 10.3 is set to contain, and be among the very first to have, the new GNOME 2.20. We’ll see what new things you can expect from this version, what additional polish openSUSE brings to the desktop, and finally we’ll be talking to JP Rosevear, an openSUSE and GNOME developer, to find out a little more.”
Ah yeah, nice one, downloaded the Gnome liveCD yesterday late evening GMT. It certainly looks stylish and professional with it’s sharp and clear, clean design.
Booted up quite fast and without any other setup routine like configuring ethernet or video hardware from a choice of options as is common. On boot up though it only came to the Gnome splash and then froze, network showing disabled sign and mouse inactive, also not reacting to keyboard input.
It’s always the same, great looks but fails to deliver. Guess I’ll rather stay with Slackware and Debian.
It does look rather pretty. I’m a sucker for looks.
Mee too. When you look at these screenshots: http://news.opensuse.org/?p=264 it clearly stands out from the crowd.
I just wish they offered a screaming fast Fluxbox version for my old computer as well.
Ubuntu has been driving innovation on the Linux desktop….
There I fixed that for you!
–bornagainpenguin (who hasn’t used SuSE since…well since it was still called SuSE…)
not really, though. nothing innovative in what ubuntu does. they just try and do what they do very very well.
Wow..
I love how I’m getting modded to oblivion for that comment.
Heh..I was using SuSE back in the 4.2 days and enjoyed tinkering with it very much! Of course I was usually forced to head back to Windows in those days because even with 7 cds SuSE couldn’t provide everything needed for a working system and I was without internet so I couldn’t just use the unofficial repositories to get what I needed. I still appreciated those cds though as they gave me a better taste of what was possible in Linux…
How many of those modding me down had even heard of SuSE back when it was in the 4.xx versions? How many are doing so because they’re Novel fanboys?
–bornagainpenguin
Umm, I didn’t use SuSE back in the days of version 4.2, but I did use Windows back then. I can state with full certainty that SuSE 4.2 contained a helluva lot more applications back in the day than did Windows of the same era. I don’t know why you’re acting retarded!
Edited 2007-09-21 18:23
Maybe try to re-read what I actually said please?
SuSE came with seven cds–which is exactly what I said isn’t it?
I also said that I was unable to use it for much as a desktop, simply because I didn’t have ANY internet connection at the time. I used the local library’s connection (all three of them!) and then from there I began frequenting various cybercafes in the area. Given most places didn’t have cd-burners and iomega drives were just coming into fashion most of the time I was stuck ferry my files around via sneakernet….
When’s the last time you were able to install and run a distro with all videohardware drivers, all your basic codecs for audio and video, and all the applications (plus their dependencies and the dependencies’ dependencies…) right out of the box?
Given THAT and the fact it was easier to get software with installers back then, can you try to understand I’m not “acting retarded” I’m just telling it the way it was.
As it was, SuSE was the best Linux install at the time IMHO. They always made deals with various *nix companies to get the best software deals and bundled them with the boxed distro for their customers to enjoy. I still remember how I’d buy each new release hoping to get better at using Linux or manage to stay with it before I’d get stumped by something I didn’t know how to do in Linux.
At only $30.00 a box (with SEVEN cds!!) SuSE made it easy to experiment with Linux! The fact they included that huge book with every box really helped me along when it came to troubleshooting my hardware… I had one of the first SCSI iomgea zip drives, and that involved reading the manual and lots of print out from the library on isapnp, etc… Good times!
If nothing else I’d remember them for being the first software installer I could run from a cd, back when everything else at the time demanded a floppy be used first to initialize the cd drive and making bootable cds was the blackest of black magic.
I was a rabid SuSE fan. Don’t make me out to be a troll just because I no longer am one.
–bornagainpenguin
EDIT- Fixed stupd spelling error, changed ‘rapid’ to “rabid”
Edited 2007-09-21 23:41
Yes the good old days of big boxen with multiple CD’s and heavy manuals
I didn’t start as early as you did, but certainly a lot of time before SuSE was bought by Novel. I was quite suspicious of Novel to start with. The great 9.0 was the last release by the old ownership, and from there on I felt that SUSE was going downhill somehow.
However 10.2 is my main OS and I expect 10.3 to really rock.
Besides I’d almost say that SUSE/openSUSE isn’t just a desktop distro. It can be used for many purposes, almost like Debian.
SuSE 6 came with four CDs and a big manual written in Latex in German, and then translated for us Englishers: I know because I bought it. I doubt very much SuSE 4.2 came with more than 7 CDs, in fact I suspect it was less than four. Indeed, when 4.2 was released in 96, KDE had only just been proposed by Matt Ettrich: without KDE or Gnome (which came after 6.0) there was little need for so many CDs. No-one would have used it expecting to get a great desktop experience, the best you could hope for was fvwm95, and the lack of desktop applications meant it was only good enough for people who wanted to use the Unix console.
All of which makes me wonder if you really did use SuSE 4.2, or if you dragged out an obscure reference to back up a somewhat weak, and definitely inflamatory assumption.
Qt and Intel sponsor huge amounts of work in X11; RedHat leads the way in desktop standardisation, and has developed a number of configuration utilities; Novell, with Mono, have done a lot of work in apps like Banshee and others, and Ubuntu have done a lot of work creating configuration utilities (like RedHat) and packaging all the software in a manner conducive to use by non-technical users. They currently lead the pack in that regard, but are by no means the only game in town.
SuSE 6 came with four CDs and a big manual written in Latex in German, and then translated for us Englishers: I know because I bought it. I doubt very much SuSE 4.2 came with more than 7 CDs, in fact I suspect it was less than four. Indeed, when 4.2 was released in 96, KDE had only just been proposed by Matt Ettrich: without KDE or Gnome (which came after 6.0) there was little need for so many CDs.
Well I know I bought at least one version of SuSE with that many cds…
I don’t remember which window manager was default but I know it wasn’t KDE or Gnome. KDE at the time I used my first copy of SuSE was still in beta on release and I don’t remember seeing Gnome at all until a later release. I recall using fvwm95 and playing with afterstep–which lead me to Litestep and back to Windows with the whole shell replacement scene for awhile. In fact my first glimpse of BeOS was through an early Litestep theme that intrigued me enough to start hunting down more information about them and to my purchase of BeOS 5.0….
All of which makes me wonder if you really did use SuSE 4.2, or if you dragged out an obscure reference to back up a somewhat weak, and definitely inflamatory assumption.
I’m not here to measure e-penises with you; I only mentioned SuSE 4.2 in the context of having been a long time user and fan. It’s possible I may have used the wrong version number–maybe it was actually 5.2?
The point is I’d been using SuSE for a long time, and I think it’s hilarious so many people were modding me down who’d probably not even heard of the distro until the 8.x or 9.x days…
–bornagainpenguin
You are officially the most macho SuSe user of all of these SUSE 10.3 articles; before you the earliest user was 6.0. I was a 6.4 guy, but now I bow to you 🙂
I’ve always viewed ubuntu as a slimmed down version of Linux. I don’t mean featureless, but rather they don’t try to install a bunch of crap by default and instead opt for more of a minimum.
I don’t view Ubuntu as being any better or worse than any other distro. The one thing I’ve always like about ubuntu is that it comes on one CD. I’ve also found synaptic to be a good package manager. And over all easy to use. I think ubuntu has good direction, simply put.
However, I think openSuse has the ability to steal some thunder from ubuntu. I haven’t used openSuse since 10.1, but I have every intention of trying out the final release of 10.3.
openSuse 10.3 seems to have some very positive buzz around it. I look forward to trying it out.
And what exactly can we thank Ubuntu for?
Mono? Beagle? Xgl? Compiz? F-Spot? Tomboy?
Ubuntu doesn’t try and innovate so much as it does polish.
Too bad they didn’t invest as much time on KDE. Anyway, wasn’t OpenSUSE a more KDE-centric distribution (even if SLED adopted Gnome as its default DE)?
Gnome 2.20 looks nice (true). Unfortunately, the Gnome/GTK community fail to deliver rich applications for simple tasks like listening to music (Amarok) and burning cds/dvds (K3B). All you get are basic frontends to command line tools (duh).
KDE takes on the philosophy of Windows in the apps department. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink and make it as complex as possible because that means it is good.
Gnome on the other hand sticks with the UNIX philosophy. Make small apps that do one or two things and do them well.
I much prefer quickly starting up a small app and doing what I need and then being done. With KDE you have to start a huge app (Rich?)and then configure it for your specific circumstance.
For music, whats wrong with Rhythmbox or Banshee or Listen or Exaile?
For CD burning I will admit that nothing beats K3b. But there are plenty of full featured tools for gnome that expand upon the defaults like Graveman or Gnomebaker or even NeroLINUX.
I know this is likely going to turn into another GNOME v. KDE flamewar, but I’ll just throw in my two cents before it gets too hot for me.
Gnome on the other hand sticks with the UNIX philosophy. Make small apps that do one or two things and do them well.
Not necessarily. What you’re describing is more akin to Fluxbox or something similar. When compared to KDE, this might hold some water, but some GNOME-centric apps like Evolution have multiple functions. Hell, Kmail and KAddressBook and friends are also standalone programs in addition to offering integration into Kontact. Also, for some, not offering sufficient preferences or features means the app doesn’t do its thing well.
KDE takes on the philosophy of Windows in the apps department. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink and make it as complex as possible because that means it is good.
KDE is a lot more complex and offers a lot more options compared to GNOME; however, they are usually intuitively presented (minus Konqueror, the panel, and the god-awful Kopete), unlike how things are in Windows. KControl does a reasonably good job of sorting the plethora of customizations available for KDE itself.
Each KDE app has its settings and customization dialogs in the same menu. While that’s true for GNOME (Edit menu, IIRC) as well, it’s not for Windows; I’ve seen Options dialogs stored in everything from File to Help. I prefer the dedicated Settings menu that lets you customize everything and the kitchen sink, to GNOME’s minimalistic approach.
That’s the thing, though: “I prefer”. Neither elegant minimalism nor endless customization are better than the other. One may be better for certain people or certain circumstances, but one is not definitively superior for everybody. That’s the beauty of having the two major desktop environments in Linux so contrasting in philosophy and approach.
Edited 2007-09-21 17:03
KDE takes on the philosophy of Windows in the apps department. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink and make it as complex as possible because that means it is good.
Nope, never really seen evidence of that philosophy. You’ll get features that actually make using a Unix/Linux desktop useful over anything else, such as your middle mouse button being able to do something. Despite some better organisation being needed, I have never seen a feature thrown in that didn’t turn out to be a gem at some point.
Gnome on the other hand sticks with the UNIX philosophy. Make small apps that do one or two things and do them well.
On the other hand, if you want to run an application as another user like every other desktop can do, or if you actually want to make your middle mouse button do something like all Linux/Unix desktops have traditionally been able to do then you’re going to have to turn to something else.
With KDE you have to start a huge app (Rich?)and then configure it for your specific circumstance.
Hmmm. I’m not entirely sure how I had to configure Amarok the last time I used it, other than adding the location of my music collection and letting it add away. I also have great stuff like album covers, support for lyrics, Magnatune and other things that are great if I want, but don’t have to configure.
If your favourite application just simply doesn’t have the features, it’s always easy to use simplicity as an excuse ;-).
I don’t about amarok. When I use a music player I want it to be simple and to work. Amarok works, but I’m not sure its simple. Its interface is cluttered (as are most KDE apps) and there are things that Rhythmnox and Banshee do in much impler ways that I like. That’s not to say that Amarok is bad, far from it actually.
Its easy to have bad UI design and clutter and call it a feature. Simplicity is a lot harder to achieve, imo.
I slightly disagree. Having a lot of features and still retaining a simple interface is hard to achieve. Cutting features and making a GUI for the few remaining or obscuring them in GConf is much more easier.
Yes, that is true, but I hope you are not suggesting that that is what KDE is doing, because its far from accurate.
Yes, that is true, but I hope you are not suggesting that that is what KDE is doing, because its far from accurate.
Well, it’s certainly what they working towards. Trying to retain all the features they have now, but organising things in a better way. Retaining all the powerful file management features in Dolphin from Konqueror, and adding a few more, is an example.
Excuse me but that’s not accurated, Dolphin is now as Klutered as Konqueror, 5 diferent views, an embebed console, stupid kluter you don’t need.
And that’s a shame because it looked like a good project, but now, is just another example of a bad and klutered UI.
Edited 2007-09-22 14:44
I was not going to flame, but this is too much even for me.
If you are THAT easily intimidated by a button or two then you shouldn’t use computers AT ALL. Amarok is just about the cleanest as it gets UI wise. Damnit, even OSNews has gazillion more distracting elements on their site than ‘Rok has in its interface. Pry tell me, how DO you manage to browse OSN? Don’t you feel a bit scared? Y’know with all them buttons n’stuff?
I know that idiots prefer to have a single big button labeled “do stuff” that they can click to DO STUFF(tm) and get confused when there’s a second button added so they have a *gasp* CHOICE!!!!
Fine, have it your way but do not squeak about programs that are actually usable instead of “simplistic” and with “no clutter”.
First of all stop being an ass. I just happen to like well designed interfaces. Amarok is a hodgepodge of every bad UI design decision ever made in KDE. In-terms of interface Amarok is inferior because the developers don’t know or didn’t bother to actually learn how to put a functional UI together. I was being nice about it and not pointing out that I think Amarok is a piece of shit in-terms of Ui design, but I guess the KDE fanboys want to start the flameage. Learn how to put together a f–king UI then you tell me why I have this button that does everything I want it to do and you have 3 that basically the same thing but call it a “feature”.
“I think Amarok is a piece of shit in-terms of Ui design”
Care to give even one concrete example backing that up?
I’m finding it a bit hard to figure out what this “one button that does everything I want” would be vs. the “3 that basically the same thing” in Amarok – unless you’ve somehow merged play, pause and next…
Back on topic, that SUSE design is nice. My only minor nitpick would be to lose the brackets on the taskbar – they’re just distracting noise.
Yeah. My f–king opinion. I said clearly I THINK that it has a pice of shit UI design. What’s you point?
Yeah. My f–king opinion. I said clearly I THINK that it has a pice of shit UI design. What’s you point?
If you want it to be more than an opinion you’re going to have to go further. Your point is?
Amarok is a hodgepodge of every bad UI design decision ever made in KDE. In-terms of interface Amarok is inferior because the developers don’t know or didn’t bother to actually learn how to put a functional UI together.
And yet, Banshee and Exaile are trying to be exactly like Amarok in terms of features and Amarok is still more functional. Can you care to give me an example of what you mean by this, given that I’ve never seen anyone have any real problems using Amarok when compared to something like Windows Media Player.
Yet again, it’s easy to liberally throw around words like hodgepodge, clutter, simplicity and usability (and they’re thrown around a lot), but if you can’t explain them up then they’re pretty meaningless.
I was being nice about it and not pointing out that I think Amarok is a piece of shit in-terms of Ui design
Can you give us an itemised list to back that up?
but I guess the KDE fanboys want to start the flameage.
No. If you’re going to liberally throw around meaningless words such as simplicity and phrases like ‘good UI design’ without knowing what they mean then you’re going to get people calling you on it.
then you tell me why I have this button that does everything I want it to do and you have 3 that basically the same thing but call it a “feature”.
Can you give us an example of of where Amarok has three buttons to do the same thing, whereas the oh-so well designed Banshee, Exaile and Rhythmbox only have one button (or none, because they don’t do what Amarok does)? I mean, it’s always been an easy and casual thing to throw around stuff like ‘clutter’ and ‘three buttons when one will do’, but without telling us what you mean it’s simply meaningless. I have my playlist, I have album art, I have support for lyrics and Magnatune, and I don’t see them repeated all over the place.
Like I said, if you don’t have the features people like then don’t start throwing around words like simplicity in order to make up for it. I can’t think of any piece of software in history, or of Microsoft or Apple marketing Windows and OS X on the basis that they are better because they have less features and therefore more simplicity.
Listen pal, I probably know more about what simplcity and cklutter means than you. Go read a book use something other than windows and KDE and then come back and clutter and simplicity will smack you in the face. I have no idea why you are acting liek this f–king news. In-fact the KDE4 devs are trying to remedy some of this clutter and to simplify the interface for their apps. Its hsould be obvious just by looking at the difference between Konqueror and Dolphin, guess which one is default.
The three button is an exageration based ont ha fact that some idiot was ranting about the all powerful super button but if you must know go to settings in any KDE app and you will see three different options there to do something that could be done with one. This is almost universal across all KDE apps.
Amarok doesn’t have features it has clutter. Banshee has only a passing resemblance to Amarok but that is it, in-terms of functionality it resembles Rhythmbox and Rhythmbox resembles Itunes, Again you guys keep ranting about features while, I can give a rats ass about features I can’t find because there are 3 other “features” getting in my f–king way. If I remember correctly I said very little about features other than that little one button quip. Instead I focused on the absolutely inane UI design and yet I have like 3 KDE guys ranting about features. f–k the features I want to use my application without it screaming at me and showing off. Rhythmbox doesn’t have all those “features” but who cares, its a music player. I pick a song I want to play then minimize the stupid thing, that’s all I want from my music player. I don’t need a telegraph from it telling me how great it is. Its a music player, shut the f–k up and get the f–k out of the way, is how I like it and most KDE apps don’t do that. Its like in the movies where you have that guy who has all the skills in the world and can do incredible backflips and high kicks and can even break out the nun chucks, but at the end of the day a simple kick in the groin would be more effective, or a shot in the chest like Indian Jones.
Listen pal, I probably know more about what simplcity and cklutter means than you.
I’m sure you do, since no one but you seems to understand what you mean by simplicity or clutter.
Go read a book use something other than windows and KDE and then come back and clutter and simplicity will smack you in the face.
And what is this supposed to mean? I’ve read a great many usability books in my time, and ‘clutter’ is simply not defined anywhere. It’s a meaningless word that certain people have come up with in order to try and tell us why a piece of software doesn’t do something.
Its hsould be obvious just by looking at the difference between Konqueror and Dolphin, guess which one is default.
Dolphin has all the file management features that Konqueror ever had, plus a few more. It has not been done at the expense of features and functionality.
…but if you must know go to settings in any KDE app and you will see three different options there to do something that could be done with one. This is almost universal across all KDE apps.
Without a specific example, this is meaningless, although a few could do with tidying. That’s not a reflection on the fact that features should be cut though.
Amarok doesn’t have features it has clutter.
Again, without a specific example then clutter cannot be defined. It’s a meaningless term people are bandying about without knowing what it means.
Amarok gives you access to lyrics, can tell you about the artist, can sort a playlist, can give you a context and show you albums by the same artist, let’s you manipulate your iPod effectively and provides last.fm and Magnatune integration. You certainly don’t have to use those things, but many do.
I’m sorry, but you can’t sell a piece of software based on it having less features. It’s like running up an escalator.
Again you guys keep ranting about features while, I can give a rats ass about features I can’t find because there are 3 other “features” getting in my f–king way.
That’s your opinion. Many people do want lyrics and artist information and many do want to use their iPod properly. I don’t use most of those things, but it doesn’t stop me playing music.
f–k the features I want to use my application without it screaming at me and showing off.
You can’t sell an application on the basis of it having less features I’m afraid. It’s never worked in the software world, and it isn’t about to start now. Why do you think people look to applications like Amarok and K3B these days?
I pick a song I want to play then minimize the stupid thing, that’s all I want from my music player.
You can still do that. What makes you think you can’t with Amarok?
Spoken like a true KDE zealot. “Simplicity” is not a meaningless word to any person who knows a little bit about HCI.
Exaile’s mission is to be as messy as Amarok, but Banshee not at all. It’s quite more usable than Amarok.
Simplicity doesn’t equal less features, but whatever.
On http://www.apple.com/getamac they use the word “simplicity” once and “simple” four times.
Spoken like a true KDE zealot. “Simplicity” is not a meaningless word to any person who knows a little bit about HCI.
You’re going to have to define it and give examples. I’m afraid you know nothing about HCI outside of reading Gnome’s HIG or something. That is not understanding HCI or usability.
Exaile’s mission is to be as messy as Amarok, but Banshee not at all. It’s quite more usable than Amarok.
It does a fair bit less, and also gives you some lovely and pretty meaningless .Net style tracebacks at times, or even worse, seems to descend into native C code and silently fails without anyone knowing what has happened, like a lot of Mono apps.
Believe it or not, that’s related to usability as well ;-).
Simplicity doesn’t equal less features, but whatever.
Well no, it shouldn’t ;-).
In Gnome’s case, it certainly does. People can’t run an application as another user like they can in any other desktop environment, people do not have access to PPD printer options of the kind you’ll find in any other desktop environment’s print dialogues and options, people can’t configure their Synaptic touchpads, people can’t get access to any features of their screensavers like they can in any other desktop environment…………
But, whatever.
On http://www.apple.com/getamac they use the word “simplicity” once and “simple” four times.
It seems to be an automatic reaction caused by some disease amongst many people to wheel out the Mac quotes and hold up the Mac as some sort of epitome of design without having the faintest idea what they’re actually doing. It happens every time, and it’s pretty endemic.
The words ‘simple’ and ‘simplicity’ on there are used as marketing terms and do not relate to HCI or usability explanations at all.
This is ridiculous. You’re going to have to look for them yourself, I won’t bother discussing it with someone who supposedly read a great many deal of several HCI related books. Here’s a tip: pick *any* of them and look it up.
I’m afraid you’re wrong.
There it is boys and girls. We can’t have a single topic on OSNews that is remotely related to Novell without segedunum doing his usual trolling routine.
No, it doesn’t. You’re misinformed.
You got two things wrong there. You can do that under GNOME, and it’s not a feature available under any OS. It’s a pretty pointless thing to pick on as well…
That’s bogus as well. It was not a usability decision to not include all PPD options in GNOME’s old printing dialogs.
Same as above.
Yes, people can.
You’re right on the first part. Of course, it’s got nothing to with what I wrote; I looked up Apple’s website because you brought it up:
I can’t think of any piece of software in history, or of Microsoft or Apple marketing Windows and OS X on the basis that they are better because they have less features and therefore more simplicity.
Highlighted some parts for your weak memory.
Actually, Amarok has the least cluttered interface of any application I use on a daily basis:
Win-B, Win-X, Win-C, and scrollwheel over the amarok icon is pretty much all I use.
I see lots of people talking about “clutter” and “simplicity” as if they’re holy words which no unbeliever can possibly use correctly– They’re just words, and they’re not mutually exclusive.
If people prefer the limitations… er… simplicity, of Gnome, that’s fine. I’m actually fine with a compiz/gnome desktop on a single monitor, but every time I’ve tried to use Gnome on a dual-monitor setup, I’ve gone back to KDE within a few hours.
To answer the original question, openSuSE hasn’t shown any signs of neglecting the KDE environment. Of the distributions out there, they probably do more to give a consistent desktop regardless of KDE/Gnome preference, than anyone else.
This is ridiculous. You’re going to have to look for them yourself, I won’t bother discussing it with someone who supposedly read a great many deal of several HCI related books. Here’s a tip: pick *any* of them and look it up.
You’re right. It is. If you’re the one trying to shout simplicity from the rooftops as if everyone should know what it means, it is up to you to define what you actually mean and give some examples. No HCI or usability book you will ever find has a term called ‘simplicity’ that is universally understood and defined.
You’ve been on the Gnome usability anti-freeze, and the mysterious words simplicity, clutter, polish and all the other things used simply do not exist as defined terms in the usability world.
There it is boys and girls. We can’t have a single topic on OSNews that is remotely related to Novell without segedunum doing his usual trolling routine.
Ha, ha, ha, ha sweetheart. I have seen Banshee and F-Spot on many occasions give me some quite bizarre .Net tracebacks that don’t look good, and even silently fail on me because it hasn’t actually thrown a traceback. If you don’t like it, tough.
That’s bad usability on quite a large scale. Usability means a hell of a lot more than just HCI design, but it’s how the whole package works. Like it or lump it.
No, it doesn’t. You’re misinformed.
You were given examples sweetheart. You don’t like them. Tough.
You got two things wrong there. You can do that under GNOME
By default? No. I’m not interested in sleight of hand.
and it’s not a feature available under any OS.
Hmmmmmm. Running an application as another user. Can do that under Windows as Run As… Can do that under OS X. Can do that under KDE. Gnome? Nope.
That’s bogus as well. It was not a usability decision to not include all PPD options in GNOME’s old printing dialogs.
That was the U-turn that was done after the event sweetheart ;-). Read the original e-mails before Linus’ now famous post. The backtracking then happened.
Same as above.
And yet no one can configure their touchpads through a Gnome control centre panel. Go figure.
Yes, people can.
That’s news to me and everyone else. Where on Gnome’s screensavers ‘selector’ can we configure the features of a particular screensaver? If you’re talking about William McCann’s novel suggestion to configure the screensaver yourself then you’re trying to sleight of hand this again.
Some people really do have some quite serious emperor’s new clothes syndrome.
You’re right on the first part. Of course, it’s got nothing to with what I wrote; I looked up Apple’s website because you brought it up
If you’d remembered the thread of this, this whole thing came about because ‘simplicity’ was talked about as a defined HCI/usability term that everyone should just know – apparently. It’s not. It’s a marketing term knocked up by many people, along with stuff like clutter, clean and polish, that means absolutely nothing without a definition.
You then amusingly wheeled out the Apple marketing quotes, as if Apple is the epitome of usability, which then proved me right ;-).
You’re being dishonest. Yes, a GNOME developer not responsible for the dialog mistakenly informed Till that it was a usability decision, but after the public flaming the actual developers responsible for the dialog said it wasn’t there simply because nobody had implemented. A lot of features are not in GNOME because nobody implemented them yet, not because of usability decisions.
Same with touchpads: nobody ever said “Don’t put this feature in”. It’s just that, until recently, nobody cared enough to do the work. You will find this feature on Ubuntu 7.10 though, and in a future GNOME version for sure.
If you take 2 seconds to think about it you might find that the people behind GNOME’s usability are excelent engineers who have done great work to advance Free software, and whose work will have an impact on KDE 4 as well. Instead, you choose to believe they are idiots who don’t know the basics of the subject and base all their decisions on removing features.
Of course there are features that are not implemented because it leads to bad usability. For example, GNOME doesn’t have a welcome wizard to annoy you when you log in for the first time. GNOME’s file manager can’t browse the web, and GNOME’s web browser can’t manager files. If you propose these features they will not accepted, but funnily enough you will still be able to do the same things with GNOME.
Regarding the last point, you said that Apple (you brought them up, not me) does not market (you said it, not me) Mac OS X with simplicity and simple in mind because that would be stupid. You, not me. And now you keep talking about something else… straw man argument.
Regarding the last point, you said that Apple (you brought them up, not me) does not market (you said it, not me) Mac OS X with simplicity and simple in mind because that would be stupid. You, not me.
1. Simplicity was brought up as some form of defined usability term that everyone should just know. It isn’t.
2. I said that no one markets a lack of features, and therefore simplicity, which seems to be the case with Gnome (in the absence of an actual, proper definition of simplicity), as a selling point.
3. Apple certainly don’t market OS X based on a lack of features (just look at them!), although they do liberally throw the words simple and simplicity around as marketing terms, which seem to be features in themselves! That certainly was a straw man, because simplicity obviously means nothing there – which has been my point all along.
I’ll re-quote what I wrote that you actually quoted yourself:
I can’t think of any piece of software in history, or of Microsoft or Apple marketing Windows and OS X on the basis that they are better because they have less features and therefore more simplicity.
All you’ve admitted at the end of this is that your definition of simplicity is less features.
And now you keep talking about something else… straw man argument.
Go back and look at the rest of the thread, since you weren’t actually involved in all of it……..
Amarok uses vertically labeled tabs for crying out loud. Any UI with vertical text is a down-right abomination to UI design.
Explaining to a KDE user how bad the design is is like trying to explain how stupid the theory of Intelligent Design is to a “believer”. Its just SO obvious and right in front of your face its hard to put into words. Especially when they don’t understand simple words like “clutter”, or “natural selection”. I believe it is a choice if you want a lot of features visible at all times, or only the necessary features for use visible and the others placed elsewhere. I’m no GNOME user, I use Xfce. I was under the impression that KDE users knew this and just liked the clutter… only recently found out that they deny it.
To each is own… but at least admit its cluttered and bad design… but just that you like it that way.
Its just SO obvious and right in front of your face its hard to put into words. Especially when they don’t understand simple words like “clutter”, or “natural selection”.
Some specific examples would be nice, but you know, the intelligent design people can’t give us that either. It’s just so obvious.
I’m no GNOME user, I use Xfce.
Which doesn’t do a tenth of what KDE does. Go figure that one out.
Edited 2007-09-21 21:36
Hmmmmmm, I can never understand what any of this means.
When I use a music player I want it to be simple and to work. Amarok works, but I’m not sure its simple.
What do you mean by simple?
Its interface is cluttered (as are most KDE apps)
I don’t really understand what this means either. You’ve got Banshee and Exaile that look very similar to Amarok, and Exaile is basically a clone of Amarok in GTK and Python.
Its easy to have bad UI design and clutter and call it a feature.
What do you mean by bad UI design, and that immortally meaningless word, clutter? Amarok has good, powerful features and people can name them one by one.
Simplicity is a lot harder to achieve, imo.
What do you mean by simplicity?
I don’t happen to like Exaile either. Banshee may look like Amarok on the surface but on that note so does Itunes, and WMP11. Banshee and Amarok have very little in common. My biggest gripe with the UI design in some KDE apps are the side tabs, that is the most awful design choice ever made, imo. Besides that I use Rhythmnox for the most part and if they would work on better ipod management I wouldn’t even bother with Banshee either because I don’t like mono.
As for simplicity this is Rhythmbox:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/screenshots/rhythmbox-main….
and this is Amarok:
http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/images/2/2f/Amarok_14_main.png
I don’t think I can get clearer than that. Rhythmbox (and Banshee) gives me everythign I need without needing tabs and with very little clutter. But to each his own I guess.
Edited 2007-09-21 23:31
If I could add to your list, I’m a staunch supporter of the depreciated Yammi:
http://yammi.sourceforge.net/pics/goto-album.png
The fuzzy search is invaluable, and it handles tens of thousands of files gracefully where aforementioned programs tend to choke.
Using XMMS as the backend (also depreciated these days), it still supports everything: the LCD, remote control, video (well, with mplayer), etc.
That is some serious philosophical perversion you’re promoting there!
apparently you know absolutely nothing about application development and what kde does. Noone makes you use the kde libraries if you don’t like them and as far as the qui is concerned you can just used qt and skip the other stuff. As far as OS/DE design goes both KDE and Gnome provide libraries only gnome is written in plain C with structures that behave much like object ( gobject ) while KDE is written in C++ with all the benefits that come from using a newer language with a higher degree of abstraction. But there are ways of using other languages than the basic ones and especially with gnome you see a lot of stuff like that.
Also I really fail so see how openSuse has a better and more polished gnome distribution than they do kde. Both are quite polished and pretty much look the same. I personally like the KDE start menu better and also KDE has a lot better front end to beagle and every configuration tool ( at least the major ones ) is integrated into yast. The same cannot be said for the gnome version. Overall I find both the KDE and the gnome versions to be of equal quality which is a surprise for people coming from ubuntu.
Most notable feature in 10.3 is that the update manager works a lot faster than in 10.2 and now is on eaqual speed to aptitude. A welcome and much awaited change if I might say so.
Best combination ever Gnome WM + a lot of KDE Applications + CLI
I don’t know anything about Banshee, Listen or Exaile, but for me, Rhythmbox doesn’t cut it. Close, but not there.
First, one can’t sort a playlist. You can sort in the library, but not the playlist. I have a long playlist I like to listen to but I want it sorted so I can add new songs without duplicates, or to find a song in it.
Second, I couldn’t figure out how to create a playlist on an iPod. I would like to think it is there, but I couldn’t do it. I also had to copy the songs to the iPod and then move them to the playlist for it to work.
Amarok makes both of these simple. Even though I typically use almost all Gnome applications, I still have to install a KDE one.
For music, whats wrong with Rhythmbox or Banshee or Listen or Exaile?
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ll tell you what I think is wrong with them. They’re kind of a worst of both worlds approach. On the one hand they’re more complex and cumbersom than an mp3 player needs to be (think winamp 2), on the other hand they’re lacking some features of the more rich and complex players. If you’re going to try to be feature complete then be feature complete, if you’re not then try to be a simple clone winamp. As far as I’m concerned they fall into some kind of limbo.
Whats wrong with Banshee, rhythmbox and all the other music players for GTK/GNOME?, K3b is a frontend to cdrecord.
I dont understand where you get this idea that SUSE dont invest time in KDE, kickoff menu, YaST, kontrol with Yast built in. Infact it’s GNOME that SUSE left without much new and only the lest few releases have seen new GNOME features.
I dont understand where you get this idea that SUSE dont invest time in KDE
People say that because time was SuSE was known as being the KDE distro with Gnome only getting basic support, much like Red Hat has become known as being a Gnome distro…
It’s also worth noting SuSE never put much effort into Gnome until they purchased Ximian….
–bornagainpenguin
Maybe that is because Nat, Miguel, and Federico are ximian monkeys. You know that those 3 are the *founding fathers* of gnome, right?
http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html
You know that those 3 are the *founding fathers* of gnome, right?
Yes I knew that. I was being slightly sarcastic. OF COURSE a formerly KDE centric distro is going to pursue improvements in their Gnome installation after purchasing those guys!
–bornagainpenguin
And it’s certainly sad that Novell allowed that little startup to erode the $210M they paid for Suse. Which I’m going to go out on limb and assume was much more than they paid for Ximian, due to the fact that Suse had actual revenue and marketshare.
Fortunately, saner heads prevailed, the primates have since been kept in check, and KDE remains a strong focus from Novell…
Humans ARE primates
Well, I hope you are not a creationist 
SUSE never bought Ximian. Novell bought Ximian, then made the Ximian managers the head of Novell’s new Linux department. Later SUSE was bought by Novell.
Same difference.
Like Apple buying Next, and Palm buying Be the purchase of Ximian resulted in the people from SuSE who made their product so great leaving and the people from Ximian taking more of a controlling interest. Check the archives, I know I wasn’t the only one outraged by SuSE’s sudden shift towards more of a Gnome centric desktop….
–bornagainpenguin
Too bad they didn’t invest as much time on KDE. Anyway, wasn’t OpenSUSE a more KDE-centric distribution (even if SLED adopted Gnome as its default DE)?
To me, it seems like they’re going both ways and supporting both GNOME and KDE equally. A lot of improvements have also been made to the KDE side of openSUSE (which I’m still wanting to call ‘SuSE’–old habits die hard).
GNOME’s just getting all of the attention because, in the opinions of many (including myself), GNOME support on SUSE has been abysmal at best. Sure, GNOME was there and worked just fine, but it wasn’t as polished as KDE on SUSE.
Gnome’s applications are arguably better at doing their designed “simple tasks” than Amarok and K3B are.
The keyword here being arguably. But lets not denigrate this into another KDE/Gnome flamewar.
What I really don’t understand though is the GTK frontend to Yast. Yast, a system tool that you really don’t use often. Why does there need to be a GTK frontend? What a colossal waste of time to develop this, and in the future, even more waste of time maintaining it. This philosophy of “everything in the system must be GTK” is insane. It goes both ways of course, kynaptic is a good example of stupid cloning using Qt. Some apps, like Exaile, even blatantly state that fact. “like amarok, but for GTK”.
I think distro’s should force people to install both the qt/kde and gtk/gnome libs. Then people will have less of a phobia of “if I install this app, I’ll bring in tons of libraries!” Who the hell cares! Since when is disk space at a premium? How about we don’t waste time making two copies of every application and instead make those applications BETTER.
Of course, I am a hypocrite, in that I try to use all KDE applications. With a bit more work into integration, I wouldn’t be so adverse to GTK apps. The most important part is the open/save file dialogs. I find the Gnome/GTK dialogs incredibly crippled, and can’t bring myself to use them. If the apps used native dialogs depending on the environment it would be much nicer. Can’t be that hard, Openoffice does it very well.
What a colossal waste of time to develop this, and in the future, even more waste of time maintaining it. This philosophy of “everything in the system must be GTK” is insane.
Yep. They seem to have had this paranoid trip where everything depending on Qt and kdelibs needed to be removed. GTK seem to get installed when I install KDE and no one cares. There is even a Bugzilla entry somewhere where someone complained that a fantastic bit of project management software called TaskJuggler had been removed. The answer was that they wanted Gnome and GTK everything, even if the alternative was woefully inferior.
Disk space isn’t the problem. Memory is.
A graphical toolkit takes up a significant amount of memory. If all the apps you’re running only use one, you save that much memory compared to having both Qt and GTK+ in memory.
Fine, if you have less than 256MB of RAM, go crazy with toolkit bias. For anyone else, it won’t make a damn bit of difference. you’re sacrificing maybe 10MB of RAM, and that’s a one time cost, for the first application only. After that it gets shared. Big deal. How does that justify all the duplication? No other platform has this kind of irrational phobia.
It’s not only Qt and GTK. Both KDE and GNOME ship with lots of libs and depending on the used app, a lot of libs have to be loaded into memory.
I was thinking the same thing. This is a direct result of Novell owning Suse, and Novell employing lead Gnome developers. Favouritism? Yes. The same thing is happening at Suse as what has been happening at Redhat for years, and more recently at the recent darling of all things Linux, Ubuntu – blind favouritism of one particular desktop.
I prefer a Linux distro to include them all, tweak them all to be as good as possible, and then let the user choose. That’s choice. Linux is supposedly about choice, but when you get a bunch of distros all favouring one desktop environment, that’s bad imho.
I have a bone to pick with Debian ‘etch’ as well (slightly off topic) – it seems you cannot install KDE and XFCE together, at least not without removing several key components of KDE. Not very good, and what I consider a major bug. Said machine is not connected to the net, so it’s only stuck at the DVD versions, so don’t tell me to update it
I used to like Gnome a long time ago, but circa v1.2 they lost the plot in all honesty, and with the advent of KDE 2.2 I started leaning in KDE’s direction. KDE 3 just confirmed to me that KDE was heading in the right direction even more. I’m hoping that KDE doesn’t screw KDE 4 by trying to copy the Gnome philosophies to appease potential Gnome converts etc.
Dave
“””
“””
I would disagree with that point. I prefer to see distros choose a desktop and run as far as they can with it, focusing their resources on making it the best it can be. We still get diversity, because other distros pick the other major desktop and do the same. And some others might pick lesser known desktops, or a newcomer.
Choices are great when those choices are upstream choices. But the downstream distributor should focus the QA efforts on a select set of components. In my opinion, of course. QA efforts are a scarce resource, and should be conserved. 🙂
Personally, I find my needs serviced quite well by Rhythmbox and Serpentine/Nautilus-CD-Burn. Simple apps for simple minds, I guess…
Unfortunately, the Gnome/GTK community fail to deliver rich applications for simple tasks like listening to music (Amarok)…
Have you tried Floola, Exaile, Rythymbox yet?
and burning cds/dvds (K3B). All you get are basic frontends to command line tools (duh).
Have you considered trying Gnomebaker yet? I also hear Ahead (makers of Nero Burning Rom) have a GTK2 version out for Linux…
–bornagainpenguin
PS: Dang.. having to google the spelling to some of those apps has me trailing behind as the fourth response..
Edited 2007-09-21 16:56
Those apps are poor in comparison to their KDE counterparts, so I guess that explains why he said the GTK part is failing to deliver rich applications. Note I don’t agree with that, there are some nice Gnome apps out there, but I do think overall, KDE apps are better. Maybe not by much, but that makes sense, as they’re mostly 2 years old (KDE 3.5) and are competing with stuff that came out days ago. Things might change when KDE 4.0 and shortly after that 4.1 get out…
I really do not care for this preview, if anything it just makes Suse look very bland. The color scheme is horrible. I hope this isn’t the default for Gnome. I wish they would have tweaked a little before taking some screenshots, knowing that there are many that chose based solely on the GUI.
Well, I rarely stick with the default theme myself. Just head over to gnome-look.org and kde-look.org to get all the pieces & parts that will dress up the UI to your liking.
I really like the redesigned “Start” menu. Best I’ve seen in any OS/distro in a while.
it reminds me of the menu from Linux Mint:
http://linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/cassandra/2.png
The menu in Mint is a rework of the SLED menu. An improvement in my opinion.
How much patented material from MS has the Gnome/Novell team put into Gnome?
Edited 2007-09-21 17:34
How much patented material from MS has the Gnome/Novell team put into Gnome?
Oh please, do not go down this road.
If I can guess it’s heading in this direction, so read this please if you haven’t already and if you can still complain about Novell/OpenSuSE, I give up:
http://en.opensuse.org/FAQ:Novell-MS
The short answer is nothing.
Edited 2007-09-21 19:31
I’ve been looking to “refresh” my neglected PC currently running ubuntu, and I’m still torn bewteen Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon, The latest Fedora, and now this. 10.1 was problematic for me, but hopefully this will be a bit better, since overall Suse seems to be the most polished.
I’ve been wanting to try opensuse but I keep hearing they don’t provide timely kernel security patches. Is that true?
no it’s in fact not. Unless you feel that a backported fix that takes maybe 1 or 2 days is too laten.
As I don’t use SuSE, but how easy is it to add support for patent protected stuff, ala restricted repository support like Ubuntu?
matt
It depends, how hard do you think this is ?
http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_Formats/10.3
Awesome! I was far too lazy to actually do the searching for myself.
I think it was me that complained about Taskjuggler being removed.
a great app that has no alternative in that GUI based management apps cannot be effective in sprawling projetcs that change on a daily basis.
i noted a factory news reference to Taskjuggler 2.4.0 as being in the factory. i was delighted that common sense has prevailed.
lol..is just me or does the last 50 or so comments just seem like off topic cat fights? I think the solution is to take away everyone’s computers and replace them with calculators (hmmm..people would probably find a way to fight then)
What I would like to know is this:
1.) Has wireless support been improved? I could never get any Suse to run with my old laptop and get wireless working (Broadcom chip). I have a new notebook now with an Intel wireless I hope either works out of the box or at least can find a driver somewhere.
2.) Is the set up process still the same? Same amount of steps?
3.) What would be the most significant visual changes from 10.0 – 10.1 if any?
Has wireless support been improved? I could never get any Suse to run with my old laptop and get wireless working (Broadcom chip).
No.
Is the set up process still the same?
Pretty much.
What would be the most significant visual changes from 10.0 – 10.1 if any?
None. We’re on 10.3 now.