An upgraded GNOME desktop environment for Linux and Unix is due for release this Wednesday, with its authors pitching enhanced features for end-users and a commitment to make hardware “just work”.
GNOME: We’ve overtaken Windows, bring on Apple
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
you can even move the mouse, and do clicks with the keypad, instead of having a mouse. You just have to turn on the option “Universal Access”. OS X is about 99% keyboard friendly (I have not been able to use Home or End to navigate text and have not found an equivilant….a bit annoying)
I am sure there are even more shortcuts out there, I think I should visit the help files…I have only been using a Mac at home for less than a month.
This works in any decent X-Window system: shift+numlock. Now you can use the keypad to move the mouse and click with the 0 key on the keypad. Don’t remember what the rest of the keypad keys do.
“I admit, it would be nice to have desktop apps install to ~/apps without any need of a root password.”
When you said “nice”, I guess you made a mistake and *meant* to say “hideous Windows-style security nightmare”, right?
“I like things that work out of the box right-away, like Windows and Mac OS X.”
When was the last time you installed Windows “out of the box right-away”? I did it last week. The system was a random white-box one from your usual dodgy PC store. The CD it came with was for a completely different system. “Out of the box right-away” it required over 200MB of security updates, the video was set up with no acceleration at 800x600x60Hz, the network card, modem and sound were all non-functional. That’s a creative definition of “working”, and getting it to that “working” state was extremely tedious and required me to physically examine the system components and locate drivers from badly designed manufacturer websites using Google, which I could only do as – luckily – I had a second system handy with internet access. Out of the box? Hardly.
“However, there are some issues with that. For example, a memory stick will mount and open when it is plugged in, IF: You have a mount point and an fstab entry already.”
And that’s what distros are supposed to take care of. I know that Fedora and Mandrake, at least, do it already.
@AdamW
I had to change a dying HD (30 gigs Maxtor lol) on a clone Wintel PC monday. So I did a full install of Windows XP Home. Then copied the rest of her files over to the new HD. I have a slipstream of XP2 so the whole ordeal went fast and the WindowsUpdate part was done very quickly (only the JPEG thingy to DL and the monitor driver).
Installed a couple of CODECs, Chipset inf, IAA, PowerDVD, WiMP10 and AVG. I had time to do and eat supper and the whole installation process was over. Her PC is smooth now. Took about 45mins to 1 hour. Installing Windows is a trivial task.
OT: If I have time I may do a review of SUSE 9.1 persoanl this weekend. I’ve been meaning to do a real review of a Linux Distro installed by Windows/Mac user.
“I have a slipstream of XP2”
bully for you…
how many other people do you think have such a thing? And how many have vanilla Windows XP CDs, 2001 vintage? the latter, I’d venture, would rather outweigh the former…
(btw, it takes me about 3 hours to install a completely working Mandrake system from a PC with absolutely nothing on it which has a viable broadband internet connection. Total reboots – 1.)
oh, and you didn’t address the points I raised at all. Installing drivers was trivial for you as you knew which the correct ones were and had them available. In my case, I didn’t (through no fault of either mine or the system’s owner), and sorting that situation out was a giant PITA.
@AdamW
how many other people do you think have such a thing? And how many have vanilla Windows XP CDs, 2001 vintage? the latter, I’d venture, would rather outweigh the former…
All the people’s who’s Wintel PCs I worked on have their SlipStreamed SP1 CDs. Very few have SP2 CDs. Either they done it themselves or have their XP CDs done by me.
(btw, it takes me about 3 hours to install a completely working Mandrake system from a PC with absolutely nothing on it which has a viable broadband internet connection. Total reboots – 1.)
That’s way too long. But then Mandrake probably comes on 3 CDs and probably installs full of unnecessary stuff on your HDs.
oh, and you didn’t address the points I raised at all. Installing drivers was trivial for you as you knew which the correct ones were and had them available. In my case, I didn’t (through no fault of either mine or the system’s owner), and sorting that situation out was a giant PITA.
I have installed XP on tons of PCs and I never seen a scenario were it wouldn’t install. Nor had drivers problems. Can you share the details of the incident with XP and the problematic installation?
Your problem is a CODE 18.
you know, I work for Shaw, you want to give me that guy’s IP address and I’ll submit him to Calgary’s abuse people?
Read harder. No CDs involved. The entire thing can be installed over the internet. Tried that with Windows lately? If I was doing it from CDs, 30mins-1hr depending on the system speed.
I already shared the details above. It was a white box PC with incorrect driver CD supplied. No way to get the correct drivers except manually examine the hardware and do a bunch of Googling, thanks to Windows’ poor hardware detection…
because we don’t give a monkey.
I love it! That’s why I choose Perl.
I know Perl is inefficient compared with C and Ocaml, but its easier (for me) than C and the O’Reilly Perl book has a camel on its cover. This is why I think we should use Perl for embedded projects and DEs and everything else. Because I suck at writing C and assembly, and Ocaml is right out.
@AdamW
Read harder. No CDs involved. The entire thing can be installed over the internet. Tried that with Windows lately? If I was doing it from CDs, 30mins-1hr depending on the system speed.
Why should I install my OS from the Net when it’s already on CDs? Irrelevant. Why should I suffer longer and monopolize my Internet connection when installing an OS? Makes no sense at all.
So you’re telling me that you traded 3-4 more reboots (a whole 30 secs) for 2 hours of your time.
I already shared the details above. It was a white box PC with incorrect driver CD supplied. No way to get the correct drivers except manually examine the hardware and do a bunch of Googling, thanks to Windows’ poor hardware detection…
Impossible. Windows XP should have installed even with default settings. XP has a very good hardware detection.
The worst case would be a PCI controller card (EIDE, SATA and SCSI).
Please provide model and system specs as you shared no details. I am curious.
Please show me how to move windows using the keyboard on Windows or OS X, or how to resize windows with the keyboard on Windows or OS X…
Alt+Space. Been there since Windows 1.0 I bet.
Not everyone had a mouse back then.
would you please read stuff before commenting? you’re wasting everyone’s time, here. I never said it didn’t install. I said it installed but left half the hardware not working and the desktop looking terrible. This was explained in the first frickin’ post. One thing I forgot to mention was that for one piece of hardware – the sound card – Windows actually *had* a driver that would work (just a bog-standard AC97 codec driver, but that’s better than nothing) but it didn’t actually install it by default. I had to go to device manager, find the non-functioning device, tell Windows to look for a driver then tell it to search its own driver set before it actually installed it. Now there’s robust hardware support…
Why not install from the CDs? What if you don’t have any CDs? Why waste the time downloading or buying the CDs when you can just download the software you want?
It’s not 3hrs vs. 1hr install time. It’s 3hrs vs. 1hr install time plus X hrs acquisition of CDs time.
well, it depends on what your operating system and situation is. if its windows and their decade release cycle, you may as well just burn a new cd with the new slipstreamed service pack every few years as they come out. linux software moves very fast though, and that means burning a new set of cds every few months. not only that, but linux distrobutions traditionally come with enough software for it to be usable out of the box, so your not just talking about one cd either. another reason would be that you dont exactly install your os every few weeks, so why bother burning cds?
it makes no sense and is irrelivent to you because linux is verrrrrrrrrrry different then windows in more ways then the gui.
Is Python cross platform like Mono? I personally don’t know but I thought the idea behing Mono and it’s similarity to Net is that is was a write once and run on many platforms? i.e. Windows/Linux/OS-X
Now backing up AdamW, try installing windows on a box you don’t know the exact specs of and then all hte associated apps to get it up and functional with all current updates. I think I would personally prefer to stick with the Linux way of doing it. Much easier. Not to mention that with a fast net connection there is no need to have app CD’s littering the place. At least Arch Linux is very easy.
Now Software Patents suck, I see no difference in people using examples of software that has come before and then improving on it. No different to Science down the ages, Mathematics or Art. Only now we have Corporations bitching like spoit little bratts about so called IP rights. Where would we be if this was mankinds attitude during the Renaisance? Back in the Dark Ages celebrating the styrup and wheelbarrow. If Microsoft and ecetera come after people over patent issues the better because it is time the patent system was shown up for the bloody farse it is.
A can of worms that will lock up the legal system for years to come and the only beneficiarries will be the lawyers and no one else. Definately hold back the rest of us from developing on a scientific/technical level.
mono and python are very different animals (not so much how they work which is similar, more how they are designed to be used) python is similar to perl, its a cross platform “Scripting” language. .net is designed to be used as a fuller, more general purpose application development framework. thats not to say you cant make desktop apps with python, or cli scripts with mono, but its more a matter of the best tool for the job.
The headlines and articles lately have been needlessly inflammatory, I think. Slashdot’s got that stuff if you care to read it.
Just to play devils advocate I will start with the position that “OK – the MS stuff that MONO is using as of today is not going to be affected by patents”.
Now moving on from today, Euginia. MS is in a position today that one could argue it has never been in. See if you recognise any of this MS behaviour before 12 – 18 months ago:
1.) MS “begs” Apple to allow iPod to play WMP format.
2.) After GNOME & XUL announce possibility of teaming up to pre-empt XAML+Avalon, MS makes overtures indicating that these entities “do not have to go that route” as MS would be willing to “cooperate” on said technologies (its assumed this would include “making their technology available to F/OSS community.
3.) MS now giving away “virtually free” version of VS (VS Express or something of the sort), Server 2003 (not too sure – someone please verify), “watered down” version of windows for Asian market.
4.) After calling F/OSS every name except Lucifer, it looks like they are headed in that direction – even though it is in baby steps. Its said that if Sun does OSS Solaris (recently confirmed by one of the execs. in the last 1-2 weeks for end of 2004) MS has said it would concider doing the same with windows although it will not be overnight.
5.) Agreements (e.g.with Sun) to ensure non-MS environments/platforms can work with their products
…… etc., etc., etc.
Basically, what I am saying is that for the first time in a long time MS is feeling the competition – or at least its potential (I hope XUK+GNOME continue their initiative). Note, I did not say they never had competition, just that they did not FEEL it before.
One of the multitude of results of this is the above mentioned. The other is – believe it or not – INNOVATION. They are finding for the furst time they HAVE to innovate – pricewise/productwise – in order to keep up, and its HURTING.
Its hurting so bad trying to keep up – what with the progress of Linux(Beagle, iFolder, GNOME 2.8, Python & friends [Zope, Plone], Dashboard, etc.), Solaris 10 (ZFS, DTrace, etc.), Tiger (CoreVideo, CoreData, CoreImage, Spotlight, etc.) + Eclipse + Netbeans, etc.
Because of increasing cmpetition MS will not stop at anything. For example, look at the number of patents they announced they anticipate filing – 3000+. IBM, which generally files more patents each year usually patents around 1000 – and these cover a range of products/services far wider than what MS is doing it for – .Net.
Also, do not forget Zen – the so-called additions/improvements which I can barely find any links to on google (well I gave it 5 minutes then gave up – one would assume something that was hyped so much a few months ago would still be in the first several pages of a google search).
Are these exntensions to the language/platform – which include built in support for rules such as 1-1, 1-n, 0-1, native (i.e. c#) support for various database programming features, etc – are they all going to be made a part of the standard. Even if they are, some of these are somewhat major in the featureset and would require a “decent” updating of t he language. What will MONO do then?
Tim Bray talks about “sharecroppers” on one of his recent posts @ his Sun web site. I suggest the folks at Novell read up on that to see where the rest of the OSS community is coming from when it comes to .Net/MS/MONO/3000 PATENTS/etc.
I just Sun would hurry up and OSS Solaris [done – well almost] AND Java [more important right now] and lessen the confusion around Unix/Linux desktop.
Why should I install my OS from the Net when it’s already on CDs? Irrelevant. Why should I suffer longer and monopolize my Internet connection when installing an OS? Makes no sense at all.
I get a full install of Arch Linux over the Net (meaning latest kernel, X, WM, and applications), configure it and drop into a GUI in 40 minutes. How long does it take you to install XP from CD, do updates, install software?
Much longer. Don’t lie.
Is Python cross platform like Mono? I personally don’t know but I thought the idea behing Mono and it’s similarity to Net is that is was a write once and run on many platforms? i.e. Windows/Linux/OS-X
Python is very cross-platform. More so, than .Net, I believe. Python can run either compiled or interpreted on many OS’s and architectures. In addition to Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Unix in general, here are the other specific platforms Python works for:
http://www.python.org/download/download_other.html
Also, Python is not just a scripting language (although it performs very well when used as one). It also get performance gains when compiled. In my experience, Python apps are quite snappy when well done. Nice.