GTK+ 2.8.0 released [LWN.net]

GTK+ 2.8.0 released

Posted Aug 15, 2005 23:14 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
In reply to: GTK+ 2.8.0 released by dskoll
Parent article: GTK+ 2.8.0 released

> Nobody bought the argument that code reuse (via invoking an external editor) is a long-standing UNIX tradition that has served us well for decades.

And that is the crux of the matter here. GTK, being primarily a toolkit for Gnome, is not interested in Unix tradition. These people (GTK and Gnome developers) want to build an easy to use desktop system for regular folks, most of which are most likely going to be Windows users converting to Gnome (at least that's who they are targeting with their software). I don't know if this will ever happen, but that's what they appear to be doing.

Obviously, they are upsetting a few people (well, maybe quite a few - time will tell) in the process. At least they have some kind of a plan and they are sticking to it.

We all need to ask ourselves hard questions from time to time and one of them is: "If Unix (whatever that's supposed to mean) is such a great desktop system, why isn't it on everyone's desktop?" I distinctly remember 40 MHz Sparc workstations being delivered to our lab that used to put Windows to shame. Doesn't appear that way any more...

I think Apple will have a few things to say about that (i.e. make it Unix where it works, make it something else where it sucks), KDE people may have their say (not a user, so don't know) and Gnome/GTK folks obviuosly have their own view. I am certainly not going to blame them for trying.

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GTK+ 2.8.0 released

Posted Aug 16, 2005 1:07 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

GTK, being primarily a toolkit for Gnome, is not interested in Unix tradition.

Thanks for being honest.

Now tell me: From all I can see, the KDE hackers have more-or-less the same goals as the GNOME hackers --- an easy-to-use graphical desktop. The KDE hackers, somehow, have managed to support UNIXy things like external editors for years now. Are GNOME hackers incapable of it? I don't believe that for a second, so I can only believe they are willfully turning their backs on UNIX. That's fine up to a point, because I don't have to use GNOME. But when their decisions start contaminating other software (like Firefox) that doesn't have a viable alternative, then I get upset.

GTK+ 2.8.0 released

Posted Aug 16, 2005 1:22 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Thanks for being honest.

You are most welcome.

> I don't believe that for a second, so I can only believe they are willfully turning their backs on UNIX.

Yes, that is surely a valid point of view for a "Unix person". In other words, the glass is half empty. On the other hand, for "Gnome people", the glass may be half full.

> But when their decisions start contaminating other software (like Firefox) that doesn't have a viable alternative, then I get upset.

Well, I don't want to be a smartarse here, but the only real way to address these things is to get involved in the development process of Firefox. I don't have enough knowledge and time to do GUI development, so I had to get over things and eventually got used to "new defaults". I'm sure others will choose differently. And I'm sure you'll make your choices too. At least we all don't have to pay for the darn things, so nobody's robbing us.

However, when proprietary software vendors sell me a licence for a piece of software worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and then can't/won't fix segfaults in it, then I get really upset.

GTK+ 2.8.0 released

Posted Aug 16, 2005 2:19 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

However, when proprietary software vendors sell me a licence for a piece of software worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and then can't/won't fix segfaults in it, then I get really upset.

Well, that's in a whole other league of evil. :-) I wouldn't dream of accusing the GNOME hackers of being that bad.

But they are pretty arrogant: The Gnome-vim author has working code that does a pretty useful thing, and the Evolution maintainers are refusing to merge it, simply ignoring his (repeated) requests to put his code in the mainline version. For crying out loud: He did all the work! What more do you want? If you don't like his code, at least give him the courtesy of a response.

That's almost (but not quite) as bad as your example.

GTK+ 2.8.0 released

Posted Aug 16, 2005 2:33 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Evolution

Actually, Evolution 2.2 is so full of bugs that it regularly crashes when used with Exchange connector (e.g. click on "Reply to All" crashed Evo pretty often). With IMAP it crashed occasionaly, but it is still pretty ordinary. So, I'm hoping they are just busy fixing the segfaults and simply didn't have time to do anything else... ;-)