GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 6:56 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

And there were no big changes in 2.16 when compared 2.14 either. So last two releases have been pretty boring and lame. I asked this before but got no answers: Is GNOME stagnating?

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 7:14 UTC (Wed) by oblio (guest, #33465) [Link]

Depends.

All I want as an user are more stable and featureful apps, not a fast moving platform aka desktop environment.
Maybe someone should put down a list with applications/features that would be nice to have in future Gnome versions - like Sabayon was created.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 7:41 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"Maybe someone should put down a list with applications/features that would be nice to have in future Gnome versions"

Well, looking at OS X I can see these things that are worth adopting:

- A tool for repetetive workflows, like Automator on OS X

- Versioning, continuous backup-tool that backs up everything (Time Machine on steroids)

- Expose. I think GNOME still does not have this

Other features I would like to see:

- Ability to re-arrange items in the taskbar with drag and drop

- Parental controls

- A shared workspaces for remote teamwork

- How about moving from application-centric system to content-centric system? Instead of listing application in the foot-menu, how about listing content instead? We do not "use application", we "use content". We do not launch Epiphany (for example) for the sake of using Epiphany, we launch it so we could access some website.

Point is: There's A LOT of stuff to be done. But it seems that nothing really gets done, we just get minor changes and tweaks.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 8:33 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

The default GNOME WM doesn't have an Exposé clone but the 3D accelerated WMs both do, so most of the people who'd want it either have it by now or will be getting it in their next desktop upgrade.

It's not appropriate for GNOME to try to implement file versioning IMNSHO, this is something the underlying OS wants to address and then GNOME can add the user interface, e.g. if NAS-style snapshot directories became popular it would be easy to add "see files from an hour ago", "from a day ago", "from a month ago" UI to GNOME, or if versioning became common in ext4 you could add "see previous versions of this file..." UI

I share your enthusiasm for easy-to-use macro systems, they do empower ordinary users. DBUS is a small step in the right direction, but GNOME is the right place to get some serious work done on this. I hope they do.

So out of your OS X list, (and by the way there's a Wiki for this sort of thing somewhere on GNOME's web site as far as I remember), that's one item already done, one reliant on more work from Linux developers, and one that GNOME can and hopefully will address, although perhaps not in 2.20

Now, as to the other features...

The re-arrange tasks idea is interesting but I worry that it might be hard to make it accessible without less experienced users causing mayhem. I guess re-using middle-click-drag couldn't hurt here, although that means most users will never use it.

Some of what you'd want for Parental controls exists, you can lock down user desktops (forbid printing, limit which programs appear in the GNOME menu system, disable the filesystem view etc.) which is aimed at office workers but is useful for children too. You can limit login hours on most Unix systems and I think GNOME provides sensible UI for that. However obviously the Free Software world isn't too excited about trying to e.g. screen web sites or detect when a child is viewing "inappropriate" images.

I'm not quite clear on what shared workspaces would do, I do work remotely and I'd like a whiteboarding application, but the trouble here isn't the lack of software but the lack of /standards/. Software that works well for me doesn't interoperate with a co-worker's OS X application, or with whatever they're using on Windows XP. If shared workspaces means multiple people VNC'd (or equivalent) onto a single desktop UI, I think I can do that already (but perhaps not using GNOME?) and I never use it.

I sort-of agree that there's a lot to get done, but GNOME depends on volunteers, and in particular developers who actually do the work - they probably don't need any more Eugenias for example.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 9:51 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"The default GNOME WM doesn't have an Exposé clone but the 3D accelerated WMs both do"

But that's irrelevant. GNOME provides a WM, and that WM is lacking an useful feature. The fact that some third-party WM does have that feature, does not change the fact that there's an useful feature that is missing from GNOME.

"It's not appropriate for GNOME to try to implement file versioning IMNSHO"

Well, if you want to be less ambitious, ANY KIND of back-tool would be appreciated. But, sadly, there is none. Yes, there are third-party tools, but again, this is a feature that is missing from GNOME.

"So out of your OS X list, (and by the way there's a Wiki for this sort of thing somewhere on GNOME's web site as far as I remember), that's one item already done"

But not in GNOME, but by a third-party.

"The re-arrange tasks idea is interesting but I worry that it might be hard to make it accessible without less experienced users causing mayhem."

I don't really see the problem. I usually try to have my taskbar set so that I have most used apps on the left, so moving between them is easy. And that means that I need to launch the apps in specific order. If I could simply drag the taskbar-entry to a new location, that problem would be fixed. We can already arrange tabs in Firefox, I don't see why this would cause any additional problems.

"However obviously the Free Software world isn't too excited about trying to e.g. screen web sites or detect when a child is viewing "inappropriate" images."

Dumb question: why not? Because it limits the child's "freedoms"? Raising children usually includes limiting the freedoms of the child.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 10:48 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

If gnome was to try to impliment every feature that cropped up anywere then it would be buggy and horrible.

Personally I like Gnome taking it easy. They have had a history of creating a complex and buggy thing and now they are to the point were it's usable and not very buggy at all. And Linux needs something like a desktop that isn't buggy. KDE3 is pretty much dead now. As in it's not going to be developed any further. It realy is stale.

And for KDE4 you have, at least, 1.5 to 2 years before it becomes usable and somewhat mature. Such is the nature of software re-writes. (pick any project you like that has gone through that and survived. Apache 2 for instance was like that)

So if you have a feature you want and it's aviable in the 'third party tools' then by all means use it and tell other people if you like that. Eventually if enough people use it then maybe it will get integrated. Gnome isn't like KDE were they write everything from scratch for Gnome. How Gnome works, generally, is that somebody creates a nice program that does something. Then if it's nice and people like it they incorporate it into Gnome.

For example take desktop search;

I used Beagle for a long time. If it had been incorporated into Gnome then it would of been nice and Gnome would have desktop search built-in.

But that would of actually sucked because stuff like 'tracker' is much better then Beagle. So maybe now that tacker is a 'second generation' product that should be incorporated into Gnome. That would be nicer.

If you have a feature you want in the taskbar or something core to gnome then write a patch or see if you can get somebody else to write a patch for it. File a bug for Gnome. Maybe nobody else thought of it for Gnome yet.

I know for me I abhor the taskbar. I always used the drop down list. Or alt-tab, but now I use F8 in Beryl.

> Dumb question: why not? Because it limits the child's "freedoms"? Raising children usually includes limiting the freedoms of the child.

Use a proxy filter. Basicly for a child the problem is porn and such online, so you have a proxy filter for it.

There are ways to 'lock down' Gnome (built in more or less) so that people can't change this or that, but it seems not realy a usefull approach for a child.

Supervision, limiting physical access to the computer, and a proxy filter for accidental stuff is the way to go.

Dansguardian should work. I never used it myself, but it's aviable in Debian and since Ubuntu is Debian it should be aviable in that also, if you use such things.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 12:19 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"If gnome was to try to impliment every feature that cropped up anywere then it would be buggy and horrible."

I'm not saying that they should. What I AM saying that featurewise, the work is FAR from finished. But still we only see minor and next to irrelevant improvements. So I can now make lists with Tomboy? Well, whooppee. And I was making lists with it long ago, so I fail to see what has changed.

"KDE3 is pretty much dead now. As in it's not going to be developed any further. It realy is stale."

I fail to see what KDE has to do with this. But at least in the KDE-land we have KDE4 to look forward to. What does future of GNOME bring us? No idea. Looking at their last two "major" releases, not much.

"Such is the nature of software re-writes."

I'm not asking for a "re-write".

"If you have a feature you want in the taskbar or something core to gnome then write a patch or see if you can get somebody else to write a patch for it."

I have no coding-skills. And if I wrote a mail to GNOME-devel or something with the suggestion, would they do it? I doubt it.

"Use a proxy filter. Basicly for a child the problem is porn and such online, so you have a proxy filter for it."

A third-party solution? Since we already have tools for locking down the desktop, why couldn't these kinds of features be part of that system?

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 20:46 UTC (Wed) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

"I have no coding-skills. And if I wrote a mail to GNOME-devel or something with the suggestion, would they do it? I doubt it."

I think the chance of getting your ideas implemented would be significantly higher than complaining here though.....

Also, people doing coding work on their free time will likely do stuff they find interesting, not what you (or me) would like. However, companies such as Imendio, OpenHand and others would probably be more than happy to implement whatever you desire (if you are willing to pay them).

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 12:46 UTC (Wed) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

> KDE3 is pretty much dead now. As in it's not going to be developed any
> further. It realy is stale.

it's a bit premature to call something stale when it's relatively new.
we've released several 3.5.x releases, including one two months ago at the
end of january. some of these releases included entirely new versions of
apps such as kopete and i believe each of them has had some new features.
there's a 3.5.7 slates, though that one will likely indeed be boring if it
makes it out given that it's pretty much bug fixes only.

in a year i might call it stale, but right now it's jumping the gun to do
so.

> Gnome isn't like KDE were they write everything from scratch for Gnome.
> How Gnome works, generally, is that somebody creates a nice program that
> does something. Then if it's nice and people like it they incorporate it
> into Gnome.

that's a rather gross missgeneralization of both projects. gnome does
indeed create a lot of technology that exists elsewhere previously, and
kde does indeed pick up a lot of outside apps (case in point: dolphin) as
well as have "independent" apps of very high profile and central purpose
(points in case: amarok, k3b, digikam). i think you can find lots of
examples of both modes of operation in both projects, and the reasons tend
to be fairly defensible most of the time.

> For example take desktop search;

indeed: first there was kerry integration of beagle for KDE. it wasn't
pulled into KDE proper though many used it; ditto for kat before it. now
we have strigi which works very nicely and we are integrating that.

what KDE doesn't tend to do is remain a loose affiliation of
sort-of/kind-of integration code bases. we do like to provide means to
integrate well as that provides a more coherent and complete experience.
counterintuitively that sometimes means widening the scope of integration
options, such as with phonon or solid which give us integration points
(APIs) that reach out to various platform specific backends. so in those
cases we've moved even further away from "sucking things into the
codebase" while also improving integration.

iow, i don't think you're observations on KDE as a project are
particularly on-target =) perhaps this conversation should instead remain
focused on the topic at hand: GNOME.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 21:10 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

What I wanted to get across is that Linux folks are going to have to be stuck depending on Gnome for the time being. KDE is going to be out of the loop for a while until they get KDE4 up and going again and application developers being taking advantage of the new features.

That's all.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 1:28 UTC (Thu) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

how is KDE out of the loop when there is a well functioning, solid and
proven 3.5.x release out there that still has more features and
functionality than other free software desktops?

it hardly matters than 4.0 is out in october or that 4.1 will follow some
6-9 months hence. 3.5 is still there and works just great, and that's
something that the state of kde4 doesn't change in the least. it's not
like you aren't allowed to use kde3 just because we're working on kde4. in
fact, even long after kde4 is out, people will continue to use kde3 due to
the conservative upgrade habits of companies, schools and governments.

and, as i pointed out, 3.5 is hardly stagnant even from a development
perspective given that last *6* releases of it and what made up those
releases.

sorry, but your logic here is beyond faulty. =/

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 4:56 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

"beyond faulty" :(

Thanks for the counterpoint, though.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 16, 2007 6:28 UTC (Mon) by jasonspiro (guest, #38047) [Link]

Yes, Dansguardian is fine web filtering software.

Some installation tips:

You can get a Dansguardian installer shell script (installs Dansguardian and the UbuntuCE Dansguardian GUI but you don't have to use the GUI) at the Ubuntu Christian Edition website. Click Download, then choose your Ubuntu version, then click on the link to the Dansguardian-related stuff.

Configuration tips:

Make sure to get updated blacklists; the ones from shalla.de are good and fully compatible with Dansguardian, but as shipped they block all pages hosted on most free webhosts including geocities.com and free.fr. You can also get updated phraselists for the text-based filtering portion of Dansguardian if you like, I don't know if they are better. You'll have to do some configuration and tweaking at first. For example, there are many categories you can choose to block or not to block, including nontraditional ones like shopping, webmail, and spyware-related sites; you configure this by commenting/uncommenting various lines in the config files for the various lists. Look at all the config files and see what you want to tweak.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 16, 2007 6:35 UTC (Mon) by jasonspiro (guest, #38047) [Link]

In general, though, as you describe, supervision and locking away the PC or DSL modem when the kids are not supposed to be using the computer are the best way to limit use. No filtering software is perfect.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 12:12 UTC (Wed) by irios (guest, #19838) [Link]

> But that's irrelevant. GNOME provides a WM, and that WM is lacking an
> useful feature. The fact that some third-party WM does have that feature,
> does not change the fact that there's an useful feature that is missing
> from GNOME.

Are you being deliberately obtuse, or trying to cling to your faulty reasoning after being proved wrong? Why should Gnome developers replicate everything that is offered by other parties? Why do you care whether it is done by a third party if it works well and is well integrated?

Beryl, Compiz and now Metacity-3D? What a great idea! Hey, Compiz and Metacity programmers are already doing the job, and you can find it integrated in Gnome in all coming Linux distros, so the fact is that this features are NOT missing in Gnome.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 12:27 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"Are you being deliberately obtuse, or trying to cling to your faulty reasoning after being proved wrong?"

How exactly was I "proven wrong"? I said that "GNOME is missing this feature". What reply did I get? "This third-party tool provides that feature". Well, last time I checked, that "third-party tool" is not part of GNOME. Yes, GNOME is missing that particular feature, and you need to rely on third-party solution to provide that feature.

"Why should Gnome developers replicate everything that is offered by other parties?"

Why does GNOME then provide a WM at all, since there already are tons of third-party WM's available? Why does it offer a web-browser when we already have Firefox? Why does it offer a text editor, when those are already provided by a third-party? Why does is have a terminal emulator when we already have xterm?

"so the fact is that this features are NOT missing in Gnome."

Are those features part of GNOME? No they are not. So yes, they ARE missing from GNOME. GNOME does NOT provide those features, they are provided by a completely unrelated project.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 14:59 UTC (Wed) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link]

Janne, I don't want some of the things that you want, I also want some things that you probably don't. I like releases that fix bugs and improve the quality of the programs, eye candy and new features...not so much.

If GNOME was setup the way you want it, someone else would probably think it was broken.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 6:48 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

And why couldn't those features be turned on and off as needed? Don't like expose-functionality? Then don't use it. Don't like to re-arrange taskbar? Then don't. But I fail to see how adding a feature (say, expose) would cause some user to complain that "my desktop is broken".

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 16:40 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Careful... Add a feature? That's the sort of talk that might get you flamed on gnome-devel. :)

Personally, I've been a happy Gnome user since ~2000, but I find the NO-UNUSED-FEATURES-AT-ALL attitude of some of the devs quite offensive. I especially remember some rather unbelievable emails about gnome-screensaver and the gnome print dialog.

So, be warned... "Just adding a feature" to Gnome tends to be a steep uphill battle. Well, unless the feature can only be configured in the horrible gconf-editor, in which case it's a lot more likely to be added!

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 15:47 UTC (Wed) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

You're missing the point.

GNOME is not Windows. GNOME is not an operating system. GNOME is a desktop environment. Windows is an operating system with an embedded desktop environment that you can't change. GNU/Linux is an operating system, that you can add multiple desktop environments on top of (or none, if you prefer).

Whenever asking for features "in GNOME" it's important to remember this distinction. No one is going to add backup/versioning into GNOME, because it's not appropriate for a desktop environment to have file backup/versioning built into it; that's not the job of a desktop environment. It's not "missing", because it doesn't belong there at all.

Yes, certainly, it would be great if your distribution provided a versioning/backup tool, and obviously any such tool should have a user interface that makes it easy to use and is integrated with the rest of the desktop. That's a feature for distributions to provide, though, not the GNOME project.

If you're waiting for GNOME by itself to become an all-in-one environment like Windows, then you'll be waiting a long time (I hope!!) That's not the UNIX way, and more importantly it's not the RIGHT way.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 7:31 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"You're missing the point."

No, I'm not. You are.

"GNOME is not an operating system."

And the features I asked for were related to the desktop, not as much to the operating-system as much. Or are you saying that the GNOME-taskbar (for example) is not related to GNOME at all, it's an OS-thing?

"No one is going to add backup/versioning into GNOME, because it's not appropriate for a desktop environment to have file backup/versioning built into it; that's not the job of a desktop environment."

There are lot of features in GNOME (or KDE for that matter) that are not about _desktop_ as much. text-editing? Filemanagement? Point is that GNOME (and KDE) have features that make the system more powerful, easier and more fun to use. We have games, how are those related to the desktop? We have system management tool, how are those related to the desktop? We have text-editors, how are those related to the desktop? Then when someone asks for a tool to handle backups, suddenly it's a OS-thing, and not at all related to the desktop.

We already have VFS-layers in the desktops. Why is that, shouldn't that be handled by the OS? Why not extend that desktop-VFS to cover versioning as well?

And you are focusing on one idea I had (backups). How about taskbar than can be re-arranged? Expose? A tool to handle workflows? And instead of staring at the ideas I presented that then proceed to shoot them down, how about looking at the point I'm making: There's still a lot of useful functionality that is missing from GNOME, and it seems that no work is being done to address the issue. Instead we get bunch of non-features (lists in Tomboy???).

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 7, 2007 7:20 UTC (Sat) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

Why does GNOME then provide a WM at all, since there already are tons of third-party WM's available?

Because those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reïnvent it, badly.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 14:35 UTC (Wed) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

Stop flaming. The point is that the feature exists and is being worked on in the pipeline. There is architecture work to be done before AIGLX (the underlying 3D technology under Compiz and Beryl window managers) can be shipped by default or relied on for all desktops, the biggest problem being the lack of free 3D drivers for all architectures. The upshot is that the "defaults" for both Gnome and KDE still need to work on 2D hardware, and will in the near future. Blaming the desktop project for policy decisions of NVIDIA and ATI/AMD seems unfair.

You wanted to know why no work was being done on an Expose clone for Linux. The answer is that work is being done on it and you can install it today, but you need to wait for the driver situation to fix itself before it can be default. In what way is that answer "irrelevant"?

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 5:03 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Not to detract from your words (I agree), but it is possible to create exposé-like functionality without 3d acceleration, although it might not be quite as attractive and it might use more CPU.

As Janne may appreciate, this too has already been implemented, and apparently works now (and has for a few years) with the default GNOME WM, Metacity. http://thegraveyard.org/skippy.php However, I guess this isn't "in GNOME" so perhaps it will not satisfy some.

Full Disclosure: when I tried it at the very beginning of the project, I could not get it to work. I have not revisited.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 7:59 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)
"Stop flaming."

How exactly am I flaming? Because I think that last few releases of GNOME have been pretty boring, I'm "flaming"? Should we all just get down on our knewws and proclaim this the greatest release of GNOME ever? Well, it's not. Sure, the desktop itself is better than the one before it (since there were no regressions, as far as functionality or stability is concerned). And it was better than the one before it. But as a release, it's not significant.

"You wanted to know why no work was being done on an Expose clone for Linux."

I wanted to know a lot more than that. And you are missing my point. I listed a bunch of features from top of my head that would be nice to have. Others might have different features in mind. And the point is that as far as functionality is concerned, GNOME has been standing still for 12 months (the time when they released a version with significant new functionality). It might be OK it the work was "done" and all that is left is spit 'n polish. But that is NOT the case.

The whole discussion seems to be focusing on shooting down my list of suggestions. But the individual suggestions were not my point. The point was that there's still loads of useful functionality out there that would be nice to have. But we are not getting that, we are getting minor tweaks and changes instead. And we have been having those for the last two releases. Last two MAJOR releases I might add.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 17:04 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

FWIW Janne, even though a few people shouted you down pretty hard, I totally agree. Here are a few more features that I find glaringly missing:

- What ever happened to drag-and-drop? Gnome hardly supports it at all.
- How about a persistent clipboard?
- Why do Rhythmbox, Gaim, and xchat-gnome all do different things when you click the main window's close icon?
- Can Gnome finally receive a decent print dialog? It's been promised for years.
- How about Nautilus's memory footprint? Nautilus has about the same functionality as Thunar (XFCE's file manager) and yet it uses 6X the memory!
- How about Nautilus making icons somewhat transparent when you drag so you can see where you're dropping them?
- How about finally learning the Spatial-is-a-mess lesson that the rest of the industry learned 5 years ago?
- GStreamer/Rhythmbox: how about not freezing every 2 hours when streaming?

These have all been issues from the last 3 major releases. Have any of them been addressed in 2.18? Maybe the persistent clipboard... Other than that, I'm not holding my breath. :)

Personally, despite these warts, I will continue to use Gnome for the forseeable future. I must admit, though, I am a little dismayed at how minor the last two major releases have appeared!

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 6, 2007 17:39 UTC (Fri) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

Could you provide the links for the bugzilla entries for these bugs? Especially the gstreamer comment seems interesting.....

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 11, 2007 21:26 UTC (Wed) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link]

> - How about a persistent clipboard?

Testing:
- Start gedit
- Write something
- Select it and do "Copy"
- Close gedit
- Do "Paste" in console
Works fine for me...

Have you managed to kill your clipboard server?

Or did you mean clipboard that persists over reboots?
(for what kind of a use-cases you would like that?)

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 11, 2007 22:32 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I didn't notice that this one had been fixed! Awesome. Strike it from the list. :)

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 8:34 UTC (Wed) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470) [Link]

>>> All I want as an user are more stable and featureful apps, not a fast moving platform
I think that there are some urgent improvements to achieve. All i want as a user is a useful file explorer and not a buggy one. See my comment here on the Gnome bugzilla : http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362139#c9

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 7:43 UTC (Wed) by irios (guest, #19838) [Link]

There's one improvement the article fails to notice: You can change Clearlooks theme colors! I've got a green Ubuntu, finally ...

But seriously, only six months have passed, and many things have been worked on: a lot of work has been done in improving the Cairo graphics layer to make it faster and leaner; a lot of work has gone into gstreamer, too; a lot of work has been put into cleaning up the gtk+/gnome libraries; and many bugs have been killed. These changes don't show on a static picture, but they make Gnome a much better product than it was six months ago.

Apps have also improved due to this improved infrastructure: Jokosher has advanced a lot by also pushing gstreamer forward. And Inkscape is considering Cairo for all their rendering, instead of their own layer. Most apps in the Gnome suite have improved.

And there's a lot of work that is almost done, but not quite yet. Compiberyl is almost there, and so are the desktop applets.

We shouldn't expect a revolution every six months: It's impossible, and it would be bad if it weren't. But whoever thinks Gnome has stagnated, please install Gnome 2.0, and watch its evolution in 5 years. And wait 6 months more and watch it go a bit further.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 8:26 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"But seriously, only six months have passed"

And before that, only six months passed between 2.14 and 2.16, and 2.16 was similarly "boring" release. I know that GNOME's release-schedule is time-based, but is it does seem like last two releases were forced. There was nothing much to release, but they released anyway because their schedulde told them to release.

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 23:32 UTC (Wed) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

I disagree strongly, and that's why I like Gnome's release schedule. The reality is that regardless of new features, there are always lots of bugs fixed in each release, and I want those bug fixes ASAP rather than in 18 months when some new fancy feature is available to make it "worthwhile" to release.

Especially since I'm forced to use Exchange at work, and Evolution + connector is sooooo buggy still.

Really, I don't understand why people are complaining about this. If you don't find anything useful in the release, don't use it. Why is it a problem if they release every six months?

GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 6:57 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"I disagree strongly, and that's why I like Gnome's release schedule. The reality is that regardless of new features, there are always lots of bugs fixed in each release, and I want those bug fixes ASAP rather than in 18 months when some new fancy feature is available to make it "worthwhile" to release."

Don't we have minor releases for that? 2.16.1 and so forth?