Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released [LWN.net]

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released

Posted Oct 14, 2011 12:52 UTC (Fri) by topyli (subscriber, #62267)
In reply to: Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released by BeS
Parent article: Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released

'gnome-desktop-environment' is an obsolete metapackage, now replaced with 'gnome'. It installs the standard upstream GNOME collection of software (close to what you find on Debian). If i try to install this package, apt wants me to install lots of applications and themes - 73 packages which would use 261 MB of disk space. And I'm using a very comfortable GNOME session already.

Obviously Ubuntu's set of default applications is different, so the download will be big.

gnome-shell's dependencies alone include gnome-panel, metacity, panel applets and other stuff that are related to the fallback mode. Naturally, none of this is installed on a default Ubuntu system.

None of this changes the fact that Unity simply sits on a GNOME 3 environment. It's just the shell.

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Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released

Posted Oct 14, 2011 13:22 UTC (Fri) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828) [Link]

Ok, so the umbrella package name was wrong, but the point remains - installing 'gnome' in Unity wants another 195Mb of download.

- we agree the set of default applications is different, and gnome apps are missing
- we agree that the fallback system is different, and gnome's fallback is missing
- I think we agree that it doesn't use Gnome's desktop manager GDM
- we agree it doesn't use the same theme, font or look etc.
- presumably we can agree that Unity has its own non-gnome APIs too

If we just install the barebones shell, what else do we get:
- apps
- on-screen keyboard
- introspection files for Gnome libraries (aka the actual Gnome API)
- gjs

So aside from the shell, the applications, the APIs, the desktop manager, the font, the theme, the UX, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, it is Gnome 3, yeah.

BeS summed it up best, "Unity is Unity and GNOME is GNOME". There's no shame in that, but there's also no point pretending otherwise.

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released

Posted Oct 14, 2011 18:57 UTC (Fri) by topyli (subscriber, #62267) [Link]

Can't really disagree with this. In fact, I got inspired to install the 'gnome' metapackage and will try to use those apps for a change. I can then meditiate on whether the applications matter so much. I actually suspect they do.

No verdict yet on rhythmbox vs. banshee :)

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released

Posted Oct 14, 2011 21:11 UTC (Fri) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]

I find it hard to believe that we still get these discussions about applications coming with a desktop at this point in time (and about disk space and maybe memory usage). All the applications I use are based on individual merit: my desktop could be called KDE 4, but this only means KWin, Plasma, Dolphin, Kate and Konsole (+ Klipper and the other little ones); all the other heavyweight applications are not KDE 4 based, ex. Opera, Amarok 1, Thunderbird, QtCreator, VLC, Pidgin, WinMerge.

I find that investing in 1 GiB of memory more is totally worth it for loading whatever library of my favourite but eccentric application, built maybe with LISP, MFC and Wine.

Amarok / Clementine

Posted Oct 23, 2011 3:10 UTC (Sun) by ccurtis (guest, #49713) [Link]

> Amarok 1

Hmm. Check out Clementine ( http://www.clementine-player.org/ ) if you're not yet familiar.