The GNOME Roadmap 455
glockenspieler writes "Recently on the the Gnome Foundation mailing list, Dave Camp posted a draft Gnome Roadmap for versions 2.8 and Beyond. Issues up for discussion are Mozilla/Epiphany, incorportation of peer to peer filesharing, blogging, addition of more media widgets, and many others. Time for Gnome users to weigh in on what improvements that you would like to see. If that's not enough, then there's always the the C# versus Java versus ? discussion."
They should stick with C (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't put my finger on what it is, but there is something about KDE's interface that makes me angry. That may sound dumb, but I can only use KDE for a short while because it is emotionally exhausting to me and always leaves me feeling irritated.
KDE does many things right it my opinion (for example, their support for multiple keyboard layouts is excellent), but something about KDE is emotionally draining to me so I don't use it.
Re:They should stick with C (Score:2)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be KDE's tight letter spacing [osnews.com] in menus that's getting to you (screenshot [osnews.com]). As the article puts it, menus "read like a sentence instead of being wisely spaced out". I couldn't put my finger on my KDE-anger either, but I'm now thinking that the menu spac
Re:They should stick with C (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot: Hello, Tim
Tim: I used to use KDE. I've been sober for 6 months now.
Slashdot Leader: When did you realize that KDE wasn't healthy for you?
Tim: I just always... I got angry and irritable. My wife started getting concerned. I tried doing less KDE, but... then, some lonely night when my wife was at a meeting, I'd see that KAtomic icon staring back at me. It made feel less lonely. Then one day I was trying to edit a menu -- I wanted KAtomic to be in the K menu -- and I just couldn't figure it out. There must have been 30,000 icons on the screen, but none of them made it work. And then my little girl tries to show me how, and I slapped her hand off my mouse. She started crying and said, "Daddy I wish KDE was never invented!"
Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: A lot of people cope with loneliness by getting angry or acting out.
Tim: No, it's more like I'd turn to KDE to take away my inner loneliness, but then it would just make me angry with the people who really should make me happy.
Alternate-Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: I think you're really angry with yourself.
Slashdot Leader: Mr. Alternate-Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person has a lot of experience with anger. Maybe you two can help each other.
Tim: Well, I mean, I don't want to share everything with the group. Some things are just private.
Alternate-Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: You should really be more honest and open. When more people are looking at your personal life, it's easier to find the flaws. Many eyeballs, you know.
Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: You should really GPL your life.
Teenage-Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: Yeah, I'd like to see how your wife works on the inside.
Tim: No, really, some things are personal.
Alternate-Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: Don't you like open source?
Tim: I guess not.
Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: Kill him!
Teenage-Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: Kill him! His widow will date geeks!
Alternate-Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: Mod him down! Troll! Troll!
[*Tim's karma becomes negative*]
Slashdot-AOL-Me-Too-Person: Now I need something else to do.
Re:They should stick with C (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:3, Informative)
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Exposing C++ APIs (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely.
but very difficult to expose a C++ one to anything except C++, and in fact it's generally done by flattening the API to a C one
Are you sure that's still true? It was true the last time I checked, but doing a look around today, it seems that SWIG [swig.org] has become very good at wrapping C++ in anything from C# to Tcl.
Re:They should stick with C (Score:4, Insightful)
Miguel and his cronies are oddly superstitious toward C++. They have probably never actually seen it in its modern (standard) form, probably having been exposed only to early MSVC++. You generally don't even know if you're running a C++ program; they are easy to install (no buggy JVM) and they don't tend to crash or leak, so they don't call attention to themselves. Apt-get is a C++ program; were you ever obliged to notice?
It's a shame that Ximian are planning to make Evolution 2 depend on Mono. Looks like it's time to fork. I'd be happy to stick with Evo 1.4.x, myself. Nothing they talk about adding for 2 is anything I want.
Re:They should stick with C (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:5, Insightful)
The few C# gtk/gnome apps I've seen look great too. Just like the transition to enterprise frameworks like j2ee is the only sustainable way to do large-scale web development, using C# or java or some other tool is the only way to sustain large-scale client application development in the long run. Sure you can do it in C or C++, but sooner or layer the maintenance issues will get really expensive.
Re:They should stick with C (Score:2)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They should stick with C (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm used to coding in C, Java, PHP, Perl, etc. I have to admit it would be much easier to write apps in higher level languages than C. Not to mention getting rid of nasty bugs which one could accidentally stumble on while programming in C (like memory management) that's inconvenient to work around with with macros and functions.
Instead, consider the high level language for ease-of-development, maintainability, flexibility and performance in implementation. As much as I love Java and abhor C#, it's beginning to look a lot like Mono might be the better route. Java VM is just too slow (I've used it from developing Hello World programs to embedded apps, commandline apps and full-blown desktops apps). Even the HelloWorld app is slow in all the JVMs I've tried (IBM, Sun, Blackdown) on the various platforms (Windows, linux).
Re:They should stick with C (Score:2)
Uh, what? GNOME is no more cross-platform. They run on the various *nixes.
"GTK is easily the most painful widget set, both graphically and programmatically, that I have ever used."
Oh, you were talking about the Widget set? Guess what: Qt is the most cross-platform one of those. (In case you didn't know, Qt is what KDE uses.)
Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not make an installation system that works as simply as clicking setuppackage.msi is in Windows and let the other problems solve themselves?
Why not just make a working desktop first?
Sheesh. Yeah, this year will be the year of linux-on-the-desktop now that we have integrated blogging. That was sure the barrier for entry to me.
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh man, you just opened the floodgates with this one. Prepare to be lectured on why the 37 different packaging standards make software installations easier than with Windows. Of course, the reality of the situation is that it's a crapshoot as to whether or not a package will work with whichever one of the 10,000 Linux distributions you happen to be running (chan
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Package management is a distro issue, *not* a desktop problem. Of course, it's nice if you can just click an ebuild/RPM/DEB/whatever and it's installed automatically.
Complete bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely, 100% wrong. Your abitrary mindset is the primary problem. "I've randomly decided that application installation should be handled by the distro!" No reason or proof or logic is given.
How will you ever have a seamless, professional, sane desktop environment that doesn't even have an installation/uninstallation API? The very idea is so backwards and laughable, I fully expect Linux to take another 10 years to reach the le
Re:Complete bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
*cough* Window Maker? XFCE? ROX? Enlightenment? There are tons of window managers and desktops that don't use a taskbar+start menu interface.
"You want a litmus test? The day someone can buy a printer that comes with a CD, stick the CD into the drive, a menu comes up to install the binary driver, and afterward the printer works."
I bought an Epson printer. I stick in the driver CD, and the install program pops up. I click Next, Next, Next, and after a while I get an error. The printer didn't work.
No dude, Windows is highly overrated. Things don't always work smoothly. Things go wrong more often than you zealots want to admit.
On Fedora Core 1: Applications->System->Printers. Click Add Printer, Next, Next, Next, done.
"At the current pace, that is definitely not going to ever happen with either KDE or GNOME. They both are horrible desktops"
Yeah let's make grand statements without any evidence to back up. What makes GNOME and KDE so horrible? Do you have any usability tests that say GNOME and KDE are totally unusable?
Re:Complete bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Somehow I can't resist feeding known trolls today...
How will you ever have a seamless, professional, sane desktop environment that doesn't even have an installation/uninstallation API?
Let me get this straight... you want GNOME to invent their own packaging format. So then your distro will use .rpm or .deb for every package, expect for the GNOME ones, which will use this new packaging format.
And despite the fact that on modern Linux distros installing a new package or uninstalling an old one is just
MacOS X's packages leave much to be desired. (Score:4, Informative)
Even on MacOS X that's not true. NeXTSTEP had a far more functional Installer.app which would install, uninstall, and archive packages based on the bill of materials (essentially a list of files that belonged to the package) and this was more useful than the current MacOS X strategy (except that the NS Installer didn't handle conflicts at all).
On MacOS X you can't be sure that a package's content are only in the .app directory because some apps are installed with an installer program that does who-knows-what to your system. Programs that come with the OS are not always desired and don't come with uninstallers (how does one properly uninstall Microsoft Internet Explorer and be sure that all of its parts are gone; how can we know all the parts are in the .app folder? Why can't the installer let you tell it what not to install if you are reinstalling the OS and you know you don't want some program?). Many MacOS X users commonly run their machines as administrative users where they have the ability to write to system directories. Therefore it's possible for a program to see that some file isn't installed somewhere else (like a system dir) and then place a file there. Also the .app directory grants virtually no dependency tracking (modulo that which is built into an application). If program A depends on program B and B is removed, there ought to be a complaint and some kind of extra effort required to break program A but none will occur. As a result, programmers are implicitly urged to not reuse code in this way.
Then there's the inconsistent uninstall procedure -- uninstalling the developer packages appears to have somehow messed up a friend's ability to use Software Update on his iBook running MacOS X. He was lucky there happened to be a Perl script to do this job in the first place -- the developer packages install a lot of stuff in a lot of different places. Software Update complained of a permissions error on a /tmp subdir it was trying to write to. A reinstall of the OS fixed this (and also forced making a backup of personal data which was needed anyhow, so this wasn't a complete waste of time) but it sure seemed like overkill. Depending on each program to supply its own uninstall seems problematic and unnecessary particularly when you have the installer "receipt" which lists what files belong to which package and you could let packagers run a pre- and post-uninstall script to do things that aren't strictly file-based.
Making all of this worse is that so many programs on MacOS X are non-free software; inspecting the program's source code to see what the program really does is not possible. In the end, I think Apple sacrificed a lot for perceived simplicity that ended up not being so simple after all. I think MacOS X has some important user interface improvements other systems would be wise to build upon, but this way of doing package management is not one of them.
As for making a printer (and, for that matter, a scanner) work, I prefer the approach I've used in Fedora Core GNU/Linux: plug in the USB printer and run the printer manager program wizard. The wizard could be improved to automatically sense the new printer and configure itself (or the desktop could do this), but no additional software was needed. Scanning was even easier for me with my Epson scanner -- plug in the USB scanner, start the scanner program, scan. OS X required additional non-free software to do both of these tasks and that means another dependency I have no ability to share, modify, or inspect. I'm not willing to give up my software freedom for user interface enhancements and I don't think I should have to. Looking at how things used to be, history suggests I don't have to either.
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh man, you just opened the floodgates with this one. Prepare to be lectured on why the 37 different packaging standards make software installations easier than with Windows. Of course, the reality of the situation is that it's a crapshoot as to whether or not a package will work with whichever one of the 10,000 Linux distributions you happen to be running (chances are it won't), but hey.
Dude, fragmentation is what happens in healthy, competitive markets.
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux _has_ standardization. Choose a distribution, and stick with it.
For example, Mandrake Linux + kde:
One method of installing software - CHECK
One interface and widget set - CHECK
One set of 'canonical' programs - CHECK
Well, looks like it has everything you want right there. Perhaps you'd like to use the Mandrake Linux standard?
Or maybe not.. maybe you'd prefer the RedHat Fedora Core standard:
One method of installing software - CHECK
One interface and widget set - CHECK
One set of 'canonical' programs - CHECK
Or maybe you would like to choose the Debian standard? Or perhaps the S.u.S.E standard?
"But wait!", you say, "There are too many standards! There should be only one!".
Perhaps.. maybe there should be a Linux standard. But then, how are you going to choose between the Linux standard and the Windows standard and the Apple standard? How are you going to handle that choice?
We should roll that in to one standard too. The OS standard. But shit.. we're not home free yet. How are you going to choose between all the different competing hardware on which the OS standard runs? Honestly, why should you be expected to invest time and effort finding the one that's right for you when you could make one that FITS ALL SIZES?
But hey, no chance of that ever happening. So I guess for now, the world remains complicated.. and we remain forced to make choices.
What a travesty!
-Laxitive
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet, somehow it happens in the commercial software world: Windows and OS X, Microsoft Office, etc. Any way you slice it, in the free software world there's thousands of man hours spent doing the same things, over and over again, when that time would be better spent concentrating on making the "superior" piece of software even better.
That'd be pretty awesome. About as awesome as it would be if the entire wold all he
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:2)
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Insightful)
because for some reason today programmers can not understand the ideas of.....
Smaller.
Faster.
Better.
I really hope that someone will come in from the sidelines with a nice fast and easy to use desktop manager that has NONE of the added crud that is going into KDE and Gnome. I want all the added "features" to be add-on programs. if I want a battery meter, I'll download and install it.
If I want a blogger I'll download and install one.
I just wish that someone w
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pick two.
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:2)
I'm with you, they need a good installer.
why do you troll every Linux story? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't people just install their own peer-to-peer and blogging apps?
Sure, but they can install web-browsers, mail clients, et cetera too.
Why not make an installation system that works as simply as clicking setuppackage.msi is in Windows and let the other problems solve themselves?
Often it is that easy, with a number of caveats, however.
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It works on my Fedora system.
Download an RPM, double-click on it, voila, it is installing!
Get out of the dark ages.
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't get all the criteria right, well, it's back to compiling the software, or searching for the package you wan
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Distributions that don't have apt-get. Or yum. Or emerge.
Go ahead and name a distro in common use that doesn't have a package manager.
The possibility that what you're looking for isn't packaged.
I can release a source tarball for a Win32 app too. Whose fault would this be exactly?
That you know offhand what the package name is.
As opposed to Windows, where clairivoyance is built into the operating system...
Re:Wow. Out of touch.. (Score:2)
Typical childish behavior. "I use Debian, therefore the whole world uses Debian!"
Improbable. When you want to make software available for windoblows, you make an EXE and an MSI and a DLL.
Well no, not really. You can release the software as is (ZIP of the contents), use InstallShield, MSI, etc. Any route you take, when you download the installer, it works.
When you want to make it available for Linux, you make
When is too much (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When is too much (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, folks. It's the Gnome Desktop Environment, not the Gnome Application Library.
Re:When is too much (Score:2)
The future is BRIGHT (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, working with Mozilla Firebird is a stroke of genius. There are a heck of a lot of man hours being put in on that project, we should utilise them rather than recovering ground already trod upon by the lizard.
Secondly, integrating both Ximian, Gnome-DB, calendering and address book tightly into Gnome could be a great leap towards a working Dashboard project. This alone looks like propelling Gnome into pole position - it's a genuinely innovative feature, not yet seen on any other desktop, and only hinted at by Microsoft so far. Beating Microsoft to the punch would certainly be a coup.
The other really encouraging thing is the following paragraph:
--
One area in which GNOME has lagged behind other desktop operating
systems like Windows and Mac OS X is tight integration with hardware.
GNOME is working with the freedesktop.org community to make
plug-and-play hardware management just work.
--
For me this highlights that Gnome has moved well into position as the premier Linux desktop, and rather than concentrating on what KDE are doing, they are focusing on bigger fish
I want my 2.8!
Re:The future is BRIGHT (Score:5, Insightful)
For me this highlights that Gnome has moved well into position as the premier Linux desktop, and rather than concentrating on what KDE are doing, they are focusing on bigger fish
Personally, as KDE user I hope GNOME does this too, because where GNOME makes big improvements in areas like that, KDE generally follows, and vice versa, especially when freedesktop.org is involved
Re:The future is BRIGHT (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The future is BRIGHT (Score:2)
--
One area in which GNOME has lagged behind other desktop operating
systems like Windows and Mac OS X is tight integration with hardware.
GNOME is working with the freedesktop.org community to make
plug-and-play hardware management just work.
--
For me this highlights that Gnome has moved well into position as the premier Linux desktop, and rather than concentrating on what KDE are doing, they are focusing on bigger fish
Re:The future is BRIGHT (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not so sure -- Epiphany and Firefox are very different projects. Certainly they have similar stated goals, but the execution shows that Epiphany is *serious* about them. When you see Epiphany you first notice all of the features that are missing. If you're like me, you'll quickly noti
Re:The future is BRIGHT (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a great paper [pdx.edu] (written just a couple of days back) that describes the current state and future plans of this effort. Highly recommended reading. If you read it your "warm feelings of loveliness" will be doubled :)
Re:Integration is "good" now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Integration is "good" now? (Score:2)
Re:Integration is "good" now? (Score:2)
Blogging (Score:2, Interesting)
Mozie (Score:2)
Re:Mozie (Score:2)
Fortunately it is still possible to run an explorer style window too, but overall GNOME 2.6 gets a big thumbs up from me - spatial, minimalist, uncluttered.
While it would be nice to see tools such as blogging etc. but I'd rather see services to support such too
how about (Score:3, Insightful)
i don't understand why windowmanagers need to do everything under the sun. the footprint of freebsd's gnome port is damn near 1GB. perhaps if the gnome and kde camps could focus on simplicity instead of features, things would be farther ahead than they are now. maybe we could all agree on a unified copy/paste for once for pete's sake.
Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. Dennis Ritchie said that
Re:how about (Score:5, Informative)
Re:how about (Score:5, Informative)
No they are not. They are environments. If you want to quibble about the term "desktop", be my guest, but a window manager is a much different thing than an environment.
KDE and GNOME come with file managers. They come with browsers. They come with email clients. They come with a lot of stuff that's unnecessary for window managers, but useful in working graphical environments.
They both also come with standard libraries and APIs. So they're also development environments. Write a KDE program and it integrates into the environment in a way a pure Qt program never could. Write a GNOME program and it integrates into the environment in a way no GTK+ program every could.
Re:how about (Score:2)
Metacity and KWin are window managers.
You aren't even talking about what you're talking about.
language (Score:4, Funny)
Real men use Assembly. They should code it in assembly.
Re:language (Score:2, Funny)
real men write directly in machine code. assemblers are for wusses.
Re:language (Score:2, Funny)
Re:language (Score:5, Funny)
Back in MY day we had to rewire the ENIAC and replace blown out vacuum tubes just to calculate 2+2!
(To which someone responds:)
Well, back in MY day, we had to rotate the proper component on our differential engine to calculate 2+2! And we LIKED IT that way!
(Which begets the response:)
OH YEAH?! Back in MY day, we had to slide beads on an Abacus to calculate 2+2! We liked it so much that we STILL do it! And WE could even calculate while walking uphill through the snow! Both ways!
(ad infinitum)
Java vs C# vs ? (Score:5, Funny)
For example the familiar Hello, World! application is written in ? as follows:
what is the procedure the OS calls first?
{
what is the output of the most common small example program?
}
John.
My Gnome Wish List (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The Menus should be much more customizable; treated like folders that you can click and drag into (I hate to say this, but "Like Windows").
2. Better Video control properties; take advantage of XFree's extended features and have options like TV switching and such.
3. Better preferences; the control panels are quite lacking.
4. Other aesthetic enhancements that will make gnome pretty enough to compete with other window environments (like win XP's or OSX's). Smooth scrolling, the zoom-on-hover icons in OSX are sweet, and _drop shadows on windows_ would be real nice.
5. Some kind of Linux-version-of-Active-Desktop would be real nice, so I could have an IRC session running as part of my wallpaper,anchor the weather channel radar map to the background, etcetera.
You have heard of gdesklets, right? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My Gnome Wish List (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My Gnome Wish List (Score:2)
Quite right.
2. Better Video control properties; take advantage of XFree's extended features and have options like TV switching and such.
Again, correct.
3. Better preferences; the control panels are quite lacking.
GNOME is a horrible offender on the front that it wants to give the user just a few options, but no real power.
4. Other aesthetic enhancements that will
Re:My Gnome Wish List (Score:5, Informative)
blogging? (Score:2)
1. RSS feed client integrated into Gnome (maybe even displaying RSS feeds on the background?)
2. Blog API client integrated in Gnome. BloGTK [sourceforge.net] seems to be a good candidate.
DBUS/HAL (Score:5, Insightful)
ATM, all they do (in conjunction with gnome-volume-manager) is automount/unmount/run removable media. Pretty much what you got with autorun for years on Windows, but more extensible in that you can tell the daemon what program to run, etc. Its also setup to detect/play dvds, and import photos from a digital camera automagically. Long overdue perhaps, but still very nice to have.
I suspect the best improvements are coming in the future once this is all integrated. Basically it gives the system a queryable, extensible device manager. In the future, I would expect all software that does hardware interaction will interface with this layer, for detection, hotplug, identification, and so forth. Long story short, its an absolutely critical piece of Linux on the desktop.
Um...Python? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, using Python paves the way for universally integrated scripting, somewhat like the VB script possibilities in MS-Windows (and, despite waht MicroSoft did, that is a good thing).
Re:Um...Python? (Score:4, Insightful)
Python should not be used for core libraries or core apps like Nautilus. As completely excellent as Python is, it's just a fact that it just doesn't run as fast as C (or even Java or Mono) for nearly any operation. Also, using Nautilus as an example again, while Nautilus is finally fast enough as of 2.6, it still needs work in terms of memory footprint. Going to Java or Mono wouldn't help this, but going with Python for something like Nautilus would probably make it Much Much Worse(TM). Finally, while PyChecker [sourceforge.net] is a beautiful complement to Python, it's simply not a complete replacement for static type checking.
What you did hit on, though, was that Python (IMHO) ought to be pushed as the Linux equivlant role as VB does for MS - with hooks for it into everything, wherever possible. I don't see any reason why Python shouldn't be A) used like VB is for making quick custom desktop apps, but B) (and I know I'll get flamed for this), like VB, Python makes for a great system *and* web scripting language (ie: why push PHP when Python could do a much better job and offer familiarity between web scripting and system scripting)
If Python could get the approximately the same speed, memory footprint, and built-in sanity checking as Java or Mono, then it could be a contender for core app/library programming. Sadly, this isn't likely, and even if a concerted effort were launched to this effect immediately, it still wouldn't materialize for a couple years. Java and Mono, however, are here now.
Re:Um...Python? (Score:2)
Re:Um...Python? (Score:3, Informative)
see: http://docs.python.org/ext/intro.html [python.org] for more on that.
On windows you can access COM components from Python.
By the way, did you know that Python is really OO with multiple inheritance (diamond-style class traversing added recently) and has hundreds of built-in libraries?
ultimately, stay
Re:Um...Python? (Score:3, Insightful)
For the kinds of GUI tasks that VB gets used for though, OO is really nice, and why wait for PHP to catch up when Python has great OO right now?
Re:Um...Python? (Score:2)
Re:Um...Python? (Score:2)
Of course, when GCJ is done, this won't be true, and Java will be able to be compiled.
Re:Um...Python? (Score:2)
Go OS X route a finally ditch X11 (Score:2)
Are we forgetting somebody? (Score:2, Interesting)
Other Tools Needed (Score:3, Interesting)
C'mon... none of these address simple usability issues like those noted by Nick Petrely. I don't agree with him on many things, but let's get usability going before we start throwing applets in.
Re:Update? (Score:2)
Very odd. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's especially amazing, considering that Gnome is an important part of GNU. What's up, Gnome foundation? Don't you care about documentation freedom?
x.org integration (Score:5, Insightful)
With regard to the plans for new media and networking features in GNOME, I hope that the GNOME team leverages efforts from the x.org project to work towards a common implementation of those features. In particular, I think that the Media Application Server [mediaappli...server.net] looks very promising. Since future versions of GNOME will likely be running on x.org anyways, the wheel should not be re-invented with respect to advanced media features.
GNOME is becoming more like KDE every day... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not particularly an X fan. I don't go for the shiny point and click thing because its just another layer separating the user from the system. Hence, I often have maybe a dozen terminal windows upen spanned across my 4 desktops.
That's not to say that X doesn't have its virtues. I wouldn't want to use Lynx as my sole browser, for the Web really does have some neat interactive and graphical content. However, things like IRC, News, and even P2P filesharing really don't need a GUI. Oh sure, I use X-Chat, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate Epic. And I actually really like Pine.
How would you like it if you could do realtime management of email on your computer from anywhere? And I mean anywhere. Run the email client you use at home from school, work, your mobile phone, etc? To do that, you need a client that can run in a terminal. This includes Mutt and Pine (amongst others). Hell, I even use (http://www.idokorro.com) idokorro mobile ssh to access my box from my car!
That said, everything has its place. But making Gnome into KDE is not the right way to go. If this happens, I will probably keep a backup of version 2.6 on CD somewhere and downgrade any new version from that my distro ships.
Most important technology not on the roadmap? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is a SVG based window manager so far away?
Re:Most important technology not on the roadmap? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, you asked for it [freedesktop.org].
Don't SCREW the EXPERT (Score:5, Insightful)
Disorganized series of thoughts follow.
Make everything as simple as possible, and no simpler.
It seems the Gnome architects often forget the important second part of that goal. Or they are, frankly, deluded into thinking that there is no limit to how simple and appliance-like they can make the computer. There is a limit, and that's when I can no longer adjust it to fit me.
In contrast, this is Microsoft's lofty goal, which is good enough as it stands, but they too still forget the nuances in that goal.
Make the easy things effortless, and the hard things possible.
Desktop designers can't just cherry-pick a few simple problems and write a few lines to make it easy. While it's noble to strip out the rarely used options, or the options that "confuse" the newcomer, it is NOT ACCEPTABLE to bury the familiar power interface behind a gconf/registry setting, or to make the familiar power interface unreachable. (You hear me, Nautilus?)
Allow configurability. Allow personalization beyond just the stupid passive things like wallpaper and skins. Let a user choose their favorite way of presenting information, and be smart about it.
Commit to finishing the features you start. How long has a Gnome-Menu editor been promised, but neglected? Ever since Gnome 2.0, they've said, "well, real soon now." We thought it just barely missed the deadlines for the first distros with Gnome 2.0, but I still can't edit my launcher menu. If obvious features aren't usable, then don't go announcing major X.0 version releases.
Re:Don't SCREW the EXPERT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't SCREW the EXPERT (Score:3, Interesting)
Please God.. (Score:3, Interesting)
My two cents... (Score:2)
How about being able to have a different wallpaper on each workspace?
Re:My two cents... (Score:3, Informative)
Better Menu Management (Score:3, Insightful)
If gnome is truly about usability, putting programs into the menu should be a piece of cake. I'm not sure if KDE has the end-all solution on menu management, but it could be improved in gnome.
On the other hand, gnome has done a nice job at being able to modify the menu directly from the menu (where it makes sense).
Some drag and drop capabilities in the menu would also be nice.
Make it a better development platform (Score:5, Insightful)
Developers want to quickly build applications. Right now, a lot of the development focus for GNOME apps is using C. That's a generalization, but a fairly accurate one. They have bindings for many other languages, but they usually don't get the spotlight. Fold the bindings projects into the main project. For example, fold Gtkmm (C++ bindings) into the bigger GTK effort. Likewise for other language bindings and other libraries. Make sure these bindings are as identical as possible accross target languages, so the learning curve from one language to the next isn't so great. Right now its easy for a newcoming developer to find the main project (ie Gtk), but no so easy to find information on how to use it with his/her preferred language.
Once that has happened, stress the fact that using GNOME you can develop apps in a wide variety of languages. Lay the whole Java/C# thing to rest and support both. Linux has an opportunity to become the premier development platform (which should rest nicely with geek and open source ideals). Everyone says choice is key, but then they try to rope you into a development methodology. This isn't necessary. Build incredible libraries (likely in C) and then bind them to as many higher languages as possible, and always keep these bindings current with the mainline. Developmers will come in droves, and make great applications, if they can pick and choose the most appropriate technology rather than having it dictated to them.
Real virtual desktops (Score:5, Interesting)
This is related to a problem I have with Gnome 2.4 (I don't know if it's been fixed in 2.6): when I double-click a desktop icon, I expect that program to launch on the desktop where I clicked the icon. But if I switch desktops before the program window shows up, it opens in that desktop instead. Maddening, especially on a slow computer such as mine! Also, dragging items between virtual desktops needs to be made easier (again, apologies if this has improved in 2.6).
I also have to second the idea of a sound server replacement, though I'm not thrilled that it's in the "Long Term" section of the roadmap. The current situation is frankly an embarrassment for a desktop environment of Gnome's stature.
In the pie-in-the-sky department, I would love to see options for a Mac-style menu bar, and Acorn-style file choosing via drag-and-drop rather than with a file selector dialog.
Mike
I searched for the word "performance" (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess Gnome is destined to remain the slowpoke of the GUI world. Who would have thought KDE would be the quick one.
Firefox is OK, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hope GNOME sticks with Epiphany, or fixes Firefox's wart(s).
Re:Firefox is OK, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox is OK, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox (and thunderbird) still have the profile manager, but the default launching script has been rewritten with some trickery to hide it. That's right, when you "call the binary" and it opens a new window, that's actually an ugly shell script that detects whether or not firefox is currently running and then decides whether to actually launch firefox or just tell the existing firefox to open a new window based on that. It's a really ugly hack workaround for brokenness within firef
GNOME wishlist (Score:3, Interesting)
* Faster startup time and lower memory usage for GNOME applications.
* A GUI method of enabling emacs keymappings and user-rebindable accelerators.
* User-rebindable accelerators on contextual menus, rather than just regular menus.
* OpenOffice working like the rest of the GNOME applications.
* All config directories (dotfiles and dotdirectories) being moved from ~/.appdir to ~/.config/appdir (including gnome/gnome2 stuff. Less garbage in ~/.
* More types of data being supported in cut-and-paste in GNOME apps. This means being able to cut-and-paste from the GIMP or Inkscape to Open Office and back again.
* The introduction of an "infinite progress bar" widget containing barber pole stripes, a la the Mac OS, to be used on tasks with an indeterminate completion time.
* The finishing of *some* instant messaging client for *some* protocols. All of the GNOME-based IM clients have issues. This is mentioned in the roadmap. IM is a standard feature even at many businesses. To use GNOME, I need to be able to send/recieve files with it and send encrypted messages. This is currently a tremendous pain in the ass (for some reason, encryption support *still* has not been merged into gaim mainstream, despite the fact that the US no longer places encryption limitations on people).
* Security. The GNOME people are busily putting in auto-discovery stuff and the like. If GNOME talks to the network, it needs to be tied down very tightly. I get *very* unhappy when my desktop environment needs to talk to the network.
* Network management. GNOME's GxSNMP is currently dead, and there are no GNOME network management apps. There is nothing like Intermapper. [intermapper.com]
* Make a GnomeTreeView that's a more intelligent GtkTreeView. It should natively have the ability to reorder or hide columns (say, a popup menu can come up from clicking in an icon in the title line of the GnomeTreeView that has a checkmarked list of columns to make visible) -- this sort of functionality shouldn't really require the application to do anything.
Re:Mozilla Firefox (Score:3, Informative)
As to the Mozilla SeaMonkey (Navigator/Messenger/Composer/IRC) suite, I do agree it is still a useful piece of software. I personally use Konqueror or FireFox as a browser on most of my mach