GNOME 3.0 May Not Come Until September 2010

[val-gaav]

User features:
- open-save dialogs are much better, can be added new sources (like search integration with beagle/tracker)

Open/save file dialogs in gtk+ were always one big horrible joke on usability, features or whatever you want to name it.

Saying that those are much better now is just as saying that "hell has frozen".... and it's also untrue, because I'm watching this dialog right now on my PC and it still makes me want to delete every application that uses it.

As for other things I think we are living in 21 centry right now so putting drag and drop into major improvements is silly. It's not an major improvement it's a basic function that every DE should have and if it doesn't have it the devs should be just ashamed.

[mat69]

@ciplogic well what you mention on the user side is not that thrilling at all (uuhh, drag and drop, come on that is a no-brainer and not sure on Gtk but should not take much time to code) [1] and you are highly inaccurate on the technology side. There is no such thing as "Freedesktop integration", fd.o is just a collection of "standards" people "agreed" on. [2]

D-Bus has nothing to do with hardware and btw. KDE 4 only uses DBus, nothing else. Funny somehow that Gnome partially still uses Bonobo, reminds me of the icon-fd.o-spec that KDE uses while Gnome still does not fully embrace it (sic?) or at least took way longer, despite the fact that both D-Bus and that icon-spec were started by devs that are close to Gnome. And to be honest I never understood that because I had the feeling that Gnome had more devs than KDE, but maybe I'm completely wrong on that or developing with Gtk was (! with all the bindings that for sure has changed) not that fast/easy compared with Qt.

[1] That is not to say that there weren't any thrilling changes, probably people just got so used to them that they can't imagine the absence of them in the past. And overall it is just hard to remember them and I do not urge anybody to look at all the changelogs, that would be a waste of time. Yet I still will mention when I see a change not as major improvement.
[2] Actually fd.o was/is heavily Gnome sided and highly inflexible, inconsistent and inconsequent, that is what started discussions from KDE devs to improve the decision-process, not sure if it worked out. Just one example, look how Akonadi was treated, months without an answer and then half-baked unfounded reasons to neglect it. Just ridiculous and brashness --> people working months on something and then putting them of with reasons like "some people think it has problems" (no quote, but the problems were not listed at all). Also galago anyone? That is not to say that I do not like fd.o, it could be a fantastic way to bring the whole Linux desktop foward, to make live for users and devs easier but in many occations it hinders just that.

[ciplogic]

@mat69; I worked (as I'm a software developer) and I am aware of Qt4 that is a much improved over Qt3. I can agree that KDE4 shell looks like a revolution compared with KDE3. The point was that without breaking the user front look, GNOME changes almost in the same amount as KDE4 did. Gtk3 is expected to have a new theme engine but in rest, will be mainly Gtk2 with removed a lot of deprecated symbols. There are KillBonobo and Project Ridley that were about improving GNOME.

Making minimalist improvements, makes you feel that GNOME stays in place for ages, but as platform did improve. By FreeDesktop integration it just mean that GNOME implements specfications as folder locations, launchers, using HAL, etc. They are probably not revolutionary from UI standpoint, but at large taking GNOME 2.0 with GNOME 2.28, is a jump (in 8 years) as is KDE 3 to KDE 4. Don't get mislead by plasma itself (or any fancy UI). Think as a jump from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, meaning the same of Win32 API to be there, but a lot of internals to be much well better written, improved, etc.

Just the fact that GNOME 3 can run (as it's visible part: Gnome shell) on top of Gnome 2.28, simply means that technology on it may be considered one version above 2.0

I also agree with persons that say: Gnome is the same for ages in the ares like: Nautilus in general, Gnome-Panel look and feel that are the most visible parts of GNOME. A Nautilus rewrite I think may be desirable, but no one will do it very soon, so we will stay with it for now.

Probably, but at a smaller scale, is what OS X was from 10.0 to 10.6, but when you will go back on 10.0 stay 2 hours, you will say: how could someone liked that desktop?

[L33F3R]

@ciplogic

thank you for that post. That will hopefully clear alot up, for alot of people.

[val-gaav]

Remember gnome 3.0 would not happen without kde4. Gnomers were so set on their incremental improvements and no 3.0 as we do not believe in revolution (there was a webpage on gnome.org called threepointzero arguing how next major release will not happen and why). Only KDE impact made them go 3.0 route.

[kraftman]

@mat69; I worked (as I'm a software developer) and I am aware of Qt4 that is a much improved over Qt3. I can agree that KDE4 shell looks like a revolution compared with KDE3. The point was that without breaking the user front look, GNOME changes almost in the same amount as KDE4 did.

It doesn't have sense to me. You said Gnome changes in the same amount as KDE4 did, but same time gtk3 will be almost same crap like gtk2? Btw. the first thing which they should change is its front look.

[val-gaav]

Well I expect gnome 3.0 to be more of a marketing release: "competition had a major release so we will have one too" ...

The same way current Firefox was changed from 3.1 to 3.5 though it really is not so different from 3.0 ...

[L33F3R]

Remember gnome 3.0 would not happen without kde4. Gnomers were so set on their incremental improvements and no 3.0 as we do not believe in revolution (there was a webpage on gnome.org called threepointzero arguing how next major release will not happen and why). Only KDE impact made them go 3.0 route.

please explain how the kde fanboys can both argue that the reason we will have a gnome 3.0 is because we need to catch up with kde; and on the flipside, its not really a 3.0 release at all.

gnome 3 adds a few major things. they dont want a total overhaul like kde4, which might i remind you sucked ass for about the first year as they crunched bugs. The kde fans here are debating that gnome is both a moderate change and an overhaul (not necessarily the same people arguing both). These are the same people that say windows 7 looks "ugly" or "disgusting", when a joe on the street will tell you default kde4 looks far worse.

kde fanboys (not to be confuzzled with kde users) are to desktop environments as republicans are to American politics...

[BlackStar]

please explain how the kde fanboys can both argue that the reason we will have a gnome 3.0 is because we need to catch up with kde; and on the flipside, its not really a 3.0 release at all.

gnome 3 adds a few major things. they dont want a total overhaul like kde4, which might i remind you sucked ass for about the first year as they crunched bugs. The kde fans here are debating that gnome is both a moderate change and an overhaul (not necessarily the same people arguing both). These are the same people that say windows 7 looks "ugly" or "disgusting", when a joe on the street will tell you default kde4 looks far worse.

kde fanboys (not to be confuzzled with kde users) are to desktop environments as republicans are to American politics...

Well said!

Gnome 3.0 is not a "revolutionary" release, like KDE 4 was (with all the pain and suffering that brought). It's the culmination of years of gradual changes. It's also an effort to clean up the codebase from legacy features.

Gnome doesn't need "clean breaks" or "revolutions". This is its strength. This is why it's used almost exclusively in the professional/corporate world.

[bugmenot]

Fair enough

Only one correction: Contrary to the belief of a lot of gnome users, Gstreamer is not a gnome app. In fact, isn't Gstreamer the default backend of Phonon? (BTW, the entire Phonon approach is nothing short of freakin genius)

Except that there are two forks of phonon - the qt version and the KDE version.

Not only that, Nokia is planning to abandon it for some upcoming abstraction framework yet to be announced...