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« GSoC 2009 is here! (okay, I'm late) | Being out of the virtual world at Solutions Linux »

Thursday 2 April 2009

A look forward at GNOME 3.0

You might remember this:

It's been a long time coming, but if the proposal that was presented at GUADEC caught your attention and if you're curious to know more about GNOME 3.0, you will definitely want to read the detailed planning that the release team prepared. While the GUADEC proposal was mainly about the idea of doing GNOME 3.0, we also hoped that it would bootstrap a new period where people would begin serious planning about it. And it did happened: before, people tended to only propose ideas on paper; after GUADEC, we started seeing more concrete roadmaps, proposals and code.

I strongly believe the planning we've been working on is the right way to do things, and I surely hope it will be well-received by the community. I don't want to summarize the mail here, so just check it out (interestingly, it breaks in the web archives because of a line starting with From and the mail is split in two: second part here) or check the wiki version, read the thread that it will create, or look at Andre's post or Lucas' post about all this.

[13:23] | [GNOME] | [#511]

Trackbacks

1. Aggregator @ Bitubique [02/04/2009@16:08]

Frédéric Crozat: GNOME 3.0 planning announced

After a lot of thinking GNOME release team is happy to announce planning for GNOME 3.0 Enjoy (other members of Release Team did blog about it too : Vincent, Lucas, Andre). Now, back to work, folks !...

2. Aggregator @ Bitubique [02/04/2009@16:08]

Lucas Rocha: ThreePointZero

So, we have finally announced the GNOME 3.0 plan. I’m really confident about this plan. I’m sure a lot of new cool stuff will happen to GNOME from now on. Let’s make it happen! Vuntz and Andre blogged about it too....

3. Aggregator @ Bitubique [02/04/2009@16:09]

Andre Klapper: GNOME 3.0 Schedule draft; Streamlining of the

GNOME 3 Today I have released a GNOME release schedule proposal for 2.27 and 2.29 (please keep discussion streamlined on desktop-devel mailing list instead of e.g. the comments section of this blog). GNOME 2.30 will be GNOME 3.0 (if it’s considered to...

4. Aggregator @ Bitubique [02/04/2009@22:25]

Frederic Peters: ThreeDotOh!

Thanks to Vincent Untz, Michael Scherer, Christophe Fergeau, Pascal Terjan (and the ones I forgot since I am totally exhausted now), GNOME had a great booth at Solutions Linux on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and it was great fun manning it and...

5. Aggregator @ Bitubique [10/04/2009@03:26]

Vincent Untz: Being out of the virtual world at Solutions

Last week was Solutions Linux, one of the big free software events in France each year. And of course I went to there (thanks Novell for letting me go there on work days!). While still in Paris, it moved from CNIT La Défense to Porte de Versailles,...

6. Jacob's Weblog [21/04/2009@08:01]

Gnome 3.0 - please integrate Gnome-Do

After reading the the Gnome 3.0 announcements (Vincent Untz, Andre Klapper) yesterday and reading The Plan, I don’t really know if I got exited or dissapointed Anyway Gnome works very well for me already (version 2.26) so I guess the limited a......

Comments

1. Cypher [02/04/2009@15:13]

After reading the article on the wiki, it seems to me that GNOME is trying to mimic KDE, except that it just sounds "oooh yeah, let's do that too" and then it fails miserably.

Honestly, if this is what you plan for 3.0, I do not see the point of having GNOME anymore. There's nothing you're talking about that cannot be achieved easily with the KDE4 framework. You are going to try to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of keeping a brand... I do not understand that. Do something different, or join with the existing, especially if what exists is already capable of doing what you're planning to do.

In what I have read, I've only seen your slow decay. Sorry for that, but that's my opinion.

2. ethana2 [02/04/2009@15:22]

I hope gnome finally does away with windows and 'the desktop'. I want to use my screen for what I want to get done, and all that resizing, and (un)maximizing is useless complication. If my workflow involves two applications, I may want them side by side, but I should only have to worry about the edge between them and even that should have a decent default.

Before we go all crazy on this, make gnome-do docky into a panel applet, and fix the top pixel of gnome app menu bars. I'm using maximus by Canonical, and my KDE, Win*, and Java apps are Fitt's Law compliant, but my gnome apps aren't, it frustrates me.

3. Canol [02/04/2009@15:57]

If we had too many "big" desktop environments I would agree with Cypher but we only have two: Gnome and KDE (others are minor, buggy and incomplete). So, right now we have a "choice". But if Gnome to be merged with KDE then we won't have any choice. Reinventing the wheel is totally understandable in such situations. I can't understand why a person would choose "not to choose" like Cypher do.

4. Cypher [02/04/2009@16:19]

@Canol: because there is not point at choosing between two identical things. If you decide to eat pasta, are you gonna spend much time choosing between two identical packs ?

I'm always up for choice, when there are differences... price, quality, ideology, whatever... but here there is no difference at all. All in all, I prefer to have one big thing that evolves properly with a lot of people behind it than two identical thingies trying to fakely compete for no reason except being seen. There was a reason, and it was the Qt licensing issue, which is fully understandable. But this is no more, there's no reason left except misplaced pride.

My opinion of course...

5. bkor [02/04/2009@16:53]

Cypher: Your arguments have been rasied many times before. Don't find them useful. At all. If you don't want to use something, great. Don't bother us with it though.

6. Vaibhav [02/04/2009@17:13]

Please don't enforce the Gnome Shell onto the users unless its usefulness is proven. It looks pretty in the screencast, but after daily use is it really more convenient than the current panel/window system?

Regarding Zeitgeist, it seems to be just another tool, and no way "an idea that can form the basis of an overhauled GNOME user experience" (from ThreePointZero/Plan).

The Gnome 3 idea seems to be a little too rushed. It is disappointing to see them calling 2.30 = 3.0, and mention some petty projects that form the basis of the overhaul. Is this all that what we, the loyal Gnome users, deserve?

7. Cypher [03/04/2009@01:26]

@bkor: just the fact they have been raised (many times) before makes them invalid ? If you don't find them useful, it's your right, as it is mine to want my opinion to be heard. Moreover, I am not attacking GNOME itself, I'm just saying that this action plan is not, in my opinion, the way to go to claim difference. I am not saying that environments should merge, I'm just noticing that his plan could lead to redundancy. Does that bother you ? Sorry then, but sometimes, you have to know that some people might have different opinions.

8. Vincent [03/04/2009@16:12]

@Cypher: can you elaborate on why you are saying that GNOME is trying to mimic KDE? Because, well, I'm in strong disagreement here :-)

(and fwiw, you could also say that there's nothing in KDE that couldn't be achieved in GNOME... it's hardly an argument)

9. Vincent [03/04/2009@16:16]

@Vaibhav: of course pushing something like GNOME Shell without making sure it works fine for users would be bad. This is something that will be done (I'd still expect people to dislike the end result -- you can't please everybody). For Zeitgeist, I'd disagree it's just another tool. It can really change the way people deal with their documents, if done right.

Also note that the idea is not to change everything for 3.0, but to start a trend with 3.0 that we'll be able to continue during the 3.x cycle. That's a deliberate choice, which is related our choice of a 6-months schedule for GNOME releases.

10. Eric [03/04/2009@19:07]

I'm an end user and I can say that Gnome 3.0 looks like more a release for developers directly and end-users indirectly. Therefore, I'm not really holding my breath. However, what I would like to see is a FULL revamp of how you connect to people. I think Gnome 3.0 should be a "People Release" where you have meta contacts using https://launchpad.net/people-projec... and integrate every contact application that makes talking, sending information and collaborating with people a snap. They scratched the surface of this in the 'Other Potential Area,' but they talk about it as if it's probably not going to happen (at least in 3.0). The better we can connect people to where it's like they're sitting right next to you (i.e. jingle/mingle, editing the same document at the same time, empathy integration with apps, desktop sharing, etc) I think the better Gnome will do. Just my 2 cents. Hence, 3.0 seems more of the prep work for 3.XX rather than 3.0 itself and I feel that 2.30 should be the prep work and 2.3X should = 3.0 when it's ready because once Gnome turns 3.0 it will receive much more media attention than the normal releases and I think it should be amazing as well as done right.

11. Jacob Emcken [03/04/2009@22:44]

A great feature IMO to add to Gnome 3.0 would be Gnome-Do:
http://do.davebsd.com/

This is also an exiting read about Do’ifying GTK:
http://www.cimitan.com/blog/2009/01...

12. taila [04/04/2009@14:43]

As a user of GNOME (currently on Ubuntu Intrepid), I think the idea of GNOME 3.0 is great but should not be rushed to avoid the same problems with KDE 4.0. We do not need to move to a confusing and buggy system just to appear to be moving forward. As Eric the GNOME user says there will be a lot of attention from the media and when that happens it should not be another unusable window manager like what happened with KDE 4.0.

As far as I'm concerned the current version I am working on is the best computing environment I have ever worked on. It seems to work with anything I throw at it and its fast and flashy on my old P4 2.4 GHz, 640 Mb and 9200SE ATI Radeon graphics. I even run a VMWare to run the Win XP for those few technologies that still need it. And everything works like it native.

So all in all, GNOME 3.0 should shine when it comes out as there is no rush technology-wise from the 2.x system. The idea of everyone working to build one big GNU/Linux window manager does have an appeal to it for development and Linux acceptance point of view. This could be done in a way where buy a user could choose the setup as part of a theme to get the look. For learning to use Linux people would have a simpler HOWTO for doing something.

For those who might choose to boo the idea because they enjoy using their distros so much, well I have been using linux from around 2002 starting with Red Hat 9 Desktop after having played around a bit with Knoppix. At this point I have a tendency to multiboot more than four systems at times. So I do have a bit of an idea what I am talking about from the user point of view.

13. marcinq [04/04/2009@15:32]

Vincent I'll be happy to answer in Cyper place :

By saying you are reinventing the wheel he menat the technolgy ... Aside from that I'm sure you will do things different like swap OK Cancel buttons or others Gnome HIG diffferences hovewer you could do all that with the tech that KDE already has and has worked hard to get there with the 4.0 fiasco and some hard to make decisions.

Let's look on new things in gnome 3.0 :

Gnomeshell = plasma

Changing the way we access documents (via a journal, like GNOME Zeitgeist): having to deal with a filesystem in their daily work is not what makes users happy -- on the contrary, they generally just want to access their documents and not to browse their hard disk. Providing new solutions to this problem (using timelines, tags, bookmarks, etc.)
=
NEPOMUK

Some obvious examples are 3D effects (with Clutter) = KDE4 has compositing and 3d efects in kwin too ...

Geoclue = Marble

So you are going to do all the things that are already there in KDE4 ... and to not make it an attack on GNOME KDE guys are doing the same refusing to use Webkit instead of khtml , even though the fork (webkit) is right now clearly better then khtml ...

Is it out o provide ? yes and this "let's make it our way" is generally one big problem of whole FOSS ... Tell me again how many audio servers we have in linux, and how may wrappers on those ?

@Canol:
We have 2 desktops that are as big as KDE and Gnome is .. and by far have a lot more users. Yes I'm talking about Windows and MacOSX ... If Linux had one main desktop it would actually had more pros then cons for whole FOSS world ... At least all linux desktops should share the same "underthehood" technology ... be it plasma Qt nepomuk or gtk+

14. Bengt [05/04/2009@20:53]

So... Gnome 3 will be like Gnome 2, except for a desktop sidebar thingy and there will be two file managers now?

15. Eric [06/04/2009@18:34]

@Bengt: For the end user that's what it sounds like. That's why I think Gnome 3.0 is more of a developer's release.

16. Dread Knight [10/04/2009@15:20]

@Cypher i actually don't think that at all, i think it's getting away from KDE4 more, but becoming a modern desktop as well in the process.
I understand your opinion and thought the same from seeing the first mockup and documents related to Gnome 3. But things changed for the better lately it seems. Here's my view on both Gnome and KDE since i like them both and used them for years now...

I consider KDE4 like this: sitting in between a few desks that are sort of cluttered with objects, calculators, bins, pictures and all sorts;

And i consider Gnome 3 like this: you're a cyborg and just get the information plugged in into your thinking. Because I've read about overlays and being able to access data in very quick and easy ways and such, not bad :)

Anyway, time will tell... as well as patches :P

17. 007swz [19/04/2009@08:48]

If Linux had one main desktop it would actually had more pros then cons for whole FOSS world ... At least all linux desktops should share the same "underthehood" technology ... be it plasma Qt nepomuk or gtk+

18. Ryan L. [22/05/2009@23:51]

@marcinq
The KDE-guys do provide webkit-kpart AND khtml-kpart. User can choose what to use.

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Thursday 2 April 2009

A look forward at GNOME 3.0

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