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GNOME GUI Software Linux

Gnome Removed From Slackware 761

Posted by Zonk from the quite-large dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "After long consideration, Pat Volkerding has removed GNOME from Slackware. Pat mentions in the -current ChangeLog that GNOME takes a lot of time to package, so this move should allow more time to be spent on the rest of Slackware." From the changelog: "Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent desktop choice."
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Gnome Removed From Slackware More

Gnome Removed From Slackware

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  • Good! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After all, who wants a desktop with a big smelly foot on it?

    KDE 4 EVA SUCKAS!

  • Also from the Changelog (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:48PM (#12063178)
    Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against your sister heself, who (although she does usually need to be fixed up and polished beyond the way she ships from upstream more so than, say, Bob's sister or John's sister) is a decent girlfriend choice."

  • I thought this was decided a long time ago (Score:4, Informative)

    by inflex ( 123318 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:49PM (#12063182) Homepage Journal
    I can think of this piece of news being bought up at least 6 months ago and everyone moving over to using replacements like Dropline GNOME etc.

  • KDE 3.4 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:50PM (#12063191) Homepage Journal
    Gnome has been dropped and KDE 3.4 added? Wow. That says a lot in itself about the current state of the 2 leading Desktop Environments in Linux...particularly in a conservative --not--bleeding freaking--edge distro like Slack.

    • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by superpulpsicle ( 533373 )
      I almost wish KDE and GNOME would just combine effort to create the ultimate gui desktop. They both have their pluses, but individually they never seem to be better than windows desktop. Damn it, when will they have cleartype fonts.

      • Huh? Fonts on my KDE 3.3 DE look fantastic. Better than Windows IMHO.

      • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:5, Informative)

        by Fnord ( 1756 ) <joe@sadusk.com> on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:15PM (#12063356) Homepage
        Do a google search for xorg and sub-pixel rendering. Cleartype is not a microsoft exclusive thing.

      • One OS to rule them all. (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "I almost wish [Linux] and [Windows] would just combine effort to create the ultimate [OS]. They both have their pluses, but individually they never seem to be better than [MAC OS/X] desktop. Damn it, when will [Apple] have [those new MS] fonts.

      • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tehcrazybob ( 850194 )
        It's an interesting idea, but they would still need to keep two distinct styles. In my experience, KDE is rather Windows-like, while GNOME is rather similar to Mac OS. Sure, they can both be customized quite a bit, but it's still something to think about. I'm much more comfortable in KDE. If you tried to combine the two, you would have issues with the way certain things are done and how stuff looks. So, even if they combined to use the same resources, they would need to maintain two completely separate

      • Who cares about fonts? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by solios ( 53048 )
        I want a decent file browser, useable (system-wide) drag and drop, homogenized toolkits (none of this "three apps, three different looks" bullshit), a friendlier clipboard (I got a powerbook here, this whole THREE BUTTON MOUSE!!!!! thing is killin' me!), a non-shitty default aesthetic that doesn't compell me to change everything out of its sheer ugliness, a useful offline help system, CAREFULLY THOUGHT OUT CONSISTANT AND TESTED CONFIGURATION MENUS and.... (pause for breath) everything else MacOS had in 1994
        • Is there something wrong with your mouse hand that it can't handle 3 buttons while the other can handle 100+? If you don't like the middle-click copy (which you should, since it's very nice) you can always use the windows standard shortcuts. I've never had a problem using those between different applications.

          But then I guess if limited functionality is your thing, maybe you should just stick with your mac. But I much prefer a system geared towards easy use and powerful configuration without having to j

        • Re:Who cares about fonts? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mshurpik ( 198339 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @01:05AM (#12063856)
          I have news for you, people who know how to make things work go into construction, not programming. People go into programming because they want to dick around.

          I happen to like Gnome, but then again, I also liked Unix windowmanagers circa 1995. They do X and they do multiple desktops, two things that were always a hassle on Windows. Other than that, Gnome is still waiting for a third compelling application. It's just a prettier version of TWM, or FVWM, or whatever you were using way back when the internet was born.

          • I have news for you, people who know how to make things work go into construction, not programming. People go into programming because they want to dick around.

            Spoken by someone who's never had a builder in, I suspect... :-)

          • yet bloated (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Mr. Underbridge ( 666784 )
            It's just a prettier version of TWM, or FVWM, or whatever you were using way back when the internet was born.

            And the sad thing is it gets this with 100x the footprint of libraries. I'm assuming that's why gnome's logo is, in fact, a footprint. Because it is huge.

          • What you have written is not only completely incorrect, but absolutely NOT 'Interesting' or whatever the moderators decided to give you just recently.

            People who program for a living, especially people like myself who program in a manufacturing R&D facility, program to make things work. 'Dicking around' costs money and jobs. Serious programmers program to solve problems and accomplish goals among other reasons. Programming for fun is just one of the benefits enjoyed by serious programmers.

            You are ei

        • Re:Who cares about fonts? (Score:5, Funny)

          by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @01:31AM (#12063944) Homepage Journal
          " 32-bit icons and font smoothing are candy things."

          Font smoothing is more than eye candy, it's more like eye-pillows.

          (note: I pretty much agree with the rest of your point, I'm just feeling nitpicky today.)
        • a decent file browser

          Please. Konqueror gives Finder a pants-down spanking as a file manager. IOslaves rule.

          useable (system-wide) drag and drop

          Agreed, there is balkanization in copy/paste methods in KDE. But OSX is not entirely consistent either, if you use any X apps.

          homogenized toolkits (none of this "three apps, three different looks" bullshit)

          You've got to be kidding me. GarageBand? QuickTimePlayer? Hello?

          a friendlier clipboard (I got a powerbook here, this whole THREE BUTTON MOUSE!!!!!

      • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:3, Interesting)

        by spagetti_code ( 773137 )
        I agree with this. One of the problems with Linux is that there is too much choice.

        Let me explain before the flames arrive - with windows during install there is one GUI (with themes), one notepad, one calculator... That means few questions and you are up and running straight away. Sure there are other choices for almost every utility, and once you are up and running you can look at the others.

        With linux you have to select between 3 or 4 GUIs (at least on Fedora) and a gazillion versions of most other t

        • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:3, Interesting)

          by sp0rk173 ( 609022 )
          Bitch bitch bitch. If you don't like it, use something else. There are distros now gearing towards simplicity. You mentioned one yourself - Ubuntu. One GUI with themes (gnome), one notepad (gedit), one calculator (gcalc), one media player (totem), etc. The problem is that for a while the holy grail of distros was one that could do EVERYTHING. Because people wanted it to do EVERYTHING, they put EVERYTHING in it. That's changing. And even if it isn't, it doesn't fucking matter. If you don't like it,

        • You are missing the entire point (Score:4, Insightful)

          by gosand ( 234100 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @11:02AM (#12065803)
          Now, linux-heads love choice and more power to them for that. BUT such up-front confusion with linux is not the way to win over the general public.

          Your entire argument is based on the opinion that winning over the general public is somehow the "goal" of Linux.

          Think about it for a second.

          Now think about it for another.

          Personally, I don't want it to become mainstream, or the OS of the general public. The general public is a bunch of morons who destroy the fun and life in everything it collectively touches. Disney is what the public wants. NASCAR is what the public wants. Windows is what the public wants.

          Now I have known people, that I respect, that like each of these things. But as a whole, these things cater to the lowest common denominator. In my opinion, Linux is above that. And you can't say it is elitest, because *it* isn't a thing with someone behind the wheel steering it in any one direction. It is more like evolution than a lab experiment. In all honesty, I think it is a beautiful thing, and I don't want it to be degraded to the point where it is on the public desktop. If someone or a company can put it there, so be it. But hopefully if that happens it won't drag "Linux" down with it.

          One of the problems with Linux is that there is too much choice.

          I know I quoted you out of sequence, so forgive me. But choice is EXACTLY what got Linux where it is today. I can agree that it is daunting, even for me, to choose. But I would rather have the choice. I was on the same distro for about 5 years, which is like millenia in distro time. By the time I decided to upgrade, the choices were staggering! I tried one, then another, then settled on my third choice. There are still things that I don't like about the one I chose (or should I say that I like better about the ones I didn't), but I made a good choice. Linux is evolving, constantly, and is improving. I have been using it since RedHat5.1, and Unix before that. There are some tools that I use today that I used the first day I logged in. And I still learn about new tools today - some brand new, some that have been there since day 1. It is awesome, and I love it. There are 50 ways to do the same thing, some more elegant than others, some brute force. I write scripts all the time that perform actions like taking photos, resizing them to 3 standard sizes, making thumbnails, and creating HTML around them so people can view them on a web page. There are packages that can do this, there are hundreds of ways via shell scripts, different languages, etc. But I did it my way. Is my way the best way? There is no best way. My way works, and it is mine. THAT is why I like Linux. I think it is better to offer choice. Everyone can choose, but everyone doesn't have to choose the same thing.

      • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:4, Funny)

        by BorgCopyeditor ( 590345 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @12:55AM (#12063823)
        Yes! Then every damn program could be uselessly and unpronouncably prefixed with "KG".

        New slogan:

        KGOffice: how did you want to pronounce me today?

    • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Skater ( 41976 )
      Patrick has always kept up with KDE releases in Slackware.

    • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:3, Informative)

      by damiam ( 409504 )
      What exactly does it say? If you RTFA (or even the summary), he has no complaints about the quality of GNOME, just that it takes a whole lot of work to package.

    • Re:KDE 3.4 (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28, 2005 @01:31AM (#12063945)
      They're dropping KDE as well. This GUI thing has all been a mistake that's gone on long enough.
      • Now, if they'd drop this silly obsession with this thing called "X", we'd be there.

        All together now:


        Give me that old time VT100,
        Give me that old time VT100.
        It was good enough for Dennis Ritchie,
        it was good enough for Dennis Ritchie,
        it was good enough for Dennis Ritchie--
        and it's good enough for me!


        Ahh, a 4x4 grid of them. Make mine half white, half green . . .

        hawk

  • Ironic... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bytal ( 594494 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:50PM (#12063192) Homepage
    How ironic, seeing that Gnome tries to be the simplest and easiest to use full-featured desktop on Linux. I guess easy to use doesn't mean easy to package.

    • Re:Ironic... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rahga ( 13479 )
      Misconception. Truth be told, it's probably not hard to run something like jhbuild after installing Slackware... Very few people use Slackware anyway, and the ones that do are probably qualified to run a GNOME build system such as jhbuild or GARNOME with little trouble.

      Simply put, it's probably better for Slack to work on parts they care about.

    • Re:Ironic... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      See this is odd. I'm sitting here making Gnome 2.10 packages for Slackware right now and I'm wondering exactly what the problem with packaging it is.

    • Re:Ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ogerman ( 136333 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @12:16AM (#12063669)
      Having done the whole "Linux from scratch" thing as a learning experience, I can tell you that building a complete Gnome installation takes at around 3-5x longer than KDE and is much more difficult. This was 4-5 years ago, but the situation has gotten worse from casual observation of the Debian packaging.

      One of the biggest differences between KDE and Gnome is that KDE's use of the Qt library dramatically cuts down on dependancies. Gnome requires use of dozens of libraries to match the functionality of Qt and this complicates the build process.

      Frankly, from a developer perspective, I don't think Gtk/Gnome libs have quite kept up with Qt in terms of overall quality and I'm not sure how they can be expected to. Qt is heavily supported commercially. There are people being paid full time to add features, improve performance, and write top quality API docs. Gnome expends much effort maintaining its own libraries. It's a shame that KDE and Gnome do not both use Qt. It would eliminate almost all of the compatibility issues, save memory on hybrid desktops, and allow them to compete on things that really matter like UI design. (where there are legitimate arguments on both sides) But, unfortunately, Qt began it's life as a less-than-Free piece of code. As a result, the Gnome folks rightly avoided it. But then they continued their own efforts even after Qt went GPL.. Now there's even a GPL full version for Windows, so the cross-platform argument is totally shot.

      FWIW, I'm not trying to bash Gnome, but I do think there is some re-evaluation in order. Competition is good, but wheel re-inventing is usually not.

      • Qt licensing, again (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @05:19AM (#12064706)
        It's a shame that KDE and Gnome do not both use Qt. It would eliminate almost all of the compatibility issues, save memory on hybrid desktops, and allow them to compete on things that really matter like UI design."

        It would also eliminate the option of creating closed source applications without paying thousands of euros for Qt licenses (or at least apps that fit the general UI look and feel).

        Not in million years. Companies don't want to be that dependent on Trolltech.

        This comes from a KDE user (KDE 3.4 is a gem). But I'm also a developer, and I don't see Qt as *strategically* viable route to bring Linux desktop forward.

        (For those that don't know, Gtk is LGPL which is more free than GPL, which is the license Qt uses).

        • Re:Qt licensing, again (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28, 2005 @06:26AM (#12064844)
          yada yada yada. If you are developing closed source commercial applications the licensing cost of qt is like a speck of dust in the universe. If you really think these euros is too much, all it tells is that either you have no idea what it costs to have people employed, or that you are a cheap bastard that want first class tool for nothing.

    • Re:Ironic... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      KDE's file management is superior, you can split windows, split sub-windows, and split sub-sub-windows and drag and drop with speed and ease, Gnome simply is not as fast or easy. I've never grokked Gnome's way. KDE Knode? It has an 'attach' button that allows me easiily to put something in a post. Pan? No. Again and again, I find it hard to do things in Gnome that KDE makes easy. I won't use Gnome simply because its a big pain in the butt. I wouldn't miss it if it disappeared.
      Its NOT easy. More than o

  • That is ok (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thundercatslair ( 809424 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:52PM (#12063198)
    Because you can always easily install dropline gnome [dropline.net].

    • Re:That is ok (Score:2, Informative)

      by datadriven ( 699893 )
      Actually if you read the article you'll see that dropline is Pat's 3rd choice.

      • Re:That is ok (Score:4, Funny)

        by zborgerd ( 871324 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (dregrobz)> on Monday March 28, 2005 @12:26AM (#12063715) Homepage
        I must admit that the post in the changelog was a bit disheartening. I realize that we cannot make everyone happy, but there are some legitimate benefits to the things that are dubbed as "intrusive" by some. For instance, we are going to include an evdev patch in X11 that several users have asked for. There are little touches like this that you don't always see in Slackware, and we believe that they provide a better desktop experience for most users.

        That said, in spite of the fact that I am one of many that works on Dropline GNOME, I'm very pleased to see that there are other alternatives for everyone. Each GNOME desktop for Slackware offers a unique experience and helps provide choices for Slackers (which has always been the mission of Dropline GNOME in the first place).

        We will be releasing Dropline GNOME 2.10 within a few days. Currently, it is being BETA tested, but things are progressing well. It will be our first release that is built totally from the ground up, since we (the development team) took the project over from Todd back in Novemeber. We're really proud of our work.

        In addition, I'd like to pay my respects to the other Slackware GNOME teams out there. Freerock (of GNOME.SlackBuild) frequents our IRC channel, and has been very kind in sharing some of his experiences with GNOME 2.10's (many) quirks. He's a very nice guy, and has a quality GNOME desktop. I've also visited the GWARE room on Freenode, and have found that they are also nice guys as well. They're also developing a quality desktop.

  • To bad (Score:3, Funny)

    by md10md ( 828419 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:53PM (#12063203)
    I was looking forward to Gnome 2.10 in Slack. Wanted to see how he'd do it.

  • WHAT?!?!?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by null etc. ( 524767 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:54PM (#12063215)
    Man, that's so screwed up! I just bought my mom the Platinum edition Slackware collection so she could use Gnome. Now that it's going to be removed, I'm gonna switch back to Windows 98 ME.

  • Weren't Sun and HP.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:55PM (#12063219)
    ..supposed to help with this stuff and let Gnome catch up?

    • Re:Weren't Sun and HP.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:03PM (#12063276) Homepage Journal
      Weren't Sun and HP supposed to help with this stuff and let Gnome catch up?

      Technically speaking, they have been. However, the scuttlebutt out of the Sun team is that the GNOME developers are not entirely appreciative of the help and tend to shove back. While this may or may not be true, I'm afraid that the whole "Spatial Natilus" debacle didn't do much for the GNOME team's reputation.

  • What did you expect? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:56PM (#12063224)
    Bunch of slackers.

  • Wow... just wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:56PM (#12063229)
    I think this happened a while ago (months?), but that Slackware, which is still a major, well thought out distribution, decides to drop GNOME support just like that is major news. Dropline GNOME and other community support projects for Slack exists, so it's not Slackware users will need to part with GNOME. But still, a slap in the face to the GNOME crew. I wonder what they have to say about it.

    Anway, i found interesting that Pat mentions XFCE as a "fixed an polished" desktop. It's great, and while i'd hate to see GNOME loose popularity, at this time XFCE 4.2 is a better GNOME than GNOME itself.

    • Re:Wow... just wow (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pavera ( 320634 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:24PM (#12063411) Homepage Journal
      I'm gonna give an amen to that. I moved to Xfce I think in Fedora Core 2 when it was included as a standard desktop option, and i haven't looked back. It is fast, easy to use, small, powerful, I've got gnome and kde libs on my machines to run kde and gnome apps, but I love Xfce all the power of gnome or kde, loads in less than 5 seconds (as opposed to 30+ for either kde or gnome) and uses much less ram. All in all I really like it.

    • Re:Wow... just wow (Score:5, Interesting)

      by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:35PM (#12063483)
      Anway, i found interesting that Pat mentions XFCE as a "fixed an polished" desktop. It's great, and while i'd hate to see GNOME loose popularity, at this time XFCE 4.2 is a better GNOME than GNOME itself.
      I second this. XFCE is as fast as GNOME used to be, its interface is as simple as GNOME is today, and in general it feels more cleanly designed, and it doesn't seem less powerfull. If you like GNOME and you still haven't done so, give XFCE a try. You may find it pretty useful.

  • Over at OSNews (Score:5, Funny)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:57PM (#12063235) Homepage Journal
    you can hear Eugenia yelling "I told you so, Gnome developers!"

  • I think it's for the better... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by demon_2k ( 586844 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:57PM (#12063236) Journal
    I don't think slackware needs Gnome. I think (which means i could be wrong) use KDE. Gnome is a little behind with features that allow customization and if a little strange to work with. Slackware is an easy distro but, it's also a small as in not heard of by some. By that i mean that newbies are more likely to use fedora or mandrake, and the rest of use can install Gnome ourselves if we want to... Or use a other distro,based on Slackware with Gnome.

  • Real men... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Statecraftsman ( 718862 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @10:58PM (#12063242)
    don't use GUIs. I for one won't be terribly hurt by this because I can't seem to get one of these GUI thingies loaded after installing in ultra-secure-you-can't-do-anything-unless-it's-san ctioned-by-the-security-gods mode. On the other hand, maybe I've only been trying to install this here difficult-to-package Gnome.

  • LFS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 ) <xptical@gmEEEail.com minus threevowels> on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:05PM (#12063290)
    Before you all go freaking out, let me suggest something.

    Build Linux From Scratch. Then try adding some common desktops. KDE is quite easy to add to LFS. Gnome is an absolute bear to add.

    At one point, I had a printout of all the deps for Gnome. It was a huge spiderweb of tangles that had to be decoded and followed exactly to get Gnome to build.

    Anyway, Gnome is lots of work.

  • slow your roll fools (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stalyn ( 662 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:09PM (#12063308) Homepage Journal
    I suspect the main reason behind this is the popularity of Dropline GNOME [dropline.net].

    "Dropline GNOME is a version of the GNOME Desktop that has been tweaked for Slackware Linux systems. It is available in Slackware's standard .tgz package format, in addition to the usual source code. The current release is based off of the latest GNOME 2 distribution from the GNOME Project."

    Why not let Dropline do all the work... so don't fret slackware users you still have GNOME. Just not being packaged by Slackware officially.

  • A few subtle hints (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OverflowingBitBucket ( 464177 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:10PM (#12063318) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like a way of saying that they aren't terribly happy with the GNOME releases but don't want to start a big fight over it. Read the comments in the ChangeLog; when justifying the decision they hint repeatedly at the problems. I suspect they wanted to say a lot more than they did. ;)

    This does open the door for third-parties to tidy up the GNOME releases and provide a drop-in package for the distro though. Perhaps one of them will become strong enough to make it back in the door again.

  • Sometimes I think Pat runs KDE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by karmaflux ( 148909 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:10PM (#12063323)
    ...because that's the only reason I can think of to include it. I don't know anyone who runs Gnome or KDE on slackware. I run fluxbox, some people I know run Afterstep, some run Windowmaker, a lot run xfce, but nobody runs KDE. Admittedly, most people keep the kde and gnome library packages installed, so that we can run programs that require them, but as for the UI -- well, I've just never seen it.

    I'd be interested to hear anecdotes from Slackware users who run Gnome or KDE. This change just won't affect me much.

  • hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grepMeister ( 37303 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:20PM (#12063386) Homepage
    why on earth is GNOME so RIDICULOUSLY difficult to compile by hand? yes, it's a big and complicated project. so is kde. kde comes in packages: libraries, base, etc.

    last time I tried -- admittedly a VERY long time ago -- compiling gnome without the benefit of something like portage was a days-long dependency hunt. dependencies of FINAL releases were often still in CVS only. ick.

    if you think that's what computing should be all about, you have WAY too much time on your hands.

  • Give Me Slack Or Kill Me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:22PM (#12063400) Homepage Journal
    "Including GNOME is too hard"? Putting the "slack" in "Slackware".

    Maybe this will pressure GNOME to become more installable. I find it worth the effort, but we'd all be better off if it were easier. Including GNOME, whose user/developer base would expand.

  • In related news (Score:3, Funny)

    by thelastguardian ( 841878 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:28PM (#12063441)
    Internet Explorer from Windows. Gates mentions in the -current ChangeLog that IE takes a lot of time to package, so this move should allow more time to be spent on the rest of the system's security. From the changelog: "Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against IE itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, Mozilla or Opera) is a decent web browser choice.

  • The right decision (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stox ( 131684 ) on Sunday March 27, 2005 @11:59PM (#12063603) Homepage
    Which would you rather have?

    1) A distribution that includes everything. Of course this means that the team's resources are spread too far, producing an inferior product.

    2) A distribution that provides a subset, but is a solid foundation upon which others can reliably add functionality.

    I'll take quality over quantity, thank you!

  • thank you (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dermusikman ( 540176 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @12:01AM (#12063609) Homepage
    i'm glad to see it go. it's always been a big waste of burned disk space when all i want to do is upgrade the latest core packages and recompile everything else that linuxpackages.net doesn't have a binary for.
    and while we're on the topic of cutting out unnecessary GNOME fat... GTK developers: please stop depending on GNOME-specific packages!! when i want a cute little program for a slim little purpose to run on my less mainstream enlightenment setup, i *don't* want to install an entire DE that i never use!! please write programs independant of GNOME *and* KDE. both Qt and Gtk are perfectly fine libraries by themselves, without the additional bloat!

    • Re:thank you (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      GTK developers: please stop depending on GNOME-specific packages!!

      I almost gave up on gtk when it wouldn't compile without Thai language support in pango, which was broken at the time and I can't read anyway. After a couple of days there was a fix in the CVS version of pango so I could compile gtk. The dependencies are many, varied and strange. A released version should at least depend on other released vesions, and not something in CVS from an unknown number of days ago.

      I should not get started on gconf

  • Gnome has always been messed and unstable. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jidar ( 83795 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @12:02AM (#12063610)
    There I said it. No I'm not trolling or flamebaiting, it's just the simple truth. Every time I've ever used gnome over the last near decade it's been that way.
    It's a shame really because I love C and I like gnome is about, but the bottom line is the results simply aren't there. Going a day with a Segv in a gnome environment is unusual in my experience.

  • for crying out loud!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by xutopia ( 469129 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @12:08AM (#12063639) Homepage
    This doesn't mean the end of Gnome on Slackware! Dropline Gnome is so popular on Slack that Pat doesn't see the need to support gnome anymore. Anyways if you look at other now very popular distros [distrowatch.com] you'll see that many only support just one Desktop Environment. Why should Pat bother because his Gnome version was always overwritten by something more current anyways (see dropline-gnome).

    I don't see what the big deal is. If other distros can become so popular without supporting everything and build a very strong community around that streamlining concept I don't see what is wrong with Slack doing the same thing. Pat is making the right decision in only supporting one DE.

    PS: yes I know some religious Gnome fan boy will come and try to comment on my post and say that I'm just a KDE fan spewing his views. Except I'm a gnome fan too.

  • Slackware removed from Gnome (Score:3, Funny)

    by Icephreak1 ( 267199 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @01:37AM (#12063981) Journal
    That should read "Slackware was removed from Gnome." Gnome consists of so much memory-hogging bloat, it begins to make sense.

    - IP

  • Dropline is slow, so is Gnome, imo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bushboy ( 112290 ) <lttc@lefthandedmonkeys.org> on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:47AM (#12064646) Homepage
    I used to swear by Gnome on slackware, now I just swear at it.

    KDE 3.4 was a total cinch to install from source on slackware 10.1 - download about 100meg of packages, extract, make a quick bash script to compile and leave for a few hours - done !
    Or you can use Konstruct.

    I tried compiling the latest version of gnome, gave up and tried dropline. Dropline runs like an absolute dog on my hardware setup, whereas KDE 3.4 runs smooth. It also took almost as long to install dropline as it did to compile KDE 3.4

    I can't blame Pat for deciding to Gnome - it's much better for a distribution to focus on a single core desktop. After all, if you want to install Gnome, you can.

  • GNOME slipping, slipping, slipping into the past (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @06:00AM (#12064794)
    GNOME's been slipping for some time now, really. They've always been more bloated than KDE, and they've even admitted so. For instance, a gconsole tab uses 300K, while a konsole tab uses 50K. The user experience has also been slipping. Their usability engineers, if they have any, aren't doing any usability studies. Mind you, KDE aren't either, but their usability seems better.

    The drawback to eliminating GNOME is not the loss of the GNOME UI, but the loss of the GNOME libraries, which allow one to run GNOME apps under KDE. But it IS a huge reduction in what has to be built and packaged, a huge reduction in disk usage, and a huge reduction in memory bloat.

    GNOME people need to get on the stick, cut the fat, improve the quality of the user experience, and make their system easlier to use.

    I think part of their problem is over-dependence on RPC. Too many things are done by launching another process, and then calling a procedure in the other process. I suppose the RPC interface itself isn't that bloated (or is it?), but just think about the overhead!

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