GNOME 2.24 Released

thhamm writes "The GNOME community hopes to make our users happy with many new features and improvements, as well as the huge number of bug fixes that are shipped in this latest GNOME release! Well. What else to say. I am happy." Notably, this release is also the occasion for the announcement of videoconferencing app Ekiga's 3.0 release.

Huge number of bugs?

[Cthefuture]

Isn't it weird how developers (myself included) consider it a good thing that they fixed a whole bunch of bugs?

Personally I know it feels good to fix bugs because it feels like you're making the product perfect and somehow that feels like "development". However, the reality is that it would be better to have no bugs in the first place.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[fractic]

However, the reality is that it would be better to have no bugs in the first place.

Sadly the reality is that it's just too hard to write such complicated software without bugs.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[wanderingknight]

Or downright impossible. I believe that's one of the things FOSS is based on ;-)

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[Kjella]

Not impossible, but quite likely you'd maybe hit Gnome 1.0 in these days after 10+ years of development. And everybody else would be using the betas/unstable versions because they're soooo much faster and more featureful despite the odd bug. In fact, the FLOSS market seems to be going after exactly its own pace - live on the bleeding edge? You can do that. Stay with the ultra-stabile? You can do that and so the bug level is pretty much what you want it to be. In short, most people wouldn't want the bugfree version if one existed. It's too extreme in the "of these three things, pick any two" department.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Daengbo]

No, I call it trolling for being misinformation. 95%? Let's look at the details:

• 2.1. Stay in Touch
  This is about voice / video and the new IM client in Gnome. Has Windows had integrated AOL or Yahoo! Chat since Win98? No? Does it now? I didn't think so.
• 2.2. Track Your Time Better
  Did Windows 98 have an integrated time-tracker? No?
• 2.3. Ekiga 3.0
  Has Windows had an integrated Voice / Video / Text SIP client since Win98? Hmmm ....
• 2.4. File Management
  Complex Asian characters in Win98? Tabbed file browser? Tab completion in the file browser?
• 2.5. Do More With Deskbar
  Calculator, Google search, Yahoo suggestions, Twitter updates, and indexed search from a key press? Not even to this day.
• 2.6. New Screen Resolution Controls
  Windows has had this one for a while.
• 2.7. New Sound Theme Support
  Windows, annoyingly, has had this one since like Win95. I think it says a lot about Microsoft's priorities.
• 2.8. Better Digital TV
  I'd be really surprised if Win98 had DVB capability.
• 2.9. Extra Pretty
  Desktop backgrounds. Again, Windows has had numerous wallpapers for years, but it says something about what they think is important when they still haven't gotten window management to work correctly.

Two out of nine. 22%. Not quite 95%, eh? I give you a D+.

Let's talk about localization. Windows XP3 offers retail installs for Chinese Simplified, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish [1] [microsoft.com] (that's eight), while Gnome offers forty-five languages.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[mhall119]

Why is it that windows can actually hide taskbar icons that I don't use.

I assume you mean the system tray. My question is, if you don't use them why would you even want them in the system tray? The very fact that Windows needs a "hide" option is a problem.

Re:Huge number of bugs?

[MojoMagic]

As a software developer I feel confident in saying this:

If your software "doesn't have bugs", it either doesn't do much or you just aren't looking hard enough.

(I'm not pointing any fingers...)

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Draek]

By the time Windows 2000 came around, there was nothing in the OS that I could not configure using the GUI.

I'm sorry, but most of us don't consider "regedit.exe" a GUI, at least not anymore than "gedit /etc/httpd.conf" is. And without considering the registry, then yes, there's plenty of stuff in Windows that you can't configure from within the GUI.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Kjella]

Comparing Gnome 2.24 to Win2000 is a joke. Heck, comparing it to WinXP is a joke. Gnome 2.24 is a modern desktop just like Windows Vista

That bad, huh? Well, I think I'll stick to something that's at least an upgrade from XP like KDE.

Re:Catching up ever so slowly

[Daengbo]

Are you implying that Gnome doesn't hide panels or have a consistent appearance?

Compare

1. Abiword to [cleardefinition.com]
2. Epiphany [soccio.it] to
3. Totem. [ubuntu.com]

Next, compare

1. Internet Explorer 7 [wikipedia.org], released on October 18, 2006 to
2. Microsoft Word [wikipedia.org], released in December, 2007, to
3. Windows Media Player 11 [geekpedia.com], by the same company for the same platform.

Now tell me with a straight face that Windows knows how to look like Windows.

Not available for u

[Yfrwlf]

Too bad they don't support some standardization with packages, so that any normal user can easily download and install the new software. That would require them helping out the Burgdorf Packaging API perhaps, or some other system which worked to standardize packages. We're tired of being tied up, waiting for our distro of choice to compile it for us, we want cross-distro binary packages. kthnx.