GNOME 2.24 Released 163
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.
SmallerFasterLighter? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Hmmmmm?
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Not everybody can march in the parade. Some of us have to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
-Will Rogers
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...and some jeer and throw peanuts
Its a fact of life
timothy (Score:2)
I know typos in summaries and headlines are the norm, but have we really got to the point where the dept. gag has them also?
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He's referring to Ekiga's tendency to fire little bits of rock and gravel at people. It's a feature.
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Oops.
Whooosh'd by the editor, ouch.
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Naw, the editor was wrong. Though screeshots would be interestingly dangerous.
timothy
Huge number of bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I just wish GNOME would fix the damn panels to keep them from rearranging the applets. That bug has been there since pretty much the very beginning of the GNOME project and they have "fixed" it many times but it is never really fixed. They have done things like introduce the "lock" feature that locks an applet into place. All that does is make it even more annoying because you then have to unlock them to put them back where they were before the panel mangled them.
Especially if you get a crash, freeze, or
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Same thing happens in KDE, for me, and I've NEVER had GNOME do this.
Teach them a lesson (Score:2)
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Re:Huge number of bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Huge number of bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...)
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Yes, I'm pissed because I spent the better part of last night reinstalling Wordpress because 2.0 got rooted. Nice going, open-source movement.
I've used computers since the mid-80s and I'm just losing patience with security exploits and especially with this slapdash attitude of 'it'll happen'. No. It does not need to happen. It should not happen. Real people may die when computers malfunction; it is not enough to say 'that's okay, we'll patch it afterwards'. We had the tools and the methods in the 1950s to m
Re:Huge number of bugs? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, there's the theory that every program contains at least one bug and can therefore be reduced in size by at least one instruction. Iteratively then, every program can be reduced to a single instruction which doesn't work.
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Actually, the original saying, as I learned it sometimes in mid 80's, did not have the word "therefore", it was just a simple conjunction.
Also, the conclusion is obviously correct. I can easily replace any program by a single NOP instruction, which will not do what the program was supposed to do, and therefore will be buggy. Except for programs that are supposed to do nothing, you would have to use a different instruction for those.
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It's just not feasible to write software without bugs. In fact, Jeff Atwood would claim you're an amateur developer until you realize that everything you write sucks. Go read his post on the subject: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001020.html [codinghorror.com]
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I realize that. That is why I included myself. The question was rhetorical and I was just commenting on the psychological aspects of it.
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Ahh. I didn't read it that way. I do agree that it feels great to squash bugs and see the outstanding issues closed.
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Your asshole needs to be cleaned? Perhaps his is a retard, like such as The Iraq.
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However, the reality is that it would be better to have no bugs in the first place.
"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien."
("The best [the perfect] is the enemy of the good.")
- Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764)
Sometimes, things have to be "good enough" or else nothing gets accomplished.
Is this feature available? (Score:2)
I would like to know from those who have test driven this new release, whether I can copy a PDF URL address link, paste it into the appropriate PDF application, and have the application open the file.
Is this possible? In earlier versions, one had to download the PDF file, then point the application to it...a nonstarter to me!
Just note that I handle PDF documents all day.
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Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent!
Now when can I expect this in my Intrepid Ibex repositories, mmm?
Mandatory puns:
"Glad to see Linux really putting it's best foot forward in the GUI department."
"The new Gnome is a feet of software engineering."
"Maybe I'll revert from Kubuntu to Ubuntu, dip my toe in and see what it's like."
"I hope the new version doesn't have a much bigger footprint."
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Yep, you totally put your foot in it that time.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Informative)
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/+source/gnome-utils/2.24.0-0ubuntu1 [launchpad.net] the day before yesterday.
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Exchange 2007/MAPI Connector waits for GNOME 2.26 (Score:1, Interesting)
It looks like the Exchange 2007/MAPI Connector we've all been waiting for isn't in this release.
The road map shows it's planned for the Gnome 2.26 release.
RoadMap Link - http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap
I thought they were skipping this release? (Score:2)
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2.24 -> 2.26 -> 2.28 -> 3.0
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I think it was GTK that was going to do a 3.0 release, not Gnome.
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I'm working on a Fx/Tb extension for importing Photos to F-Spot. Comments/Testing appreciated.
You know, not two days ago I was thinking that it would be nice to import an image from a website directly into F-Spot. I just installed your extension, and it's fantastic!
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Tabbed browsing... (Score:1, Interesting)
Xfce (Score:1, Redundant)
BSD tag? (Score:1)
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Gnome developers don't give a frak about BSD.
Really? The core GNOME developers may not develop on, or principally for, the BSDs but they are pretty receptive to patches from the ports and package maintainers. Since the release of GNOME 2.0, the code has certainly got more portable across different Unix like operating systems, which is quite remarkable as there's far more features that rely on OS specific implementations of things like Bluetooth. (Freedesktop initiatives have certainly helped).
Not available for u (Score:3, Insightful)
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why do you think i am so happy?
Re:Catching up ever so slowly (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to see Windows pick up some features that any UNIX desktop had 10 years ago. How about virtual desktops that actually work? Window shading? The ability to keep a window on top of the others? Can I even add something like a CPU usage graph to my panel in Windows? If so, it's not clear how, but it's trivial in my desktop environment of choice.
UNIX has had a superior GUI than Windows for a long time. The only thing it's really missing is wizards to help the less savvy configure it.
Caveat: this is coming from an XP perspective. I've not used Vista, so I don't know if these features are available there.
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You don't mention much to explain just why UNIX has a superior GUI, but I expect a GUI to be able to control all aspects of the OS that I need to access. This is where Linux and UNIX fall way short, as is evidenced b
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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.
Did Windows 98 have an integrated time-tracker? No?
Has Windows had an integrated Voice / Video / Text SIP client since Win98? Hmmm
Complex Asian characters in Win98? Tabbed file browser?
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2.2 Track your time? Hello, this is just a applet for which there has been software available to do pretty much ever since there was multitasking. No, it wasn't built into the O
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Try http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/DrIntl/faqs/Locales.mspx [microsoft.com]
Also see http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/win2k/setup/localsupport.mspx [microsoft.com]
Lists Thai as one of the locales natively supported by 2000. I'd never heard of the Thai Starter Pack.
Either MS really poorly implemented it as you suggest, or you didn't implement it. I don't know, I wouldn't know Thai from Japanese.
Deskbar, Taskbar toolbar, Panel - call them what you want. Yes Gnome organizes them differently and calls them by different names
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I expect a GUI to be able to control all aspects of the OS that I need to access
Why?
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And what if your choices are a short and simple command line, or a series of windows and dialog to get to check boxes on various tabs? For example, say you want to re-start a service in Windows, do you right click My Computer, select Manage, wait for the MMC to open, select Services, find the service you want, and finally restart it, or do you run "net stop/start ${servicename}" from the command line?
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How is a GUI going to help you when you don't know what you're looking for?
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Have you never used one? They are all listed there with descriptions.
Again, what good is a description of something when you don't know what something you're looking for.
So if someone told you to restart all your SQL server services, would you know them by name?
Um, yeah. It's "mysql", as in "sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart". You seriously don't know what SQL server you're running?
I'd just look in the services applett and find them and restart them.
Okay, say you want to disable network file sharing and remote shell execution (rcmd) in Windows, what services do you stop? On my box, its "sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop" and "sudo /etc/init.d/ssh stop".
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Oh that's right, you don't have MS SQL and Pervasive and others which have separate instances with their own service names. Sorry.
Oh and I'd just stop the Server service. And, let see. Windows remote management (Vista/2008 Server only of course, MS didn't want the security issues it posed in Unix I guess...
Joe average user wouldn't know that command line syntax let alone the service names.
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Oh and I'd just stop the Server service.
The "Server" service? That's the name of the file sharing service, or does it handle more than just file sharing? Ubuntu calls it "Folder Sharing Service", much more accurate I would think.
And, let see. Windows remote management (Vista/2008 Server only of course, MS didn't want the security issues it posed in Unix I guess...
I'm sorry, security issues? WTF are you talking about?
Joe average user wouldn't know that command line syntax let alone the service names.
Even if he didn't know the first time, he'd see their name when he used the Services GUI to manage them.
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Yes, the Server service. The description of that service is that it enables file, printer, and named-pipe sharing over the network.
SSH Security issues, for instance running SSH through a firewall with no VPN; for businesses, the inability to monitor a user's activites because of encrypted traffic; port-forwarding capabilities that could open a wide open tunnel to the server and network from a compromised client; to name a few of the major concerns. It may not be as much of an issue in a closed small netwo
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SSH Security issues, for instance running SSH through a firewall with no VPN; for businesses, the inability to monitor a user's activites because of encrypted traffic; port-forwarding capabilities that could open a wide open tunnel to the server and network from a compromised client; to name a few of the major concerns.
Um, what? I'm going to have to take that one piece at a time. What is the issue with running SSH through a firewall with no VPN? Businesses monitor user activity on the systems they use, not by scanning packets on the network. Once a machine is compromised, of course there's a security issue, that's true even without SSH.
In reality, I don't mess with these services enough for it to really be an issue. Once I have the system set up the way I want it, I rarely even touch those services.
Okay, I'm probably an edge case here, but it was a specific example that was relevant to me. I'm constantly starting and stopping mysql and tomcat as part of day to day development.
The whole point really boils down not to whether or not it's easier to accomplish things from the command line, but to whether you are unable to do it easily or at all via the GUI. That is where Gnome lacks IMO at the moment.
Um,
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The point is not whether there is a services GUI. That was your example.
The point is the multitude of things that are not available to perform in the GUI. You seem to enjoy doing things via the command line because you find it quicker, but not every user has the know-how to do this and needs a graphical interface to figure it out. Too many functions involve going online and researching how to do something or why something doesn't work, and having to run a number of commands in your terminal window in ord
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Yes, running an individual file in it's default program is something easier done in a GUI, and it's perfectly easy to do in Gnome.
But let's say you want to open every music file in a directory and it's sub directories in a music player. That's easier to do on the command line.
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I've never heard of foobar2000, but I'm pretty sure that WMP and Winamp don't make it that easy.
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I tried that while at work, I had a directory with 5 MP3 files under it (not even sub-directories), and right-clicking the directory gave me no such options.
Selecting all the MP3 files in the directory gave me the option, and if I created a sub-directory then I could play them all if I selected some MP3 files plus the sub directory and right-clicked on one of the selected MP3 files (not the sub directory).
For added fun I put a JPG image in the music directory, did the same as above, and the JPG file was add
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It is better because when you minimize a window, it goes somewhere far from its current location (a place on the taskbar which also depends on further windows being opened).
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Re:Catching up ever so slowly (Score:5, Interesting)
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 is, only faster. Same bling available. Better consistency. Better features than WinXP (though probably not Vista). In fact, using Windows XP makes my ears bleed after only a few minutes.
X (not Gnome) has handled multiple monitor setups since before I started using it in 1997.
Gnome has strict accessibility and localization requirements and has since 2.2. Windows wasn't even localized in Thai until Gnome adoption there forced it to be, and even then they just half-assed the "start menu" and nothing else. A generation of Thais learned to do computing in a language they didn't understand.
ESD never had a problem with mixing stuff if you used it instead of OSS or ALSA. It even mixes stuff locally and outputs it to another computer if you want it to. Maybe your problem is that you didn't know what you were doing
Gnome configures everything for Gnome and always has. Since Gnome runs on a large number of operating systems, it doesn't deal withthe underlying system, and you'll have to be specific about which one isn't configurable and take that up with the OS vendor. That's not the job of a cross-platform desktop.
Since we're playing this game, these are the places Windows doesn't live up to Gnome:
Gnome vs. Win95 or Win2000? Pshaw!
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Gnome can hide panel icons that you don't use. You put them in a "drawer."
Managing the network is the job of the operating system, not a desktop environment.
I'll quote myself, since you obviously didn't read my post the first time:
Gnome configures everything for Gnome and always has. Since Gnome runs on a large number of operating systems, it doesn't deal withthe underlying system, and you'll have to be specific about which one isn't configurable and take that up with the OS vendor. That's not the job of a cross-platform desktop.
Getting slow icons is certainly annoying, and has been improved in recent versions, but it's not more annoying than clicking on the Star
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Gnome has the HIG [gnome.org], which makes Gnome applications and the desktop function consistently. It means that Gnome does the same thing that Apple does for Mac in this regard. No, I don't want to get into an argument about whether Macs or Gnome are more usable. I'm saying that Gnome is consistent with itself. The developers judge applications based on the HIG before those apps are allowed to become part of the official Gnome desktop.
Windows appli
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You're confusing the graphical subsystem with the UI. Every system has (1) a graphical subsystem, (2)a widget toolkit and (3)a window/desktop manager.
In Windows you have:
1) GDI/WDM
2) MFC/WinForms
3) Explorer/Aero
In Linux you have:
1) Varieties of X11
2) GTK, QT, XLib, Tk, WX, and several others
3) Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Enlightenment and several others
I don't know what the equivalent OSX layers are.
What the GP was saying is that X11 handles the multi-monitor setup on Linux, not Gnome or KDE.
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The behavior of menu expansion mentioned several posts up would fall under Gnome, I'd think.
It does, and I think they have a bug being tracked for that. It's especially bad when you are using vector graphic icons because it has to re-calculate them whenever the cache is invalidated. I only ever experience this when I change icon themes, or add/remove menu entries, which cause Gnome to re-build it's icon cache. Windows has a similar issue. If you'd rather not have icons at all, you can disable them (can I do that in Windows?).
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Don't confuse system administration with user experience.
I thought that what the GP was describing was exactly the user experience. From the user point of view the layer at which the problem lies is absolutely irrelevant.
If you want to talk about the programming merits of the Gnome devs, you should break things into layers and look at the layer that Gnome occupies. if you want to talk about user experience, well, do as the GP and look at what the user gets by using all the layers put together.
Re:Catching up ever so slowly (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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 is, only faster. Same bling available. Better consistency. Better features than WinXP (though probably not Vista). In fact, using Windows XP makes my ears bleed after only a few minutes.
Stop. You are switching back and forth on your comparison environment. Pick one. Since 2.24 came out today, stick to Vista since that is the most recent. Comparing to XP would necessitate choosing a Gnome from that year. Something I rather imagine you would prefer to avoid.
Gnome has strict accessibility and localization requirements and has since 2.2. Windows wasn't even localized in Thai until Gnome adoption there forced it to be, and even then they just half-assed the "start menu" and nothing else. A generation of Thais learned to do computing in a language they didn't understand.
This is irrelevant to the comparison of desktop features, bugs, and usability.
ESD never had a problem with mixing stuff if you used it instead of OSS or ALSA. It even mixes stuff locally and outputs it to another computer if you want it to. Maybe your problem is that you didn't know what you were doing ....
It could be that, or it could be the well recognized and horrifying mess that is the linux soundsystem.
Here is some reading for you:
http://insanecoding.blo [blogspot.com]
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UI consistency works better in Windows Vista. Actually, it worked better in Windows 98 than Gnome does. When I arrange something in one of those, it stays that way.
Either you're lucky, or I'm unlucky. Windows XP regularly changes the order of the icons on my desktop. Installing a new application may put the application's folder at the end of the "All Programs" menu, but it may also put a launcher for the app itself somewhere in the middle (mixing files and folder? really?) And the most annoying of all is that the taskbar randomly forgets about an open window, I have to alt-tab over to it for it's button to reappear in the taskbar.
Virtual Desktops have been around in Windows for quite a while. My current desktop has 4. This has been provided free of charge from Microsoft for years now as part of the PowerToys collection.
I used the Microsoft one a few yea
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I'll give you that Gnome is faster. It's clean, well layed out, and looks modern.
Uhh... when did X become part of the conversation?
Admittedly, I don't have much experience with localization, other than my Czech friends who have fully localized, Czech language systems with XP that switch back and forth between Czech and English language as well as localization (keyboard layouts and the like) with a single click.
Thai happens to be one of the 17 main language groups that MS started including with Windows 2000
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3. Window management I have never had trouble with in Windows. I've never had trouble in Gnome. I'm used to the upper left corner double-click to close a window in Windows, but Gnome doesn't let me do that (or maybe I just haven't found the setting for it). Can you explain further how Gnome manages windows better?
Gnome (and KDE and XFCE) allow you to make a window "sticky" or always on top. Certain Windows apps let you do this too, but it has to be provided by the app, it's not provided by the window manager. Compiz, of course, takes things to a whole new level with window-opacity, scale (expose), shelf (shrinks your window), grouping, and several others I'm sure I'm forgetting about.
5. If you have a middle click button on your mouse, the driver for that mouse will allow you to assign a multitude of different functions. My logitech mouse has 7 buttons, and a scroll wheel that clicks down and side to side. Every movement of those buttons can be assigned a function. It's marvelous!
Good for you, I don't have a super Logitech mouse, I have a basic 3-button mouse that doesn't have specialty drivers. At home, I ha
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Can I view thumbnails in my file dialogs at least now?
You can see thumbnail previews in the file chooser, but only on selected files, it still uses a simple list view as far as I can tell.
Ideally it would use Nautilus to render the files in the file selector, so that it can show thumbnails on any file Nautilus can.
The problem, I think, is that the file chooser is a GTK component, not a Gnome component, and GTK doesn't do thumbnails itself, rather Gnome components handle that. Even the "preview pane" offered by the file chooser is implemented by the applicatio
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Compare
Next, compare
Now tell me with a straight face that Windows knows how to look like Windows.
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By the time Windows 2000 came around, there was nothing in the OS that I could not configure using the GUI.
That's true, but only because you can't configure anything without the GUI. I could remove all of the command line configuration tools from Linux, and then everything that could be configured would be what would configurable via the GUI.
Here's my list of Windows GUI functionality complaints:
Windows only has one panel, ever. You can't remove the start button. You can't move the start button. You can't rearrange the start menu. Application launchers in the start menu are not organized. There are non-lau
Re:Catching up ever so slowly (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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For example setting the hardware clock to GMT (Something everyone who dual boots probably wants). I couldn't believe it when I found out I had to do that via regedit.
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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.
To be fair, though, there are plenty of things which you can not configure in Gnome without opening up its own equivalent of regedit.
One example that comes to mind is enabling the different shuffle modes for Rhythmbox. I really dis-like its standard shuffle, but I really like it when the shuffle mode weights the probability of playing a song I haven't heard in a while more than a song I heard last week
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not as good as being natively built into the UI, but there are plenty of workarounds for all the flaws in windows.
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gdmsetup has gone from recent releases. GDM is undergoing some fairly major changes and the developers haven't got round to reimplementing the preferences. You can make some changes by directly editing custom.conf, but the documentation is a bit sparse right now. Things which used to be easy (like turning off the people picker are currently difficult or not possible. Things are likely to improve soon but I don't know if they're sorted in th