Talk:GNOME/Archive 1

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Contents

Non-NPOV w/r/t KDE?

KDE bashing?

I'll see if anyone posts comments on it first, but I don't really see the need for the large paragraph which basically seems to insult KDE. If there were a whole bunch of contraversies regarding the licenceing of KDE, surely they should live on the KDE page? I'd perfer to just shorten this to a sentance saying GNOME was started as KDE was based on QT, which at the time was not under the GPL. --Mrjeff

The license issue is very controversial -- it took quite a few revisions to arrive at the current one. It explains that there was once a serious problem with the licensing of Qt... most of which was fixed with the dual licensing, but for many people there are still issues to do with the full GPL being used. Quite where you see an insult is a bit of a mystery. Removing it, or leaving out that there are still issues, is not an option as far as I'm concerned. --Motor 00:08, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I should also add that it is on the GNOME page because it was the main reason the GNOME project was started and the main reason why the desktop schism still exists. --Motor 00:12, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What were these "alleged violations" of the GPL? Was there "considerable disagreement" of licencing it under the GPL, at least any more than there is considerable disagreement about almost every program's licence including the kernel, GNOME, gcc, apache, php, etc. I've heard complaints about GNOME being under the LGPL (people who think it should be BSDed). Again, I think that this should just be reduced to "controversy", and the actual problems moved to the KDE page. I feel that the wording was written by a pro-GNOME person, and is written in an anti-KDE way. --Mrjeff 15:51, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Originally, the QT license was was most certainly unacceptable, and several pieces of software were ported to KDE effectively violating the GPL, this was before it was dual-licensed... this is all documented. [1] As stated in the article, most licensing issues were sorted out when Qt was dual licensed, but this is still controversial for some people (and companies). As for whether it was written by a Pro-GNOME person, I take offense at that -- since I wrote it. I originally wrote "mostly resolved" in respect of the license issues (you can check this in the history) because I didn't want to get involved in license fights and arguing with KDE supporters, but some people seemed determined to remove even the "mostly" and airbrush the issue completely. So, I felt it appropriate to address the issue in more detail -- hence I expanded it to include the resolution and continuing issues with the full GPL. I'm still unsure what's anti-KDE about a statement regarding the origins of QT (which are well-documented), and the full GPL issue, and it most certainly does belong in a section covering the origins of GNOME since it is the single biggest reason for its existence and the main reason which keeps the desktops apart. --Motor 19:22, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

GNOME vs KDE

Personally, while we're on the Gnome vs kde thing, could we also include maybe a discussion of their technical merits? -- Maru Dubshinki 01:59, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We weren't "on the GNOME vs KDE thing". The last thing this article needs is a GNOME vs KDE discussion of technical merits -- not only would such a thing be trollbait, it would add nothing and really has no place. --Motor 09:22, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
Detailing how the two main desktops stack up 'adds nothing'?? Are you serious? Discussing the merits of the twain- as long as it is NPOV- is definitely something that should be included. And just because it is trollbait, I suppose that means it should be shunned and removed- hey, while we're at it, lets take down the Adolf Hitler article as well! --maru 16:04, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It adds up to nothing that this wikipedia article can use. "Discussing the merits of the twain- as long as it is NPOV- is definitely something that should be included." No it's not. I'll repeat myself (see KDE talk) if you want to write a review/comparison of the two desktops... do it somewhere else. This is an article about GNOME, it's not a review, it's not a "please do/don't use GNOME" article, and it's not a howto (and obviously the same applies to the KDE article). As for the "trollbait"... if you want to take it out of context, fine, but what I said was: "add nothing to the article and be trollbait". So let's forget about your spurious Hitler reference, and besides I can't find any "Hitler vs Stalin, who was the biggest mass murdering dictator" section on his wikipedia article. Controversy is fine if it adds something. Controversy just for the sake of it is a pointless waste of time. And BTW: you've approached this from the beginning as a confrontation between GNOME/KDE using words like "biggest competitor" (but actually if you want to be exact GNOME's biggest competitor is Windows). It's not and, again as I said before, this isn't slashdot it's wikipedia. There are lots of desktops for Unix-like systems. KDE is only mentioned in this article in respect to the origins of GNOME. Some people have started pages such as Comparison of email clients, but you'll notice that those compare *many* clients and limit themselves to describing specific functionality in a table (virtually impossible with huge projects such as KDE and GNOME). Addition: I should also add that if you get the idea of creating a page just to compare KDE and GNOME I will put it up for speedy deletion. if you want to create a page comparing the various desktop environments in the same style as Comparison of web browsers or Comparison of Linux distributions, that's up to you. --Motor 18:01, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
Merely being of too narrow a focus (in your opinion) is not a criterion for speedy deletion. --Deh 19:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No, but being a blatant trolling attempt is -- and that's what someone creating such an article would be doing. In addition: Are you also going to accept the hundreds of combinations of pointless GNOME/KDE/XFCE/xxx vs desktop-of-choice articles too? How about the app categories and distros that currently have one "comparison of" article. Why not break those out too: Evolution vs Kmail, KMail vs Sylpheed, Sylpheed vs Mutt... or how about Galeon vs Firefox, Galeon vs Internet Explorer, Galeon vs KMelon... or maybe Red Hat verus Gentoo, Gentoo versus Debian... and so on. All with their own separate pointless articles. So yes, I'll put such an article up for speedy deletion, and if that's rejected put it up for a vote. --Motor 20:37, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
Some of those aren't bad ideas; but given that Gnome and kde are in basically the same ecological niche (ie kde isn't competing with fluxbox; gnome isn't competing with Icewm.) a comparison is valid, just as a page comparing the three competitors for 'general-purpose OS' with Mac, Linux and Windows is a valid article. Some of your suggestions are flawed- Galeon doesn't have anywhere near enough marketshare to be really competing with anyone. That article would be more properly IE vs Firefox (and maybe opera as well). Ditto for those distros: are they in the same niche? Is Red hat trying to win over Gentoo's users and vice versa? Are they designed to fulfill the same needs? Is it an invalid comparison, a comparison of Red Hat vs Gentoo, like SuSe vs Damn Small Linux vs Linux From Scratch would be? I'd say yes, and I think most voters would agree. (Just a side note: I don't think a Hitler vs Stalin article would be too controversial- last I heard Stalin had beat Hitler by several millions, and that's a pretty objective metric anyways, unlike most controversies.) If anyone else should like to weigh in on whether such a section would be *useful* and *informative*, I'd appreciate it. --maru 21:09, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Who mentioned comparing window managers and desktop environments? No-one suggested comparing icewm or fluxbox. You'll notice that I specifically use the words "desktop environments". KDE and GNOME are in the same ecological niche as Windows, Mac OSX, XFCE, GNUStep etc etc... but so what? An article just to compare KDE and GNOME is not valid and a waste of time. Galeon was merely an example -- and who are you to say that it has too small a "marketshare"? Compared to what? Compared to Windows, both KDE and GNOME are mere blips. As I pointed out before, looking at your posts here and in the KDE talk you are approaching this as some kind of battle between KDE and GNOME "I mean, that's one of the major disputes these days isn't it?", which makes me extremely suspicious of your motives. And again, your initial justification was that KDE was GNOME's "biggest competitor", and it is not... Windows is. When I listed the potential "X vs Y" articles it wasn't to set up an opportunity to nitpick, it was to demonstrate that there is a ridiculous number of combinations of pointless articles that are already covered in "Comparison of X". As I said, if you want to start a Comparison of desktop environments article in which you have a table of features marking out the difference between GNOME/KDE/XFCE/GNUSTEP/Windows/Mac, go for it (but even that's a waste of time, IMO). But if you add a comparison to KDE section to this article I'll revert it, and if you start a "comparison of KDE and GNOME" article I'll put it up for deletion, or probably move it to a more general Comparison of desktop environments. Again, you started this in the KDE talk page by claiming that you wanted help "making a decision about using KDE or GNOME". You're in the wrong place for that. Find a site that does reviews or has Q&A forums where you can ask for opinions. --Motor 21:49, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)


Article improvements

There are many things that (unlike a GNOME vs KDE section) this article really could use:

  • Some new screenshots!
  • More details on how freedesktop relates to GNOME. --Motor 22:19, 2005 May 4 (UTC)
  • More on the role of the GNOME foundation -- it's not a technical decision board, for example. --Motor 13:52, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)
  • Some mentions of prominent GNOME developers perhaps.
  • The relationship between GNOME and GTK. How some development code was created in GNOME and eventually got pushed down into GTK, for example.
  • How GNOME is developed. An explanation of the GNOME development releases... a mention of things like jhbuild. More on language bindings -- does GNOME still have a language bindings release which coordinates the bindings for all the different bindings? I remember reading that GNOME did two releases "development platform" and "GNOME desktop"... true?... still? The release process: how code gets frozen upwards from GTK.
  • A section on developing software that uses the GNOME facilities.
  • There are technical documents on the GNOME developer site covering the architecture of GNOME (dependencies and such). Lots of material could be incorporated into a technical section.
  • A future development section (DBUS; the discussions of moving some kind of virtual machine into GNOME; how things like cairo will affect GNOME; and far-off things like GNOME Storage). There's a GNOME developer wiki full of discussions of where GNOME will go in 3.0... how it will make other users top level objects on the desktop turning GNOME into a more social interface... etc.

--Motor 09:19, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

New Screenshots

  • There actually already exists some newer screenshots of GNOME on wikipedia:
Debian
Fedora Core:
Image:Fedora1.jpg
Gnoppix
Java Desktop System
Morphix
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Solaris 10
Ubuntu 5.04:
Image:Ubuntu504.png
Ubuntu 5.10:
Maybe it would be a good idea to use some of these existing screenshots, as it would also be a good and natural way to link to some distributions that ship GNOME. Any suggestions on which screenshots to include? - David Björklund 00:29, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Essentially, the thinking behind the two (badly out of date screenshots) was: One screenshot should be clean (no fancy fonts or splashy desktop wallpaper), simple, attractive and have certain apps open... browser, images, and maybe a word processor/spreadsheet)... all arranged in a reasonably attractive fashion. The second screenshot would demonstrate the internationalisation stuff. The current ones came from the official GNOME site, sometime around 2.2 (I think... it was quite a while back). I wouldn't go overboard on the number of screenshots myself... two is enough. As for linking to distributions -- it'd be better to stick with distro neutral screenshots and leave the, for example, fedora screenshot on the fedora page. On suggestion: It might be worth a look on art.gnome.org or even asking on their forums for candidates shots to demonstrate the internationalisation and general features. Motor 01:11, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

Gnome popularity

Quoting from GNOME desktop: "...and many users of GNU/Linux systems favor the GNOME desktop"

Is this neutral? or true? --Anonymous

Quite true. However, if, instead of using "many" the word was "a majority", that would be rather more difficult to support seeing that KDE also has a large following, and many people use KDE exclusively (or parts of both GNOME and KDE at the same time). --Robert Merkel


Eye candy

Has anyone got a really good screenshot for this article? One with nice looking fonts (not weird cursive ones), a good desktop wallpaper and some great looking apps running -- something clean and business-like, but attractive. The one I got the GNOME site is ok, but I'm sure there are better. --Motor 12:23, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm... apparently not. So, does anyone have views on the 2.6 screenshots? Are any of those an improvement on the current English language one? --Motor 23:11, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It does need a new screenshot, but in the meantime, how about we at least label the existing screenshot with the date and/or version? The latest version of Gnome is 2.8, and that looks to me like 2.2 or so. The date says Friday 31 January -- the last 31-Jan on a Friday was 31 January 2003, or over 18 months ago. Gnome is currently doing releases every 6 months, so this is quite a bit out of date.
It's not horrible to have a screenshot of an older version of Gnome, but we should say it's an older version, so people don't get the wrong idea. --Anonymous
Agreed. If anyone reading can find a couple of good screen shots (one English, clean and attractive looking; and one in an obviously foreign language one) that'd be great. --Motor 10:32, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What we could call an eye candy si definetly KDE .I had the good intention to use Gnome some weeks ago so i installed it [Gnome 2.10] and again I was disapointed. It was nothing worth to speak of .I am not against it but ...It can never reach KDE as an eye candy. --Anonymous stupid guy

Xscreensaver's Gnome-ness

Removed Xscreensaver because it isn't part of the architecture. It's an application... and not a GNOME one. --Motor 11:15, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. The manual says: "The screensaver application for the GNOME Desktop is XScreenSaver". If by "not a GNOME one" you mean it wasn't written by or for Gnome, then we should take GStreamer out, too -- it was designed to be a general-purpose multimedia framework, and the 'G' does *not* stand for Gnome, IIRC. (I would be OK with moving it to the "applications" section. I think it's more Architecture than Applications, but I think it's more important that it gets credit.) --Anonymous
I think you're blurring the line (and I admit it already is pretty blurry) between apps and archicture too much. XScreensaver isn't even nominally a GNOME app (as far as I'm aware) -- it's just one that's thrown in there to do a job some people think is needed. GStreamer isn't an app it's a set of libraries that provide media services to the desktop. Adding XScreensaver (even to the apps sections) seems a bit like adding emacs to me. --Motor 10:32, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)


As a follow-up: Does Metacity belong in the arch section? I suppose it serves an essential purpose. --Motor 11:22, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sure, why not? It's one of the things upon which Gnome is built. (It runs its own process, but GConf does, too. Neither is an "application", to people using Gnome.)
While we're at it, how about adding Mozilla/Gecko to the Architecture list, since Epiphany (the default browser) uses it? And maybe even freedesktop.org? --Anonymous
I agree. Do you want to do it? BTW: you might want to sign in an get a username if you're going to be editing. It'll also let you sign and date your talk posts by using four tilde (~) characters in a row. Cheers. --Motor 10:32, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)


Split

Should the split in Gnome be mentioned? I saw something about it on slashdot. -- Watsonladd

The new project is goneME. --Anonymous
It was mentioned... but the project went nowhere and is dead as far as I'm aware. So I removed it. --Motor 00:12, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)


HIG

"Since version 2.0 (since 2002) GNOME development and design follows a Human-Interface-Guidline (HIG), which is actively supported by Sun Microsystems. The release cycle for major updates takes about 6 months. GNOME tries to satisfy users who expect an intuitive interface and also demand flexibilty."

I've put the introduction of the HIG info into the version table rather than the article text. The six month cycle is already mentioned under Versions, and the last sentence seems a bit redundant. --Motor 16:15, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Spelling - copied from my (Motor) talk page

Oh, and incidentally, the Wikipedia guidelines for American vs British English say to use whichever is either most predominant in Wikipedia, or what applies best to the article or what the article is written in, in order of ascending priority. Wikipedia is largely in American English, Gnome is an American project, and reading through the article, the only thing that I can find that is British English and not American, is precisely the word we are quarrelling over. So I think I can safely say it should be 'organization', not 'organisation'. But I don't want a revert war, so I'm gonna drop it until I hear from you. 'Course, we could always go to arbitration... --maru 15:44, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

First of all... I notice you have now modified your original bold and incorrect assertion that "American English" is the standard on Wikipedia. Second... GNOME is not largely an American project, that is simply incorrect. It is an international project. The fact that a number of contributors are American does not to justify unnecessary spelling edits. Third, I wrote most of the article, and I can assure that it is "British" English with a few exceptions where other people written something and I didn't "correct" it (naturally), or where I simply preferred the "American" spelling when writing it. Fourth, when I edit I try to fit in with the style of a pre-existing article. I would also revert the edits of anyone who started converting an "American" spelling article into a "British" spelling one while adding nothing of substance. I do not edit the writing of others to fit my style or spelling, and I have no intention of allowing you to start changing the spelling of an article just to suit your personal preferences -- and I think you'll find that any arbitration will agree with me on this since it is the only workable policy in articles that are not *definitely* British or American or anything else. Certainly considering that your contributions to the article are minimal. Addition: In fact, a quick check of the page history shows no contributions whatsoever -- apart from the spelling revert and its snide edit summary (along with a worse violation of wikipedia guidelines on the KDE article). Your only contributions (to the GNOME/KDE articles) appear to be posting to the talk pages of both the KDE and GNOME articles attempting to get some kind of GNOME vs KDE thing going, for whatever reason. However, arbitration is not something I've had to do before, so it might be interesting. I won't initiate it though, because as I said, it's a waste of someone's time and energy (esp. in a case like this). Still, if you absolutely insist on forcing the issue in the face of all common sense and considering your behaviour so far... go ahead.
On the other hand, if you decide you would rather do something constructive to the GNOME article, I made a few suggestions on the talk page. I would welcome the help, since (as I said) I wrote most of the article and have felt for a long time that it needs more detail and more voices in order to become a better article. You can see evidence of this in the talk page. --Motor 16:56, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)


Future developments

I've included a first draft of a future developments section. I originally wrote a bit about some of the options for high-level languages... and then removed it because it's a very complex issue and I wasn't sure it was all that relevant, plus it's extremely difficult to avoid bias without long digressions into subjects that have nothing to do with GNOME. I'll include an early version here. It was originally meant to follow on from: "This would increase the minimum specification of machine able to run the latest GNOME desktop."

In addition there are intellectual property issues surrounding C# and Java. Using C# would require the inclusion of Mono — a controversial project which, although it uses a free software license, is viewed with suspicion by some in the free softare community because of its origins as a reimplementation of Microsoft's .NET languages and frameworks. The use of Java has similar concerns. Python, while it is free software, lacks the industry support of either C# and Java.

Suggestions welcome. --Motor 17:01, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

A question: I understand the bit about IP and licensing issues, but why exactly does using a higher level language create such technical problems? I mean, Gnome will still be compiled into bytecode for most distributions and users, (save source-based distros like Gentoo) and I think Gnome programs adhere to standards for intercommunication so that wouldn't be a problem... As far as I can tell, switching to a higher language simply means more system requirements for rolling your own Gnome, which for, I do not hesitate to say, the vast majority of users is irrelevant. So does it merit so much space? --maru 22:51, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Using either Python, C# or Java for GNOME applications needs a virtual machine to be present on the end-users computer (and the class libraries)... which is fine if you choose to run a GNOME app written in one of those languages and install the stuff yourself. The discussion is really over whether GNOME should "bless" one virtual machine (and its associated libraries) as official, install it with GNOME and use it within the desktop itself. That really would increase the minimum requirements for a machine to run the base GNOME desktop (mem, CPU and disk space). As for how much space... the possiblity of moving to using an HLL within GNOME is a big discussion point at the moment and will have a large impact on GNOME in future. So IMO it does deserve to be in the future development section. --Motor 01:35, 2005 May 9 (UTC)
Hmm. I still fail to understand: aren't most programs provided compiled (with of course, source in addition to comply with the GPL; it is fairly rare I need to fire up GCC and Make for a new program- or so my experience goes. YMMV.)? I didn't think one needed an interpreter or virtual machine for compiled byte-code. --maru 01:43, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Take Java for example: You can sit at a workstation running Linux on an athlon-based PC and "compile" a Java ".jar" file that will then run on a Solaris workstation with a SPARC microprocessor. It works (at least in theory) because when you "compile" your Java app, you convert the source code into a bytecode for an imaginary computer architecture called a JVM, rather than actual instructions for the specific microprocessor you are running (and a set of class libraries to cover up the differences between platforms). See Just-in-time compilation for a description of the process. Essentially, the code isn't converted into actual specific instructions for the microprocessor in your computer until you run it by starting a JVM and pointing it at the .jar file. So an end-user is actually compiling the bytecode into a program that runs on their machine... they just don't see that step. The whole interpreter/compilation thing gets a little more complicated when you bring in gcj... but essentially, to run Java apps you need a JVM.
The process is basically the same for C# (and any Microsoft .Net language) and Python. It gets still more complicated when you realise that the language isn't necessarily restricted to one VM. For example IKVM can convert Java bytecode to .Net code, which is then run on the Mono VM. See also IronPython or Jython. --Motor 09:09, 2005 May 9 (UTC)
Ah- I understand now. --maru 19:59, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Free/Non-free

I'm not too happy about just throwing around words like free and non-free. It's too confusing for casual readers (something anyone who ever mentions free software to others will know all about). Has anyone got a more descriptive and less confusing way of putting it? One more thing was it just members of the GNU project who got the ideas for Harmony/GNOME? Motor 20:14, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

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