Why I probably won't directly upgrade onto GNOME 2.0
or Why normal users perhaps will be disappointed by GNOME 2.0 |
During these days important steps of the GNOME project are realized: the GNOME 2.0 Desktop Final Release is announced for the 29. March and the first beta release has already been published. Hence, let us ask ourselves what we will have got when the April has come: For the moment - after having compiled the whole GNOME 2.0 beta - we have a crashing file and desktop- / background manager accompanied by an empty bottom panel. The dialog buttons must be clicked by the mouse button for noting that they are meant. But being meant means nothing: the action can only be called by the return key alone. Our top panel contains an application menu whose entries can be started with the right mouse button instead of the left and which doesn't offer any shell. As a compromise an additional "Action" button lists all the menu applications again (except an entry of a shell). But while searching the also unfindable editor we can admire many new icons. Short sense of these long sentences: For the moment you can compile GNOME 2.0 beta. But you really can't use it. Is that a fault - in any possible sense? No. Definitely not. We've got a beta release which shall be debugged by the users for being able to offer a perfectly stable release in the beginning of April. Hence let us for a moment assume that we already have got what we will get during the first days of April: a perfect GNOME 2.0. And let us ask ourselves again what we then will have: We will have one or two nice panels, filled with many buttons pointing to the different tools of the system. We will have a callable control center by which we can configure all that what we want to change. It will be as sophisticated as the control center of GNOME 1.0. We will be able to call all the nice applets and utilities which we have learnt to love while using GNOME 1.0 / 1.4 / 1.4.1. And we will have a shell, a nice process / system viewer, an editor, a picture viewer, some sound-tools, a spreadsheet and last but not least a perfectly running file- and desktop manager "nautilus". That's all? That can't be true. But it is all if we believe in the two directories http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/pre-gnome2/releases/gnome-2.0-desktop-beta, http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/pre-gnome2/sources , the GNOME 2.0 todo list and the module report. But where have all the flowers gone? I've tried to find GNOME 2.0 compatible versions of the most important GNOME 1.4 applications. «Most important» means «most important for me» selected by my wishes and their purposes. A really fair list must be much longer than mine. But even for my list the result is strange: none of them can be compiled in the GNOME 2.0 environment. If GNOME 2.0 contains the applications of GNOME 2.0 beta (in a bug free version) we won't have any net-analyser like ethereal or etherape. We won't have any application for writing papers like abiword, gtex-letter or lahelper, no application for crating pictures and diagrams like dia, gimp, gthumb, gqview, gpaint or sodipodi. We won't get any developtool like anjuta, moleskine, memprof, gtranslator. And so on, and so on. No mailer, no pim, no evolution. No html-editor, no editor, no pybliographer. That's the problem! When we will get a perfectly stable GNOME 2.0 we won't directly get those applications too which we already use in our daily work. Maybe later, but not directly with GNOME 2.0. Is that a fault of the developer? No. Definitely not. Is it a fault of all these busy guys who hack and hack to make a new GNOME 2.0? No. Is it a fault of those foreign programmers who are waiting for a GNOME 2.0 core system for being able to convert their applications because they want to see and test the reaction of their applications in the new environment? No. Is it a general fault? Yes. Undoubtly yes: We are arguing that GNU/Linux is right for the desktop. (For example we try to convince the german politicians.) And in these times we are publishing a new main release of one of the most important desktop systems without applications for the practice? That can't be true. That would directly help Microsoft fighting against GNU/Linux. What can we do?
Ok. Perhaps all these points have already been seen and discussed. Then the decision to publish an incomplete GNOME 2.0 system has been taken. In this case I will probably not upgrade onto GNOME 2.0 and I assume that many user will be disappointed by the coming GNOME 2.0 system. |