A Look at GNOME 2.14 602
An anonymous reader writes "Gnome has a nice preview of their newest version 2.14 posted which should be hitting the streets around the 15th of March. From the article: "As well as new features and more polish, developers have been working around the clock to squeeze more performance out of the most commonly used applications and libraries. This is a review of some of the most shiny work that has gone into the upcoming GNOME release."
Coral Cache Link (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Coral Cache Link (Score:5, Funny)
Kall me krazy, or just konfused, but I kan't konceive klicking to another desktop. Kount me out.
Biggest change: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Biggest change: (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that is funny!
However, who in their right mind would put 'exit' under the "File" menu? 'print' and 'close' makes sense, but 'exit' is to exit a program, not do anything with a file.
Re:Biggest change: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Biggest change: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Are You Serious? Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
And when that day comes, if it ever does, there will be great rejoicing.
GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM is just a propietary file format to keep people tied to a software just like CSS is a very succesful way to control the dvd-player market. It's not there to keep people away from seeing video. By implemeting DRM support you break the main purpose of DRM
The one reason why itunes sells DRMed songs is because in 5-10 years, everyone who bought itunes songs will NEED to buy a ipod to listen those songs, no matter if by that time ipod is the worst and more expensive player of the galaxy. You're stuck with apple products
The same goes for DRM'ed
So DRM is just a closed document format. But instead of being a standard closed format which can be reverse-ingeniereed, they use crypto to make the "perfect closed format": A closed format that can't be reverse-enginereed. By allowing people to use DRM in other systems you break the purpose of DRM. But yes, DRM should be avoided. It's ironic that DRM has been created in the country that is supposed to love capitalism - DRM keeps me away from choosing products from other companies which is what the capitalism is about.
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people are going to want to run and use DRM-ified content. You are trying to restrict their rights to do so by demonizing a technology that can not be evil so as to push forward your own agenda. Information does not want to be free, it can't want anything. Software does not have rights, computers do not have rights. People do have the right to use their system the way they want, and that includes choosing systems that use DRM.
A truly free system allows the user to choose how to use it, it is not one where the developers force their agenda.
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets be clear. DRM is not evil. Abuse of it's functionality and usage from RIAA/MPIAA is, well, it is close to stupid and shortsighted (at least so far - region coding for DVD for price fixing, requesting DRM for bough songs in Internet shops like iTunes). But there are lot of LEGAL and UNDERSTANDING uses of DRM in multimedia, even for small media companies.
I understand that music and movie cartel actions is something is should not taken lightly, however, such hyperbole which are claimed by RMS and other "wisle blowers" are too much. Fight companies which abuse DRM, don't fight DRM itself. Because by itself it is just one of technologies to allow copyright holders have their rights fullfilled. If it is abused to limit anything.
It is NOT a black/white situation. And claiming that Fluendo is doing just to give "control of Linux desktop media to cartels" are plainly overblown and childish claim. Fluendo actually created LEGAL mp3 plugin for you to use, freerly. you can download it at their webshop, put it in your home directory, and vola - no half-legal repositories, no endless searching. It is just works.
And by the way, Xine is illegal to distribute in US with mp3/divx/quicktime support. It is just by the way. Mplayer too.
Of course, there is "nothing wrong" with these apps in geeks view. But it totally wrong to think that any distro will get ANY kind of support for those prioritary formats out there with such attitude. Oh, you don't want prioritary formats? What about your XVID videos? What about divx movies? Mp3? Quicktime trailers which geeks love so much? Haven't got enough?
Be real. There is world out there which are seeking compromises not always screaming about something they don't like. And trolling (yes, such claims about Fluendo ARE trolls) won't help not your cause, nor KDE, nor Linux desktop overall.
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:5, Informative)
From gnomejournal: [gnomejournal.org]
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole reason why GStreamer started was to create a framework that would enable these "ugly" DRM plugins. GStreamer has hurt the multimedia effort on Linux and the Free Desktop because they stole talented developers from much more mature projects like Xine [xinehq.de], MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu], and VLC [videolan.org]. In other words, they further fragmented the developer base purely for the selfish, immoral purpose of ramming DRM down Linux users' throats.
Of course, th
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong, GStreamer is LGPL only. The GStreamer website [gstreamer.org] is adamant about denying developers the right to license contributed code under the GPL:
We require that all code going into our core package is LGPL. For the plugin code, we require the use of the LGPL for all plugins written from scratch or linking to external libraries.
Fluendo, the company that controls GStreamer, wants to link their DRM plugins to LGPL code contributed by the naive independent developers, who don't realize that by writing LGPL multimedia code, they might as well be working for the RIAA and MPAA.
Xine [slashdot.org] on the other hand is GPL, and any code that links to Xine must also be GPL. So even if someone decides to make DRM plugins or apps for Xine, they will have to give users the source code to those plugins. There will inevitably be some users who know how to extract the useful part of the codec while leaving out the DRM restrictions. As the KDE developer Aaron Seigo [blogspot.com] eloquently put it:
DRM + source code = no DRM [blogspot.com]
Now I realize why Richard Stallman warned against using LGPL [gnu.org] for any code, including libraries. Too bad the makes of GTK and GNOME didn't listen. But thank God the makers of Qt [trolltech.com] and KDE [kde.org] did!
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
My mistake.
We require that all code going into our core package is LGPL. For the plugin code, we require the use of the LGPL for all plugins written from scratch or linking to external libraries.
Good job selectively quoting the site. What they're saying on their licensing page is that in order for a plugin to be part of gstreamer.org's distribution the plugin must be LGPL. The answer is simple, don't write a plugin for gstreamer.org to distribute. Write GPL licensed plugins for the Linux distribution maintainers to distribute. From the licensing page you linked to:To keep this policy viable, the GStreamer community has made a few licensing rules for code to be included in GStreamer's core or GStreamer's official modules, like our plugin packages
Fluendo, the company that controls GStreamer, wants to link their DRM plugins to LGPL code contributed by the naive independent developers,
As is their right under the licensing agreement. But we don't have to use those versions of the plugins if we don't want to. We can compile the non-DRM enabled LGPL code. That is also our right under the licensing agreement.
Xine on the other hand is GPL, and any code that links to Xine must also be GPL
And as a result xine can't legally be distributed in the United States with the ability to play a CSS encrypted DVD. Gstreamer was written with the licensing and framework to avoid that problem. Personally, I would like to see software that plays DVDs on desktop Linux and is legally distributable in the United States. To be honest I'd rather see the legallity not be an issue, but that is harder to get changed.
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM (Score:3, Informative)
What the LGPL does, is allow LGPL'd libraries to be used by non F/OSS programs. Even then, it requires access to the source code and build system, so that the LGPL'd parts of that program ca
Re:Biggest change: (Score:2)
BTW i am actually using XFCE4 because of its old macos usability bonuses: 1) black cursor, easier to spot on mostly white windows 2) custom layout for the window buttons, the close button on the left, the others on the right.
Re:Biggest change: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Biggest change: (Score:3, Interesting)
So GNOME continues to try to break out of the mold cast for them a generation or so ago. Never mind that we were only just starting to get to the point where real know-nothing users actually expected things that way, it's important to know that the spirit of gratuitous difference lives on...
Re:Biggest change: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Biggest change: (Score:3, Funny)
The File menu has simply been integrated into the Edit menu. The Edit menu was then dropped.
Re:Biggest change: (Score:5, Funny)
Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
Progress! (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks like I'm going to have to admin a lab of Linux boxes soon, and I'm pleased with the progress that is coming on the nebulous "Linux desktop".
Although, both Gnome and KDE are still 90'ish, at least Gnome is now knocking off OS X instead of Windows.
Now, for the confusing part. Why was their previous allocator so lame compared to malloc()? Its worth a read to check out this [umass.edu] for an allocator. Being that multi-core/"threads"/CPUs are pretty common today, its worth using that to one's advantage.
Re:Progress! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not call it collaboration instead. OS X is using like 50 GNU programs straight off, source and everything. Gnome (Which is part of GNU) is borrowing some ideas, but not code from OS X. "Knocking off" seams like a bad thing when both GNU and Apple are using eachohers ideas and it's probably benifitial for both projects.
Re:BSD, not GNU (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Progress! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Progress! (Score:5, Informative)
Because glibc's malloc() is actually a pretty fast and scalable piece of code for a general-purpose memory allocator. Even GNOME's new special-purpose allocator only gets about twice the performance of glibc's.
Re:Progress! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Progress! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Progress! (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously, because malloc() doesn't start with a G. And to think, they could have easily sped up their allocator years ago just by doing:
#define gWhateverTheirAllocatorIsCalled malloc
Re:Progress! (Score:2)
Re:Progress! (Score:2)
Network Manager has an interface pretty much exactly like the wifi config app in OS X.
Re:Progress! (Score:2)
Re:Progress! (Score:3, Informative)
SW Dualprocessing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:2)
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:2)
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:2)
AFAIK it will be in the universe repo (at least that's where it is now), and you will also need compiz and either compiz-gnome or compiz-kde (obviously to match which DE you're running).
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:2)
Install Ubuntu Dapper (now in stabilisation to prepare for release in April). Xgl is in the "universe" repository, and instructions for enabling it are around somewhere.
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:5, Informative)
Downoad the latest ubuntu CD [ubuntu.com], then:
1
2. Make sure that you have the latest mesa, libglitz1 and libglitz-glx1, xserver-xgl
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa libglitz1 libglitz-glx1 xserver-xgl
3. Install compiz-kde and/or compiz-gnome depending on your desktop
sudo apt-get install compiz-gnome
4. Replace
sudo ln -sf
5. Close all applications and restart gdm (This will log you out!)
sudo
6. Log in, then in a terminal start compiz and the Gnome window decorator (do NOT use sudo here)
compiz --replace gconf decoration wobbly fade minimize move place resize scale switcher cube rotate zoom
gnome-window-decorator
Leave out the gconf plugin if you don't have compiz-gnome installed
7. Add these commands to ~/.gnomerc if you want this on every login (which you probably do)
Taken from the Ubuntu xgl howto wiki [ubuntu.com]
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:2)
Re:SW Dualprocessing (Score:2)
Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next? (Score:2)
Just curious if anyone might know if Gnome 2.14 is making the cut for Fedora Core 5 or the next Ubuntu?
Re:Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but the clever people at Ubuntu have managed to find a (patent-pending) way to keep their standard 6 month release cycle nicely in sync with the Gnome standard 6 month release cycle. I don't have time to explain to you how it works, though. Sorry.
Re:Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Will it be in FC5 or Ubuntu 6.next? (Score:2)
I think... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think... (Score:2)
Queue em up! (Score:2)
Re:Queue em up! (Score:2)
GNOME rocks (no offence to KDE) (Score:5, Interesting)
It has replaced Windows XP as my current primary desktop, and I can finally recommend Linux to my friends without hesitation.
(btw You shouldn't have "DDOSed" the poor server. It contains really nice information.)
Re:GNOME rocks (no offence to KDE) (Score:2)
I tried not to, but the other Slashdotters pushed me into it. Honest!
State of Gnome (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:State of Gnome (Score:4, Interesting)
My situation is roughly the same, but I have to add several things:
Anyways it's nice to see another fellow using a similar setup (OK, there are millions like us).
Program Naming (Score:4, Insightful)
I use linux both at home and at work, so I'm not some anti-linux zealot or something- I think it's a legitimate question to raise. On my mac laptop, I have a handy app for browsing mDNS networks called Rendezvous Browser (since mDNS was once called Rendezvous). The name is simple and describes perfectly what the program does. On the other hand, 90% of the linux applications available have names that look like they were chosen by picking random letters and squishing them together. I'm sure that the programmers think they've very clever by choosing a name that means something in some obscure language- or they just thing the name sounds cool- but that simple lack of meaningful names is detrimental. If I start up a GNOME session and want to use network meeting functionality, how is there any possible way that I could guess that "Ekiga" is the application I'm looking for?
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes that name makes perfect sense. What exactly is Rendezvous, again?
If I start up a GNOME session and want to use network meeting functionality, how is there any possible way that I could guess that "Ekiga" is the application I'm looking for?
The menu will probably say "Internet Telephony" next to it. GNOME is pretty good about labeling the programs.
Re:Program Naming (Score:4, Insightful)
The French word meaning "a meeting". Maybe in your attempt at making a point you meant Bonjour [apple.com].
The point he was making was that a perfectly meaningful name was intentionally obscured for who knows why. Also I've never heard ZeroConf Networking Browser on any platform, but I know of Bonjour on Windows and Macintosh, as well as being listed on a lot of printer boxes lately.
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Program Naming (Score:2, Redundant)
"Also in the new Admin Suite is Sabayon. This powerful tool allows administrators to create profiles for groups of users"
Under W*nd*ws, this would be called the 'Group Profile Creator' and everyone would be happy AND would recognise what the tool did when they tripped over it.
Those at the core of the Linux development world need to recognize that the names they choose can actually hinder adoption of their creations. I'm still uncomfortable promoting 'Kubuntu' to the board and I do
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Funny)
That's why I don't push Ubuntu or Kubuntu; I use the specific releases like Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger or Dapper Drake. Oops, that's The Dapper Drake.
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, I'll be lame here:
Re:Program Naming (Score:5, Insightful)
While I don't disagree that a lot of OSS software uses poor naming onventions, as an OSS developer myself, I can understand the reasons behind it.
Let's face it -- the obvious descriptive names are typically already taken. OSS developers want to write software -- they don't want to have to spend a lot of time doing name searches in order to ensure they aren't infringing on a trademark used by some tiny software house out in BF Nowhere, and they typically don't have the resources to fend off a legal attack. Thus, the tendancy these days is to pick (or make up) some sort of really obscure name that hopefully isn't going to attract negative attention from litigation-happy corporate lawyers, and then hopefully make a name for yourself.
Naming is difficult, even within the corporate world. But at least within the corporate world you have people who can do research on existing trademarks, and will hopefully come up with a suitable name for your new product -- and then have the lawyers to fight it as necessary. OSS projects don't have such resources.
Just take a look at your own example -- "Rendevous". Apple was forced to change the name to "Bonjour" due to trademark infringement with another company.
If Apple, with its bevy of lawyers and billions of dollars, can run into such a problem, what is the poor OSS developer to do? Picking some obscure name that nobody is likely to call their product is a good (but hardly guaranteed) way to avoid the problem in the first place.
Yaz.
Re:Program Naming (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if things have been installed and set up properly "Ekiga" will be under the "Internet" sub-menu of the "Applications" menu, and the entry itself will read something like "Ekiga video-conferencing" with a tooltip saying something like "Communicate with others using text, voice phone calls, or video conferencing". You hold up "Rendezvous Browser" as a well named application because it's clear what it does, but it really begs the question: what the hell is Rendezvous and what does it do? I think the GNOME approach - to choose a distinctive name and pair that with a concise description - is a very good one. You can't have everything named after what it does or else things quickly get pointlessly confused, so distinctive names are good - as long as you pair that with a description of what the app does so people can find it easily. You'll find GNOME conforms to that pretty well, and the result (always having descriptive menu entries and explanatory tooltips for those entries) actually makes for a system where it is easier to find what you want.
Jedidiah.
Re:Program Naming (Score:3, Insightful)
My personal preference is a word, made up or no, followed by a descriptive subtitle. So, Ekiga Softphone, GIMP Image Editor (ignore the redundancy), Sabayon Administration Tools (or whatever it is), and so on. I really dislike the coopting of generic terms like "Windows" or "Word". Granted, they have the adjective "Microsoft" in front, but Microsoft also claims a trademark on "Windows" (and "Word" too?). I would prefer something like Microsoft So-and-so (or just so-so) Word Processor as the full name.
T
Re:Program Naming (Score:4, Insightful)
The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's own (Score:5, Insightful)
We also do need to thank the artists that put in the time to create the icons and mouse cursors for us. You can put in all the anti-aliasing you want, but if something like the icons dont look good, people get put off. I'm just really happy for the Gnome guys and all I can say is, "keep it up, you're doing a great job!"
Linux is about choice. I wouldn't want either Gnome or KDE to wipe each other out. They need to co-exist simply to show Windows users that there is a choice available if not for anything else
Re:The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's o (Score:5, Funny)
- Criticize GNOME, its developers and its users
- Criticize KDE, its developers and its users
- Bash Microsoft.
- Make obligatory jokes about russia, etc..
Thank you for attention.
Re:The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's o (Score:2)
Re:It's no Vista though (Score:3, Funny)
As opposed to Vista, which is running stable and polished on your desktop?
speed! (Score:2, Informative)
Beware the Ides of March! (Score:3, Funny)
Et tu, Bill?
using 2.9.13.9x for a week in Ubuntu 6.10 betas (Score:5, Interesting)
NetworkManager is much improved, too. At least in Ubuntu 6.10 betas, you don't need bind do use it! Instead it finally uses the existing functionaly of the DHCP client to write /etc/resolv.conf. I don't think the VPN stuff from CVS is going to make it in though.
Rhythmbox 0.9.3.1 is pretty nice. It has [iTunes] playlist sharing built in (reportedly, don't anything to share with). I don't have an iPod but I think that should be supported practically out-of-box too. So you might wonder what improvements I actually do notice. You can finally specify a watch folder to sync your library with, import an audio cd, scan removable media, and queue songs from your current playlist. The queue is viewable as a sidebar pane like the cover art display in iTunes. No support for displaying the cover art yet, though.
Gstreamer 0.10 has cleaned up the plugin code, and reorganized their plugin classifications. Good plugins are open source and highly functional. Ugly plugins are legally questionable in some jurisdictions but are highly functional. Bad plugins are ones that may have bad implementations and I guess are more likely to not work. Unfortunately the faad/faac plugins are in the bad package, which currently has to built from source on Ubuntu 6.10. Hopefully that will be added to universe or multiverse by release. Everyone post from someone who has built it reports that AAC files play just fine (including me).
I am having some trouble with dbus/hald not showing desktop icons for hard drive partitions mounted under /media. I set the gconf key for volumes_visible, and that works for CDs and such. But I have to restart dbus/hald after logging in to get partitions to show a desktop icon.
Lastly, I haven't yet got xgl+compiz working yet. But compiz seems hard coded to use Mesa so far, so some people are reporting it's actually slower than plain old xorg with the Ati/Nvidia binary drivers.
Naming (Score:3, Insightful)
Oooh! Ekiga is a much more meaningful name than GNOME Meeting. GNOME naming just gets better and better. I know the last time I wanted to search for font information, overly sexually active monkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo [wikipedia.org] was the very first thing that popped into my head.
Re:Naming (Score:3, Funny)
But yeah, naming is getting far out. For example, their new configuration manager is called "Pessulus". I don't know what that means and I'm afraid to find out.
Re:Naming (Score:3, Informative)
"A delicate bar of cartilage connecting the dorsal and ventral extremities of the first pair of bronchial cartilages in the syrinx of birds."
From The Free Dictionary [thefreedictionary.com]
Surely everyone knows that!
The most usable UI (Score:2, Funny)
Unfortunately the half terabyte of AI this requires also makes this the fattest gnome ever.
Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
I just wish for one thing, and that is that the Gnome and KDE people would cooperate on clipboard and drag and drop standards so that software from one would work in that department at least in the other.
The l337 jargon has me confused . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
From the article:
Can someone put this into words that an average user can understand?
Might I suggest. . . (Score:3, Informative)
Where's an integrated spellcheck? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why hasn't gnome got on the ball with this?
No / Yes - NO! (Score:2)
I really hope they implement some way to switch that... I come from Windows and this is the most irritating "feature" of GNOME. It's even more irritating if you have a dual boot, since you can't readapt your brain to get a specific order of clicking a dialog.
Re:I wonder what features got removed! (Score:2)
Yeah, the desktop I use on my main UN*X machines has the buttons for the "Do you want to save changes to this document before closing?" dialog in the order "Don't Save", "Cancel", and "Save", rather than "Yes" and "No" or "No" and "Yes". Similarly, the buttons for "Are you sure you want to remove the items in the Trash permanently?" are in the order "Cancel"
Re:Debian stable user here (Score:2)
Point releases are hardly distinguishable from each other in the parts that matter.
Re:KDE? (Score:2)
Re:KDE? (Score:5, Informative)
So you won't see any kde news for a while except for KDE 4. KDE 3.5 is everything what KDE 3.X has to offer. Of course people could continue developing 3.5, but they're focusing in kde 4....there'll be news in the kde 3.5 field - bugfix releases, updates from individual programs like koffice or kopete - but overall, you won't see any "earthbreaking" change in kde 3.5.
Some gnome developers think that there should not be a gnome 3 - at least, there's zero lines of "gnome 3 code" right now - and that the gnome 2 is OK and that it's much better to do small improvements to the current architecture. This is a big error IMO, but the fact is that until kde 4 is released it will be gnome who gets more attention and releases more attractive things.
Re:KDE? (Score:3, Insightful)
When I want a painting of a UI then, I'll talk to GNOME. Since I want to actually *USE* the UI, I'll stick with kde
Re:How do we make it look more compact? (Score:3, Informative)
change the number in the 'Size' box. Done! This feature
has been there since 1.x days.
Toolbar size depends on your font size. Go into your
Preferences->Font and change 'Application Font' to
something smaller.
Re:Why (Score:4, Informative)
KDE can be configured with one global menubar. Both KDE and Gnome can have the buttons on the left, you just have to find a window manager theme that puts them there.
Advanced GNOME configuration (Score:3, Informative)
Don't feed the trolls ... don't feed the trolls ... must ... resist ... aaahhh
Gnome has taken the route of trying to pick decent defaults for as much as possible. This ranges from the trivial (like the Window List always being a reasonable size, rather than specifying a minimum and maximum size) to more entrenched settings like button order based on your language left-to-right or
Re:Advanced GNOME configuration (Score:4, Insightful)
I should be able to explore the majority of the useful functionality just by opening the application and clicking through it.
You should bloody well be able to explore ALL of the functionality, PERIOD. There is simply no excuse for ANY of the configuration options not to be exposed within easy/obvious reach and explorable in as much or as little detail as desired. Don't want to put off beginners? It's dead simple to cater to both beginners and in depth users. It's as simple as putting an "Advanced Preferences" line under the "Preferences" line in the "Edit" menu on the app. Hello? Gnome? Anybody home? How hard is that, damnit!?
Re:open and save dialogs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Link KDE/GNOME applications w/ Motif library? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not as crazy as you think. If you need to migrate a large Xt and Motif application to a modern toolkit, that's the most sensible solution. And the exact reason why the TT has developed the Qt Motif Extension. The Qt Motif Extension provides a complete and working solution for incremental migration. http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/motif-walkthrough.ht m l [trolltech.com]
Re:Ironic choice for app that has ... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not. Gnome Terminal is a good indicator of how fast their font rendering is now. Don't confuse the benchmark programs with the actual technology.
They put attention towards font rendering.. gnome terminal can render anti-aliased fonts faster than an unanti-aliased xterm.
Re:Will I be able to configure the screensaver? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the gnome-screensaver FAQ [gnome.org]:
Why doesn't the screensaver preferences tool allow me to change the settings for the theme?
We are trying to take a different approach. We would prefer for the themes to simply work.
From Bug 316654 - no ability to configure the different screensavers [gnome.org], which is resolved and marked WONTFIX:
I don't have any plans to support this. My view is that any screensaver theme that requires configuration is inherently broken.
From Bug 316655 - no ability to full screen preview individual screensavers [gnome.org], which is also resolved and marked WONTFIX:
There are no plans to implement this feature. I don't think this feature solves any real problems.
Res ipsa loquitur.