patrick to stop supporting gnome

[Smokey]

http://www.dropline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3430


Troy McFerron
to volkerdi
Oct 6 (1 day ago)

I have been using Slackware 10.0 for about a month now and having
switched from Redhat based distros, I am really enjoying it.

My only issue is that Gnome 2.8 has been released for some time now
and there aren't any Slackware packages available to allow me a clean
upgrade path. I could install it from source (with a lot of hair
pulling), but would prefer official packages. 2.8 is a signifigant
release for the GNOME project, and I think a lot of people would be
happy to see it go into -current, so we could upgrade.

I hope this is something that is close to happening and I am bothering
you for no reason, but its something that Ubuntu has by default and
most other distros have easy to install packages for.

Thanks,

Troy McFerron




On Wed, 6 Oct 2004, Troy McFerron wrote:
> I hope this is something that is close to happening and I am bothering
> you for no reason, but its something that Ubuntu has by default and
> most other distros have easy to install packages for.

GNOME 2.8? I'm not aware of too many distributions that contain that.

Anyway, suffice to say the jury is still out. Since GNOME 1.4 I've felt
that GNOME is going in a direction that doesn't fit well with Slackware's
goals, and for at least as long I've considered removing it completely and
taking whatever flames I get for that decision. Right now, I think
removing it would be the best thing for Slackware as it's become a
maintainance nightmare (unlike nearly every other ./configure'ed source,
GNOME doesn't build into packages easily with DESTDIR).

Not what you wanted to hear, I'm sure, but I do believe it would be best
to let Dropline produce Slackware's GNOME and quit wasting my own time
with it. Probably 1/3 of developement time here is used maintaining
GNOME, and *most* of the bug reports I get have something to do with GNOME
(and aren't bugs I caused, or can fix). KDE, on the other hand, tends to
build using the existing build scripts with no changes at all. I can
start the build and come back to finished packages in a few hours. A
GNOME update usually takes at least a week of manual labor, and another
week of cleaning up broken things. It's been a long time (like I said,
around GNOME 1.4), since I've felt the effort was worth the return.

Sincerely,

Pat

[rbrimhall]

I read this earlier today but. if it is true, it doesn't really shock me... my guess is if GNOME is dropped then XFCE will be the default GTK based desktop for slackware

[timothykaine]

Eh, I prefer XFCE to GNOME, anyways. Gnome doesnt offer me many useful things (to me) that XFCE doesnt offer.

[aNoob]

FreeBSD , here I come :D
Was a nice journey Slacking , but I will keep it only on my laptop where I don't have Gnome anyway.
But my home box uses exclusively Gnome and honestly , can't live without :D

[mrBen]

Ubuntu defaults to GNOME 2.8 at the moment ;)

[psi42]

Since GNOME 1.4 I've felt that GNOME is going in a direction that doesn't fit well with Slackware's goals


I can definitely agree with that. I, personally, have no idea what the gnome developers are thinking. Pretty much every configuration option has been removed from the controlcenter, because they "don't need to be there." We wouldn't want to confuse the poor halfwit n00bs with a very difficult to fathom option like "disable opaque window moving." They might get confused, because, well, they are just stupid n00bs and can count all their brain cells with one hand.

Why is it that they can't realize that opaque window moving/resizing is simply unbearable for those of us who don't have a 3ghz machine? Do they even test GNOME on lower-end hardware? And the only way to fix this particular problem is with gconf-editor, which looks more like the windows registry editor every time I look at it. What happened to plaintext configuration files? If I can't vi it...
</rant> :D


At least now I won't have to rebuild abiword by hand with --disable-gnome to get rid of the annoying stuff. :)


The problem is all those programs that depend on gnome libraries... we still need gnome to use them. Then again, there is always dropline.


XFCE has really been shaping up of late. The panel is actually usable now, with the taskbar plugin. :)

[aNoob]

The trouble with dropline is that it basically modifies your slack install.Even swaret have these disabled by default.To me , dropline was always a ximian desktop , not gnome DE. But this is just my oppinion.On the other hand , I spend most of my time on my oldie laptop where I run flux (of course with all gnome libs installed to run those beautiful gnome progs) , so I'm not that desperate.But as I said , at home I use exclusively Gnome and that , well , that will make a difference for me. Or maybe it was the time to try another distro? We'll see. However Pat said he consider removing Gnome not that he made a decision.And if you ask me , KDE is also difficult to install , well , not as Gnome but still.Besides , KDE is like windows everydamn thing in one place while gnome is more modular.But as I said , we'll see what happens in future. Maybe Xfce will be the default desktop for Slack from now on.

[rbrimhall]

youch, this got /.d... and now dropline's site is "suspended" from overload... funny how one little post from a forum can overload the forum's webserver account a couple of days later. Chaos Theory at work;)




--edited to make sense;) ---

[rbrimhall]

From today's changelog for current:

xap/gftp-2.0.17-i486-1.tgz: Moved from /gnome. Apparently gftp
doesn't require any of the GNOME libraries. I've heard that
AbiWord can also be built so that it does not require GNOME
libraries but haven't had much luck getting it to work that
way. Does anyone know how to do that? How about a GNOMEless
gnumeric (I suspect that's not possible, but...)?

Looks like it's becoming more "official"...

[psi42]

I've heard that
AbiWord can also be built so that it does not require GNOME
libraries but haven't had much luck getting it to work that
way.

Did the build system break? I used --disable-gnome with my abiword (2.0.6), and it just worked. As far as I can tell....


~psi42

[rbrimhall]

Originally posted by psi42
Did the build system break? I used --disable-gnome with my abiword (2.0.6), and it just worked. As far as I can tell....


~psi42

You should shoot P.V. an email about it...

[MMYoung]

Originally posted by aNoob
To me , dropline was always a ximian desktop , not gnome DE. But this is just my oppinion.
The thing is, Todd doesn't add much to the "ximian" desktop you're talking about that isn't in the gnome desktop ftp site.

Later,
MMYoung

[EnigmaOne]

Originally written by Pat:
Probably 1/3 of developement time here is used maintaining GNOME, and *most* of the bug reports I get have something to do with GNOME (and aren't bugs I caused, or can fix). KDE, on the other hand, tends to build using the existing build scripts with no changes at all. I can start the build and come back to finished packages in a few hours. A GNOME update usually takes at least a week of manual labor, and another week of cleaning up broken things.

The man knows what he's talking about, and isn't afraid to say it.

::: thumbs-up :::

[nko]

I like GNOME, but if you're really interested in GNOME on Slackware, don't worry; there's Dropline, for one, and I'm sure LinuxPackages.net will come up with something if there's demand.

As great as GNOME is from a user perspective, if it'll free up development on the rest of slack by such a margin, Pat would be insane not to cut it. Don't like it? Build GNOME yourself and submit packages to LinuxPackages.net. Or wait for someone else to do it. If no one succeeds in doing it without giving up, it's a great indicator of the weight off Pat's shoulders.

Anyone saying they'll leave Slackware because it's not going to include GNOME by default needs to chill for just a little while. Hey, for the time being, it isn't even officially gone yet. When it is, wait and see if someone else develops packages. Remember, Slackware is an Open Source OS. It's not like Windows, where if Microsoft decided explorer.exe was a pain, everyone would have to make due.

[EnigmaOne]

Originally posted by nko
It's not like Windows, where if Microsoft decided explorer.exe was a pain, everyone would have to make due.
You say that like it would be a bad thing?

So far, it looks like everyone but microsoft knows that explorer.exe sux. ;)

[nko]

No! Don't take my precious explorer.exe! Then how am I gonna... gonna... uhm...

Meh, take it, I don't want it anyway.

[MMYoung]

Originally posted by nko
if you're really interested in GNOME on Slackware, don't worry; there's Dropline, for one
Is there? DLG (http://www.dropline.net) ;)

Having posted that, I'm sure they'll be back up shortly. Most of the time I don't install GNOME in Slackware and just install Dropline Gnome afterwords.

Originally posted by nko
As great as GNOME is from a user perspective, if it'll free up development on the rest of slack by such a margin, Pat would be insane not to cut it.
I couldn't agree more. Why re-invent the wheel. The DLG packages work (or at least they do for me) so why maintain GNOME when Dropline is built *specifically* for Slackware. Duplication of effort, put that effort into the main parts of the distro.

My 2¢,
MMYoung

[nko]

All this, not to mention the saved download size for people who're never going to use GNOME anyway. And people who don't want to use GNOME, but want some GNOME app like Abiword, and after installation find that Abiword doesn't work because some GNOME libs aren't installed.

Ya know, now that I think about it, Pat really aught to do this for KDE, as well. Dumping GNOME on Dropline's lap means that Slackware CD2 is just KDE by itself. I mean, if Pat doesn't have a problem with it, maybe he can still maintain CD 2 as a sort of Dropline KDE (sort of). But hey.... it's lookin' pretty lonesome on CD 2.

[psi42]

I"m going to try building the newest version of abiword with --disable-gnome and see if it still works. My version is relatively old...

(It might take a little while, the source is over 25MB and I'm on a dialup :( ).

~psi42

[jymbo]

Oh, man...this IS glorious news. I don't use Gnome nor KDE, nor any of the libs associated with them. My install method for Slack consists of groups a,ap,d, l, n, and x copied onto a 1GB FAT32 partition at the end of my harddrive from which I do an install from floppy. I've gotten by with just Flux and some other lighter alternative apps for file managment and such. Less headache for Patrick means more focus on the OS itself and less on the desktop (leave that to the DLG guys). Patrick could drop KDE as well, and it wouldn't bother me in the least.

Slackware IS a one-man-show, and I wouldn't expect Patrick to maintain 2 DE's, especially when one of them is already being maintained by another project.

[aNoob]

Well,to be honest I started using Gnome because of Slackware y'know...I was until then an avid KDE user on RH. When RH took the boot I didn't felt so comfortable with FC idea , hence Slackware where I made a full install everything on default.And there was Gnome.And I start to love it and soon after I couldn't boot without Gnome.Now, on my laptop I use flux because of speed but on my big machine I still use Gnome , not Dropline (which is great). But many times things were not working in Dropline (e.g. eclipse it was after 2.6 release) and decided to stick with pure gnome , wise choice , everything worked as expected.
Now , will it make a difference for me? certainly .Does that means I will drop Slack? Well , maybe , from my laptop there's no need , from my home machine most probably , I'm still thinking what would be the next distro.
Sad news (for me) , but I'll get used with that.

[psi42]

I still haven't done my abiword build (sorry, major distractions), but luckily:

From slack-current changelog
xap/abiword-2.0.12-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to abiword-2.0.12.
Moved from /gnome and compiled without GNOME dependencies.

Nice.