Gnome 2.2

[Sunner]

Seems like Im the only one around here who's got an active interest in Gnome/KDE, but Im gonna post my initial impressions of Gnome 2.2 anyway

Installed it on my Gentoo box two days ago, been using it since.
It's improved a bit, enough to make me like it above KDE 3.1 so far.

Font handling is nicer, works pretty much the same way as in Redhat 8.0, which is a good thing, I don't enjoy having to mess around too much with simple boring things like fonts.
AA is nicer as well, the Gnome terminal uses the same AA settings as the rest of the system now, which is nice, I always liked the AA settings in the default RH terminal, that's now the default in Gnome, good thing

Also, changing the menu's is easier(well smoother), right click in the menu's and do whatever you wanna do(change, add, etc), that's another thing I don't like about alot of WM's/DM's, having to edit text files to change the menu's isn't hard, but it isn't my idea of fun either.
Of course for someone who uses a rather static set of programs that ain't much of a problem, but I just love trying out new stuff and install lots of programs, so my menu's change very often, which makes this a big improvement to me.

Those are the two big things for me so far, there's a bunch of small improvement here and there, as can be expected with a 2.0->2.2 release, which in the end makes 2.2 a nice improvement over 2.0, if nothing revolutionary.
I've seen a bunch of people complaining about problems with 2.2, however I've run into none so I have no comments on those.

All in all, a very worthwhile upgrade IMO

Oh, one more thing, it's a shame more applications haven't been ported to GTK2 yet, two of my most frequently used apps are still GTK+/1.4, Evolution and Galeon.
Im not much into using CVS snapshots, unless I really really have to.
The KDE project is far better in this respect, of course this is mostly due to the fact that all the major KDE apps fall under the KDE project umbrella, but still...

 

[ugh]

Good info! I tried MDK9 and didn't really like the feel of KDE 3.x (can't remember the exact version). Guess I'll have to try RH8.x and Gnome 2.2 when I get my broadband connection.

BTW, I thought X handles AA and not the desktop managers?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I use both the KDE and the Gnome that came with RH 7.3 on occassion at work. They arent too bad. In fact, I was quite impressed with the speed since the machine only has 128mB of ram.

 

[Spyro]

Gnome Rules!

 

[Abzstrak]

cool, I'll have to give it a shot... did the emerge work? (last time I emerged gnome I had 4 hours of fixing to do to it before it would work....)

TIA

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: ugh
BTW, I thought X handles AA and not the desktop managers?

The X Window System, or specifically, the RENDER extension for the XFree86 implementation of the X Window System protocol, provides the means by which anti-aliased text may be drawn. However, this extension will not be used unless the application or toolkit specifically requests it. Generally, anti-aliasing is handled at the toolkit level (QT or GTK), and AFAIK this means that the applications do not need to worry about it themselves. However, the applications of a given desktop environment will still not have anti-aliased text until their toolkit is updated to be able to use the new RENDER extension. Hope this helps clarify things a bit.

 

[Deceiver]

I'd like Gnome2.2, but I don't have the time or knowledge to go through the complete build of installing it and all the libraries that go along with it. Is there a 'fast' way to go about doing it? Like something simple.

Thanks,
Jason

 

[N11]

Good info -- I just made a permanent switch from KDE to Gnome 2.0 a few days ago. Probably going to stick with gnome in the near future.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Deceiver
I'd like Gnome2.2, but I don't have the time or knowledge to go through the complete build of installing it and all the libraries that go along with it. Is there a 'fast' way to go about doing it? Like something simple.

Check out GARNOME.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Abzstrak
cool, I'll have to give it a shot... did the emerge work? (last time I emerged gnome I had 4 hours of fixing to do to it before it would work....)

TIA

Well there was a problem with emerging mjpegtools, but setting -quicktime as USE variable solved that one, aside from that it went smooth.
Took a while though

 

[ugh]

Originally posted by: jliechty

Originally posted by: ugh
BTW, I thought X handles AA and not the desktop managers?

The X Window System, or specifically, the RENDER extension for the XFree86 implementation of the X Window System protocol, provides the means by which anti-aliased text may be drawn. However, this extension will not be used unless the application or toolkit specifically requests it. Generally, anti-aliasing is handled at the toolkit level (QT or GTK), and AFAIK this means that the applications do not need to worry about it themselves. However, the applications of a given desktop environment will still not have anti-aliased text until their toolkit is updated to be able to use the new RENDER extension. Hope this helps clarify things a bit.

Thanks for the explanation. Is AA enabled by default in Gnome 2.2?