Hi

I was just reading an article and associated threads on the proposed
discontinuation of GNOME under Slackware, and was struck by the kind of
comments on the difficulty of compiling GNOME from sources for various
distros, with new nuances reportedly creeping into each newer release.

As to myself, I stopped using GNOME early this year after a few years of
using it and shifted back to KDE which has now become a lot more stable
than it used to be. I have never compiled GNOME for myself, but once did
compile KDE for Sun. The question is :

Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for GNOME
with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is still
a very good window manager. Or would the burden of providing a distro
specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?

What do you think ?

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On 2004-10-13, Madhusudan Singh <spammers-go-here@spam.invalid> wrote:

> Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for GNOME
> with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is stil
l
> a very good window manager. Or would the burden of providing a distro
> specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
> developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?
>
>         What do you think ?

Personally I think that, to a certain extent Slackware is a bit of a
special case, in that it is, essentially, a one man show, but already
has a very good set of gnome packages available from dropline.

I don't think any of the other large distros are about to drop
Gnome from their distros, especially not debian or Red Hat.

However, I do think that the gnome devs ought to put a bit more
work into making gnome as straight-forward as possible to compile
from source.

- --
James					jamesk[at]homeric[dot]co[dot]uk

Microsoft is a cross between the Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately, the
Ferengi do the coding and the Borg do the marketing. anon
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On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:57:43 -0400, Madhusudan Singh wrote:

> Hi
>
>         I was just reading an article and associated threads on the propos
ed
> discontinuation of GNOME under Slackware, and was struck by the kind of
> comments on the difficulty of compiling GNOME from sources for various
> distros, with new nuances reportedly creeping into each newer release.
>
>         As to myself, I stopped using GNOME early this year after a few ye
ars of
> using it and shifted back to KDE which has now become a lot more stable
> than it used to be. I have never compiled GNOME for myself, but once did
> compile KDE for Sun. The question is :
>
>         Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for
 GNOME
> with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is stil
l
> a very good window manager. Or would the burden of providing a distro
> specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
> developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?
>
>         What do you think ?

Gnome is the default desktop for Redhat and Novel now owns both Ximian and
SUSE so you would expect that Gnome will at least gain parity with KDE in
SUSE. Mandrake is pretty agnostic, they seem to give equal support to both
Gnome and KDE. There hasn't been any talk about remove Gnome from any
other distribution. It sounds like it's a Slackware only phenominon.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Madhusudan Singh wrote:

> Hi
>
>         I was just reading an article and associated threads on the
>         proposed
> discontinuation of GNOME under Slackware, and was struck by the kind of
> comments on the difficulty of compiling GNOME from sources for various
> distros, with new nuances reportedly creeping into each newer release.
>
>         As to myself, I stopped using GNOME early this year after a few
>         years of
> using it and shifted back to KDE which has now become a lot more stable
> than it used to be. I have never compiled GNOME for myself, but once did
> compile KDE for Sun. The question is :
>
>         Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for
>         GNOME
> with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is
> still a very good window manager. Or would the burden of providing a
> distro specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
> developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?
>
>         What do you think ?

I don't get all the fuss about it. Use Dropline Gnome and be done with it.
Personally I'd say drop KDE too. If people want either WM they can get
Gnome via Dropline, and KDE via Konstruct.

Jenni

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

* Madhusudan Singh <spammers-go-here@spam.invalid> [alt.os.linux.debian]:
> As to myself, I stopped using GNOME early this year after a few years of
> using it and shifted back to KDE which has now become a lot more stable
> than it used to be.

Same thing here.

BTW allow me to note: your paragraphs suck. Please start them without a
tabulator. Your style provokes overlength lines when quoting.

> Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for GNOME
> with other distros ?

I hope that's not the case. ATM, I know about 3 DEs for GNU/Linux, 2 of
them are widely known (GNOME and KDE). I think it's a good motivation
for the developers, even when it isn't commercial, to have a competing
project.

> If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is still
> a very good window manager.

GNOME is NOT a window manager. Metacity is one, it's the default in
GNOME 2.x. Just like kwin (formerly known as kwm, which is part of the
KDE-project) is the default window manager in KDE. GNOME as well as KDE
work with every fdo-compliant window manager.

>_Or would the burden of providing a distro
> specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
> developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?

I don't think so. Commercial Distros are interested in delivering at
least one DE to their users. Debian wants to be a better alternative to
the commercials.

Greets, Felix

--
-|- Felix M. Palmen (Zirias)                     http://zirias.ath.cx/ -|-
-|- fmp@palmen.homeip.net   (PGP pubkey: http://zirias.ath.cx/pub.txt) -|-
-|- try out http://mini-chat.ath.cx/    !! I never read HTML emails !! -|-
-|- PGP Fingerprint ED9B 62D0 BE39 32F9 2488  5D0C 8177 9D80 5ECF F683 -|-

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* Jennifer Smith <jennifer@cathouse.mine.nu>:
> I don't get all the fuss about it. Use Dropline Gnome and be done with it.
> Personally I'd say drop KDE too. If people want either WM they can get
> Gnome via Dropline, and KDE via Konstruct.

Those are /not/ WMs! Himmihergott! (sry *g*)

Greets, Felix

--
-|- Felix M. Palmen (Zirias)                     http://zirias.ath.cx/ -|-
-|- fmp@palmen.homeip.net   (PGP pubkey: http://zirias.ath.cx/pub.txt) -|-
-|- try out http://mini-chat.ath.cx/    !! I never read HTML emails !! -|-
-|- PGP Fingerprint ED9B 62D0 BE39 32F9 2488  5D0C 8177 9D80 5ECF F683 -|-

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On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:57:43 -0400, spammers-go-here@spam.invalid wrote:

[..]
> Does the Slackware decision portend more difficult times ahead for GNOME
> with other distros ? If so, its a little unfortunate because GNOME is stil
l
> a very good window manager. Or would the burden of providing a distro
> specific set of packages for GNOME (and KDE perhaps) shift to the
> developers of GNOME (and KDE) instead of distribution providers ?

Patrick is considering dropping gnome for technical reasons (these are
from memory, so please correct me if I'm wrong); some of which are:
* The latest GNOME needs(?) Linux 2.6; Patrick is not using Linux 2.6
as the stock Kernel in Slackware just yet.
* GNOME is difficult (or more difficult than it could be) to build into
packages because many of its component packages do not support
installing into a pseudo root (usually done using a 'make' variable
named DESTDIR, TOPDIR or similar).  Therefore the way Patrick builds package
s
is to do a comparison of the file system before and after the build,
tidy up, Slackwareify the contents then turn it into a package with makepkg.
This is terribly time consuming but for non DESTDIR or similar 'clean' build
s
he likes to do it this way.
* A number of other technical problems he's experienced in the past which I 
can't
recall right now.

Whilst other people do contribute fixes, scripts and other things to Slackwa
re,
it's still Patrick who ultimately builds, tests and packages *everything*.
I have read comments in the past about how all Slackware is is just compiled
source put into a gzipped tar file: whilst that's essentially true, it's muc
h
much more than that. When a new version of a package is released it's not al
ways
a case of just changing the package version number and recompiling; changelo
gs
need to be read, scripts need to be amended.  It really is a long winded and
time consuming process, especially for one person!

--
Stuart Winter
www.interlude.org.uk & www.armedslack.org
| "Washing machines live longer with Calgon"

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Stuart Winter wrote:

> Patrick is considering dropping gnome for technical reasons (these are
> from memory, so please correct me if I'm wrong); some of which are:
>  * The latest GNOME needs(?) Linux 2.6; Patrick is not using Linux 2.6
>    as the stock Kernel in Slackware just yet.
>  * GNOME is difficult (or more difficult than it could be) to build into
>    packages because many of its component packages do not support
>    installing into a pseudo root (usually done using a 'make' variable
>    named DESTDIR, TOPDIR or similar).  Therefore the way Patrick builds pa
ckages
>    is to do a comparison of the file system before and after the build,
>    tidy up, Slackwareify the contents then turn it into a package with mak
epkg.
>    This is terribly time consuming but for non DESTDIR or similar 'clean' 
builds
>    he likes to do it this way.
>  * A number of other technical problems he's experienced in the past which
 I can't
>    recall right now.

There may be more to it than that. I also read in the patch Changelogs
about problems with Galeon (Gnome/mozilla based web browser) which occur
when Patrick updates to the latest Mozilla versions. Dropping
Gnome/Galeon and also Epiphany would allow continued use of up to date
Mozilla builds or even a migration to Firefox/Thunderbird instead of
Mozilla.

--
Regards
Martin Hughes
Linux User #283064
Blessed are those who expect nothing; for they shall not be disappointed.

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Every distro I know of except Slackware & Lindows/spire still includes
Gnome.  RedHat has it as the default, and SuSe is owned by Ximian.  I
don't think Gnome will be seriously hurt by Pat dropping them.

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Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote in message news:<2t62t4F1qq8ecU4@uni-berlin.de>.
.
> A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Jennifer Smith <jennifer@catho
use.mine.nu> wrote: 
>
> Neither Gnome nor KDE are window managers.
>
> They are correctly characterized either as:
>
>  a) Application frameworks, or
>  b) Applications created using those frameworks.

"Application frameworks". "Applications created using those
frameworks" are Gnome/KDE applications.

Maybe the annoying confusion around the term "window manager" stems
from the fact many so-called WM's provide functionalities that have
little or nothing to do with window management?

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