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1. Found the distribution hard to installi
Since I use the Gimp (and other GTK 1.0 apps) regularly, I installed a 'development' installation of RedHat 5.1 on a empty partition of my computer. I *highly* recommend doing the same with this -- or any other -- beta software when possible. The GNOME also requires the most recent versions of several other libraries, many of which require new versions of other libraries. A great source of updated libraries and information is available from RedHat Labs imlib page:
http://www.labs.redhat.com/imlib/ Here are some details about my installation: First attempt, I gathered up all the updated graphics libraries and GNOME 0.30 rpm files and put them all into a directory /install on my RedHat 5.1 system. The system had all the appropriate errata patches applied. Here are the files I had:
You should notice that although this is considered the 0.30 release of the GNOME, some of the libraries were version 0.25 or 0.27, rather than 0.30. Since my first install, some of the updated packages were available from the GNOME ftp mirror. I used these (source) for my second attempt at installing the GNOME.
I installed these directly on top of the existing libraries from my first attempt. I should also mention that RedHat 5.1 installs some of the older GTK libraries (pre v1.0, in fact) by default. It also installs some old versions of the gnome core libraries (for reasons I could not divine.) In my second attempt at installing the GNOME, I created a directory called gnome_install/ and moved the above files into it. I then untar'ed and ungzip'ed them, and ran the standard
$ ./configure
commands, all under the root account.
2. Found the distribution and many of its applets immature.
Keybindings, for example, were not standard. The Gnumeric spreadsheet used a Ctrl-Q combination to exit, the sound mixer uses Ctrl-E, while the gnomecal calendar program used a Ctrl-X. The Gnumeric spreadsheet also did not prompt me to save changes to spreadsheet -- it just quit. b. It seems that many of the applets are re-inventing the wheel. The same could also be said for the KDE, but how many versions of solitaire, CD players and calculators does one really need. It would be more helpful, I believe, to create more intuitive interfaces to existing Unix programs like cron, apache, sendmail and pppd. Good things 1. The obvious. The GNOME is built entirely on free software -- the core, programs *and* libraries are all free in terms of source and price. That's important, because as Linux continues to rise in popularity, no one will be able to start charging for any part of it. At the same time, I have seen on the web that there is a project to create a workalike of the QT libraries upon which the KDE is built. 2. No required Window Manager. Although the KDE does not require a certain window manager, one misses certain function when not using it (such as the 'execute' command). The GNOME not only gives you total freedom to use whichever WM you choose, there are many HOWTO's that show you how to better integrate your existing Window Manager with the GNOME. 3. I found the GNOME website very helpful. In particular, the bug tracker was a great stress reliever -- I realized that other people were having the same problems as I was. Seriously, the website had a lot of relevant content and linked to even more. I think that the GNOME has a lot of potential. Despite the fact the it is only in 0.30 Beta, it is fairly usable by someone already familiar with Linux. The GNOME project is also developing rapidly -- it really just started to pick up the pace this year, while the KDE project began in 1996. I suspect that the GNOME will be of value to even new Linux users in a few months.
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Permission to use material from the GNOME website was kindly granted by Michal Fulbright.
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