gnome anyone?

[nishtya]

Hi there. I am a staunch fan and faithful user of kanotix right now, but close enough to knoppix that I still hang here (think kissing cousin, a wee bit more debian, that's all :D

Have been on a regular update/upgradefest here. I run a 2.4.x kernel, do have a knoppix cd that I have played with 2.6 on. Disappointed (in 2.6, not knoppix).

Anyhow, I am also a kde fanatic. If you gonna go GUI you might as well pull out all the stops :lol: But have been thinking about gnome lately. (yes, have run icewm and kind of liked it - also toying with the windowmaker). I was considering apt-getting the whole gnome lot. Thing is, I have seen a lot of posts in other linux forums that gnome may be a teensy bit possessive, some folks anyway have found it trying to take over the whole shebang.

Any experience among you in this area willing to lay some of your wisdom on me? I want to play with Gnome, NOT let it take over. KDE has behaved itself pretty well, I can put in an app or two without a major freakout and the only takeover it ever tried was KOffice over Open office (actually did like KO better, started faster) Anyhow, please give me the benefit of your thoughts and of your experience going about trying out gnome on a debian based install knoppix or kanotix. Much appreciated.

[mzilikazi]

Normally I prefer XFCE4 but I remastered Kanotix w/ Gnome just for yucks & grins. The install went flawlessly (of course it did - we ARE talking Debian SID here :) ) and works just fine. My only complaints about Gnome are:

1) No desktop wheeling!! bad! bad Gnome!! (That was a complete show stopper as I can't live w/out it).
2) Kind of slow. (About the same speed of KDE but definitely slower than XFCE4).
3) The background set method. You can't just browse a directory you have to teach the background mgr (or whatever it's called) where each individual background is (unless I missed that option).
4) No clipboard utility! boo!! (again I may have missed it).

If those things aren't of concern for you then you may like it. It looks very uniform, is very configurable, has some nice tools and Nautilus is an OK file manager although I always compare everything to rox-filer which simply blows all file-managers away hands down.

I don't think I know what you mean by "take over"

[champagnemojo]

It's safe to try it as long as you've got the space and all...which I'm sure you do. :D Just choose kdm as your log-in manager when it's configuring gdm (unless you wanna try gdm...which you could always go and change back later...but I don't like gdm myself). Otherwise, other than it putting a ton of extra stuff into your KDE menus, I've never had it take anything over. And I like some of it's programs. So try it...you may like it. I just find KDE to be much more feature-packed...which isn't always a good thing...but is for me. ;)

And I know what you mean about kissing cousin, cuz I'm now running an install of debian/sarge. But I like this forum...I don't wanna leave. :cry:

:D

[champagnemojo]

mzilikazi, I tried xfce4 after seeing you suggest it alot. I have to say that it looks really nice. My only complaint was that I couldn't get the hang of the file manager. I can't remember exactly what my issue was...I just remember it seemed very different from Konqueror and Nautilus. Maybe I just need to play with it more though. It was very fast though.

[nishtya]

aaww champagne what you want to go to testing for? It the tween. Doesn't get things near as soon as sid and nowhere near as stable woody, so WHY? :lol:

As for taking over, I meant gnome apps trying to steal associations or control *which is really not very common in linux. Like I said, only thing was koffice taking over docs and such but I have heard people on the other linux forums with much much bigger problems than that.

I have toyed with the lighter weight window managers flux and ice are really pleasing to the eye though I didn't see the big perfomance boost so many have spoken of (I have an older XP 1800 and just a half a gig of ram, 32 mb video too). But I was looking for more of a full fledged integrated GUI so did want to give gnome a whirl. I just don't want to be ripping it out of the guts of my install if you know what I mean. I like KDE, it has its quirks and it does gobble the resources but it is a nice integrated pkg. Why I wanted to try gnome, the other integration specialist :wink: the few gnome/gtk apps I use now are a wee bit gimpy, generally because I don't have all the gtk libraries needed for all the widgets. But they do work well and it does have a nice "suite" like KDE. Might just give it a whirl this weekend.

One thing, anybody have any hints on how I can mirror (totally) my current install on the other half of a 40 gig disk and try this gnome experiment there. Something painless for somebody who is never going to get certification as a Linux engineer :P

[nishtya]

PS, mzil...NO CLIPBOARD UTILITY? that suck mightlily. Have to think about this though I really can't imagine it could be. Wheeling desktops, I don't care about..I only have one so wheeling wouldn't be much fun :wink:

[champagnemojo]

Dang it...it's bad when you don't even know the proper name for what you're running nish. :lol: I suppose I'm really running sid, because I used the sarge installer but then upgraded everything to unstable. Don't tell anyone. :P

I've never had gnome take anything over that I can remember though. I really don't think you'll leave KDE for gnome though...there really isn't any noticeable speed-up for most things.

I once used partimage to make an image of a knoppix install a while back. It was really easy to create the image (which was stored in two gzipped files). And then I installed it back into another partition, which was also easy. I know there are other options...but that's the only one I've ever used, and I would use it again.

[mzilikazi]

PS, mzil...NO CLIPBOARD UTILITY? that suck mightlily. Have to think about this though I really can't imagine it could be. Wheeling desktops, I don't care about..I only have one so wheeling wouldn't be much fun :wink:

You may very well like Gnome. I have to say it is as good a desktop as any I've tried. I suppose it comes down to personal preferences.

As for xffm (xfce4 file manager) it's not so good. Fortunately we have ROX. ;)

[mzilikazi]

champagnemojo You ARE running SID! :)

[nishtya]

Well, my previous experience with gdm is from morphix and gnoppix live CDs. Both I didn't care for for others reasons rather than gdm. Morphix I was stumped about how to get online with a dialup (apparently the live CD "suggests" broadband, this is no good because I really can't try out distro without going online). Gnoppix crashed and crashed some more when I tried a hd install. I found that odd because it was basically just my Knoppix with gnome and knoppix went fine.

Maybe this weekend I will suck down gnome packages on my spare machine (on a blazing 33.6 dialup) and have a go with it on the spare next weekend (when it is through downloading :roll: )

Champagne - I mix up the code names all the time, too. I rather just call them stable, testing and unstable :lol: I have partimage and would like to try, the description I think said for reiser and ext2 - I use ext3 (which is just ext2 with journaling, no? ) don't suppose I can hurt anything trying :wink:

[Durand Hicks]

Nish,

I tried out GNOME a while back, and personally agree with some of the posters as regards the various quirks about GNOME. I even did a debian install using the sarge netinstaller and installed GNOME and enlightenment, but was unable to use enlightenment because I couldn't find out how to modify gdm to show the different window managers like kdm. Next was the lack of scrolling on the desktops, the lack of power options in nautilus, various other things. However, on the whole GNOME is simple enough, that I think it would make a good interface for a newbie who just wants to use the computer rather than tinker with it. KDE is definitely for the power user but it's bloated. I do like and make heavy use of konqueror as the file manager in enlightenment, because of the right-click power user options. Nautilus has a nasty habit of taking over enlightenment's desktop and robs me of it's power user options that I really crave. I'm still trying to work out the quirks in ROX-filer, and it seems that it doesn't automatically update the mime-data info like konqueror does. As you can see, I'm a big fan of enlightenment, and I make no bones about it. It's small, fairly quick, and has the right mix of power user options and eye candy hands down, IMO. But with Linux being all about choices, what works for me doesn't necessarily work for everybody else. If there was a way I could rip out a huge portion of KDE and leave just the necessary parts I want/need, then I would have a small and quick installation that I would like to back up to an ISO.

[champagnemojo]

Champagne - I mix up the code names all the time, too. I rather just call them stable, testing and unstable :lol: I have partimage and would like to try, the description I think said for reiser and ext2 - I use ext3 (which is just ext2 with journaling, no? ) don't suppose I can hurt anything trying :wink:

I know, I'm bad with names period. :lol: Partimage does support ext3. I didn't realize you were on dial-up though nish...now I see why you wanted to make sure gnome was worth a try before you went for it. :D

mzilikazi, I'm trying rox-filer out now . It's not bad...very fast. Is there any way to change the text editor it uses though?

[mzilikazi]

mzilikazi, I'm trying rox-filer out now . It's not bad...very fast. Is there any way to change the text editor it uses though?

It took me a while to figure out that one but it's actually quite simple. Find a file that ends w/ .txt. Right click>Set Run Action. Then open up the directory w/ your editor in it (rox /usr/bin for example) and simply drag the executable over. Now when you right click and select Open As Text it will use your editor. You can also customize the Send To menu.

[nishtya]

is there no limit to the wonders of KDE? :lol: Might rethink bothering with gnome at all.

This morning, noted a new KOffice but didn't want to leave it downloading in case of tstorms while at work. So just played around this a.m. with konqi as a file mgr some (I still feel it a poor second to moz as browser/email...and I use the WHOLE mozz-not too mention konqi isn't anywhere near as cute as moz). Anyhow, have been upgrading ALSA and had an audio cd in there to be sure sound was still working (it has been, yay...I upgraded ALSA 8) successfully! ) Anyway, took another look at konqi's "audio browser". I think it was a konq plugin I installed (I told you, I shop for debs, love KPKG :) ) Oh, and I know about the bug with not being able to eject a cd if you had konq on audio browsering it when you closed konq :lol:

Anyway, noticed in that audio browser an "mp3" folder. Thought that odd because this is a stamped, regular audio cd. Took a look. Guess what? Konqi can rip CDs.....TEEEHEEEE! I spent last weekend installing lame for KAudiocreator...and I guess it carries over to konqi. That is just too adorable (and a little unsettling MS-IE-like :shock: ) Damned if KDE isn't a well-rounded little bugger. (but I am still sticking with Moz as long as I can for my browsing/email :D )

Champagne- glad to hear that partimage will handle my ext3 and my windows/fat32 disk is fast becoming storage for my linux squeezes and it would be nice to tuck an image of my main squeeze there :)

[mzilikazi]

Guess what? Konqi can rip CDs.....TEEEHEEEE! I spent last weekend installing lame for KAudiocreator...and I guess it carries over to konqi.

I didn't know that. I just type 'copy' from cli and in a few minutes the cdrom tray opens and asks for a blank and burns the copy. :)

Or type 'burn image.iso' and again the cdrom tray opens, you put in a disc an moments later your .iso is burned. Even easier, click an *.iso from rox-filer and .......you guessed it.

How? Simple scripts. I always thought it was just overkill to have too many buttons and windows when all you needed was a simple command. Don't get me wrong, I like my Linux desktop and spend 75% of my time there. Sometimes tho scripts really make life easy for you.

[nishtya]

mzi, I love my command line, too. And I have been using it a lot lately as I got into more KDE-ness (to see just why something isn't working, the errors are nice to be able to note :) in the gui, it just usually dies a slow blinking, timeout death. It is very nice to see niceties (sp?) that even XP doesn't offer. I remember getting a sick sort of chuckle that XP could burn from its file mgr and doh, even look inside zip archives like a regular file (gee, linux does that). But this ripping thing from a file mgr in linux is really so, well, damn adorable :) I went through hoops to rip in windows, with aspi layer this and that. And all I need to do in linux is like "browse" a cd and copy or open it from the mp3 folder. That is cool. I am old and easily impressed LOL, but I think it very cool :)

[mzilikazi]

Errors! :) One of my favorite things about Linux. Not that we get them of course but that they are actually useful. Unlike the following:

"The application <insert app here> has crashed and will be closed by Windows."

Wow.....that is the most helpful thing I've heard all day......

As I've said before, I think it's only end users who enjoy Windows so much. I've never heard "Oh boy my windows netowrk is so easy to administrate."

Oh and another thing. Why is there a job title of "Outlook server Administrator"

It takes so much attention that it's become a job title?!?!?!?
You gotta have a degree to run one server?!?!?

Well, the point is, whatever your GUI as long as you've got Linux behind it you're doing all right by me. It has nothing to do with opinions about this that and the other. It has to do with facts and the facts are the Windows is hosing up my network!

I think it's all a matter of trying it out for a bit before you begin to see the advantages of Linux. It isn't something that can simply be explained by charts, graphs and *cough* TCO studies. Linux is an experience.

I may yet get an urge to try KDE but not until K3B can make a 1:1 DVD-9 to DVD-5 copy. When that happens let me know......