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RT @nichtsokleijn: Issue 17 of the GNOME Journal is all about Women In Open Source: http://bit.ly/68fT6l Linux FOSS
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Preview of the future GNOME desktop shell on an Ubuntu tablet PC
In the past two weeks, I've been test-driving the gnome desktop shell preview on an Ubuntu powered tablet PC. It was a really interesting experience in that it allowed me to have a little piece of idea of what it will be like to use the open source GNOME desktop in the near future. I've used it both in my everyday life - I tend to use my computer a lot - and at work, mainly for web development. ie: to get things done, not to tinker, hack or play around, This is the point of view of a user who just wants the operating system to stay out of the way.
Disclaimer: It is future technology, this piece of software is in its early stages of development and it is not meant to be used by non-developers / testers yet. I'll ignore the quirks and bugs I encountered (there weren't that many and apart from not being as reactive as a regular ubuntu karmic and having some hiccups from time to time, things went pretty well)
So, first things first: The gnome shell is a piece of software that handles things like starting applications and switching between them. It has basically two states:
The first one is when I'm using an application. The shell is then the only visible user interface element that is not part of the application window. Its most important part is the "Activities" button on the top left corner of the screen.
The second one is the activities view which I could enter either by touching the activities button when using my fingers or by "hitting" the screen corner with the pointer when using a mouse or the trackpad.
The activities view scales down the application windows and places them so they don't overlap, along with a side panel on the right hand part of the screen, which shows the icon and name of each running or frequently used application. (there is a subtle glow effect behind the behind the names of the running applications which makes it easy to tell which applications are running), a places part composed of the icons of the "Places" menu of the current GNOME desktop, and a list of the last documents opened.
There is a big (+) button on the bottom right of the screen that creates vritual desktops on the fly when clicking on it.
If you're a MacOSX user, you can think of the activity view as a mix of spaces, exposé and the doc, all at once, and if you use Ubuntu, it's like if the compiz scale plugin, X11 virtual desktops and Gnome-do's docky interface had a threesome.
You can drag and drop any icon or window to a workspace in order to move or open the application, file or folder in this workspace,
There is a search input and a 'more' button on top of the application icons that displays something that looks like the current GNOME's 'Applications' menu.
When clicking on an application icon, the shell takes you to the application if it's running, or launches it if it's not, Simple, right ?
The user interface creates a flow that's pretty obvious: When using an application, to do something else, touch the activities button or move your mouse to it, then click the big (+) button and select or search for what you want to do or open. This way, windows do not stack, they remain perfectly organized, and that's a no-brainer.
Needless to say that all of this is animated and windows move smoothly when you reorganize them, change workspace, start applications etc.
GNOME shell is particularly well adapted for both touchscreen and traditional laptop navigation, so I could go from laptop mode to tablet mode with real ease (I usually put rhythmbox in fullscreen on it at small parties, with the display rotated (so it looks like a small touch panel) and I let the people browse and select music.If I need to type faster than with the on-screen keyboard, I go back to a laptop and everything goes really smoothly as the shell is as suited to touchscreen navigation as it is to traditional laptoppy touchpad + keyboard navigation or a mix of the two.
In a nutshell, (no pun intended) the GNOME shell really is promising and as soon as I came back to the traditional Ubuntu desktop (plain "old" GNOME 2.28 and compiz) I started missing the shell's power and simplicity. It still feels way more natural than the current GNOME. I'm eager to see what the gnome community will do with it, especially about zeitgeist integration.
I hope you found this interesting !
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Dual Monitors take 2
Decided to try a stacked configuration. Working pretty well this way.
#openSUSE 11.2 FTW :-)
Supporting multiple machines in GNOME using VNC
I was recently asked how to configure VNC for user support across a series of machines running GNOME. I'm in the process of trying out a few different platforms at the moment, and didn't have my GNOME machine to hand and working right, so I decided to work it out from what I've done in the past. Here's the bulk of the e-mail I sent him to try and help him out. Maybe this will help you at some point.
If you find any errors (especially around the option names in the actual dialogue boxes) please post a note so I can correct this!
Thanks!
On most GNOME based systems (which includes Fedora), you can active "Remote Desktop Sharing" for users.
Go to System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop Sharing (or something similar). I'm afraid I've just recently moved my systems to KDE, so I don't know the exact options, but I believe it'll say something like "Enable remote connections" (tick that), and "User is prompted to permit connection" (this will be down to policy) and "Remote user needs to enter a password" (this will need some text to be entered). Once you have these for one system, you can automatically set this for all the other computers. From the command line, typegconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/remote_access This will return all the settings you have made. Here's mine: view_only = false
alternative_port = 5900
prompt_enabled = false
icon_visibility = client
lock_screen_on_disconnect = false
disable_xdamage = false
mailto =
use_alternative_port = false
enabled = true
disable_background = false
network_interface =
require_encryption = false
authentication_methods = [vnc]
vnc_password = &&&&&&&&&&&&
use_upnp = false (I've removed the password for my box) You can use this gconftool to set the same variables on your computers you've already deployed, either per-user, as a default policy for each machine, or as a mandatory policy for each machine. This article from Sun's GNOME configuration guide explains how to set variables: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-6878/6jfpqt2t5?a=view while this is an overview of all of the GNOME configuration tool (including that article): http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/806-6878/6jfpqt2sv?a=view and lastly, this is how "Vino" the VNC client for GNOME works: http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/remote-desktop.html I hope this helps you!
Gnome shell is starting to become interesting
Some time ago, I tried gnome shell to see what it was like: ugly and full of bugs. Today I've given it another try and it's full of awesomeness !
Gnome Shell
One of the next best evolution of gnome 3 has a name: Gnome Shell
It's a great change in the desktop concept. On the same screen, you are able to launch application, find last document, create, delete, select a virtual desktop in an all-in-on full integrated 3D interface.
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Epiphany browser version 2.28 package in debian is webkit based. About f___ing time they made the switch! webkit epiphany browser gnome
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GNOME 2.28 Released
Today, the GNOME team has released GNOME 2.28. It builds on the solid foundation laid out by all the previous releases, and adds in a number of new features and improvements, on top of all the bug fixes and performance improvements, of course.
via osnews.com
That's great! Just hope to have it soon available in the updates of my Ubuntu boxes...
