Gnome 2.26 – Small review of interesting features
Hi,
Lets do the same order as the gnome release notes only with my opinion about them and of the items that deserve a little more attention.
Brasero
Brasero always seemed to be the burning tool to use under linux. Or the one most used. It didn’t made much sense to have nautilus-cd-burner (which has been removed in gnome 2.26) while most people preferred brasero. Brasero is also integrated in nautilus (go to
Brasero screenshot
Brasero in nautilus
Totem
This is a good example of a feature that might be required by some people but is useless for most. Quote from the release notes:
While GNOME’s Media Player already has the ability to display subtitles for a movie, this still required you to have the subtitle data available. As of GNOME 2.26, this restriction is gone. Using the new subtitle downloader plugin, the Media Player will automatically find subtitles for you.
I don’t understand why they bother to add in features like that (and remember they did add in youtube support in either gnome 2.22 or 2.24) that are pointless for most people. This should be just a plugin that you can download somewhere but not a new feature mentioned in the release notes.
Updated sound preferences for PulseAudio
Now this is an interesting one! PulseAudio is in Fedora since release 8 and ubuntu has it since 8.04 so it was about time that those volume controls where going to work with PulseAudio instead of against it (or so it seemed sometimes). Sadly the application that gnome posts in a screenshot is nowhere to be found on my ubuntu 9.04 Beta (fully updated) machine so i can’t really say more about it without seeing it for myself.
Multiple monitors
If you have just one monitor you probably don’t care about this but it’s something that was divided in the past. Ubuntu had it’s own application to get this. Fedora had one and there where a few others floating around. Far from an ideal situation. Now Gnome has updated his display program to support multiple screens. This was all possible with the xrandr command line tool but a graphical frontend it quite handy for things like this. It’s becoming a nice tool now and way more centralized then then it used to be.
Epiphany
This browser for (and by) Gnome looks clean but has a lot of potential. I will write a bigger article or perhaps a review about this one later. What they added here is Firefox’s “Awsome Bar“… it looks funny and seems to be running fast from what i’ve seen so far. It’s definitely a browser to check out and see if you like it.
Epiphany - Note the wrong render of the legend box. That's bad and ugly! (no issue in Firefox)
Overall Gnome 2.26 impression
With the previous 2 releases (2.22 and 2.24) i found the release notes weak and more useless stuff that was added then useful stuff. Back then it seemed (to me) that they added what was popular at the time. Google had just bought Youtube and they felt some need to implement that in Totem. This time they did also include stuff that strikes me as useless but the majority seems to be useful for everyday Gnome usage. This release was a good one, despite the additions that i rather didn’t see, for Gnome although not much changed visually. This seems to be the release i’ve been hoping for since roughly 2.20. A release where they finally fixed the things that needed fixing and add the things that are needed.
Next in 6 months: Gnome 2.28
There are already some ideas for the next Gnome version. At this moment only the Artwork section for the next gnome has been filled in and that looks promising. If you want to have a look at it click here.
I hope you liked this small review of interesting new and updated Gnome 2.26 features.
Till next time,
Mark.
Ubuntu screwed up and didn’t include the upstream GNOME volume control but their own hack. Use a distribution like Fedora if you want the upstream software
Hello,
I’m sorry, I dont use fedora any more at the moment I use Sidux (latest Debian-Sid with many improvements)
This comment is to WARN YOU, you have NEW comments unread on your post “playing ASF files”
Regards,
Alejo
Lejo,
I know i have new comments! no need to “warn” me about them.
mark,
do you really think the totem feature isn’t that important?. to tell you the truth, i think this are the most important upgrades… the ones that make the end user life easier!
i mean most films are made in english but just a few countries in the world use english as their primary language!.
besides, people keep saying linux is ready for prime time… i think not, but this are the changes that will make it happen! most people don’t want to mess with things, they just want their computer to work (myself included)!
in my few years using linux as my only os (been only using it since suse 9.2) i found out that most linux users/developers are a little narrow minded, “linux is all about choise, so we added 3 web browsers, 5 text editors and who knows many… (insert whatever you want in here)”.
what i’m trying to say is, it is great to have choises but as long as everything else works without a problem! and this are the things needed to make linux mainstream. so even if you don’t get to use a sertain feature, it doesn’t mean it is not worth it.
ignacio
ps: english is not my native language so a few things might have come wrong :S
ignacio,
Well i think the feature is nice but on the wrong changelog. I just think that those pure extra extra features have no place at all in the Gnome release notes. They should be just installable plugins that you can download for example on gnome-look.org (don’t know if it’s downloadable there but that’s just my idea).
Lets take KDE as an example. When you want to change the plasma theme you now get a nice list of available themes from kde-look.org. And in the KDE release notes you won’t find things like: Added theme aero because users like vista’s look… (just an example!)
Totem should learn from what KDE has done in there plasma theme stuff and quit adding things like “totem subtitle plugin” in the release notes.
O and this isn’t narrow minded. This is just thinking in a expandable object orientated way. Keeping the core programs as light as possible with just the core stuff to work and have a flexible plugin system that allows you to adjust the program in every way you want. Or that’s how i would like to see things.
Mark,
I’m sorry to tell you that your Totem comment, it’s not only narrow minded, but even offensive for every non-English speaking person out there.
As you should know, most North-American movies are in English (what a surprise, eh?). And as you should know too, most movies this days come from USA. But even if they weren’t, if you were a bit more open minded and you watched more than the average hollywood movie, like French, Russian or even Spanish/Latin American ones, you would understand and even appreciate this feature. Too bad you don’t think foreign movies are worth your time.
This is an ESSENTIAL feature to every person that watches foreign movies. And we non-USA inhabitants are really happy that it’s not a ‘simple plugin’.
Regards
Why is automatic subtitle fetching superfluous? Maybe so for an English/Amerian/Australian who watches only films in English, but for the wide majority of people in this world, subtitles in movies are a must. And facilitating that is crucial.
The funny thing is, just today a friend of mine told me how cool the latest BSplayer is. I’m not at all a fan of BSplayer, I mostly use VLC and SMplayer both under Windows and Linux. But I gotta admit that these players still lack features that proprietary piece of crap had for ages.
So kudos to gnome developers they put that feature in totem.
Hope one day they’ll implement bookmarks and tabs in evince. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Leonardo,
I am a non english speaking native (add what you want) person (dutch) so i should be in favor of this stuff.. i’m not because of the reasons given. And i do look at movies in other languages.
It’s fine with me that others have a different opinion about it. My opinion is just what i gave.
mark,
i’m sorry but i think i didn’t make myself clear enough…
modularity wont make linux ready for the average user, out-of-the-box functionality will!!! and that’s what the whole community (besides those damn elitist users) should be aiming for.
let’s forget for a while our admin dutys and start thinking as a regular user… what’s so great about installing your brand new sistem and instead of start watching movies, browsing the web, and a whole bunch of other activities, we HAVE to configure everything so we can get to do what computers should make easier for us to do in the first place? (yeah, i know, a little confusing, sorry, but the idea is hidden in there)
maybe i’m a little off topic here but there lies the difference in our points of view. this is a huge step in the right direccion! not because of it’s usefullness but because of the paradigm shift, we should focus all our attention on the end user! that’s where the ‘money’ is!!!
some projects have been doing this for a while, others are just starting but one thing is for shure (asi se escribe ‘seguro’?) i just cant hide mi smile everytime i see improvements like this one!
ignacio
oh, one more thing… mark, your opinion is just as valid as everyone else’s, more so in your own blog! but ones you (anyone as a matter of fact) start doing journalism work, you should be as objective as possible and let the reader decide if they are in favor or not of the related issue.
but well, that would be true in a perfect world, right?…
ignacio,
I personally just rather see those features get added per distribution (ubuntu, fedora etc..) then per project (kde, gnome etc..).
But your point is clear! no need to further clarify it for me or any reader.
Our opinions just differ which is exactly the point in linux and is no problem at all.
> Why is automatic subtitle fetching superfluous? Maybe so for an English/Amerian/Australian who watches only films in English…
No need to include Australians in this. We have a national Special Broadcast Service (SBS) TV network which broadcasts programs from all over the world – from almost everywhere. Many excellent programs, with English sub-titles added for the majority of the population’s benefit. We are quite adept at reading sub-titles, thank you very much.
I am a non native English speaker, like the overwhelming majority of this world. I agree with Eric, the subtitles feature in totem is more than welcome.
Once upon a time, people thought that the celestial bodies rotated around the Earth…
Хм, к размышлению…