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REVIEWS Gnome 2.16

What’s new in the new Gnome 2.16 desktop? NEW GNOME

The changes in Gnome 2.16 are more than cosmetic: the current release sees a leaner and faster version of the desktop.

BY CHRISTIAN MEYER

ust six months ago, when Gtk#. The libraries makes it easier for Although , the original Gnome Gnome 2.14 reached the mirror developers who prefer not to use to , does not support all Jservers, the Gnome developers enter the world of Gnome. Gnome bind- the effects I just referred to, it will still proved they can set milestones without ings are available for C++, C#, and perform well with the new 3D X servers. sacrificing usability. Programs such as Python. The features are not enabled by default, the Deskbar applet demonstrate the but enabling them will give you a first power of Gnome’s underpinnings, pro- 3D Desktop impression of the capabilities you can viding an attractive GUI that is both effi- In last couple of years, much time and expect with the new X server extensions. cient and remarkably uncluttered. money has gone into investigating new You don’t even need to terminate the The latest 2.16 version adds a variety GUI concepts. One of the results is the current session (that is, log off and back of new features, and there have been Looking Glass project [1] by Sun Micro- on) to disable the effects. major improvements with respect to per- systems, which gives users the ability to formance and memory consumption. tilt and swivel windows on the desktop. Improved Themes The Nautilus file manager is just one ex- Novell and took a different Gnome 2.16 has an improved icon ample; it now benefits from more robust tack with [2] and Aiglx [3]. Both theme; based on recommendations by algorithms. projects have a cuboid desktop, which the Tango Project [5], a large collection The Gtk# libraries are a new addition. users can rotate by pressing keys (Figure of icons have been replaced by improved The note-taking application is 1). In addition to this, the desktop may and more intuitive variants. On the other an example of a new feature based on have Exposé [4], wobble, or fading ef- hand, some icons have been removed. fects if the window manager supports Tango introduces guidelines designed them. is a plugin-extensible to standardize the look and feel of the Christian Meyer started using window manager for which a couple major desktops, Gnome and KDE. As the about ten years ago, and has fo- cused on Gnome for the last six of dozen plugins are available as of this Gnome theme follows the Freedesktop. years. He is the chairman of Gnome writing. Compiz integrates seamlessly org icon naming specification [6], it will Germany, which was founded in with Gnome, as it was originally devel- also work on KDE or . The new 2004. You can mail Christian at oped for the Gnome desktop, although icon theme also supports non-pixelizing,

THEAUTHOR chrisime@.org. Novell now uses their own Linux Enter- scalable icons, a feature that Gnome has prise Desktop. supported for some time.

40 ISSUE 74 JANUARY 2007 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM Gnome 2.16 REVIEWS

With respect to window dressing, has been replaced by the new Clarius theme. The scroll bar is in a more modest gray, rather than shocking blue. And there is a simple reason for this: many users disliked blue scroll bars for being too reminiscent of Windows, and this led to a call for a return to the previous look. You can check out the Gnome blogs for comments on the old and new themes [7]. The Evolution calendar module has also seen some improvement, with de- velopers relying on the 2D graph- ics library for the to-do view. Appoint- ments are more easily distinguishable against the background with drop shadow highlighting on editing. Enter the Gladiators As previously mentioned, the integration of the Gtk# library prepares the way for corresponding applications; and ever since the release of , a free .NET implementation, they have been sprout- Figure 1: The now-familiar Xgl cube courtesy of Gnome 2.16 and Ubuntu. ing like mushrooms. The first Gtk# application to make its way into the when you left click the Tomboy applet. tive interface and more options for cus- Gnome kernel is Tomboy, a note-taking If you are interested in your hard disk tomizing the Gnome menu (Figure 4). application. usage, Baobab can be a big help (Figure is now a core element in Gnome Tomboy (Figure 2) is extremely easy 3). Baobab will either give you the low- 2.16, following a number of modifica- to use; just click the applet with your down on the whole disk, or on a selected tions to bring it in line with the Gnome mouse and select Create new note. This directory. The program also has a neat Usability project’s Human Interface opens a window where you can com- graphical view that gives you a dash- Guidelines. pose a note. Tomboy supports Wiki- board view of your disk space. Just like the menu editor, power Words. management now has a fixed place in WikiWords are characterized by upper Alacarte Menu Editor Gnome. Power management has a few case letters at the start of the word, and Some distributions, including Ubuntu, features that you may be familiar with other positions within the word, just like introduced Alacarte to replace Gnome’s from Windows, with a few graphical the word “WikiWord” itself. Tomboy un- own menu editor. It is easy to under- goodies thrown in: take the charge status derlines WikiWords and links them to a stand why: Alacarte has a far more intui- history, for example, that shows you note of the same name. This is a simple way of linking topics. A keyword search against all the current notes gives users an alternative approach to coping with information overkill. Words that do not map to WikiWords can also be linked with notes. To do so, simply select the word in question, and click Link. The smart helper can also identify email addresses; left clicking an address launches Evolution. Tomboy also has a spellchecker that underlines errors or unknown words. You can then select a correction from a list of suggestions. If needed, Tomboy can highlight words in italics, bold type or a larger font. If you are done with a note, you can delete the note to remove it from the table of contents that appears Figure 2: Tomboy helps you manage notes efficiently.

WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 74 JANUARY 2007 41 REVIEWS Gnome 2.16

desktop experience for a user working in Gnome 2.16: • The screen pager now supports the ability to move windows between virtual desktops. To do so, just drag the icon for the window to the target desktop. • The file browsing dialog now displays a URL entry box that appeared after pressing [Ctrl]+[L] in previous ver- sions. You can hide the box by press- ing the button in the top left corner. • Gnome Terminal now launches about 20 percent faster than in Gnome 2.14, adding support for genuine transpar- ency, assuming your X server supports this feature. • The Eye of Gnome (), Yelp (help browser), Fileroller (archive manager), and () have all seen minor improvements. And the Figure 3: Baobab gives users a dashboard view of disk space usage. number of Gedit plugins has also grown considerably in the past few how the battery charge/ discharge rate avoid consuming as much power as in months. The plugins include exten- changes over time, or an Estimated Time AC mode. sions that turn the editor into a fairly History curve that gives users the ability The Python-based Orca capable Python IDE. The official Gedit to read the charging time and remaining by Sun replaces the fairly ancient Gno- Plugins package now has 12 exten- battery power time (Figure 5). pernicus. had a number of sions, with more available on the The Device information tab has some user interface weaknesses. For example, Gnome Plugins website [8]. useful information, including the capac- large screen fonts in previous versions • The Epiphany browser now supports ity, the current charge, and vendor-spe- meant that Gnopernicus failed to read spellchecking and underlines any cific battery charging. The event log de- the user interface. Orca can either give incorrect spellings in form fields. tails the events since switching on your you spoken output or Braille output via a • The latest version of Totem adds audio laptop. You can use the preferences to Braille keyboard. Orca keeps the magni- and video capabilities to the side bar. specify your laptop’s behavior in battery fying glass that Gnopernicus introduced. At the same time, the media player or AC mode. Many programs use the now supports XSPF, which means that D-Bus to talk to the power management Minor Improvements users can exchange playlists with applet. In battery mode, you can tell A variety of minor improvements to vari- other users. Browser integration has these applications to take it easy and ous applications improve the overall been improved and will now work

Figure 4: Customize your menus with the Alacarte menu editor. Figure 5: Gnome 2.16 provides improved power management utilities.

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better with proprietary codecs than in cided to ditch the cryptic - previous versions. style labels and have opted for • The new screen saver introduced with intuitive descriptions instead – the last version can now display the Create and delete files, for exam- selected image in full-screen resolu- ple. Apply permissions to en- tion. Just like other applications, the closed files applies your selec- screensaver uses D-Bus to talk to other tion recursively to subdirecto- programs. This helps the screensaver ries. The dialog also shows you let other applications know that the the SELinux context and has workstation is locked. support for Access Control Lists. File Manager News Deskbar – Simply Nautilus launch speed deficits, which Powerful were exposed just six months ago, have Many Gnome users will be fa- been addressed in the new version. Ad- miliar with the deskbar applet, ditionally, developers have completely which provides a simple but reworked the access privilege dialog – a very powerful interface for point of contention for many weeks on launching programs and the mailing lists. Up to now, recursively performing searches. Pressing modifying file and directory access privi- [Alt]+[F3] pops up the applet’s Figure 6: Bug Buddy collects crash information. leges was a complex process. Users entry box. sometimes had no alternative but to dig The look has changed slightly the computer, or the Window Switcher, down through the directory structure compared with the previous version, as- which lets you access windows by enter- and change permissions throughout. suming you checked Button in panel in ing their names. The new dialog removes the need for the deskbar properties. And there are a Many additional extensions are avail- this, giving admins more insight into the number of new extensions, such as the able as downloads from the Gnome Live required operations. The developers de- ability to Log off, Shutdown and Suspend web site [9]. The install is quite easy:

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WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 74 JANUARY 2007 43 REVIEWS Gnome 2.16

just unpack the package in ~/.gnome2/ ously external libraries with Gtk+ under Metacity Composition Manager by de- deskbar-applet/handlers and enable it in the umbrella of the Ridley [12] project. fault and to add more effects. The devel- the Extensions dialog below Preferences. The main candidates for this integration opers are also aiming to push for stan- The extensions are immediately avail- are poorly maintained and buggy dardized bookmark management and to able. The Gnome Wiki at [10] has details libraries. expedite migration to the Gtk+ printer of the roadmap. The point of all this effort is to remove API. the complexity of programming for Thanks to the Ridley project, you can Simple Troubleshooting the Gnome environment. Four of nine expect more libraries to be made redun- When a Gnome program is hit by a bug classes from the Libegg prototype dant – this may include Libbonobo(ui), and freezes, Bug Buddy pops up on your library, and two of seven classes from the Gnome component framework. screen (Figure 6). The program collects Libgnome(ui) have already been inte- Some applications replaced the team of crash information and displays a dialog grated with Gtk+ 2.10, with others to Bonobo/ ORBit with the desktop-inde- where you can add your own comments. follow in the next version. pendent D-Bus communication library in Bug Buddy has been part of Gnome for a The Libgnomeprint and Libgnomeui- the past, as D-Bus supports both Gnome long while now. print libraries have now been tagged as and KDE. Gnome 2.16 sees the introduction of a deprecated and should no longer be new interface and underpinnings for the used. More to Come program. Bug Buddy now collects a de- Besides slowly wearing down the pile Gnome has a tradition of adding more tailed backtrace, including kernel and of libraries required to build Gnome, and more applications to the core with distribution version information; at the Ridley also reduces memory consump- each release. Right now, the proposal same time, Bug Buddy requires less tion and improves the launch speed of phase for Gnome 2.18 is well underway, input from the users. You don't have to Gtk+-based applications by reducing the and members of the Gnome community go through a time-consuming Sendmail number of libraries that applications are debating possible additions. The or Postfix configuration because Bug need to load. most promising candidates include a Buddy uses XML-RPC to talk directly to Gtk+ now also supports a touchscreen scanner born during Google’s “Summer Bugzilla. mode, which will benefit users with mo- of Code,” the GnuPG front-end , bile devices. Last but not least, the and an LDAP administration program World Class Printing Gnome core library, Glib, and the that simplifies the task of setting up the The need for a new, platform-indepen- text rendering library now support Uni- arcane, LDAP configuration. Even as dent printer API in Gtk+ arose because code 5.0. This support for Unicode 5.0 some promising new applications are support for the Libgnomeprint and makes Gnome the first desktop system added to the mix, some older, unmain- Libgnomeuiprint libraries has been capable of handling somewhere in the tained applets will be removed and dropped. This loss of library support led region of 100,000 different characters. replaced. to changes within Gnome, which led to a The web team [13] is currently at- heated discussion of the resulting print- Gnome 2.18 Preview tempting to spice up Gnome’s Internet ing services, in the course of which We can look forward to exciting develop- presence. For more details, check out the Linus Torvalds referred to the Gnome ments in the near future. As I mentioned ideas and plans in the Gnome roadmap developers as “interface Nazis” [11]. earlier, there are plans to enable the [14]. ■ The develoeprs have risen to the chal- lenge and will be integrating the missing INFO functionality in version 2.10. Some [1] Sun Looking Glass: http:// www. sun. com/ software/ looking_glass/ Gnome applications already use the new feature, Epiphany (web browser), [2] Xgl: http:// www. novell. com/ linux/ xglrelease/ (document viewer), and Yelp (help [3] Aiglx: http:// fedoraproject. org/ wiki/ RenderingProject/ browser) to name just a few. Both CUPS [4] Apple Exposé: http:// www. apple. com/ macosx/ features/ expose/ and the ancient but ubiquitous Lpr are [5] Tango project: http:// tango. freedesktop. org/ Tango_Desktop_Project supported in Gnome 2.16, giving users a [6] Icon naming specification: http:// standards. freedesktop. org/ icon-theme-spec/ good choice of printing options. icon-theme-spec-latest. Updated Libraries [7] Clearlooks vs. Clarius: http:// blogs. gnome. org/ view/ thos/ 2006/ 08/ 28/ 0 [8] Plugins for Gedit: http:// live. gnome. org/ Gedit/ Plugins For many months, developers have fo- cused on integrating a number of previ- [9] Plugins for the Deskbar applet: http:// live. gnome. org/ DeskbarApplet/Extending [10] Plans for the Deskbar applet: http:// live. gnome. org/ DeskbarApplet GLOSSARY [11] “Interface Nazis”: http:// mail. gnome. org/ archives/ usability/ 2005-December/ msg00022. html XSPF: XML Shareable Playlist Format [12] “Ridley” project: http:// live. gnome. org/ ProjectRidley (say “spiff”) is an open and portable for- [13] Gnome Internet site reorganization: http:// live. gnome. org/ GnomeWeb mat for playlists under the Xiph.org Foundation umbrella. [14] Gnome roadmap: http:// live. gnome. org/ RoadMap

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