Shane Fagan » Gnome-shell

Debunking Gnome 3 myths

Shane — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:34:30 +0000

Some people are slightly confused about what Gnome 3 actually is. The biggest myth is

Gnome Shell == Gnome 3

Actually its very far from the truth, in fact there is a lot of work that has nothing to do with user interface.

The second biggest myth is

Gnome will drop all support for Gnome-Panel

Actually it will be fairly easy to go back to Panel if you dont like Gnome-Shell its just “gnome-panel –replace” in command line.

Here is a list of some of whats going on (If I forget some please feel free to comment and add them).

You can see the release announcement here. For one its a redefining of the user experience with Gnome-Shell. Its also Gnome activity journal which will bring a new level of convenience to the desktop. There will be a lot of integrating of web technologies like webkit and javascript(which is what gnome shell is written in). A lot of outdated technologies will be deprecated and new technologies introduced. A new Gnome website too.

Gnome-Shell
There is some cool mockups and info about shell here.
This is the one huge change, removing the old gnome panel written back eight years ago and replacing it with a new fresh user interface. It is written in Javascript and uses CSS for theming. Gnome Shell uses Clutter for the display and it is very exciting looking at the beauty of Moblin which uses Clutter already. It features a simple desktop and an activities area that gives and overview of workspaces and allows the user to do all of what it does currently. It also has a built in notifications system and will soon get its own applcation indicators. Its not a huge change but it adds some new eye candy to the Gnome experience.

Gnome Activity Journal and Zeitgeist
This is very cool and has a load of awesome applications throughout the desktop. Zeitgeist is an engine which simply gets your activity from the programs you use, files you open, pages you open, code you view or edit and so on. Gnome Activity Journal uses Zeitgeist, tracker and telepathy to offer a complete timeline of your activities and the history of your files. Telepathy integration is also coming for to the journal for added collaboration.
What Zeitgeist offers is that it replaces GTK recently used and it can show you what activities you do most for each program. Zeitgeist and tracker will have all the information about you and your files and will add a never before seen level of information and relevance. Here is a nice video of Gnome Activity Journal in action.

If you cant see it click here if you still cant see this get Firefox or Chrome

Use of web technologies
The use of web technologies is very important, it enables developers from the single largest area of development to contribute. It also leverages all the goodness being done in this area. So we can use webkit to make a really cool program made using HTML, CSS, XHTML, Javascript, Ajax… Also as I mentioned above Gnome Shell is being written in Javascript to lower the barrier for new developers coming from other platforms.

Deprecation of old technologies and increasing use of new ones
Cleaning up is awesome, the Gnome platform hasnt had a big clean up in a long time and its starting to get crowded. The main changes are moving fully over to the dbus and moving to dconf. This will streamline the platform substantially.

The new Gnome Website
This looks really awesome.

So whats coming is a clean up, a new user experience, new technology and a new website. I hope this post clarifies Gnome 3 for people and I hope you are as excited as I am

More gnome-shell messing from me

Shane — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:54:57 +0000

I was playing about with docky (its based from gnome do but its for window management) so I put it in gnome-shell for the window management. Have a look I also have the ubuntu netbook launcher too.

Ubuntu Netbook launcher Craziness

Shane — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:36:08 +0000

I had an insane idea. I thought how about installing the Ubuntu netbook remix launcher and run it inside Gnome-Shell. It turns out that it looks awesome. I love it

Ubuntu 9.10 are we ready?

Shane — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:39:06 +0000

I was wondering what effect a release of Ubuntu 9.10 being released at the same time as Windows 7 and Mac “Snow leopard”.
First thing we have to ask is are we ready?
I think no but Karmic+1 we will be in my opinion. Some things that other operating systems have by default we are missing.
Totem and Rhythmbox need to be replaced very soon. I think this is the most clear problem to most users switching. Maybe Banshee is the answer but its not ready yet maybe Karmic+1.
As we have seen with the most recent Mac releases and also Windows Vista looks matter. We dont have anything really nice looking and running without problems. Gnome-Shell should fix that but its being released in April (ish) too so it may not make it into Karmic+1.
I think we really need the app centre. Its in development but id love to have it in before Karmic+1, ill even help out if they need anything simple done. The problem with the current system is you get people using synaptic package manager and breaking their systems. Advanced tools aren’t needed by 90% of users so maybe we should remove synaptic and make users install it if they need something more advanced.
We should have media sharing in some form DAAP or UPNP or icecast (by default?).
Its great that the media are starting to see Ubuntu and linux in general as a good alternative. I just dont believe this October is going to be our time to make a real push against Apple or Microsoft but April or next August we should be ready for the battle ahead.

Ubuntu Development

Shane — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:45:13 +0000

I was wondering what is the preferred language for free software developers?
[polldaddy poll=1903950]
I plan to start developing for ubuntu in Karmic+1. The reason why im asking about what is the preferred language is because ubuntu and linux distros in general have a mix of languages. Rhythmbox is written in C and the update manager in ubuntu is written in python…etc. I know that languages all have a purpose, like python is great for making a program quickly but because its a scripting language it isnt as fast as C or even Java.
Novell obviously uses C# because it created Mono and it would be a PR nightmare if they made the language but didnt use it.
In Gnome-Shell interestingly they use JavaScript for the front end code and instead of using GTK, they use clutter (Because it looks awesome).
I just find it really interesting how many development languages are being used.

Gnome-Shell

Shane — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:16:10 +0000

I have been busy the past month so I haven’t had a chance to try out the most recent builds of Gnome-Shell I looked today and I have to say its looking really slick. I took a few screenshots

It is looking awesome but the bottom bar is gone. I like the idea of having one bar but in the current branch there is nothing to control the windows other than alt+tab. I love the idea of breadcrumbs in panel to have the window management in the one bar. The sidebar is still a little ugly too. It is after getting faster since I last played about with it, in particular the application and document search. Still Gnome-Shell is looking a lot better than Gnome-Panel in my opinion.
I still wonder how canonical and the ubuntu developers will change it. The black look of Notify-OSD would look really at home I think.

My views on KDE and Gnome

Shane — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:32:39 +0000

I am a Gnome guy I have always been but I have to say I recently started being annoyed by a few little things. I looked at KDE the one in the karmic repo I dont have a clue what version they are on now and im quite surprised. I had tried out KDE back in ubuntu 8.04 and I was very disappointed but everything that I hated has been changed since then more or less. The fact of the matter is that KDE has what Gnome doesnt which is good applications all around and a good looking UI. Gnome-panel looks bad but they are doing something about it.

There is no excuse for the bad choice of media players Rhythmbox and Totem are ugly and dont hold a candle to any other program that competes with them. Banshee, Songbird, Amarok, etc and the proprietary ones in other operating systems Windows media player and itunes all put Rhythmbox and Totem to shame. The one thing that Totem has is the browser plugin but that will be not needed when the tag comes into Firefox (3.5 which is going to be included in ubuntu 9.10 I hear). Evolution is also very bad too.

Then for Ubuntu and Debian related nonsense you have two ways to install programs add/remove and synaptic, as well as an update manager and software sources managers couldnt we integrate all them into one big program? KDE has this cool thing also that notifies of tasks to do and suggests installing of packages etc which is very nice. The KDE desktop is very tidy and has nice applications (Widgets) running for your convenience that are very flexible so they can be used by a wide array of people in different ways Gnome doesnt have anything to this effect and thats a real shame. Of course KDE looks better than Gnome but again with Gnome 3.0 that will be about even.

It weird because gnome is the default for many distros probably more than KDE but still it seems like many UI problems and inconsistencies are still in Gnome. We need to be creative and collaborative and revamp the lot. Some days the Free software community seems to be too big for its own good, too much talk (or too little in a lot of cases) not enough definitive decisions. Gnome needs a direction, KDE has one and they have the strength to push towards that and that is the main difference between KDE and Gnome in my opinion. Canonical, Red Hat, Novell etc anyone who has an interest in Gnome seems to have a direction that they want it to go and thats good but it seems like they are all going in different directions (and interestingly all use different programming languages). Its good to see such interesting developments but each cook makes his or her chicken soup differently and that is a problem that leads to inconsistency.

So in short KDE is number 1 I think at the moment in terms of UI and consistency, but I am still exited about the future of Gnome as long as they make a consistent user experience and put in the best applications for the users sake.

Pyclutter Music Player

Shane — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:13:04 +0000

Artir from the Zeitgeist team showed me how to use clutter today. Its quite interesting and got me thinking. He is making a video wall program using clutter it is quite a nice idea. He has a video of it up on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4NNGlz7d1k) have a look. I was thinking a music player would be quite nice. Gnome-Shell looks fairly cool so a cool music player would be a good step. I drew up some ideas and I quite like them.

They aren’t labeled but it is a basic interface based loosely on how banshee looks. Id like the background of the music window to be semi-transparent like the top bar in Gnome-shell and the main controls and the library to be placed on that background. The one on the left was my concept of Zeitgeist integration for the program. On the right side of the picture is a bar, it would be used for tagging of songs. So the user can tag the song and play all the songs with that tag as a playlist.
When its minimised id like for it to drop into the sidebar that has been included in Gnome-Shell for a few weeks now. So play/pause, next and previous would be added there. Id say control using the dbus would make that easy to implement.
The cluttergst would make playing the music very easy so the UI and the library would be the first hurdles.
Anyhow its only an idea id like some comments on what you all think.

Regards
Shane_Fagan

Gnome-Zeitgeist

Shane — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:20:44 +0000

Ive started contributing on gnome-zeitgeist so I decided that ill explain it.
Firstly here is the url http://zeitgeist.geekyogre.com/
and on the gnome website http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist
And finally on Seif Lotfy’s website http://seilo.geekyogre.com
and on launchpad https://launchpad.net/gnome-zeitgeist
In a nutshell zeitgeist journals the users workload as a log of what you have done over the past few days.
So if you looked at a video, listened to a song, looked at a document zeitgeist will journal it.
Its useful if you didnt finish something, you can go back to it the next day or a few days after.
Also you can also tag and bookmark your activities, to help you find them later.
We are currently making plugins for rhythmbox, banshee and pidgin as well as fine tuning the UI.
In the future it will be integrated into Gnome-Shell and hopefully will be included in Gnome 3.0.
If you want to help drop into #gnome-zeitgeist on gimpNet.
You can grab the current development version of zeitgeist with
“bzr branch lp:gnome-zeitgeist” (Without the quotes using bazaar)

Follow up on my gnome 3.0 post

Shane — Sun, 03 May 2009 13:36:28 +0000

I can mark a few of my points as done or at least being done as we speak.
If they replace rhythmbox and totem with banshee it would fix my point about having a unified media player like itunes or windows media player.
Gnome-Zeitgeist has file tags and makes it easier to access applications etc.
Shaking up the desktop look and feel is being tackled on a few fronts by gnome-shell and by ubuntu in recent releases.
Gnome-shell also uses multiple desktops to good effect.
My two other points aren’t being done. Id say that maybe my point about web services integration is a little ahead of its time but I think it would be good to look into. Evolution on the other hand is a nightmare in UI terms and we really should make an effort to make it better.