GNOME improvements: catch-up with the Mac
I just read an article about eight interesting improvements in GNOME 2.22, and I was hoping that maybe this time around they came up with at least one original idea of their own. Alas, once again the oh so innovative Open Source community is all but playing catch-up with Leopard…
It is a sad developement if the best what creative young minds can come up with nowadays is a rehash of Apple’s ideas and even half baked versions of those at best. I was hoping that especially with an open and independent operating system architecture like Linux the community would much more advocate trying out radical new ideas for interfacing with computers.
I was hoping someone would even build their own hardware device to interface with Linux, doing totally crazy things to try out what the next generation user interface could be. But the community is so much into either making Windows clones (godFSM forbid!) or Apple clones (from the GUI approach mostly sad OS 9 clones…) that they forgot even how to spell innovation.
GNOME web browser
Well, what can I say? It uses WebKit now, look how we innovate!
Evince Document Viewer
Quicklook works better, looks better and has a better name. And it wasn’t even very original when Apple introduced it in Leopard. It’s handy, but hardly innovative.
Cheese
GNOME’s attempt of a photo booth clone. Too bad that GNOME can’t do all the supercool core graphic and core video stuff. But hey, at least they tried to innovate imitate!
Mousetweaks
Somebody call the police, this actually looks like a useful original idea!
Vinagre
VNC client. Stores passwords in the GNOME keychainring. Oops. Well, it still takes less clicks for me to set this up on Leopard. A VNC server was included even with Tiger (Remote Desktop for Tiger was basically an enhanced VNC solution). This wasn’t even remotely innovative when Apple included it in the system (but the way Remote Desktop works is), so this is one of the more interesting features of GNOME?
Swfdec
Great marketing name. It will be engraved in my synapses forever. Or at least for the next 2 nanoseconds. Now they’ve done it. Not enough that Flash annoys the shit out of me on the Web (except YouTube—I give ‘em that—and maybe one or the other Flash based cartoon animation), but now you can also get annoyed on the desktop. And it creates icons for swf files. I wonder how it does that, i.e. since most Flash files are interactive non linear thingies and leave the first frame almost empty for technical reasons, you’ll end up with a black icon unless the plugin is wise enough to create the icon not from frame 1, but frame 20 or so.
Totem
Another great marketing name. Not enough that Linux users are often considered as a weird cult of GPL zealots (yes, we Mac users used to be called similar names, so please take it like a man, we’ve had our share of insult for decades now), software names like “Totem” just really help getting rid of the preconception. I’m really waiting for other great applications with names like “black cat”, “broomstick”, “first born child”, “excorcist”, “fetish”, “rumpelstiltskin” (isn’t that the name of a Ubuntu version?) and much more.
But I digress, it now can play YouTube and MythTV stuff. So it’s gotten support for flv that is? Neat. I’m floored.
Rhythmbox
Well it supports PSP and itms:// type links. You know “itms” as in “iTunes Music Store”. Erm. Nuff said.
I’d immediately rush out an download the newest Ubuntu release, but unfortunately—speaking of first born child and things, that is probably exactly what you have to give them to make your wireless networking work on a MacBook Pro, or has that finally improved?
this article on your favourite site.
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