chrookee wrote:David James wrote:asa wrote:What Gnome are you using? I'm using Red Hat Linux 9 with whatever gnome they ship (maybe 2.2?) and it's really quite spiffy and functional. I don't think a single one of your complaints is anything I've experienced ever on gnome.
Right now I can't even start Gnome up; there's some sort of post-install configuration issue (the joys of using Debian Sid)... it is 2.2 though.
Here's a screenshot of one of the
problems using KDE with GTK2+XFT.
If you are using Gnome 2.2 then there is a "desktop preferences" menu in gnome that allows you to change a bunch of configurations like themes, fonts etc. You might want to give that a try.
I got Gnome fixed, but it still sucks as far as I'm concerned. FB-gtk2 and TB-gtk2 simply do not take up the specified
Gnome theme and fonts when they're used under KDE3. If I run the Gnome Control Centre from KDE I can get those settings applied but it rewrites my background image in KDE and basically just causes me grief (for example, the KDE short cut Alt+F2 to launch an application ceases to work). By contrast, in Gnome KDE apps continue to use the KDE theme that I set in KDE. If that weren't bad enough, ever since I upgraded to GTK2 all my GTK1.2-based apps -- except for some peculiar reason Firebird -- have incredibly ugly fonts. That includes Thunderbird, Gftp and the Gimp unfortunately.
This is what an xft-enabled (but no gtk2) Firebird build
looks like in KDE3.
David James wrote:On a somewhat related sidenote, I really cannot understand the appeal of Gnome. Everytime I start up an app I have to click somewhere to establish the top-left position of the window otherwise it just follows the mouse around all day. The "desktop" also moves around like every other app window. Customizing is a PITA; can't change colours at all and there is no single interface for changing settings.
I can't prove my fist claim because I can't take a screenshot whilst the app is in this "limbo" waiting for a mouse click. I'd have to take a photograph but it is incredibly annoying. However, this is how it
looks the moment after the mouse click. I cannot for the life of me understand how such an idiotic way of doing things was even conceived, let alone implemented. The second, I can prove. This is a screenshot that clearly shows the
desktop to be a window like any other. Again, why anyone thought this was a good idea I do not know. The third is the way Gnome's settings are
controlled. Each item opens up a new pop-up with one or two preferences each. Want to change a whole pile? You have to go through the menu *every* time. There is also no control for system colours, so I can't even get KDE and Gnome to use the same colours for the same things. Compare that to
KDE3's control panel. It's a tree with just one level of expansion (unlike Mozilla's). You can change dozens of settings in one operation. This is all very unfortunate because some of the best Linux apps out there are gtk-based: gftp, gimp, galeon, etc. It's just that the Gnome desktop environment is markedly inferior to KDE and Windows.
Like I said, I really can't understand the appeal of Gnome and I definitely cannot understand Mozilla's infatuation with it to the point that it actually hinders use in KDE when you try to get non-ugly scrollbars/dropdowns (see my pic of oversized fonts when using GTK2 builds in KDE).