Re: [tlug] Ubuntu Gnome raves

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Raymond Wan writes:

 > I think Gnome (Metacity) is "old[er]", though I have to admit there
 > isn't much clear information about it.

Metacity goes back to the early 00s, and was a PITA for XEmacs
maintenance.  But I did like its design principles.

 > The link Charles sent was about Gnome (i.e., the first one in your
 > list).  But I guess Gnome and Gnome (Metacity) are similar?  I'm
 > actually not too sure...

Yes.  X11 is deliberately designed as a set of cooperative modules
that use screen space.  GNOME's basic concept is to extend that to (1)
a more standardized set of desktop tools (icons, dock, theme engine)
and (2) interprocess communication (originally CORBA, but I think
they've abandoned that in favor of dbus).  So you can just plug and
play window managers, and I suppose you're aware (vaguely perhaps)
that different TLUGgers have pretty strong preferences for different
WMs (icewm, metacity, fvwm are a few that come up).

 > I also was worried at first that I'd have to install everything
 > from scratch.  I know there may be conflicts with Unity and I'll
 > just have to uninstall them one by one over time...

I know several of the Ubuntu guys, and they're pretty careful about
that kind of thing.  Of course you don't get any guarantees if it's
not an LTS release, but they do try, it's pretty high on the priority
list.

Not-an-Ubuntu-fan-except-for-the-developers-ly y'rs,

Steve