Re: Did GNOME go 1.0 too early?

[bratsche dfw net]

These files are not all required for a "complete" GNOME setup. They're
merely the newest available programs that can be used with GNOME. Most of
those are not official GNOME components. Here's the stuff you really need
to install:

  GLIB and GTK+ 1.2
  GdkImlib 1.9.x
  ORBit 0.4.0
  gnome-libs 1.0.1
  gnome-core 1.0.1
  control-center 1.0.1
  mc 4.5.23

The rest of the stuff you listed doesn't matter as much. GXedit, Gnumeric,
gnome-pim, gnotepad, ee, gedit (etc) are just applications; gnome-objc and
gnome-python are just bindings to other languages and not much needs them
right now that I'm aware of; Enlightenment is only a window manager, and
is definitely a non-essential item (which is good considering how big of a
download it is! *whew!*). Etc, etc. Rather than thinking "Oh shit, look at
all the stuff I need to build to run GNOME!" you should be thinking "Oh
shit, look at all this cool stuff they've got ready for 1.0 already!"

On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Andy Kahn wrote:

> ditto here.  i was hoping the installation method would be ironned
> out before the 1.0 release, but was very disappointed when i found
> out all the files i needed to install for a "complete" GNOME setup:
> 
> 	GXedit1.22.tar.gz
> 	ORBit-0.4.0.tar.gz
> 	audiofile-0.1.6.tar.gz
> 	control-center-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	ee-0.3.8.tar.gz
> 	enlightenment-0.15.0-19990225.tar.gz
> 	enlightenment-conf-0.12.tar.gz
> 	esound-0.2.8.tar.gz
> 	fnlib-0.4.tar.gz
> 	freetype-1.1.tar.gz
> 	gdm-1.0.0.tar.gz
> 	gedit-0.5.1.tar.gz
> 	glib-1.2.0.tar.gz
> 	gnome-admin-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-audio-1.0.0.tar.gz
> 	gnome-core-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-games-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-libs-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-media-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-network-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-objc-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-pim-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnome-python-1.0.0.tar.gz
> 	gnome-utils-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	gnotepad+-1.0.8.tar.gz
> 	gnumeric-0.15.tar.gz
> 	gsl-0.3b.tar.gz
> 	gtk+-1.2.0.tar.gz
> 	gtk-engines-0.5.tar.gz
> 	gtop-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	guile-1.3.tar.gz
> 	imlib-1.9.4.tar.gz
> 	libghttp-0.99.2.tar.gz
> 	libgtop-1.0.1.tar.gz
> 	libxml-1.0.0.tar.gz
> 	mc-4.5.23.tar.gz
> 	users-guide-1.0.tar.gz
> 	xchat-0.9.1.tar.gz
> 	xscreensaver-3.07.tar.gz
> 
> 
> that's 39 separate files.  who on EARTH (especially those non-technical
> users) want to go about installing 39 separate files?  (i'm not going
> to go into how complicated the installation instructions are from the
> "old" getting started guide...)
> 
> what's worse, i followed the download link(s) from the press release
> itself: http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome-1.0.shtml
> 
> this gave me two more links to choose from: a link for precompiled
> Redhat 5.2 RPM's, which brought up a page that simply said,
> 
> 	"This page isn't yet finished. Please try our older getting
> 	started guide. "
> 
> or another for compiling from source which said:
> 
> 	This page isn't yet finished - please try our older getting
> 	started guide for now. 
> 
> 	      1.Download the tarballs. A listing of FTP site mirrors
> 		is here.  Once in the top of the GNOME FTP directory
> 		tree, go into the gnome-1.0/sources directory and
> 		download all the .tar.gz files. 
> 	      2.
> 
> 	Next Section
> 
> 
> that's right, an incomplete page!
> 
> overall, this 1.0 release looks very much like something done in
> Redmond, where you push a product out way before it's actually ready
> for public consumption, just so people get the impression that the
> next great thing since sliced bread done baking.
> --andy
> 
> 
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