Very Computer

I just installed Red Hat 8.0 and got my first
exposure to Red Hat's Bluecurve interface and
Gnome 2.  So far,  this has been a frustrating
experience.  Here are a few miscellaneous
questions:

1.  Is there still a way to get rid of Nautilus?
At version 1.06,  it's still lacking,  and,  given
that it's not much better than it was a year ago,  I
don't see it's worth sticking with.  

Or am I wrong here?  I'd love to be convinced otherwise.
Nautilus seems to lack some basic file managing
features and to compare poorly with file managers I
used many years ago under other OS's (like FM/2 under
OS/2 in 1994 and later).  Does anyone care about adding
more advanced capabilities?  Are people even still
developing Nautilus?

2.  One small point (among many others):  Midnight
commander has a "new terminal" command that launches a
gnome terminal in the current directory.  Does Nautilus
have such a command?

3.  The --working-directory=DIRECTORY option of
gnome-terminal 2.01 doesn't seem to work.  Can anyone
confirm or explain this?

4.  The command line options of gnome-terminal 2.01
seem to be significantly different from those of
earlier versions.  The credits for gnome-terminal 2.01
list only Havoc Pennington.  Earlier versions of
gnome-terminal listed other contributors.  I don't
enjoy this kind of game.  Am I off base here, or what
the heck is going on?

5.  Where is gmenu,  or the equivalent,  for gnome 2?
How am I supposed to change the menus?  Where is this
stuff documented?

6.  The gnome control center has been turned into some
strange nautilus folder that seems considerably inferior
to the old control center.  Not everything even works.
For instance,  double clicking the "Preferences" icon
causes an error message:  
  Nautilus has no installed viewer capable of
  displaying "preferences:///.directory".
I'm not talking about anything obscure here.  Am I
missing something?  In my book,  this isn't even close
to okay for a shipping product.  Doesn't Red Hat have
any pride?

7.  The capabilities of the control center are quite
a bit diminished from what they were in gnome 1.4.  Is
this progress?  Do the gnome 2 developers think improving
the ui means dumbing down and removing features without
improving the quality of what remains?

8.  I'm not even sure if Sawfish is still the window
manager;  there's no window manager capplet in the
control center.  If not,  what's the window manager?
How do I configure it?  I used to have some useful
functionality bound to keyboard and mouse keys.  How
do I do that now?

Why isn't this stuff documented?  I don't know what to
make of all this.  Are Red Hat/Gnome/Linux developers
on the MS payroll?

9.  I'm not even sure who to be upset with,  linux,
red hat,  gnome,  ...  Would I have better luck
switching operating system?  Distro?  Would I be
better off switching to KDE?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

If you do groups.google.com you on

Nautilus AND (Disable OR Rid OR Remove)

you will find a number of strategies for getting rid of Nautilus with
varying degrees of effort and effectiveness.

Quote:> At version 1.06,  it's still lacking,  and,  given
> that it's not much better than it was a year ago,  I
> don't see it's worth sticking with.  

> Or am I wrong here?  I'd love to be convinced otherwise.
> Nautilus seems to lack some basic file managing
> features and to compare poorly with file managers I
> used many years ago under other OS's (like FM/2 under
> OS/2 in 1994 and later).  Does anyone care about adding
> more advanced capabilities?  Are people even still
> developing Nautilus?

I suspect that RedHat cares very much.  The RedHat engineer with whom I
engaged in a lengthy online debate about Nautilus and about RedHat
dumping half-baked on software on unsuspecting users earlier this year
suggested that I take my concerns to Bugzilla.  I am reasonably certain
that RedHat is still funding work on Nautilus, having chosen it as its
equivalent of the Windows Explorer.

My biggest complaint about Nautilus is that it is a resource hog and
slow.  It seems to have gotten better over the last year, but I don't
have any data to support that.  It still feels like it takes forever to
open up /etc in the file tree.

Quote:> 2.  One small point (among many others):  Midnight
> commander has a "new terminal" command that launches a
> gnome terminal in the current directory.  Does Nautilus
> have such a command?

If you like you can add a script to do this by putting the script under
~/.gnome/nautilus-scripts.  The executable will then show up on the
scripts menu of Nautilus.

<snip>

Quote:

> 8.  I'm not even sure if Sawfish is still the window
> manager;  there's no window manager capplet in the
> control center.  If not,  what's the window manager?

No, it's using a window manager called metacity.

Quote:> Why isn't this stuff documented?

The documentation on the RedHat site is actually pretty good.  I use
google to search redhat.com.  The RedHat Linux 8.0 Customization Guide
and Reference Guide are good places to start.

<snip>

Quote:> 9.  I'm not even sure who to be upset with,  linux,
> red hat,  gnome,  ...  Would I have better luck
> switching operating system?  Distro?  Would I be
> better off switching to KDE?

Meaning no offense whatsoever, but you've been asking questions that are
easy to answer using standard techniques (google, the redhat site,
looking at what processes are running using the system manager, help
menus, apropos, etc.).  There is nothing wrong with asking questions
like that, but it seems odd for you to be asking questions like a
beginner while at the same time taking hard shots at RedHat.

RedHat appears to be trying hard to make Linux more appealing to a
broader public.  IMHO, they have generally moved in the right direction,
but it will be hard for them to please everybody, and it will be
impossible for them to please everybody right away.

RM

        I don't know if this will help as I have never
seen Red Hat 8.0, but I am running Gnome 2.02 as my
default desktop. I downloaded the sources from gnome.org
and built this myself.

        The current version of Nautilus for Gnome-2 is 2.07,
  not 1.06. Since menus and Desktop preferences are edited
from Nautilus using the pseudo-folder, "Start Here", I'm not
surprised that you are having problems. Although it has some
  crocks, this file manager seems quite slick.
It has a superficial resemblance to the file manager supplied
with Microsoft Windows '98 but with many more features.
        Incidentally, although Nautilus 2 does not have an
explicit option for launching a terminal, if you double-click
on an exec script it will give you the option of running it in
a terminal. There seems to be crock in this as it does not
set the terminal's working directory to the directory in which
the script is stored.

        I tested gnome-terminal 2.01 with the command line
option, "--working-directory=DIRECTORY", It worked fine.

  Although one can use other window managers,
I am using sawfish 2.0 at the moment. It is configured
via a background menu. Press the middle mouse button
with the pointer on the desktop background to get the sawfish
menus. You can add workspaces, set up mouse behavior and
all the usual stuff.
        Assuming that Red Hat has the default directory
layout for the Gnome 2 desktop and you are using the gnome
session manager, you can set the default window manager
by editing the file [Path to Gnnme2]/share/gnome/default.wm,
where {Path to Gnnme2] is likely to be /usr/local/gnome-2.0 or
/usr/local. In my case it is /opt/gnome2.

I built the Gnome 1 desktop about a year ago and never
used it, preferring Xsession and fvwm2 with the file manager, xfm.
  The version of Nautilus that I built then was 1.06.
I didn't think too much of it. I thought mc was obsolete
and deleted it.

        One of the problems with Gnome 2 is that most of the
applications built for Gnome still require the Gnome 1
libraries, so one has to keep at least a partial installation.

        You mention problems with the documentation. I noticed
that also. The gnome-help browser (called yelp) is fine for context
sensitive help when launched form an application or panel but not
too good at browsing. I haven't yet found where it get it's catalog,
which is incomplete. For instance, to browse the User Guide,
I had to use a terminal and go to the directory,
[Path to Gnome 2]/share/gnome/help/user-guide/C, and
type "yelp file:/[Full Path to xml file]" to read the doc.

        I hope some of this helps. In my humble opinion
Gnome 2 has the potential to become one of the best Desktop
environments ever.

M. H. Anderson