dropline GNOME

dropline GNOME project status

admin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:31:37 +0000

From time to time somebody comes into our #dropline channel on irc.freenode.net and asks if we need some help, or any other thing. Yes we need your help, and we want to continue to develop our beloved desktop. In case you are one of those who steps in the channel and asks something, don’t worry if you do not receive the answer immediately. It is because we are from many
different time zones, and especially not a hugely populated channel. But sooner or later your answer comes. So please if you have an will to help, step in and wait there for somebody answering you. Of course we are not developing here to live, but we are doing it for our own passion, therefore don’t expect it to be perfect.

In many years I’m here with that project we had ups and downs, but important is that we are still here, probably now its a longer down period, but hopefully this will soon be over. In my personal opinion a community project needs to be driven in some way from a person or few of them, but it should be mainly done by the community. In our case it is like this just that our community is small and therefore we need more time to do the things.

Right now we have some packages done for Slackware64-13.1 , if everything goes ok, and time permits it, soon we will be ready with them and finally release our new gnome desktop, after a longer time without updating it.

Again, there is plenty ways of helping. Some time ago somebody asked if we were in need of an editor, I can say, yes, we need an editor, we need any kind of help, so we need people from the filed of graphics, themes, audio, video, and so on, not only programmers or packagers. There is a very very large spectrum of the things we can do and improve.

That’s it for now and if you want to join us , you are more than welcome !!

The dropline GNOME development team.

Development and help….

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:49:23 +0000

Hi to all of you who are interested in our work ! If you think that we are stopped you are wrong. There is some people working on the upcoming release for dropline GNOME 2.28 desktop. We all know that gnome has released their 2.28 version of the desktop tarballs and we are trying to bring it to you as fast as possible.
Personally I’m very busy with my work and since we have just few people now in the team we always need help on building the desktop. If you are one of this persons who has enough time, forces and knowledge, please don’t worry to step into the #dropline channel on irc.freenode.net and ask for how you can help. There will for sure be somebody who will be able to answer you and direct you in the right direction. Don’t worry if you doesn’t receive your answer immediately , this is because all of the people in the channel are from different places of the world and with different time zones. So maybe they are slipping at the time you ask. Also you can subscribe to our development mailing list, and post your questions in there. Forums are also up and running and if somebody likes to use them you are free to do it.

Anyway, the development is going on , and if you look at our wiki you can see the progress of the work. Also you can check the ChangeLog from our svn or look at it on our web page. For sure is one thing, we will release the dropline GNOME 2.28 and make it even better of what we did with our 2.26 release. Our policy is not to hurry and not to release what can be a dangerous or not well tested desktop.

Again thanks to all of you guys taking the thing into your hands and building stuff.

- The dropline GNOME Development Team.

Website updates and other stuff….

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:30:42 +0000

Its not a long time since we released dropline GNOME 2.26.3, and I can surely say that the team has already begun working on the upcoming release for the dropline GNOME 2.28.x release, which hopefully will take less time than it took for the current one. But lets wait a little bit and we all will see. Our opinion is that its better to wait a little bit more and deliver a well done product than just have it done quickly and not so well.

Anyway, to do a better work for the upcoming release we are calling people who wish to help us with the various parts of the project. One of those is for sure to keep the website up to date, and possibly update the look of it. If you are interested in doing this, please join up the mailing list or come in into the irc channel and let us know.

- The dropline GNOME Development Team.

dropline GNOME 2.26.3 released!

admin — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 03:49:28 +0000

Hi, all I can say is that it took as a long to make a new release, and since the forces we have are not so strong, it was clear that we shouldn’t postpone it any longer. So, quoting the famous words, we’re going to “release early, and release (more) often”.

So, without further ado, it is a pleasure to announce the long-awaited stable release of the dropline GNOME desktop! This release includes the GNOME desktop, and its dependencies, at version 2.26.3.

Please get the installers from here:

Slackware 12.2:
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/i686/2.26/dropline-installer-2.26.0a-i686-1dl.tgz
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/i686/2.26/dropline-installer-2.26.0a-i686-1dl.tgz.md5

Slamd64 12.2:
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/x86_64/2.26/dropline64-installer-2.26.0a-x86_64-2dl.tgz
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/x86_64/2.26/dropline64-installer-2.26.0a-x86_64-2dl.tgz.md5

With this release we would like to thank very much Mr. Bart Van der Hall, a.k.a. Tyrael, who has really brought forth the build process at the beginning of the works on this release. Also a big thank you goes to Tiago Salvador, a.k.a. salvador_br. And, lastly, to Renato Cunha, a.k.a. trovao, who worked with us for a long time and I hope some day we see him back.

Many thanks also to all of the other contributiors and helpers like mohaa, juice, shadowx, Dagmar, Church, B3rx and Daga who are always helping us in the irc channel, in the forums, and elsewhere in the community.

Many many thanks to you all. Some parts of our website are still out of date and we intend to be fixing one page at a time. Also, I can say that work on the next upcoming release, which will be available for Slackware 13.0 and Slackware64 13.0, has already begun.

Last but not least, we are always in need of people willing to help us with the package creation and maintenance process. If you are interested please do not hesitate to contact us.

Many thanks and enjoy the release.

- The dropline GNOME Development Team

Dropline GNOME 2.26.3 RC2

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:49:56 +0000

Hi, its been a while since we have announced anything in here on the main web page. I think its time now that we can say something which will be interesting to all of you who are still waiting for the unreleased gnome desktop you prefer. So lets start to update you with some interesting stuff.

1) As you maybe know this time we are in sync with 2 archs the usual one on i686 with Slackware 12.2 and on x86-64 with Slamd64 12.2. Since at the time of preparing the gnome 2.26 we didn’t knew that there will be a Slackware 64bit variant. Next release of dropline GNOME will be most probably based on the 64bit Slackware version also. As for Bluewhite we had reports that this release should also work.

2) Our development has been moved on the trac platform supplied by sourceforge.net, so all bug reports and problems, wishlists and other stuff related to dropline should be in a unique database there. They are now called with a new name, which is tickets. You can see them here or add a new ticket here but you mush have a sourceforge.net account and be logged in.

3) Forums are still up and soon will be upgraded to the better spam protection version. We will add reCAPTCHA as soon as possible. All people is encouraged to use the forums to make the community alive as mush as possible.

4) So for all of you who are using our desktop we want to say thanks and we encourage you to do
fresh installs if possible. To get the installers please follow for now those links:

Installer for Slackware 12.2:
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/i686/2.26/dropline-installer-2.26.0a-i686-1dl.tgz
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/i686/2.26/dropline-installer-2.26.0a-i686-1dl.tgz.md5

Installer for Slamd64 12.2:
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/x86_64/2.26/dropline64-installer-2.26.0a-x86_64-2dl.tgz
http://saxa.droplinegnome.org/x86_64/2.26/dropline64-installer-2.26.0a-x86_64-2dl.tgz.md5

Many thanks for using dropline GNOME !

- The dropline GNOME Development Team

We are still here…

admin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:28:11 +0000

It’s been a while since this page was updated, and now I think we need to do it again.

For all our users out there, I wanted to communicate that we are working hard on the upcoming release. Yes, soon we will have the dropline GNOME 2.26 desktop. Not to push too much, but just wanted to let you know that some people have left the project because they felt that they weren’t devoting the necessary time for the project, and because of new responsibilities they took in real life. The good news is that there are newcomers that have been helping us greatly, and they were decisive in the progress we made over the last few weeks.

We all want that this project continues to go ahead in the best way. We would like to thank all of you who have contributed until now, but won’t be able to contribute anymore. And also many thanks for all of you who have joined us and gave us the help needed to continue this awesome project.

That’s it for now. Please stay tuned and if you are willing to help, don’t hesitate to join us at the irc channel #dropline at irc.freenode.net.

- The dropline GNOME Development Team

dropline GNOME 2.24.1 Beta For Slackware 12.1!

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:03:02 +0000

dropline GNOME 2.24.1 Beta for Slackware 12.1 is here!

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dropline-gnome/dropline-installer-2.24-i686-1dl.tgz

Since there are major changes in the latest releases of GNOME, there are still a few tweaks and loose-ends that we need to take care of before we consider this one “stable”. But most of the 2.24.1 desktop is in a rather usable state and may be ready for more technical users that like living on the bleeding edge.

Users that still wish for a stable and fully-tested desktop may still wish to use the stable Dropline GNOME 2.20.3 for Slackware 12.0 for a bit longer.

Please post comments on this beta release in our 2.24 forum thread:

http://forums.droplinegnome.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5903

-The dropline GNOME Development Team

dropline GNOME 2.20.2: “dropline GNOME Forever” is Here!

admin — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 04:43:54 +0000

We stopped coming up with nicknames for our releases a few years ago, but figured that “dropline GNOME Forever” best describes 2.20.2 simply because of the extended amount of time that was taken in developing this release. But that’s okay, because it means that we spent even more time trying to fine-tune every little detail to make this the best GNOME desktop that you’ll find on Slackware (and we’d say just about anyhere else as well). Our goal is to make a GNOME desktop that “just works”!

dropline GNOME 2.20.2 is here! Existing 2.18.3 users (for Slackware 12.0) can upgrade their systems by upgrading to the latest installer and choosing the “upgrade” option. New users can install dropline GNOME 2.20.2 on Slackware 12.0 by following the instructions on the Download page.

As usual, our forums provide a great place to discuss new releases or talk about GNOME and Slackware. All users are welcome (and encouraged) to register.

-The dropline GNOME Development Team

dropline GNOME 2.20

ScottHarmon — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:05:55 +0000

dropline GNOME 2.20 is almost ready to go gold, check it out here:

http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/dropline-gnome/dropline-installer-2.20-i686-1dl.tgz

dropline GNOME 2.18.3 Pre-Release.

admin — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:14:03 +0000

With just a few outstanding issues at-hand, we’re still working on finding ways to work around Slackware-specific issues without resorting to having to replace a few Slackware packages that are preventing a “complete” release. That said, the 2.18.3 release is quite stable and ready for the majority of users. Most of the remaining issues *have* solutions, but they all involve replacing Slackware packages to solve them (NetworkManager, for instance, would still need a DHCP rebuild). Note that this is what people have asked for, so this is what is holding up a final release, and we don’t think that it’s fair to call something “complete” when we still feel that there are small things to take care of. It’s just that these bugs have held us up for weeks now, and users are getting tired of waiting for us to call this release complete.

If these minor issues are not of importance, we’d suggest that all users make the transition to 2.18.3 on Slackware 12.0.

http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/dropline-gnome/dropline-installer-2.18-i686-3dl.tgz

Outstanding Issues:
1. Metacity windows may minimize a bit slowly due a a bug in Slackware’s libX11. Solution – Update LibX11. We may be providing an extra package for those who are affected by this bug.
2. NetworkManager does not work. Solution – Rebuild Slackware’s DHCP package, or fall back to the version that we included in 2.16. We are investigation its inclusion again for 2.18. (EDIT – We’ve come up with a workaround and this is now working.)
3. A handful of icons do not display for some apps. Solution – Update Slackware’s dated hicolor-icon-theme package. Alternately, we can probably patch the affected packages to use different icons instead.
4. System-tools-backends do not work. (EDIT – Fixed! Thanks to Saxa, Juice, and Stik for their work on this!)

Additional notes may be found in the following forum thread:

http://forums.droplinegnome.org/viewtopic.php?t=5609

-The dropline GNOME Development Team