I decided to revive this blog since apparently blogging is in again... gonna talk about a lot of stuff in this post as its the first one in a very long time, and I like to hear myself talk...

I figured I should have a place to just blab on about stuff I think is cool and why Linux is better then Windows and the problems with both of the operating systems.

There are so many great efforts right now that are in development and [very close to] completed.
But, if I had to choose one problem with the Gnome desktop, it would be the lack of support for decent CD burning support, and I think the development effort is going in the wrong direction for it unfortunately. Other operating systems tend to use the approach of making a big suite for burning CDs and stuff. The Gnome approach is of course to attempt to simplify it, so what they apparently are trying to do with Coaster is make a little suite. IMO, thats the problem. Its still a suite! I personally am getting tired of suites of software. A couple months ago, I definetly wouldn't have said this, as all the good stuff I used was part of a suite. I used the Mozilla suite, the mail part, the browser, and so on, and loved the integration between the applications. Same with OpenOffice, and so on. But I have come to realize that making it a suite isn't really a necessity to making it well integrates. I now use Mozilla Firefox and definetly appreciate it more then the Mozilla suite, and found that Mozilla's mail part really isn't the best option available, but rather Evolution. Being able to mix the parts without having the rest of the suite and integration options that are compatible beyond the suite's programs. I now use AbiWord and Gnumeric rather then OpenOffice's respective programs, but I use the rest of the suite's programs as they are still the best available for Linux. Had they not been part of the suite, I wouldn't have to waste space and extra menu entries (I don't like deleting stuff out of the menu so I know its on my computer, thats why my menus are so big, though organized thanks to Gnome's HIG) and compile time and such.
Yeah, now that I got a mile off topic, I'm going to jump back on topic... I don't like the idea of Coaster. I really don't see the need for software to burn CDs. It should be an option of the softwares you always use with these files. If I want to burn data files to a CD (and make them multisession and whatever) I should use what I always use to manage my data, my file manager (so basically I'm saying nautilus needs multisession support). If I want to burn an audio CD, I should open my media player (rhythmbox) and be able to select the songs I want by dragging them to a "Burn to CD" playlist and then selecting "Burn" and then it should give me a nice dialog box asking me if I want to burn it as an Audio CD or the raw files to the disk... and so on... What coaster SHOULD be is a very simple application that allows me to perform two tasks which basically just don't fit into the other categories (actually, maybe even one). Copy CD and Burn CD image to CD. Copy CD doesn't even really need to exist, I should be able to DnD a CD-ROM drive to the CD-R in Nautilus IMO, but I guess that feature would be hard to advertise and for newbies to figure out, so it should exist as an option in Coaster. Selecting files in Coaster, selecting the type of CD, and so on shouldn't be part of it. It should be kept simple and integrated into the other programs. libcoaster is a good idea, but I gotta complain about it as well. My complaint? Its about this screenshot of what it places in desktop preferences: http://www.coaster-burn.org/libcoaster/libcoaster.png
How the hell is this a desktop preference? What this dialog looks like to me, and should be, is a Copy CD dialog, it should be all of coaster. Optical Reader Device should have an extra option in the drop down menu "CD image" which pops up a file chooser to select an ISO/whatever other format image, and then it should have a Burn button. Coaster would be done and we'd have a truly nice CD burning application with no bloat and very well integrated into the desktop. I believe there are patches for Rhythmbox to burn CDs in the development version, and Nautilus just needs multisession support and support for burning CDs in Gnome would surpass every other OS IMO! Oh, another annoyance about Rhythmbox, why the hell can't it play Audio CDs anymore? In old screenshots it had the capabilitiy but its not there anymore! Thats a CRUCIAL option for a music player... I'm confused on why I need to open Totem MOVIE PLAYER rather then Rhythmbox MUSIC PLAYER. And Rhythmbox NEEDS queues (and to make a big dent in their todo list, stuff like album covers would be nice as well), and that would be nice in Totem as well.

Speaking of integration, today I read about Galago, a fd.o initiative to have global presense notification. The idea behind it is great, and I really hope that it gets adapted soon in all the Linux distributions. Other operating systems don't have this currently integrated either and really aren't even working on it, so it would be nice to get this integrated first, and with some really cool features. I read about ideas for detection if the user is there, such as detecting if their bluetooth cell phone is in range... really cool ideas, I hope this develops and gets out soon!

Also I must say that HAL and DBUS is the best thing to happen to Linux in a long time IMO... finally, the less flexibile utilities like ifplugd are being replaced by very flexible and logical utilities like NetworkManager... Connecting to wireless networks and the network connections that it uses are now logical. Wired stuff should be preferred over wireless and there should be a preference of wireless networks like it has, and integrate with the desktop. NetworkManager should definetly get network connection management on par with windows, if not surpassing it.

I can't wait for Gnome 2.8 to be released as stable (one more day ^_^) as I really think gnome-volume-manager is an amazing addition to the desktop, a very important one, and we get cool stuff like extra eye candy now thanks to the new Xorg (and a new mozilla firefox is coming out this week, hopefully, so this should be a great week), which is great. As always, I like to complain about everything though, and this is a common and well known complaint about it. The gnome-volume-manager configuration dialog is overly complex. I think it should look more like this (all the command fields are gone, they should use the default applications, I know this is being done for the next version, and yay for wonderful text mockups)
Removable storage
[ ] Mount removable drives when hot plugged
[ ] Mount removable media when inserted
[ ] Open file browser when removable media is inserted
Audio CDs
Perform action when audio CD is inserted: [Drop down menu: Do nothing, Play audio CD, Rip audio CD]
DVD
[ ] Play DVD Videos when inserted
Blank CDs
Perform action when blank CD is inserted:
This is a tough one because the user's intention of what they want to do with the blank CD
[Drop down menu: Open CD copier, Open File browser to blank CD, Open Music player to burn playlist, etc]
Digital Camera
[ ] Import digital photo albums when connected

It would be nice if it would expand beyond just removable storage, although I understand its currently beyond the scope of it, I think that should be changed. <_<
When a digital camera is plugged in and not a removable storage medium, PTP for example, it should still honor my request of importing digital photos. It could also be better then competing operating systems with other removable devices, such as when I plug in my scanner (or turn it on or whatever), I most likely will want to scan something, so the scanning software should open. And gnome needs better scanning software (xsane is powerful and all and not exactly hard to use, but I just don't like it, not simple and gnome enough, I'm going to try to make my own scanning software for gnome my next project if I ever have time, but knowing me I won't finish the project so I'm going to try to contribute to another project... I was looking at eventuality today and I might want to try to get involved in that, I'll see...)

The upcoming search technologies look nice, I can't wait for Beagle's completion, and Dashboard, they both look like great projects, and it looks like the desktop will definetly be getting a lot better integration. I'm glad that they are going to obsolete the sound servers (arts and esd and so on) in favor of gstreamer which can send the sound to wherever or whatever, such as my hardware to mix it or the Media Application Server which integrates into X very well, and that libgnomeprint/kprint are going to die in favor of xprint, and so on...
Anyways, thats my ranting for now...