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| GNOME: 'staring into the abyss' |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-07-27 12:41:52 |
| Honest question. Do you think the GNOME project is as healthy today as it was, say, 4 years ago? Benjamin Otte explains that no, it isn't. GNOME lacks developers, goals, mindshare and users. The situation as he describes it, is a lot more dire than I personally thought. |
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| What GNOME 3 needs... |
| By Jason Bourne on 2012-07-29 15:45:19 |
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From a design point of view, the whole GNOME Shell concept is flawed. If one created an extension that would provide a 3 top level menu with a bottom taskbar just like GNOME 2 was, under GNOME Shell, it would help to keep the people interested. There are some extensions that can mimick menus and so on, but they\'re not the same as GNOME 2. I am talking about a full clone of the GNOME 2 top level menus: Applications - Places - System. Of course we would also want to have all the window title buttons back and our window list at the bottom. I mean, all of those things can be implemented as default on the back of GNOME 3 technologies. Insisting that current GNOME 3 design will succeed over time is just simply silly. We don\'t need a fallback hack mode - all we need is a well written extension. GNOME 3 though, looks as if someone really wanted to ruin the whole project. I just can be hovering the mouse 1000 times a day onto a screen corner. [redacted] Linux is losing more market share and I\'m considering moving back to Windows 7. Because I have more important work to do than playing the tablet on my desktop. |
 - Score: 2 |
| RE: The desktop is only a mean, not an end |
| By gilboa on 2012-07-29 17:21:20 |
|
> - User: Load yourself. - Desktop: Give me 800 MB of RAM. Sorry, but I must strongly disagree. I ran Fedora 17 w/ KDE 4.9rc on a low-end Asus 1201N w/ 2GB RAM, and my idle memory usage (DE only) is under 300MB. (And Fedora is not really "slim"). Granted, Firefox / Chrome increase the memory usage dramatically when you start opening multiple tabs, but all in all, KDE 4.9 uses ~70-100MB more than XFCE 4.10. - Gilboa |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[5]: Well |
| By cdude on 2012-07-29 18:02:27 |
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Android is the base for lot of projects run completely by volunteers who offer modified Android versions for hardware not even the manufactors themself support any longer. Most code in Android was or is done by communities, volunteers, other companies then google. That are facts. As I wrote: if the problem is that its not you controlling development then fork it. Android is FLOSS so you can! You also seem to confuse Android with Google Ads and draw somehow the conclusion Android is unfree. I still do not follow you on that but like to ask you something related: The SELinux security-framework was done by the NSA. They know lots about you and me. More then google and Microsoft combined cause they have access to there data and much more. So, is Linux unfree for you too? Also would it become free/us if you fork Android? If yes, then something is wrong in your logic. If not, why not? You claim forking is absurd cause nobody can remove all the "data mining" from Android? Do you try to be serious or is that a joke? If you try to be serious and now that we know you CAN code, please point me to one single file in Android JB that contains data mining. There must be billions if they cannot be removed. But personally I think you just have no clue what you are talking about (actually I know you not have cause I know the Android code). Please prove me wrong by providing one single link to a source file. Only one. But it becomes better. You would take MS over Android? A closed system where you not even have access to the sourcecode, cannot control, cannot fork, have no control, rights or possibilities at all? Muhaha. What a bad joke. Edited 2012-07-29 18:19 UTC |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: gnome3 and unity. |
| By david_thomson on 2012-07-29 23:35:36 |
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> Linux is no longer some toy. it’s a professional operating system. Do you think someone is going to run gnome-shell or unity at work? I run gnome-shell at work (writing software for L3 switches) and it's great. Before I could use gnome-shell I set up gnome2 to look like gnome-shell... just because you have an opinion doesn't make it fact!! |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[6]: Well |
| By BluenoseJake on 2012-07-30 00:44:22 |
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ok, a couple of things... > As I wrote: if the problem is that its not you controlling development then fork it. Android is FLOSS so you can! As I said, expecting Me or any normal android user to fork Android is absurd. It might be FLOSS, but i can't do that, I am not capable in any reasonable amount of time, and the same goes for most of Androids users. It's a common cry of the Linux enthusiast, but it is an unreasonable expectation. The vast majority of potential users are not capable of fixing bugs, or changing functionality, or managing an OSS project. Repeating it does not change that. > You also seem to confuse Android with Google Ads and draw somehow the conclusion Android is unfree. I still do not follow you on that but like to ask you something related: The SELinux security-framework was done by the NSA. They know lots about you and me. More then google and Microsoft combined cause they have access to there data and much more. So, is Linux unfree for you too? Who said Linux wasn't free. With Linux, I have the choice to disable SELinux, or not install it at all. With Android, the whole thing comes from Google, just like Windows comes from MS. Android is free, but like MS, Google is a publicly traded company, and ultimately beholden to it's shareholders, not it's customers. It may not be free forever, and it may be totally integrated with the cloud soon, useless with out Google's servers behind it. Is anyone capable of forking it going to be able to afford to build the infrastructure to handle millions of peoples pictures movies, texts, emails, blah blah blah? > But it becomes better. You would take MS over Android? A closed system where you not even have access to the sourcecode, cannot control, cannot fork, have no control, rights or possibilities at all? Muhaha. What a bad joke. I don't trust MS more than Google, but every time they turn around somebody is crying OMFG!!! ANTITRUST!!!! I just think that as companies, their motivations are different. MS makes it money on Windows and Office. They'll screw over their partners, bully OEMs, give IE away for free, whatever to sell Windows, and we've suffered a bit for it, there is no denying it. Google however, makes it's money on Ads, and does that through it's search engine, it's toolbar, it's webmail service, it's browser, Ads are the reason Google exists. The more data it has, the more target its ads can become, the more money it can make. I use Android, I just got a shiny Galaxy Note. I love it. But that doesn't mean I want Android on my desktop, because I do different things on my desktop then my phone, none of which I want Google snooping about. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: What GNOME 3 needs... |
| By chris_dk on 2012-07-30 08:12:19 |
|
> If one created an extension that would provide a 3 top level menu with a bottom taskbar just like GNOME 2 was, under GNOME Shell, it would help to keep the people interested. There are some extensions that can mimick menus and so on, but they're not the same as GNOME 2. I am talking about a full clone of the GNOME 2 top level menus: Applications - Places - System. Of course we would also want to have all the window title buttons back and our window list at the bottom. That is what Cinnamon in Linux Mint is all about. Only problem with that is you need to rewrite the Gnome Shell extensions...ugh! |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[4]: Personal views on the matter of Gnome 3 |
| By segedunum on 2012-07-30 08:37:50 |
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> I don't know why, but I still keep having Plasma crash on me every time I use KDE for more than 10 minutes. Well, video drivers are finicky things and apparently they are in Gnome 3, but, ever since about 4.2 or 4.3 I've been able to use KDE and openSUSE quite happily for 8 hours every day for work. I have quite a few 'Plasmoids' installed and do quite a bit of file management and sys admin work. I don't think it gets much more intensive than that. I've had openSUSE's silly applet updater crash a few times, but that's about it. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Gnome Shell is fantastic* |
| By Risthel on 2012-07-30 12:08:42 |
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And it lacks a little thing: Speed. Damn, this thing is sluggish on my e350 AMD processor. I know i don't have a "top" hardware, but KDE with all functionalities and Kontact syncing contacts and mails with Gmail, kwallet enabled, amarok launching at the startup and facebook widgets, works a way more faster than Gnome3. And yes, my video driver is correctly installed. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: What GNOME 3 needs... |
| By Jason Bourne on 2012-07-30 14:51:22 |
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I think it's wiser to fork and mod XFCE because this route should be shorter. XFCE is faster than GNOME 2 and much faster than GNOME 3. I don't think it's that difficult to get XFCE on par with GNOME 2 as in look & feel and also replacing some default applications. Cinnamon is just like a 10 hour emergency surgery that will lead the patient to be unable to have full recovery. Projects like MATE certainly need Linus Torvalds himself to 'take on' the lead so that it could mean something to everyone in Linux ecosystem. Unity and GNOME Shell were a major punch on the face and we all went to the ground. We're getting up, trying to recover, and a bit dizzy. The purpose of so many mistakes surrounding the DE communities are to reevaluate our thinking. For the time being, it will be CentOS and favourite applications compiled on /opt |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[3]: Shame, I like gnome3 |
| By snowbender on 2012-07-30 19:18:53 |
|
> Having said that, there is a certain challenge in learning new ways of doing things that is exciting. Obviously those complaining don't relish that challenge. Which is ironic, because I had thought that challenge was what drove many people to Linux in the first place. I get what you mean, but my sarcastic reply is: it certainly is challenging to use gconf-editor and go search for the option that was removed and that might or might not be available and configurable through gconf-editor... But seriously, I do get what you mean... however, I think that the feeling is more like that, yes, it is a challenge to configure everything, but if you persist, you will be able to configure everything exactly the way you want it. That "promise" that in the end you are rewarded with an environment exactly the way you want it, is no longer true in my opinion. That, and the fact that in recent years I have less free time, and don't wanna invest a lot of time to reconfigure my desktop environment every time someone thinks it needs to be "improved". > I do believe some of my friends mocked me as a newbie because I used gnome/kde instead of all command line. Well.. do not underestimate the power of the commandline. But on the other hand it would be stupid to not also use the power of a graphical shell. |
| - Score: 3 |
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