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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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| RE[4]: Comment by zizban |
| By phoenix on 2012-07-30 20:28:16 |
|
And plasma-desktop vs plasma-netbook was a great separation that worked really well. Surprisingly enough, plasma-netbook works equally well on full desktop systems, even going back to Ubuntu 8.04 / 9.10 days. Haven't looked into PlasmaActive as yet. |
 - Score: 2 |
| No Surprise |
| By perfectreign on 2012-07-31 03:07:27 |
|
I was a die-hard KDE fan and always thought Gnome sub-par. However, I learned to accept Gnome after openSUSE started pushing KDE 4, and a subsequent switch to Ubuntu. Now that the purists have spent their time telling us how we should work, we moved on and made both. KDE and Gnome irrelevant. I'm currently typing this on one of my two Android tablets, which have taken over as my main computers at home. I still have a Wintendo computer running along with a paleontology my DMZ running Debian. The Debian system is used mostly to proxy and running things like Android development. It is running with lightweight OpenBox. Good bye Gnome, I still fail to understand why it was needed to compete with KDE just over the Qt license. |
| - Score: 1 |
| Attitude and politics |
| By ndrw on 2012-07-31 03:33:10 |
|
Gnome 3 (still) has all technical and organizational means to become a great desktop environment. I like their use of extensions and high level languages. I even like the integrated design, even though it aggravates the project problems. It is the politics and attitude that made Gnome3 fail. Sorry, guys, you cannot reasonably expect that after pissing off 80% of your users, Gnome will continue to keep its position. Others (Xfce) haven't even thought of making such mistakes, or (Mate, Cinnamon) are trying to reverse yours. Honestly, admit the mistake, rethink your politics and design it produced. Look at what others (Cinnamon, Xfce, Kde, Unity, Gnome3 fallback) have done meanwhile, and make the desktop people (not you) want. It isn't a lost case yet and it isn't hard at all (just look at resources others have). Why is it important? Because in a short period between Gnome 2 maturing and dying, Linux was making strides in users' adoption. Having a "standard" and "good enough" DE matters. I may be more happy with Xfce than with Gnome 2 or 3, but ultimately we all use the same platform, and we need users flocking in, not out. Unity may or may not be able to replace Gnome in that role but it also has problems and it shouldn't be difficult for Gnome to recover its former position. Things I consider key antifeatures of Gnome 3: - modal behavior - it is bad for several reasons: it slows down the user, adds complexity, hides important information from the user (windows, workspaces, main menu, launchers). What's worse, Gnome 3 already has a panel, why don't you use it? - lack of configurability - more is always better. Not everything has to be shown in the setting dialogs but restricting options is idiotic. Instead options you get forks. - lack of features - users should decide what they need. Sure, there is a lot of noise, so feel free to come up with some scoring+karma mechanism. But never decide what goes in (and especially out) arbitrarily. |
| - Score: 2 |
| i don't get it |
| By mojmir on 2012-07-31 10:02:45 |
|
why to use gnome anyway. Throughout the history i tried them almost all wm-s and these dreamy castles never convinced me i really need them. Fool's gold i'd call it. blackbox, sawfish, windowmaker should suffice for anybody who's not completely lame. .* bless them! |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: i don't get it |
| By Soulbender on 2012-07-31 10:11:56 |
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What's all these dreamy castles like mice and color monitors? A black & white text monitor and punch cards should suffice for anybody who's not completely lame. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[7]: Let's not forget their other brain turds... |
| By Savior on 2012-07-31 14:15:59 |
| I'm with the original poster. It's not like this *now*, but I remember having to enter my password just to change the time zone on Ubuntu (KDE in fact, but I guess it has less to do with DEs as with the system itself). Or to attach a second display. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: i don't get it |
| By mojmir on 2012-07-31 14:53:32 |
|
yea right, reductio ad absurdum. and the rest can just switch to m$ word as default editor. let's heat the planet, bloat lovers |
| - Score: 1 |
| it is me that doesn't get it |
| By Jason Bourne on 2012-07-31 16:00:34 |
|
Every now and then comes up a guy saying 'just drop that graphical crap', and be happy with 'owm, iwm or zwm'. I find those posts kind of ridiculous and off-topic. Graphical interfaces have dominated personal computing & the desktop. Telling people that 'owm, iwm or zwm' would be better for them is the same as saying earth is a squared block in the old days. You can't tell you what's best for people and console although very helpful is not the cup of tea for the great majority computer users. Edited 2012-07-31 16:01 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| Unity solved the DE problem for me |
| By juzzlin on 2012-07-31 19:04:09 |
|
As a happy Unity user I just don't care about Gnome vs. KDE wars anymore. Sure it still has room for improvements, but for most of the time it just works and is perfectly stable in 12.04. It's quite beautiful, too. Great move from Canonical. |
| - Score: 1 |
| No Surprise |
| By perfectreign on 2012-08-01 03:26:22 |
|
I was a die-hard KDE fan and always thought Gnome sub-par. However, I learned to accept Gnome after openSUSE started pushing KDE 4, and a subsequent switch to Ubuntu. Now that the purists have spent their time telling us how we should work, we moved on and made both. KDE and Gnome irrelevant. I'm currently typing this on one of my two Android tablets, which have taken over as my main computers at home. I still have a Wintendo computer running along with a paleontology my DMZ running Debian. The Debian system is used mostly to proxy and running things like Android development. It is running with lightweight OpenBox. Good bye Gnome, I still fail to understand why it was needed to compete with KDE just over the Qt license. |
| - Score: 1 |
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