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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[2]: They took a BLIND leap of faith |
| By Nth_Man on 2012-07-28 09:17:11 |
|
> OSS [...] is about devs making things that please themselves. As a clear example, translations of OSS from English to French are done by people who already know English, they think about other users and do the translations. Another clear example is that of many companies collaborating http://www.linuxfoundation.org/a... to develop Linux, even employing representatives to manage it http://www.linuxfoundation.org/a... so that is useful for all. |
 - Score: 3 |
| If I could choose. |
| By Gone fishing on 2012-07-28 09:35:45 |
|
> Linux really needs to cover all current bases are three production DEs: e.g. Unity as the everyman DE, KDE for the cool kids who love their endless bells and whistles, and Mint for the crusty old conservatives who like their desktops 1980s-style, thankyewverymuch. Probably - but I can't help feeling Cinnamon is wrong, all it is is Gnome Shell with a few extensions. Mint certainly have a handle on what a lot of users want, but if I could choose I'd have the Gnome Shell folk work with the Cinnamon folk to produce a default Gnome Shell that the more conservative users want and evolve it from there. Perhaps Thom is right > Sadly, I'm afraid heels will be dug into the sand regarding GNOME 3, and we'll see a doubling-down on an environment people simply don't want, instead of trying to find out what users do want. Shame |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: Well |
| By Lobotomik on 2012-07-28 09:48:44 |
| Amen! |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[3]: Comment by zizban |
| By Nth_Man on 2012-07-28 10:08:28 |
|
> KDE4 was designed around 2006-2007 when there were no such things as tablets or touch interfaces. I remember people using Nintendo DS, and that was launched in 2004. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[3]: Comment by zizban |
| By Carewolf on 2012-07-28 10:59:19 |
| At the time of KDE4 the discussion was not desktop vs tablet, it was desktop vs netbook and with dreams of being on a mobile phone at some point, so right from the get go KDE4 (well Plasma actually) was designed to have multiple different interfaces using a shared framework but providing very different experiences |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[3]: Shame, I like gnome3 |
| By znby on 2012-07-28 11:07:59 |
|
Maybe it has been designed with non technical users in mind, but it's perfectly usable by professionals with the right customizations. Sure, they could have made it much easier to tinker with out-of-the-box by including more options and tools, but I personally find that I need to tinker with any desktop before it behaves like I want it to. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: Personal views on the matter of Gnome 3 |
| By Carewolf on 2012-07-28 11:21:23 |
|
You have to realize that Plasma was an attempt at doing things different and getting new developers. KDE around the time of KDE4 was running into a similar issue that GNOME is now. KDE never had as many full-time developers, but many of the best contributors got married or was promoted to jobs where they no longer had time to contribute to KDE in their spare time. And while KDE has always had hundreds of application developers, the core-library team was bleeding, and new developers couldn't get in due to requirements of very high quality code and no feature regressions. Plasma to begin with just a plan, sort of vaporware, it was a cool idea that anyone could take part in and it didn't require feature-for-feature compatibility with KDE 3.5, it just had to do something new and cool. It worked, KDE got lots of new developers, who wrote slightly more buggy code than the old guys to begin with and the deadlines slipped and Plasma was not quite ready in KDE 4.0 or 4.1, but here years later, Plasma works great, and these "new" developers are the old skilled veterans maintaining KDE. Btw. Please keep in mind that GNOME and KDE comunities are very different beasts . A few years ago, I think the stat was that GNOME had 50 full-time developers, and around 50 volunteers. KDE has less than 10 full-time developers, but more than 600 volunteers. Now KDE has around 5 full-time developers but around 800 actively contributing volunteers. When GNOME is loosing full-time developers, it is a big problem for them, they have to either get new corporate backers or change their community and recruit more volunteers. |
| - Score: 6 |
| RE[3]: Personal views on the matter of Gnome 3 |
| By boudewijn on 2012-07-28 12:24:22 |
| I don't think I've seen the difference summarized so succinctly and well before :-) |
| - Score: 2 |
| Comment by kaiwai |
| By kaiwai on 2012-07-28 12:59:46 |
| The sad part about this whole fiasco is rather than look at the two desktops of reasonable quality in the UNIX world: CDE and IRIX Interactive Desktop what they decided to do was copy either Windows and/or Mac OS X. IMHO it would be a lot more fruitful had they embraced IRIX Interactive Desktop and then built upon it - it had the basic foundations that were a little dated but those could have easily been addressed as new functionality was added whilst keeping in the same spirit as the original design. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[3]: Comment by zizban |
| By segedunum on 2012-07-28 13:34:56 |
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> To my mind the KDE desktop is out-dated and legacy, not something we should make a glorified example of Things Done Right. I don't know how since KDE is actually a Unix/Linux desktop that works and has the underlying framework to make what they did with KDE 4 (i.e. keeping pace with Vista/7/OS X) onwards sustainable. From that point of view it is certainly an example of Things Done Right(tm). If KDE is outdated and legacy I really have no idea what that makes Gnome, or where that puts the state of open source desktops. |
| - Score: 5 |
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