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Less rantish, and I agree with everything he says here.

http://www.whiprush.org/2004/07/ten_gnome_nitpi.ht ml

Oh, he also talks about GoneME. He has a very low opinion of it.

http://www.whiprush.org/2004/07/its_not_a_joke.htm l

steveha

Less rantish, and I agree with everything he says here.

http://www.whiprush.org/2004/07/ten_gnome_nitpi.ht ml

Oh, he also talks about GoneME. He has a very low opinion of it.

http://www.whiprush.org/2004/07/its_not_a_joke.htm l

steveha

gconf == regedit

To quote Jorge Castro, here:

GConf is nothing like the Windows Registry, except for the similar appearance of their respective editors. If Mr. Petreley cares to compare and contrast GConf and the Windows Registry he would know this. In fact Nicholas, I will paypal you $100 US if you can name three architectural similarities between GConf and the Registry.

I've had Fedora Core Test 3 installed for about a week now, and I gotta say, I love Gnome 2.6. It's very clean, polished, and the gnome bundled apps are consistent with each other.

That being said, I still haven't decided if I like the spatial file navigation of nautilus, although I'm trying to give it more time. I'm a command line guy, so I tend to think in "browser" mode, and I think most of the people here on /. are probably command line/browser mode entrained people.

For people who started their computer experience on Mac's, they'll probably love the new nautilus, but I started on DOS 2.0, so I might be to old of a dog to teach.

For a better rebuttal of Petreley's article (and how to access "browser" mode in Gnome 2.6), check out: Crack Pipes for Everyone!

"The GNOME file manager, Nautilus, no longer allows users to navigate through folders as one might use a Web browser or Windows Explorer."

jorge

Misconception #1.
The standard tree view is available by right clicking on a folder and choosing "Browse Folders", via the menu using "Browse Filesystem", or via the panel icon that looks like a file cabinet (it's there by default). So, three seperate methods to access the old view, one of which is even on the panel by default, yet Nicholas, with his years of Linux experience, can't seem to find it, naturally GNOME has robbed him of this ability.

May 10, 2004
Crack Pipes for Everyone!

I stumbled upon this review of GNOME 2.6 by Nicholas Petreley via OSNews. Now, I'm no self-proclaimed Linux desktop expert, but I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable GNOME user, I even wrote up a review or two that were considered pretty decent. Given the longevity of Nick in this community, I was appalled by the utter disrespect shown in this article. Luckily for us, fools choose emotion over straight facts, so in this entry I will simply refute his comments with facts.

Obviously Mr. Petreley has chosen to outright lie about GNOME and its capabilities, so you can call this an open letter, in which I will happily debate in public, or whatever, since most of what he says, just plain ain't true. Sure, not everyone likes GNOME, and surely everyone has strong opinions about the spatial Nautilus, but misdirection is just dishonest.

Let's start off with this gem:

"Each time I get a new version of GNOME, there's this feeling of anticipation and exhilaration -- a feeling that this new version of GNOME can't possibly turn out to be as bad as the last one. But so far, each new version lives down to the same low standards set by the previous one."

Does anyone reading this quote, right off the bat assume that this is going to be a fair review of GNOME whatsoever? I can't even formulate a response to this.

The GNOME file manager, Nautilus, no longer allows users to navigate through folders as one might use a Web browser or Windows Explorer.

Misconception #1. The standard tree view is available by right clicking on a folder and choosing "Browse Folders", via the menu using "Browse Filesystem", or via the panel icon that looks like a file cabinet (it's there by default). So, three seperate methods to access the old view, one of which is even on the panel by default, yet Nicholas, with his years of Linux experience, can't seem to find it, naturally GNOME has robbed him of this ability.

If this sounds familiar, it's because this was the default behavior of Windows 95, OS/2 and early versions of Mac OS.

Windows 95 was never spatial. It was mimicked, poorly. Since Mr. Petreley can't seem to define what spatial is in the first place, and which OS implemented it in which way if at all, we're left with ye olde "Doesn't work like Explorer, it sucks." excuse. There's more to spatial than one folder per window. I'd explain it, but there are plenty of resources available that define this, unfortunately Nicholas failed to comprehend even one of them.

Not even that abomination of operating systems, Windows 95, made users retreat to the registry editor to use a single window to navigate folders.

GConf is nothing like the Windows Registry, except for the similar appearance of their respective editors. If Mr. Petreley cares to compare and contrast GConf and the Windows Registry he would know this. In fact Nicholas, I will paypal you $100 US if you can name three architectural similarities between GConf and the Registry.

Of course, this flaw has nothing to do with the inflexibility of the primitive graphical tool kit upon which GNOME was based.

This is another passage that I can't even comprehend, and isn't worthy of replying to. I'd like to quote it for the record though. Note the lack of evidence when defining "primitive" and "inflexibility". I don't think anyone that has used GTK's language bindings will use the word "inflexible".

GNOME grew out of the desire to free people from Microsoft's ability to dictate what users can or can't do.

Well someone better tell the GNOME developers, I'm pretty sure that they're out to make a kickass free desktop. I su

First off, how the hell do you call this crap a review? It mentions one specific feature and is incredibly infactual in doing so. All it does is even _mention_ the feature, then bitch and bitch about all of GNOME sucks with no factual examples. The only examples given are outright lies. (For example, the reason you can't edit colors in the GUI is because nobody's bothered to write an editor for it yet. If someone submitted a patch, it would be a most welcome feature.)

This article is complete trash. The first paragraph alone makes that rather clear, and the past articles by the same author also make it clear. This guy takes every chance he gets to insult GNOME.

Here's a public response by one of the ArsTechnica folks.

Jorge Castro, one of the Ars Technica writers has written a very nice article refutng Petreley's claims at his site.

No big surprise here as Petreley has always been a KDE rulez, GNOME sux0rs guy. The piece isn't even well written or accurate. Here is a decent rebuttal. Petreley hasn't quite figured out that the GNOME v. KDE flamewars are dead yet.

My conversion has been detailed here.

I'm not going to get into the Debian/Red Hat argument here. To me, they're both fine distributions that deserve the attention that they're due. I don't understand the "stability" issue that some Debian fanatics get into. Red Hat has been stable as a rock for me. The thing that makes Debian rule is how easy it is to maintain and keep up to date.

If you're a Red Hat/Mandrake user and has been looking to convert, this might be useful. FWIW, Debian is a mighty fine distro, give it a try, though you have been warned, it can be addictive. :)