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Nicholas Petreley Slams Gnome

Posted by timothy on from the bit-vitriolic-there-aren't-we? dept.

FreeLinux writes "Mainstream computer rag ComputerWorld, has posted a review of Gnome 2.6 by Nicholas Petreley. This opinion piece review, titled Living Down to a Low Standard, positively lambastes Gnome 2.6 over the new spatial Nautilus and Gnome's design choices. The review is quite the opposite to a previously reported review from PCWorld, last month. While this latest review is bound to be a polarizing and heavily debated issue (read flamebait), it is important in that this review will be seen by so many mainstream readers and corporate types who may have been considering Gnome."

25 of 818 comments (clear)

  1. Don't panic... it's not that bad by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sadly, the article brings up some very good points, albeit in a very inflammatory way.

    The most damaging part of the "review" is that it says nothing aboout Gnome as a whole. It's just a rant about this user's opinion about how Nautilus was designed ( changed) to work in 2.6.

    This sort of rant, if done constructively could certainly help the developers make better choices, but to put it directly to mass media as a review just sucks.

    Well, as a Pointy Haired type myself, I can assure you, these mags hit the coffee table in the lobby - and very few people actually read the articles... However, if this review makes the front page, Gnome is toast.

    --
    Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
    1. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Petreley is not a reviewer, he writes an editorial (opinion) peices. His articles are always inflamatory, by design.

      Seeing as a reference to his column has been posted on /., he seems to have gotten his point across. He must have gotten tired of ranting about SCO and blasting Microsoft.

      And he has a good point. Why, when Windows users typically change that default behavior for explorer, would the Gnome folks break Nautilas, then obfuscate the setting to change it? It was a dumb move, as he says.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    2. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by Wylfing · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Obviously its just my opinion, but the way Nautilus browses the file system is backwards compared to 2.4, and the removal of the tree in a left hand pane was a very bad decision. That change alone made me go back to KDE.

      I've already foregone my mod points for this topic, so I might as well get out the battle gear. The way Gnome works now is what made me switch to it from KDE. I fully enjoy all of KDE's eye candy and wonderful flexibility, but when it comes down to using it to do real work, doing basic tasks like dragging files around, it gets all flaky (albeit no more flaky than Windows). I feel like Konq is thin, fragile, and unpolished as a file manager. Gnome to me has that Macintosh System 7 goodness. The file manager feels nice and solid, and the spatial-ness is very welcome.

      Just because the Gnome developers went in a direction you dislike doesn't make it "backward" in any way. Some things about WIMP interfaces were done correctly 20 years ago, and doing them that way again is just fine.

      --
      Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
    3. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by justsomebody · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actualy, I said the same thing.

      And after that I tried spatial Nautilus.

      What now? I love it. First File manager that got better than OS9 Finder (I was considering this one as the best approach so far).

      There's one only thing that I miss, some gconf key to swap middle and left click for my notebook. I don't have middle button and clicking both is a bit painfull. But then again there's still Close parents shortcut.

      --
      Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
    4. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by Paladin128 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Although his tone was attrocious, I have to agree with him on some points. GNOME is too damn hard to configure. Yes, simplicity is a good thing, but if that's what you want, keep all of the other options *somewhere*, even if it's buried. The KDE tactic -- throw a billion options at the user on one screen -- isn't good either.

      There are plenty of ways of solving the problem. Unfortunately, GNOME took the approach that if the users don't like it, they better learn vi.

      --
      Lex orandi, lex credendi.
    5. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by mz2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have to agree with you. After using Gnome 2.4 and being rather happy with it, it came as quite a grave dissapointment of how a simple flaw in one of programs included could mess up the whole desktop environment -- changing the default behaviour in Nautilus is not unforgiveable in any way, but not giving an easy way to revert to the way it used to work is ignorant and arrogant from the developers. It is not as if having the very familiar 2.4ish file system browsing would be some sort of very obscure need that only a few people would want.

      It is such a shame, as I use many of the Gnome 2.6 programs very frequently and like the idea and feel of the simple, clear and usable design in almost all of the programs that are included -- and still have to choose to use KDE as the desktop.

      mz2
    6. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by 0racle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wrote about the one detail that irritated me the most, the one that stuck in my mind most clearly. I didn't keep a list of all the things that really irked me because after a few days of trying to make it work the way I want i just said to hell with it and went back to KDE which works closer to the way I work.

      I did try to get Gnome to do what I wanted it to do. I don't like metacity, so I changed it to WindowMaker. Except Gnome-Session won't launch window maker when you set it as the windowmanager in that GConf registry, so I had to fiddle with the session settings. Well now Gnome takes 4 min to actually load, WindowMaker, gkrellm and rxvt load almost instantly, but Gnome-Session sits taking 100 CPU on both processors till it decides to actually do something.

      Happier now? I gave you a little more then what stuck in my mind? Would you like me to spend a week with it and give you a list of everything that just doesn't work quite right? How about the bugs in the build that have existed since 2.0? Or that gnome-modem-lights and libgtop wont build on 2.6 kernels. Perhaps you'd like to hear how the packages that were released as 2.6 were exactly the same as 2.5 and as 2.4 with exactly the same bugs and yet are somehow passed off as a stable release?

      And yes the comment about monkeys was because of Ximian.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    7. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Unfortunately you're not entirely correct. Most people considering Linux vs. Windows from an end-user perspective would do something on the lines of Linux stands for 'RedHat Linux' which is equated to its UI, hence Gnome. They'll say "this is how Linux looks and behaves" while looking at RH's version of the Gnome UI.

      And that is because people coming from Windows don't have a high-enough resolution radar to tell the kernel apart from the UI and the producer of the distro. They look at the whole package, see the UI and call it Linux - because this is what they did with Windows all the time! Heck, even average OSX users don't single out the interface from the rest of the system!

      One can only hope they'll go far enough with Linux to be able to look at the UI and call it by its proper name, be that Gnome, KDE or anything else.

    8. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by schnell · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Any publicity is good publicity, after all.

      I hear this chesnut thrown around quite a bit. The truth, however - and I say this as someone who has spent a good bit of time as both a reporter and PR flack - is that saying is total crap. Unless all you are interested in is notoriety (not the same thing as fame), there is such a thing as bad publicity.

      Trust me on this one, I have seen it. You're far better off getting no review of your software than a terrible review when it comes to a business context. And do you think Intel's sales went up because of all the publicity over the F/DIV bug? Now, "controversy" can be fine - it gets you noticed, and it wouldn't be "controversial" unless at least some of the people thought it was great. But again, strictly speaking, bad publicity is, well ... bad.

      And this isn't just me ... ask anyone who does this for a living (at least people who are publicizing businesses, not pr0n stars) and they'll tell you that bad publicity is something you don't want. It's a sad thing that most F/OSS groups (because so few have involved anyone with marketing or PR experience) often don't know the truth about this ... it might help their adoption rate it they did.

      --
      "95% of all Slashdot .sig quotes are incorrect or completely fabricated." -Benjamin Franklin
    9. Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad by urmensch · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That bugged me too. The only way to get rid of that icon is in the configuration files. Look here. /apps/nautilus/desktop/computer_icon_visible

      You still can't rename it though.

  2. I like Gnome. by NetNinja · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But damn, it consumes to much ram from both the machine and graphics card.

  3. Simple Solution. by kemapa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    His whole article centers around the difficulty in setting Nautilus to browse files / folders in a single window, which he uses as a basis to bash GNOME 2.6 as a whole.

    The only way to change the default behavior of Nautilus is to set an obscure registry key via the command line or the registry editor. Not even that abomination of operating systems, Windows 95, made users retreat to the registry editor to use a single window to navigate folders. I can only assume that the GNOME developers decided to make Nautilus a worse Windows than Windows. I toast their rousing success.

    Also, he says

    It was deliberately designed to protect users who are invariably too incompetent to pick their own colors but are smart enough to memorize shift-clicks and keystrokes or edit the registry to get Nautilus to work the way they like.

    And Lastly, he says

    But it turns out there is no preference setting that tells Nautilus to use a single window to browse folders.

    All this is actually kind of funny... because couldn't all of his arguments be fix by simply... adding the option to browse in a single window as a menu option???

    Seems like a trivial complaint to bash GNOME as a whole... and one that can be fixed easily.

  4. Other problems, the insanity continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In addition to to opening up a new window for every folder, the folders "cascade" so if you need to get somewhere fast, your screen slowly fills up with folders you have NO USE FOR.

    and the 2.6 nautilus advocate responds "use your middle mouse button"

    So I have to DOUBLE, click with a scrollwheel (not a nice experience) and to top it all off.... the cascading STILL happens, so as you dig in to your navigation the window (or constantly closing and opening widows) move across the screen.

    In addition, there is no location bar where you can "jump" to a place you want, nor do you get a sense of where you are in the file system. And good luck even if you do have a sense of where you are because there are no forward back or up buttons in sight to allow you to get anywhere (I know there is a hidden menu, but it's hidden, it may aswell be a keyboard shortcut for how easy it is to use from a GUI perspective).

    All of this reeks of hijacking of the OS by some disgruntled designer, aka a former BeOS dude or whatever. I don't mind you making a BeOS style file browser dudes, but seriously.... make a fork of gnome.... don't just hijack gnome (at a 2.6 release, not some early design stage, a mature 2.6) to your own ends.

    I have seen a few pundits say they like it, but as far as I am concerned it is change for the sake of change and it isn't backed up by any research. Apple spends more than anyone on UI research and they have abandoned spacial..... are we to believe some hacker, former BeOS lover, is somehow more skilled than Apples UI teams?????? NO.

    NO NO NO. I can't take it anymore, how stupid is this design decision. At best the pundits has been able to say that "in theory" coupled with a filesystem that "doesn't exist yet" it wil l be "simpler to use" for some anonymous person who have NEVER used another UI before and gnome is their virgin cherry poping experience.

    This is the same as saying we need "spacial web-browing" remove the back and forward buttons. Remove all buttons, the address bar EVERYTHING. And people can just navigate by "surfing the links" because it is more "natural".

    Scratch what I said ealier, this isn't poorly implimented, it is a vicous and insane hijacking by disgruntled elitist designers who think they can make rash decisions at a 2.6 design release without backing them up with either TECHNOLOGY (the filesystem) or RESEARCH. The status quo is in my favour, they need to justify their design and they haven't. I hope they burn in the flamewars of hell.

    (yeah it's a troll, but it's deliberately embellished for dramatic effect, I don't hate them... I am just having a dig at an insane, undemocratic design decision.)

    1. Re:Other problems, the insanity continues by krmt · · Score: 4, Interesting
      So I have to DOUBLE, click with a scrollwheel (not a nice experience)
      I haven't switched from 2.4 to 2.6 yet, but I've been told that you can hold down shift key as you left click as well (which mirrors the old MacOS style).
      Apple spends more than anyone on UI research and they have abandoned spacial..... are we to believe some hacker, former BeOS lover, is somehow more skilled than Apples UI teams?????? NO.
      There's still a lot of UI wisdom from the pre-OSX days, and to simply dismiss it is foolish.
      This is the same as saying we need "spacial web-browing" remove the back and forward buttons. Remove all buttons, the address bar EVERYTHING. And people can just navigate by "surfing the links" because it is more "natural".
      Spatial webbrowsing is impractical because of the nature of HTML and the infinite space and chaotic organization of the network. In addition, you don't manipulate the web, you view it and interact with it. Spatial concepts become very useful when interacting with files (i.e. drag it to the trash to delete it) but isn't so necessary when all you're doing is looking at data. File browsing has a very different set of requirements and constraints.

      Ultimately, what's interesting about the above is that a spatial metaphor encourages the user to interact with their data, where the portal viewing method that Windows and OSX uses is meant more for viewing, like on the web. Perhaps the reason why Apple switched to the portal viewer metaphor for OSX is that there's so much in UNIX that you're not supposed to manipulate, where in the old MacOS you could manipulate anything really.

      And one thing that's very much in favor of spatial organization is that it's actually much faster to move files around than the porthole metaphor, at least if you know what you're doing. With the porthole method, you open up windows explorer (which by default is a totally separate icon/interface than starting from My Computer or whatever) and navigate to your file. Then you have to navigate to where you want to move it to on the sidebar. That's the most efficient way to do it, and you still have to bring up the sidebar, which may not expand far enough over to easily see as deep in the file tree as you need.

      In contrast, with the one-window per file method, you open up each folder, holding down the shift key on each open so that the previous one is closed, and where the file tree branches off from the current file location and where it's going, you leave that window open, and keep drilling down the file tree. Then, once you get to your file, you go back to that branch point you left open and drill down the other half of the tree. This is much quicker because you rarely have to navigate two full trees, and you don't have to deal with a sidebar that's too small due to the fact that you have all this extra data hanging around. Who needs to see the whole damn file tree at a time on the sidebar? Once again, this sort of thing has no bearing when all you're doing is browsing the file tree and seeing what's there, but when actually manipulating it, it's of huge benefit.
      --

      "I may not have morals, but I have standards."

  5. Typical UNIX/Linux problem - configuration sucks by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting
    What this guy is really complaining about is that the configuration "system" for UNIX and Linux is lousy. It historically consisted of editing textfiles, with no checking that the values or syntax were meaningful. There's been some progress, but not much.

    If you're involved in configuration, go take a look at Susan Kare's original Macintosh control panel. Now think really, really hard about how to get to something that intutive.

  6. Re:The guy has a point... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, what really bugs me about gnome is the "you'll need it all" mindset. I don't want gnome itself, but I do want some of the applications (gnumeric, abiword, ...). Building just enough of gnome to get there becomes harder with each release. And that's before the "hide all of the useful config options" mindset applied to the ui. e.g. in abiword I want an arbitrary size applied to a document, used to be "overkey the percentage", now it's hidden away. Now, kde is a breeze to build. Everything packaged up into a few large parts. Even the koffice applications build easily. RANT With gnome you really have to work to find what is actually needed - lots of things will build, but fail to run correctly because some obscure prerequisite isn't there, e.g. gnumeric help needs yelp which needs scrollkeeper. Then upgrade from gnome 2.4 to gnome 2.6 and suddenly there are a load more undocumented dependencies which stop it working. Gimme the days when ./configure would tell you all of the missing requirements. /RANT.

  7. Re:Interesting by iguana · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This might (and I say might) be true if they were competing for resources.

    I must vehemently disagree.

    They are competing for resources--users and product developers. Developing a commercial desktop application for Linux is almost impossible because of the crazy-quilt of user interfaces.

    Saying choice is good is like saying it's a bad thing we all standardized on TCP/IP.

    The majority of my work is embedded Linux done on a Linux box. But I bought a Mac because Linux-desktop is all over the map and has been for years. Before that I did all my work ssh'd into a Linux box from Windows.

    Linux-desktop is in trouble until there is a STANDARD. Like networking has standards, like hardware has standards.

  8. He's pretty much right by arashi+no+garou · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Flame me if you will, but he's pretty much right on the money. I was ecstatic when 2.4 came out. I think it was a vast improvement over 2.2. I was even more excited when I got a chance to try out 2.6, but it took me only a few hours to decide that I was better off with 2.4.

    With 2.6, I felt, as Mr. Petreley did, that I had gone backwards in time. I am back in 2.4 now, and I'm much happier for it. My biggest fear is that I may not be able to upgrade to Slackware 10 because it will surely contain 2.6. I'd love to be able to run 2.4 on Slackware 10, but not if it means installing it without GNOME and then attempting to download and install 2.4, assuming that it would even be possible.

    Basically, thanks to GNOME's design decisions, my next GNU/Linux OS desktop will be either KDE (horrors!), XFCE (not bad), or Fluxbox (fast but too minimal).

  9. Nautilus needs to integrate with file chooser! by austus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not that nautilus is a spatial file manager because that is actually a good thing. The problem is Nautilus does not integrate with the Gnome file chooser! Essentially Nautilus seems incomplete as a result.

    When one edits bookmarks in Nautilus, the gnome file chooser should come up. The directories "added" using the new file chooser should be the directories that make up Nautilus's "bookmarks". This solution removes redundancy. Think about it. People "choose" files from directories their applications use, which incidently happen to be the same files that people tend to manage.

    There should be an "open" option under the file menu that invokes the Gnome file chooser. People still want and need to browse the file system. This solution allows that.

    In summary, the new gnome file chooser and Nautilus should be inseparable bed buddies. File choosing *is* file management in a practical sense, so why doesn't Nautilus take advantage of the new Gnome file chooser?

  10. Re:Interesting by dkleinsc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The problem with calls to unify the Linux desktop is that people on all sides want to unify the Linux desktop around their own. The Gnome people want the KDE folks to port all their apps to Gnome and disappear, while KDE wants Gnome to quit being wierd and help out their project. It makes a certain amount of sense that this would happen, because people on both sides have put an awful lot of time and effort into their respective projects and don't want it to get flushed down the drain. Of course, there may be some ego issues involved too, but I Am Not A Desktop Coder.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  11. Thank you, but who? by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Please excuse while many of us sit back in suspicion, as opening a new account to post one comment to a story is a common Trolling tactic.

    Thank you for being informative, and if you are really whom you claim to be, may I be the first to invite you to join the discussion in other ways. Heck, maybe you could coax Nick to join the discussion.

    I'm quite happy to hear that this will be a mid-pages article, especially as - well you've read by now - the narrow target of the article has got some folks a bit up-in-arms.

    The reason why I am so vocale, is that I know how I read the tech magazines I'm sent (over 8 per week), and I honestly don't have time to read all the articles. But if a tag strikes my interest on the front page, them I'm likely to open to that article. At that point, I've never once gone to seek additional information from other sources.

    --
    Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
  12. Re:Vicious by ksheff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Petreley is a long time KDE fanboy. It's not surprising he gave GNOME a bad review. It would be a surprise that he DIDN'T give it a bad review.

    --
    the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
  13. Re:News Flash by Tukla · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Actually, I have a G4 with MacOSX Jaguar on it, and I don't see what the big deal is.

    The window manager sucks. Not only do I have to use that one little corner no matter how I want to resize the window, but putting the Close button right next to the other window controls was a huge leap backward in GUI usability. Don't even get me started on the color coding.

    I can't save my session when I log out.

    Right-click support is abysmally sparse.

    I have to reboot it every few days, otherwise it will start complaining that it can't talk to my USB printer or it will lose the ability to authenticate a PPP connection with my ISP. I haven't had that sort of problem since Windows-fuckin'-95.

    Speaking of rebooting, I have to manually turn Internet Connection Sharing back on every time I do it.

    I bought a wireless mouse & keyboard after the cheapie Apple keyboard died. The Apple Installer handily put a configuration icon for them in the Control Panel. Too bad I still can't configure them because the driver can't find some kernel module it needs. So much for "It Just Works".

    I suppose I shouldn't complain. After all, history shows us that it takes at least six or seven iterations before Apple manages to make an OS that works well. In the meantime, I suppose I could drool over the "lickable" UI.

    ...Oh, wait. They've even screwed that up with the "metal" look. Ah, well.

  14. Re:Vicious by Crazy+Eight · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My biggest pet peeve with GNOME's new attitude is that you need to use the gconf editor to disable link underlining in Galeon. It's flabbergasting. There is a difference between simple and retarded.

  15. Re:Vicious by gujo-odori · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I made that migration, too.

    My path was FVWM95->Afterstep->Window Maker->Gnome->KDE3.0.

    I liked Gnome better than the other things that were around at the time, and steered away from KDE partly because of the licensing issue with Qt that existed at the time, and partly because KDE prior to 3.0 was just so generally ugly and amateurish-looking that I couldn't stand to look at it. Who designed those icons? Blech!

    Then KDE 3.0 came out. I tried it out of curiousity and found that it was *worlds* ahead of Gnome. Gnome up to and including 2.4 was nowhere near catching up. Whatever chance they might have had was buried by KDE 3.2.

    I will take a look at Gnome 2.6, just to see how they've done, but I have my doubts. I read some of the ideas that were going into the design for Gnome 2.6 and all I could think was "That sounds really stupid."

    So, while his review of Gnome 2.6 (or more accurately, of Nautilus in Gnome 2.6) may be written in rather inflamatory language, it should not be dismissed outright as being crap. Even if it's not as bad as he says, the idea of having every double-click open a new window and be so difficult to override is criminally stupid.

    People tend to dis KDE by claiming it works too much like the Windows UI, but you can customize that any way you want, and so I do. It's something I like a lot about KDE.

    If it has behaviors that are much like Windows by default, so what? That can help new users make the transition. Is that a bad thing? We also need to keep in mind that Microsoft does know a thing or two about UI design. Unlike most open source projects, MS does have UI specialists. Lots of them.

    I have a laundry list of things I hate about Windows, but only two things on that list are UI-related:

    1) You can't customize the UI much. It just works the way it works;

    2) This is the bigger one: you get only one desktop. On my notebook, I have 8 virtual desktops. On my desktop machine, I have 10. This allows me to organize my work by assigning different types of tasks to different desktops, and I have a set pattern of where I put different types of things. Ctrl-F[1-10] takes me to the desktop I need. I cannot do this with Windows and it's a major PITA.

    That's it. Those are the only two points of MS UI design that bother me, and the first one is pretry minor, really. If KDE copies some of their ideas from Windows (but don't forget that KDE has a lot of capabilities that the Windows GUI does not have), it could be that KDE developers just know how to recognize a good decision when they see it.