Nicholas Petreley Slams Gnome

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."

Comments

Vicious

[two_stripe]

Why doesnt he pick on someone his own size?
Those poor gnomes. :(

Re:Vicious

[ThrasherTT]

Shouldn't your sig be:

Dont drink and derive. Alcohol and calculus dont integrate!

Re:Vicious

[identity0]

Obviously, you've never been attacked by a pack of wild Gnomes...

The horror! The horror! They came at me from every direction! There were sidebars everywhere! Pastel-colered icons went flying! When they were through, I was left without my precious KControls or KApps...

...and then a horde of Ximian monkeys showed up...

Re:Vicious

[ksheff]

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.

Re:Vicious

[DunbarTheInept]

I made that same migration. You might think it's because my preferences have changed so they no longer matches what Gnome does. But what's actually happened is that Gnome has changed so that it no longer matches my preferences, and it does so with misplaced accusations of elitism. It used to be that KDE was less customizable than Gnome. But now Gnome has a manefesto to remove user choices and this is no longer true. The way the project maintainers describe it, there's something aberrant about wanting to customize things in the GUI, and it's a waste of time to use something out of the ordinary. What they are blind to realizing is that *ALL* GUI interfaces are something "out of the ordinary" and are prone to being unproductive if badly set up, and by forcing me to do it their way or not at all, they have not succeeded in making me more productive - they are merely forcing me to use THEIR unproductive interface.

Re:Vicious

[Crazy Eight]

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.

Re:Vicious

[gujo-odori]

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.

Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Allen Zadr]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[grub]

However, if this review makes the front page, Gnome is toast.

I think that's putting too much weight behind one person's opinion.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Allen Zadr]

Remember, it's not one person's opinion anymore. It's the opinion of a, frankly, well respected publication.

If this makes front page, then a much higher percentage of pointy haired individuals will read it. And -- if on the front page -- the opinion will be taken with even more weight. The article does bring up some good points. If I had never seen Gnome 2.6 myself, I would probably never consider looking at it seriously after reading this article.

After-all, in the opinion of this publication, there's nothing good to say about Gnome 2.6.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[realfake]

I think that's putting too much weight behind one person's opinion.

Sure, it would be nice to think that people withheld making a final decision until they carefully gathered all the information available, took into account the author's bias, and balanced the merits of all contrary points of view.

But the costs in time of gathering, understanding, and evaluating "all the information available" is huge. Managers often just make snap judgements, and often, because it's often less costly to be wrong than indecisive.

But I still wouldn't worry too much, or say that even if it made the front page, "Gnome is toast". People's negative opinion would only last until the front-page story that said "Gnome: worth a second look!"

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Erratio]

I think the impact of the article will be very esoteric, and it will have basically the same effect as all the other open-source bashing articles before it. Since it's mainstream it may be read by some executive type people and they may acquire a bias, but mostly those people rely on the nerds to make the decisions and any able nerd would read through the article, weighing the perceived bad things about GNOME against the virtues. So, in the end, you're left where you started, with people that like GNOME and people that don't, with no more than usual shift in the numbers.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Curunir_wolf]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Allen Zadr]

I didn't say destroy, I said toast.

But don't underestimate the power of a PHB.

• PHBs run commercial distributions, too
• PHBs can dictate what is on the Linux servers within their own department.
• PHBs can mentor their Employees in Linux, and teach a newbie, 'Don't select Gnome, it's not flexible'.

If the mentality spreads, then it becomes truth. It's not death, it's toast. Welcome to the popularity levels of Fluxbox.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[0racle]

Except that this one persons opinion was dead on. I had used Gnome 2.2 and 2.4 as my main DE after using KDE for a while there. I liked 2.4 and was looking forward to seeing what was new in 2.6, but when it came, it was the biggest steaming pile of an almost useless environment since Gnome 1, which I also didn't like using. 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. To paraphrase a well known engineer, I think this new release was put together my monkeys, She's got a fine engine but half the door won't open.

In an effort to thumb their noses at everyone else and ignore everything that has happened on desktop OS's in recent years the Gnome team has made some very backwards decisions, and it casts a very large cloud over everything good the team has done.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[daviddennis]

It's an opinion piece, meaning it will land on the opinion pages, which I think are about in the middle of the magazine.

I doubt that it will have a massive global impact, especially since it only talks about a single characteristic of the product.

D

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[RManning]

However, if this review makes the front page, Gnome is toast.

I'm sorry, but if Gnome is toast based on a single review from a single magazine, we've got big problems. Frankly, I can't imagine a person considering Gnome/Linux instead of Windows, reading this article, and deciding to go with Windows instead. Most of the people who read this will be either pro-Gnome geeks who will discard this as infamitory, anti-Gnome geeks who will consider the whole thing slightly interesting, or non-geeks who probably have never heard of Gnome and will continue using Windows as always.

I didn't read the article carefully, but if it's true that it pops new windows while you navigate the file system, I'd guess Gnome users will be up in arms. From my persepective that's about the most annoying part of old OSs' UI. However, having a bad review like this is not the cause of possible defections as much as the 'bad' funcationality itself.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Minna Kirai]

Frankly, I can't imagine a person considering Gnome/Linux instead of Windows,

Moreover, I can't even imagine people considering Gnome vs Windows.

Computer users may choose "Linux vs Windows", and then they may choose "Redhat vs SUSE", and maybe later they'll think "KDE vs Gnome"...

But at no point does someone have to choose between Gnome and Windows. Folks still using Windows probably don't know what Gnome is (and shouldn't have to). By the time Gnome is even on your radar screen, you've left Windows far behind.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Wylfing]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[justsomebody]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Paladin128]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[urmensch]

I think this new release was put together my monkeys

It was.

How Interesting, you give no other reason why it is "the was the biggest steaming pile of an almost useless evironment", and instead of finding out how to change nautilus to suit you, you switch to a completely different environment.

Your opinions will mean more if they are less dramatic and provide more information.

To paraphrase you: I liked gnome's last release but this one sucks because the file selector doesn't work the way I want it to. Rather than change how it works to suit me better, I moved to another desktop. This problem was obviously not well thought out and was just an attempt to say fuck you to the rest of the world and me.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[ImpTech]

Ok, I'm not sure how the GNOME folks have 'broken' Nautilus. It seems to do precisely what they designed it to do. And frankly, I don't see why they should follow the Windows trend in this case. I read the case for spatial when 2.6 came out, and frankly it makes a lot of sense. For one, it makes drag-and-drop useful for file management again. Its also kind of nice that windows open exactly where you saw them last time. And as far as screen clutter, as long as you're pretty much living in your home directory, whats the big deal? Looking quickly I can't find many directories more than 4-deep in my home dir, and I'm more organized than most. Seems like people are always complaining that GNOME and KDE don't innovate, and when they do everybody gets upset.

The only valid criticism in the article is that its a bit tricky to go back to browser behavior by default, in that you have to get into Gconf (which by the way is no where near as massive and convoluted as the Windows registry). IMO, it would have made sense to put a checkbox for it in File Management Preferences. But come on, dismiss an entire desktop because of the lack of one checkbox? Outrageous!

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[object88]

I didn't say destroy, I said toast.

And toast is good! I mean, nothing like warm, slightly crunchy sourdough or rye, with a little butter and apple-mint jelly. MMMmmm! Gimme toast!

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[andyross]

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.

The tree has not been removed! Right click on something and select "browse" and you have your old Nautilus back. Not enough? Make a launcher on your desktop and have it run "nautilus --browser". Still not enough? Put it in a menu (FC2 already does). Still not enough? Delete all the spatial icons from your desktop and you will never see it again.

Good grief. You would think that "expert users" who can handle the complexities of a browser-based file interface might be able to, y'know, configure their desktops before whining about it in public.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Paladin128]

Some people don't like the "spatial" nautilus and would prefer the default behavior to be just like every other damn UI currently used. Some people like to change colors of UI elements because they otherwise like a theme, but can't stand the damn ugly yellow the theme designer chose for the highlight color.

And yes, these are individual preferences. People who fall in the "power user" catagory are important too. And no, "power user" != "ueber-hacker" for all values. Some people just like to get damn work done in a way that makes sense for them.

On *NIX, I currently use KDE, which also is quite imperfect (KControl sucks, too many different freakin' media players, some odd behavioral quirks), but at least I can make it act more like how I want without firing up emacs and reading docs online.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Frothy Walrus]

They're not monkeys anymore. Novell bought Ximian and replaced all the monkeys with Mormons.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[spectre_240sx]

"Seems like people are always complaining that GNOME and KDE don't innovate, and when they do everybody gets upset."

Did you miss the part that OS/2, Win95 and early Mac OS versions worked this way too? How is it inovation if it's already been done before?

The whole idea of the spacial file management system is to bring the metaphor of files and folders closer to what it is in the real world. However, that comes at a loss in usability, and there's no reason to try to do this if people are already comfortable with the way that file managers work at the moment.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[spectre_240sx]

Ok, you've made your point, things can be changed. However, the default setup still remains as such, and people who are just beginning to use linux / gnome are very likely to be turned off at the way things work. The linux community is still trying to gain marketshare, and to do that, there needs to be some* catering to the comforts of the end user. *(note: I say some, not complete)

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[cweditor]

Glad to see so much interest in one of our columns :-)

For the record, this column appeared on page 30 of Computerworld's print edition this week, on the last page of our Technology section. Nicholas Petreley is one of several different columnists who rotate writing for that Tech opinion page. (There is an opinion column on the last page of the print publication's Management section as well.)

Our print readers have seen quite a bit of coverage of Linux and open source in addition to this column. Two weeks ago, for example, one of our cover features was A Sunny Forecast For Open Source, about how weather.com has cut IT costs by one-third after moving away from proprietary software and hardware. It was one of the most-read stories on our site that week.

Sharon Machlis
Online Managing Editor
Computerworld

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Spellbinder]

ok if you don't like the spatial mode just start gconf-editor
then go to the folder apps -> nautilus -> preferences and there set the checkbox always_use_browser
then you have the pre 2.6 browser mode everywhere
i am not sure if there was not even a message at the first start of gnome 2.6 how to change this

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[mz2]

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

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[IntlHarvester]

Another example would be "Team OS/2" -- who had some whackos that would actually make death threats against computer journalists. And they wondered why nobody covered OS/2...

(Even today, you hear people talk about "Steve Bartko", some MS employee that posted a handful of times on a compuserve board 12 years ago. Sorta a legend in the OS/2 and Anti-Microsoft Zealot community.)

Back in the 1990s, there was a real effort among the Linux Community to encourage "good advocacy". Flamers were pointed to a Advocacy HOWTO document and there was a real effort to keep discourse polite in the Usenet tradition. It seemed like they might have learned the lesson of Team OS/2 & Macinsitas. However, now days with a proliferation of web forums, and Linux accumulating all of the OS/2, Amiga, and M$ Hater wackos, things have degenerated.

The thing to realize, in the real world of IT Dept Politics, zealous advocacy often hurts one's cause more than it helps. People tend to think "This guy is not objective, I don't like him, therefore I disagree with whatever he says." Yes, that's not logical like Mr Spock, but its how the real world works outside of internet boards. God forbid people have to work with a lot of you folks.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Frizzle Fry]

Why do you think Mac people became/are percieved as being so fanatical? Years of bad publicity

I don't think this is why.

God forbid anyone *ever* cast any aspersions toward Apple or pointed out any imperfections in Apple hardware or software. They would get tons of hate-mail, really ridiculous over-the-top stuff.

Ah, there we go. I think that this is why they were perceived as fanatical. Because of the actions and attitudes of lots of individuals. Not because of any "publicity" from the newsmedia.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Allen Zadr]

What if I were to tell you that my initial interest in Gnome was to replace the CDE on Solaris?

At that time, I didn't even consider using Linux in my place of business. Since then, a lot has changed, but I will fully admit, that from just the text of the article, the summary I got is: 'Gnome is inflexible' and 'backwards'. That's a strong summary, and I'm educated enough (meaning I used Gnome before reading the article) to know better.

On Solaris it isn't a question of Gnome or KDE, it's a question of Common Desktop or Gnome -- I can fully assure you that Gnome is FAR superior to the Common Desktop Environment. Would this article have given me an informed synopsis? No. Would I have taken it for gospel, no - but I would have had the impression that it's not flexible, and no impression of anything good.

To me it's broader than Windows vs. Linux. It's about taking away the ability to process facts, by centering on something that, to me, is the most insignificant feature of a desktop environment ... the file manager.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[CoolVibe]

Mac fanatics are pussies. You haven't met a real fanatic until you've debated with an Amiga fanatic.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[shatfield]

What is so bad about this article is that the headline says "Review of Gnome 2.6" and then the article only discusses Nautilus -- which is only a single part of Gnome. Imagine someone reviewing "WindowsXP" and only discussing something about the Windows Explorer that they don't like. Not exactly good reporting, eh?

Furthermore, the "reporter" didn't really report anything other than his complete lack of knowledge of what Nautilus is trying to accomplish. There was no mention of spatial filesystems, their pros / cons, nothing. He just spouted his opinion and acted like he was all informed, which he wasn't.

Do us all a favor -- if you know this moron, smack him really, really hard right in the middle of the forehead and tell him next time he doesn't research what he is reporting, you'll move it down a couple of feet.

I've seen people yelling and screaming at the FOSS community to be creative.. to innovate, to come up with something different. Then once they do, I get to read how it's not like how this OS does it, or that OS does it. If you want something that looks and works just like Windows... JUST USE WINDOWS!

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[0racle]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[orcrist]

On Solaris it isn't a question of Gnome or KDE, it's a question of Common Desktop or Gnome

Why is that? KDE is available for Solaris too.

-chris

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Too Much Noise]

So if it's a half-truth, it's not worth it, right? ok, let's get rid of some of the 'wrong' halves (the ones making fun):

• separate widows suck for file browsing - if you don't think so, you haven't had to work with deep directory structures and may God preserve your innocence forever. It was even in Windows 3.x (remember that one? all about separate windows, it was). In Win95+/NT+ you can at least tell Explorer to use a single window from a menu option. If Nautilius forces it on unknowing users without an easy opt-out, then it sucks.
  
  
• very few people will care where exactly the window for a particular folder will open - it's nice to have sometimes, but if you're constantly working with more than about 4-5 file browsers open the positions won't mean much; add multiple desktops in the picture and you've got a mess in your hands - what did I have in the upper left corner of desktop 3?
  

So here - 2 examples of design decisions that only appealed to very few users, while obeying some arcane UI design 'rules'. Remember, UI design is an empirical science, so if more than 50% of the users don't like some setting it's the theory that is more likely to be wrong, not the users. There's no provision against making experiments in the UI, but it's quite rude to force them on people who will have close to no chance of figuring out how to change the default annoying behavior to something they can live with. And exactly this kind of 'we know better even if 95% of the users disagree' ego trip attitude was one of the big UI critiques of proprietary systems, so it would be really sad if F/OSS ends up taking the same route.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[urmensch]

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?

Yes I am happier now. Don't get upset with me because you can't formulate your criticism in an intelligent manner. Giving one reason why you don't like gnome is not a very good argument. Especially when it's something that is easily fixed/configured.

I don't think gnome is perfect either, there are lots of things I would like it to do better. For example if I was going to pick a list off the top of my head it would go like this.

- Can't see .dotfiles in the new file selector. You can see dotdirs, but that's not good enough.
- Show hidden files doesn't stay selected in the file selector. I'm not sure if I really dislike this or not. Time will tell. It would be nice to have the option though.
- The new file selector doesn't retain it's height and width. This really bugs me.
- Metacity opens windows in the top left, right where I'm not looking for it.
- My panel keeps stealing focus from applications when I switch desktops.
- Nautilus should have a configuration option for spatial/browser mode. This is just something that you have to have both ways. I would have had major issues using gnome spatially, but since I don't have to, I'm not too worried about it.

So there you go, of the top of my head, it didn't take a week to post and really helps make the argument deeper. It lets people take it seriously, instead of saying to themselves, this guy doesn't like gnome, but his example is not very weighty, so who cares? If I were a gnome developer reading your original post, I wouldn't give it a second thought.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Too Much Noise]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[LPetrazickis]

Exactly. We shouldn't be trying to make computer interfaces more like the real world. Instead, we should be looking at the shit we have to put up with in the real world from the point of view of computer interfaces and making the real world more like our computer interfaces.:P

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[schnell]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Doctor Crumb]

Have you used KDE recently, specifically the 3.2 release? It doesn't feel fragile or flaky at all to me.

Also, I think that going back to the way things were 10 or 20 years ago certainly counts as backwards, given that the rest of the industry is going forward and slowly improving the user experience. The best way to improve the UI is to not force the preferences of the developer on the user, which is what gnome has done so very wrong in 2.6. Choice is good, don't make your users choose a different product because yours thinks it's smarter than them.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Brandybuck]

Furthermore, the "reporter" didn't really report anything other than his complete lack of knowledge of what Nautilus is trying to accomplish. There was no mention of spatial filesystems, their pros / cons, nothing.

Isn't that the point? The benefits of spatial file systems should be readily apparent without them having to be patiently explained to the user by the Gnome priesthood.

The user doesn't care about the theory of what Gnome is trying to accomplish. They're only concerned with what it does in practice. Evil selfish users!

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Brandybuck]

...but that isn't very informative.

If you read the article, it actually is informative. He is telling you that it's too hard to configure Nautilus the way he wants to use it. He is telling you that he's fed up with Gnome developers telling him how he should use Gnome. His perception of Gnome may be wrong, even 180 degrees off base, but SOMETHING gave him that perception.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[urmensch]

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.

Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad

[Merusdraconis]

People tend to think "This guy is not objective, I don't like him, therefore I disagree with whatever he says."

Stop looking in my window.

Yeah, I do this, although I add an extra twist: "This guy is not objective, I don't like him, but if I take his advice some people will see me as being just like him, which I don't want."

I like Linux. I mean, it's an operating system, and it doesn't piss me off, which is all I ask of an operating system. But those Linux zealots drove me away from Linux for a very long time, and they still do, to some extent. (This that I'm typing on is a Windows machine. Not a dual boot, it's vanilla Windows.) I'm not a bigot, by any means - obviously, there are places where Linux is superior and should be used (like web servers). But I don't think I'm really ready to use Linux on my own box - there are probably workarounds to the various issues I'd have, though, and probably people who would love to hear all about them. I'm just not that concerned, yet, although I'm switching before DRM locks me out of my own computer.

So, yeah, Linux zealots, calm the scupper down and actually sell Linux properly. Is it just Windows, but open source? Is it Windows, but more stable? Give people a reference point, and tell them why they should go through the switching process, especially if they're happy with Windows. Bullet points, and get it everywhere. (None of what I'm fairly sure are standard starting places, linux.org and linuxforums.org, have anything suitable.) You won't get people to switch by acting like you're on drugs, and Gerry will get sad again when I bring up various issues I have with Slashdot users who like Linux way too much.

(If you think I mean you, you're probably right.)

Don't RTFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

### Warning! ###
### CATCHPHRASE ALERT ###

Nicholas Petreley uses the tired term "paradigm shift" in his article!
[not that anyone will actually read the article...]

### CATCHPHRASE ALERT ###
### Warning! ###

Re:Don't RTFA!

[eclectro]

Nicholas Petreley uses the tired term "paradigm shift" in his article!

So, it's safe to say that the paradigm shift was embedded in the article??

Re:Don't RTFA!

[Hrothgar The Great]

He should throw the word "meme" in there a few hundred times. He could be just like the commentary on Slashdot!

Re:Don't RTFA!

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Yeah -- but that isn't half as scary as the fact that he used the word paradigm correctly is.

Re:Don't RTFA!

[llefler]

Nicholas Petreley uses the tired term "paradigm shift" in his article!

It could be worse, he could have used "wake-up call".

Re:Don't RTFA!

[SubtleNuance]

Its clear that Mr. Petreley is still thinking outside the box. In these days of Back To Basics strategies, its clear that focusing on the core fundementals of your enterprise' value propisition requires a shift, a shift to thinking Inside The Box.

Thinking OUTSIDE the box is last week's failed methods, all new leaders are clearly embedded Inside The Box(TM).

Tell your friends.

Please...

[DAldredge]

Please debate what he said, he does make some very good points and it would be a shame for this turn into a Gnome vs. KDE flamewar.

Re:Please...

[grub]

it would be a shame for this turn into a Gnome vs. KDE flamewar.

I use Windowmaker, you insensitive clod!

I like Gnome.

[NetNinja]

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

Re:I like Gnome.

[13Echo]

Yeah? Runs great on my test PC with a P3 450, Voodoo 3 (16MB), and 256 MB SDRAM. Hardly high-end by any means. Only about 150 MB of RAM is cached at any given time on the machine... That's cached, not "used". Most people don't understand how Gnome and Linux use memory, therefore they assume that it "uses too much".

No big surprise

[stephenb]

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.

Re:No big surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

If GNOME v. KDE flamewars are dead, then Netcraft has confirmed that BSD has been cremated.

Re:No big surprise

[Minna Kirai]

"Spatial" means like how real objects in real space work. It means that simple intuitive rules we've learned about how to handle physical objects will still apply.

For example:

• A thing can only be in one place at a time.
• You can't see the same thing more than once; if you see two things, they must be different things.
• Things don't move around on their own. The pencils in your drawer won't move without you touching them.

Making a computer behave "spatially" means having it obey rules like that, which could prevent users from being surprised by behavior different from what they've learned all their lives.

Of course, whether or not making computer software act this way is beneficial is a separate argument. One could say that limiting data objects to act like physical objects is like cutting the wings off birds.

Re:No big surprise

[Minna Kirai]

Here is a decent rebuttal.

It's a poor rebuttal. Aside from the obligatory accusation of bias, it mainly focuses on attacking Petrely's understanding of "spatial browser".

Problem: he never used the word "spatial".

Also, when Petrley complains that you need to edit GConf to change the default behavior, instead of finding a prominent checkbox, Jorge (a) lists 3 ways to change the current behavior, and (b) attack's Petrely's technical understanding of GConf. He says that aside from GUI, GConf is nothing like the Windows registry. Well guess what? From the end-user's perspective, the GUI all that matters! If you need to use Registry or GConf to alter a setting, then it's impossible to call that setting easy-to-change.

The oped comes down to a very simple position: when a piece of software first gets a radically different, optional interaction mode, common-sense dictates that the new mode should be OFF by default. To do otherwise will scare users who were accustomed to the existing behavior. (Or at minimum, the checkbox to "Act like the older version" should be prominently placed, such as an option at install)

PS. An additional funny part is that both Nick and Jorge manage to mistate what the motiviation for Gnome was: Nick says "freedom from Windows", Jorge says "kickass desktop"... when in reality it was meant for "freedom from KDE" (as is well-documented historically)

KDE Kollusion?

[Mars Ultor]

That's why everyone uses that K something or other right?

(just a joke don't shoot)

Interesting

[death to hanzosan]

I'll probably get moderated down for this, but I don't really prefer either Gnome or KDE, however the fact that both exist and compete for resources is in my mind one of the main causes behind the failure of Linux on the desktop. Hopefully this will drive a nail into one of their coffins.

Re:Interesting

[pubjames]

however the fact that both exist and compete for resources is in my mind one of the main causes behind the failure of Linux on the desktop.

I agree absolutely. I think we've gone beyond the stage of it being useful having two competing desktops.

In fact I seem to recall that Bill Gates himself (or Ballamer) said that he was very pleased that Linux had two competing desktops. That should be a wake-up call if nothing else.

Re:Interesting

[vrai]

Choice is a good thing. If you don't want a choice of desktops for your operating system I suggest installing Windows or buying a Mac.

Re:Interesting

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

however the fact that both exist and compete for resources is in my mind one of the main causes behind the failure of Linux on the desktop.

This might (and I say might) be true if they were competing for resources. But they aren't: the reason there are two projects, and both are actively developed, is that there are some programmers who just fundamentally don't like how KDE/Qt works while there are other programmers who don't like how Gnome/GTK work (and then there's the ones who prefer lesstif/bare X, but they're just weird and can be ignored as a statistical fluke ;)). They wouldn't work on the other if they had any choice in the matter, and since this is FOSS, they do have a choice. They aren't competing for resources because if you took away one project most of the programmers wouldn't migrate to the other, they'd just start again.

Enough with the "Kill all but one desktops" please.

Re:Interesting

[normal_guy]

Whose resources? The kinds of people developing new widgets for Gnome or KDE aren't the ones that will finally fix ACPI, enable support for the damn thumb buttons on mice, or lobby manufacturers for better driver support. Those are the real failures of OSS on the desktop, not competing GUIs.

Re:Interesting

[iguana]

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.

Re:Interesting

[b-baggins]

Choice is a good thing.

No, meaningful choice is a good thing. Just throwing a bunch of crap out there so people can have something to choose from is stupid.

Re:Interesting

[dkleinsc]

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.

Simple Solution.

[kemapa]

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.

Re:Simple Solution.

[stratjakt]

How dare he criticize something as trivial as "how you use the fucking thing".

Most people find that clicking-opens-a-new-window behaviour annoying. It makes browsing around your directory as annoying as closing popup ads - its the same experience, pretty much. Your screen clogs with shit you dont wanna see.

He makes the point that no modern desktop OS does that, and for a reason.

Why is everyone so defensive? It's a perfectly valid criticism. It makes the desktop frustrating to the point of unusable for many folks.

Re:Simple Solution.

[EdMack]

It's in there, there are three separate ways to browse normally. He misses those however...

Re:Simple Solution.

[pavon]

Kind'of like how the Classic Mac OS presented a simple usable interface to the user, with very few preferences? Because we all know how flawed and unusable the Macintosh was.

I haven't had a chance to use Gnome 2.6 yet, but from what I've read the design decisions that they made don't seem all that peculiar. It is basically very simular to the original Mac spacial finder. When you would introduce a normal Windows user to the Mac they would figure out how the finder works and get on with their lives, unlike this guy who turned around and threw a big temper tantrum, and his only argument was that it wasn't like Windows.

Re:Simple Solution.

[Mr. Frilly]

Nautilus in 2.6 by default acts in "spatial" mode. To find a good summary as to why spatial mode is good, check out: About the Finder or Inside the GNOME 2.6 Desktop & Developer Platform

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!

Re:Simple Solution.

[Knuckles]

If you read the Ars Technica links given, your learn that the Win95 way has nothing to do with a spatial file manager

Short on Specifics (-1 Troll)

[grendelkhan]

Apart from flaming the spatial Nautilus, there's nothing short of a rant in generalities here. Nothing is mentioned specifically, and it's just the author whining about GNOME's design principles. Are we sure this wasn't written by Rob Enderle?

I don't use Linux

[jlechem]

But man that wasn't much of a review. It was little more then a rant about the way the window manager works. I agree that you should be able to change preferneces like that easily but come on give some more evidence other then that for trashing the system.

Re:I don't use Linux

[stratjakt]

I'm glad you noticed that it wasnt much of a review.

That's because it's NOT A FUCKING REVIEW

Look:

Living Down to a Low Standard
Opinion by Nicholas Petreley

So while the zealots line up to flame him for his "unprofessional review", keep in mind it's an OPINION, and he can have whatever opinion he wants.

Let's talk about slashdots "unprofessional article" that criticizes this guy for being an "unprofessional reviewer" for merely voicing an opinion, which happens to be that $YOUR_PET_PROJECT sucks.

Frost Pirst

[kpansky]

"While this latest review is bound to be a polarizing and heavily debated issue (read flamebait)..."

And on that note...

KDE SuxXX0rz! GNOME 4Eva!!~!

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Living Down to a Low Standard

Opinion by Nicholas Petreley

MAY 10, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - I recently spent the better part of a week working with the latest version of the open-source GNOME graphical desktop environment on Linux. I've decided that the only way to explain the regression of GNOME over the years is that Microsoft and/or SCO moles have infiltrated the GNOME leadership in a covert effort to destroy any possibility that Linux could compete with Windows on the desktop.

To paraphrase the humorist Peter Schickele, who was describing what it was like to discover a new music manuscript by the (fictional) inept composer P.D.Q. Bach, "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."

By the time a software project gets to Version 2.6, a user might reasonably expect that he wouldn't have to adapt to yet another paradigm shift in basic user-interface design, especially when it comes to something as fundamental as how you navigate through desktop folders. Yet this is precisely what users will have to relearn with this latest version of GNOME.

The GNOME file manager, Nautilus, no longer allows users to navigate through folders as one might use a Web browser or Windows Explorer. You no longer browse with all your options accessible in a single window or a split window with a directory tree on the left and icons on the right. Instead, each double-click on a folder icon opens a new window on the screen. If this sounds familiar, it's because this was the default behavior of Windows 95, OS/2 and early versions of Mac OS. The fact that this isn't the default behavior of any mature desktop operating system might have served as a warning sign to GNOME's developers, but never mind that.

Having used OS/2 for years, I found GNOME's retro approach to be a rather pleasantly nostalgic experience. But now that I'm used to navigating folders the way one does on virtually every other desktop, however, I decided to tell the file manager not to open a new window for every folder. But it turns out there is no preference setting that tells Nautilus to use a single window to browse folders.

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.

Granted, there are myriad unintuitive keystrokes and shift-key/mouse-click operations you can use to make it easier to navigate folders, all of which will mean squat to the daft simpletons the GNOME developers say they are targeting as their users. But GNOME developers have long since abandoned logic when defending their design choices. For example, one GNOME developer says there's a good reason why users can't change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background white, thus rendering the text unreadable.

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

Of all the criticisms one might lodge against GNOME, it's the hypocrisy of its design philosophy that looms largest. GNOME grew out of the desire to free people from Microsoft's ability to dictate what users can or can't do. Yet GNOME is built on the premise that its developers are so much wiser than users when it comes to navigating folder

Re:Article Text

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"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.

Unbiased

[Embedded Geek]

Mainstream computer rag ComputerWorld...

I'm glad the author of the slashdot story managed to keep his biases concealed until the third word of the story. If the article had praised Gnome, however, why do I suspect we'd be hearing about "Esteemed technical journal ComputerWorld..."

Re:Unbiased

[Dielectric]

No, you wouldn't, because there really isn't an esteemed technical journal for mainstream computing. The IEEE puts out some good stuff, but no one outside of the engineering community reads it.

I go to the cockfights when I need to make a decision on this sort of thing. I label one chicken Choice A and the other chicken is Choice B, and that has pretty much worked for me. This explains why I'm using a C-64 right now. That was one tough chicken.

Reply from one of the Ars Technica crew

[unmadindu]

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

Re:Reply from one of the Ars Technica crew

[zarr]

So, Nautilus has three totally unintuitive ways to enable "normal" file browsing. Interesting...

Re:Reply from one of the Ars Technica crew

[beforewisdom]

I read the originial article and the rebuttal you posted.

The rebuttal split hairs on semantics and did not answer the concrete criticism of Petry's:

That nautilus opens folders in new windows by default and makes users edit settings in GConf to shut this annoying behaviour off.

Steve

I dislike Gnome

[Uma Thurman]

Because Windowmaker is all I want. But Free Software gives us a bountiful array of choices. I don't get why Nick P. needs to run down someone else's desktop.

He needs to mind his own business and write about something he DOES like rather than running down something that he doesn't like.

He's right...

[technix4beos]

Gnome has been regressing for quite some time, and now this latest fiasco of multiple window browsing serves to show how its' developers are out of touch with the intended userbase.

This begs the question; Why was the default setting for this feature changed to something that would hinder the user, after Gnome has been developed for so long?

I would really like one of the Gnome developers to answer that here.

Re:He's right...

[SoTuA]

This begs the question.

No, it doesn't.

("Raising the question" != "Begging the question")

(Bored? ME? ;)

I agree...

[perly-king-69]

Whilst writing a 1000 word rant on a single feature is a nice way to earn one's money I can't help but agree with him.

This so-called 'paradigm shift' of spatial browsing should not be enforced on users. We like Linux. We like choice. Stop being fascists and give us a 'turn off spatial browsing' button.

Re:I agree...

[Coryoth]

This so-called 'paradigm shift' of spatial browsing should not be enforced on users. We like Linux. We like choice. Stop being fascists and give us a 'turn off spatial browsing' button.

You have choice. Use KDE. Use Rox Filer. Use Evidence.

You like GNOME but don't like the new nautilus? You can use Konqueror from inside GNOME no problems. You can use Evidence from inside GNOME.

Dearly love Nautilus but don't like spatial? GConf is far from cryptic. The choice is right there.

Don't want to have spatial existant in any way shape or form? Grab the Nautilus source, make a few edits so that only the navigation behaviour is enabled in the build, and build your own version.

Explain to me ... where exactly was your choice taken away?

Jedidiah.

Re:I agree...

[Angst Badger]

This so-called 'paradigm shift' of spatial browsing should not be enforced on users. We like Linux. We like choice. Stop being fascists and give us a 'turn off spatial browsing' button.

It's questionable whether it should be offered, much less enforced. If you're so close to your code that twiddling the interface of a fnarking file browser strikes you as a paradigm shift, you really need to get out more.

Personally, I'd like to see at least one fast, tight file browser that mindlessly clones Windows Explorer. Sure, it's not a perfect design, but the overwhelming majority of the computer-using population has been using it for nearly a decade and they're comfortable with it. If you really want to lure users away from MS, that's the only thing that matters. It's not like you can't use the bloated horror of Nautilus instead if that's your deal.

Petreley's a bit off the mark, though. A much bigger problem for Linux is how bloated and inefficient the common GUI apps are compared to Microsoft's equivalents. (Oh sure, mod me down, but hear me out first.) I have an old 120MHz Thinkpad laptop with 48 megs of RAM. I can fire up Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Word 97 simultaneously and have them run more than fast enough to be useful. Would you like to guess what happens when I boot over to Linux, start X, and try opening Nautilus, Mozilla, and Open Office? The amazing part is that they will eventually shoehorn themselves into memory and run at all, even if they are swapping madly and unusably slow.

And yes, I realize the most recent incarnations of these MS products are much more bloated, but the vital point is that Microsoft achieved a level of efficiency and functionality by 1997 that FOSS has yet to achieve. (Note: I am specifically talking about GUI apps here, not CLI apps, where Linux really shines.) The difference, I suspect, is that MS tests its apps on a wide variety of machines with an eye on the lowest common denominator, and FOSS developers tend to test on their own machines which are, of course, usually cutting edge. MS also lacks the ego problem that many FOSS developers have which prevents them from producing polished user interfaces because they perceive it as "dumbing down" the interface.

Personally, I hate MS enough that I'm going to shell out a couple thousand dollars to get a recent laptop so I can run Mozilla and Open Office, but the overwhelming majority of Windows users -- which you must bear in mind still includes tens of millions of people running Win98 on obsolete hardware -- are not going to see Linux as an option. To them, Linux offers a learning curve and an expensive hardware upgrade, and that's it. It's not exactly an appealing proposition.

Nothing new here

[Mars Ultor]

Not too surprising really - here's an earlier article when GNOME 2.2 was still hot. From the article:

KDE is delivering a better version of what GNOME's goal has apparently morphed into: becoming a great component framework that you can write to in multiple languages. Nicholas Petreley rebuffs the common GNOME battle slogans and explains why the window-manager's name needs reworking.

Other than boosting ad views, I'm not sure what continuing a KDE/GNOME flamewar here on /. really contributes to open discussion (pardon the pun)

Not flamebait

[BuddieFox]

There is one fundamental problem in the open source community (and as an occassional open source developer I know what I am talking about):
It's the old "dont you dare critisize my darling project!"-dilemma, it somehow seems that some people think that because a commercial entity is not behind a piece of software it is all of a sudden beyond any criticism.
Open source adoption and progress would be better served by taking criticism more constructively and try to actually address the problems put forward (even those that are put forward undiplomatically), instead of retorting to "no, you are stupid", "why would you want to do that?", "no you are really really stupid"-flamewars in a pathetic attempt att diverting criticism back.

Check the ego at the door and see the community prosper.

and it's right

[Anonymous Coward]

I am all for simplification, but there is no reason to go back to kinder and ABC wooden blocks.

The biggest argument against spatial navigation, as produced by gnome 2.6, is that it requires the user to learn TWO different styles of navigation: one for their browser and one for their files.

That is NOT simplification. And they didn't ask the community, and they are going against the gain of EVERY other OS.

If spatial is going to pay dividends when "database" filesystems arrive.... introduce spacial THEN. And even then, have it as an option. Besides won't a database file-system be based on searches? So won't we need "back" and "forward" buttons???????????

I am not going to swear here, but I am MAJORLY pissed at gnome. I am on 2.4 atm because of it. It is at worst elitist insanity, at best a poorly executed jump of the gun.

Re:and it's right

[prockcore]

And they didn't ask the community, and they are going against the gain of EVERY other OS.

Yeah, until Apple switches back to a spacial finder and everyone praises them as visionaries.

User- and Developer- Designed Interfaces Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

This illustrates some of the fundamental problems of designing user interfaces. Namely, lots of users and developers have suggestions, but they aren't exports. They are good at telling what works and what doesn't, but their mounds of opinions are worth the same as so many mounds of shit.

Another thing GNOME has is a strong pursuit of consistency and perfection. Well, that's great, except that it doesn't always work very well. Putting "shut down" functionality in the "start" menu is an example of this: Microsoft did it because that was where people were most likely to look for it. GNOME doesn't like that because it isn't consistent, and makes things more complicated and confusing instead. (Yes, I know you CAN put it there if you want to, but most users won't change the default configuration.)

The much-trumpeted file selection dialog is another example. It does cleanly combine all the elements you'd want in there, but it isn't in the least intuitive.

To improve, GNOME *MUST* abandon the pursuit of perfection at the cost of usability and test interfaces extensively. If GNOME wants to get better than Windows or Mac OS, it must also get people doing research into interfaces, and proposing and testing new facilities. Users and developers just don't know how bad they are at it.

Poetry (Freeform, of course...)

[Embedded Geek]

I am the Gnome.
Little tunnels where I live.
Pointy hat. Pointy hat.
Pointy hat hides my secrets.

Damn the garden spade!
Damn the garden spade!

(Nods to the applause of a dozen hipsters snapping their fingers)

Article is flamebait. Know what?

[stratjakt]

Not all criticism is flamebait, as in offered solely to incide the reciever. Not all flamebait is bad, either. Sometimes things need to be said.

I've toyed on and off with linux' window managers for years, I remember when fvwm was brand new. But they all have, and still do, look and behave like crap.

I mean, it sucks. Gnome sucks, KDE looks a little better but still sucks. They all suck.

And an army of zealots lined up to kiss ass wont make them better.

It's not ingratitude to say that either. Thanks for the free desktop environments, folks. I appreciate the choice, really. It's just that right now they suck. They suck enough I'd rather pay 200 bananas to use Windows XP, which is far from desktop perfection.

A level headed reply to him.

[Soko]

Jorge "whipirush" Castro, of Ars Technica's Linux.ARS fame, has made a level headed, informative reply to this trol^Warticle on his blog. Here is the text of relevant entry, to try and save whiprush some bandwidth:

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

Re:A level headed reply to him.

[stratjakt]

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.

I'm not using gnome now, but this sounds like it turns it off for the current window, but there's no easy option to turn it off completely.

And his later point about gconf vs windows registry is irrelevant. He admits the interface is similar. They both accomplish similar things. So hey, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck its a friggin duck. Who cares if one uses an LDAP backend or a flat text file or a dunebuggy full of cockroach asses.

Gnome developers need to relax. It's just one guys opinion and he's entitled to it. If someone says your product stinks on ice, look into it and be man enough to admit if they're right.

I love this passage

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, one GNOME developer says there's a good reason why users can't change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background white, thus rendering the text unreadable.


A logical choice would have been to remove the first color selected from the second choice and voila.

So use it...

[Azureflare]

And use a different filemanager! (Or different WM). Personally, I've fallen in love with XFce as my Window Manager (I think I just love gtk...) and ROX-Filer as my file manager (Man I love ROX-Filer =)

BTW I thought I read that the new spatial mode could be turned off, and the filemanager could return to normal operation... Ah yes, according to a post on Linux Today:

I actually have tried spatial mode in Garnome. i don't like the clutter either. But it definitely does make browsing the filesystem easier. All they need to do is add a button to 'close all windows' and I'm happy. You should really give spatial an chance before you turn it off. BTW you can turn it off with the --browser option.

I'm also going to wait for Fedora 2 to be released so I can upgrade. Gnome is really starting to rock!!!

I haven't tried gnome 2.6 yet, as it hasn't been packaged for Mandrake 10, and I don't want to mess with source, so I haven't tried this recommendation.

If you're stuck on nautilus, perhaps this will help. I've never been a big fan of nautilus (hence my ROX-Filer usage =).

Reminds me of Bloom County...

[Embedded Geek]

Since we're talking about inflamatory journalism, I remember years ago a Bloom County cartoon where a politician calls up the editor of the local newspaper in a rage:

"Hello!? Bloom Beacon?! This is Senator Bedfellow! What's with this *@#! HEADLINE?"
"Headline?"
"Yes! There's no story ... just a headline!"
"Which headline?"
"THE *BIG* HEADLINE ON THE FRONT PAGE!"
"Read it to me, Senator."
"BEDFELLOW: THE SECRET LIFE OF A WIFE-SWAPPING ATHEIST"
"Oh, that's just a typo."

I'm glad to see that slashdot is holds itself to the same high standards of journalism.

Ack..

[Azureflare]

Should have read that site a bit more... I pasted the wrong post in. Here's the right one:

You can turn off spatial mode in nautilus in 2.6. There's a GConf setting to revert back to browser mode as default (search the net for it). Also note there is a file browser nautilus app in fedora 2 test in the menu.

Here's a direct link to the linuxquestions.org page about hacking the gconf (looks pretty simple really).

The guy has a point...

[ave19]

I agree with this article. (I even read it.) I want to give it mod points. Can we do that?

I used to configure the crap out of gnome, making it do all kinds of weird stuff I liked. Then, version by version, my toys were taken away. I don't get it. If the toys made it unstable, why not fix them? What ever happened to the idea of "advanced" vs. "novice" settings for a UI? Every version that comes out has LESS functionality than the one before, railroading me into a certain way of interacting with a desktop.

In Soviet Russia, the desktop clicks on YOU!

Make it easy by default, but don't take away our toys and call it progress.

-ave

Re:The guy has a point...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Scary

[stephenb]

How do you know this?

What 'this' are you talking about? I assume from your next sentance that you're talking about my claim that Petreley has a pro-KDE/anti-GNOME bias. If that's the case, then the way I know this is I have read his opinion of GNOME and KDE for years. He always criticizes GNOME and always praises KDE. I don't have the time to google all his past articles on them, but you can do it if you don't believe me.

By the way, this is not to say that some of his past GNOME criticism hasn't been justified. But this particular article was pretty bad. Criticising a whole release for a single feature? Come on.

I don't mean this is flamebait, I'm honestly surprised that these paper bloggers get this much 'cred'.

Again, I wish you were more specific. I assume by 'paper bloggers' you are talking about the author of the article I linked to. I probably should have mentioned that he is a well-respected ArsTechnica contributor. I have a lot more respect for ArsTechnica than I do for ComputerWorld. ArsTechnica is very comprehensive and accurate. Your opinion may vary, however.

Other problems, the insanity continues

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Other problems, the insanity continues

[Jon Pryor]

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.

The folders should cascade only once, the first time you ever open the folder. From that point onward, whenever you re-open that folder, it will appear in exactly the same screen location as the previous time it was closed. It will also retain the same window size, and window backgrounds (images, colors, etc) can also be per-folder (though how to do this isn't particularly well documented ATM). This is what "spatial" is about. So you'll only get a "cascade" of windows if you never bother to move the windows into a sensible location.

Put another way, if your windows are always cascading, it's your own falt! (Note "always"; the first time Nautilus opens a folder, the placement is at the discretion of the window manager.)

In addition, there is no location bar where you can "jump" to a place you want

Press Ctrl+L, and you'll get a dialog box that lets you jump to any place you want. It even supports file-name completion! This is also available as a menu item, though I forget what it is.

nor do you get a sense of where you are in the file system.

Please see this image: nautilus-parentfolders.png. The "menu" in the lower-left corner of the window gives tells you precisely where you are on the filesystem, as it contains the full path of the folder. Furthermore, clicking on any of the menu entries will open the specified folder.

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).

I don't consider that menu to be hidden. It also lets you jump up to any parent directory, so this suffices (somewhat) as a "back" button.

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.

Spatial navigation has been around since the original Macintosh, and has a number of proponents. You might find this article useful. As for research, there has been lots of research done in the 80's, and spatial was the preferred approach. This is why "direct manipulation" is so prevalent in desktop environments today. Or have you never used Drag And Drop?

Re:Other problems, the insanity continues

[krmt]

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.

Re:Other problems, the insanity continues

[Brandybuck]

Whether or not the shifting location of an item confuses a user depends entirely on the user. It also depends on what it is that shifting. It also depends on how your using stuff. It depends, it depends, it depends...

I use the spatial metaphor all the time on my desktop (the flat root window with icons on it). Move my DVD or Trash icons and I'll get pissed. I want them to remain just where I placed them. But I could care less if adding a new wallpaper to the wallpaper folder changes the "location" of all the other wallpapers. Frankly, I don't care if "index.html" is three inches up and two to the right of the bottom corner of the public_html folder.

But that's me. I'm sure other people want everything firmly affixes to the last place they left it, even if it's the /etc/crontab file, or each and every one of their several hundred invoice files. My mom is this way and it drives me nuts. Who is correct, me or my mother? We both are!

It all boils down to two things: what should the Gnome defaults be, and how convenient is to change them.

As to what the defaults should be, I see a lot of theory about the benefits of spatial filesystems, but no actual data that users will want to use it enough to make it the default. Maybe it should be, but there needs to be some actual practical evidence of the benefits before the traditional "explorer" and "commander" models are tossed out the window. Is this something most users will benefit from, or just a few? It's important to know before making it the default.

Yeha, that's *real* usability

[kikta]

The fact that linuxquestions.org or a web search is needed to answer such a question should be your first clue that something is seriously amiss.

Does it really matter that much?

[Allen Zadr]

I admitted hearly that I'm a bit of a pointy hair, but I consider myself a very HANDS-ON type. Like I said earlier, the article made some good points.

However, my favorite file manager for Linux is still the command line, closely followed by Midnight Commander (yeah, command line). I've never gotten used to Konqueror (KDE), I've never gotten used to Nautilus. That's to say... I think the both suck.

However, my choice of Desktop (I run KDE at work, and Gnome at home) is pretty undecided. They both have features that I like ... at the functionaltiy level. My main problem with the article is that it didn't touch on the things that make it a desktop. Icons, Menus, Task-bars, Desktop switching, key bindings, etc.

Re:Does it really matter that much?

[AndyElf]

Right on, brother! On average I tend to be switching back and forth between GNOME and KDE every 8-10 weeks. Both are making big strides in improving overall user experience, but it is not always 100% on the money.

For one I hate almost *all* of KDE themese -- most of them waste more screen realestate than loosely spaced icons in MacOS X Finder. Plastik seems to be nearly getting there, but still not fully.

I agree with lots of posts and the article that such "bridge burning" as done by GNOME team w.r.t. Nautilus in 2.6 release is, probably, not right. Then again -- a lot of people did not like MacOS X's Finder when it first came around with default NeXT browsing layout. Giving users an option to easily switch between spatial and browsing modes (and not only as a right-click item) would have been very nice, but was probably not as important as making Nautilus so much faster than its previous incarnation.

Cancel - Ok buttons

[GodWasAnAlien]

CANCEL

The reason given (other than being like Next buttons MS Wizard screens) for using Cancel-Ok instead of the Ok-Cancel was that we read from left to right in western countries.

By that logic, shouldn't the Cancel button be at the top left, since we read from top to bottom?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.O K

Our "left-to-right" reading is what makes Cancel-Ok so awkward.

Do you agree with the US being in Iraq?

NO.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.YES

Since we read the choices from left to right, wouldn't skimming through a page and accepting be more efficient if the default choice is on the left?

YES.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.NO

sorry about the x's. slashdot tells me "Please use fewer 'junk' characters when I use ' 's or '.'s "

some random comments

[jd142]

First, I'm not sure I agree with his statement that having folders open in the same window is the better way to do things. If I'm moving or copying a file from one folder to its parent, having two windows open is more efficient for me. It's easier for me to just drag the file between two open windows than to highlight the file, say Cut, then move up a level and say Paste.

The latest version Gnome does seem rather sparse to me. But that can also be a good thing for newbies.

One thing I noticed in the Ars Technica review at http://www.ars-technica.com/reviews/004/software/g nome-2.6/gnome-2.6-2.html, which really praised Gnome, was that when you open a window for the first time, the review said that the scroll bar can be in a random place. "[I]t doesn't know where you left the window last time, so it places them in seemingly random places." Huh? That's just silly. Make the default to select the first file in the window the first time a folder is opened. So there's a lot of work to be done on usability.

If this paraphrase from Petreley is accurate, then the Gnome coders do have a lot to learn about ease of use: "For example, one GNOME developer says there's a good reason why users can't change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background white, thus rendering the text unreadable."

Um, if you're concernd about people setting text and background to the same color, just do a simple check before applying the color and prompt the user if the two colors match.

Petreley may have some good points, but he's made them in an unhelpful way. The same way the article submitter showed a lack of objectivity with the comment about pc world being a mainstream rag.

Onion Story

[Embedded Geek]

34 Congressmen Arrested In D.C. Cockfighting Crackdown

Well, at least you're in good company. You pick a computer, they try to balance the budget. ("Get 'im Soybean Subsidies! Th' ayes! Th' ayes! Claw the ayes aught! Whooyah!! Lookee that! Aye tellya boys, they'rell be no raise for the Libraian of Congress this year.")

Typical UNIX/Linux problem - configuration sucks

[Animats]

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.

At long last!!

[TheLoneCabbage]

"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."

We have achieved GUI parity with the MAC!!

OMFG these guys are clueless

[sulli]

From Castro's blog:

[PETRELEY:] 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.

Ho-ly crap.

Here you have the GNOME fan arguing with a straight face that the user might care about architectural similarities or lack thereof between the Windows Registry and the GNOME equivalent. Earth to Castro: nobody gives a shit. The users just want to be able to configure the OS.

Years of experience with Windows tell us that the Registry is a terrible place to put important config choices. Why not learn from that lesson instead of flaming users because they don't understand the architecture?

GNOME is the example, the point much bigger

[miketo]

The article spends most of its time on Nautilus, and I'm not going to rehash the debates here. But he makes a valid point, one that I've wrestled with since Day One of Linux:

Engineers design programs that work for them, not for end users.

I've seen this time and again during my work as a software product manager. Everything from base functionality to key UI choices are made by the development team based on what they find useful, or what they think will be useful. It is a very, very rare team that actually conducts any workflow analysis or UI usability studies during the design phase. And, once it's coded, it will cling like a limpet to a rock, difficult if not impossible to change.

I know enough about my own predispositions and biases to know that my judgment about what's best for me isn't always what's best for everyone. While both Microsoft and Apple make poor function / UI choices, with Linux the problem is magnified because each piece is built by a different design team using a different methodology.

Server-side and admin people aren't bothered by this, but your average end user is easily frustrated by applications that don't behave in an expected way, or don't have settings that can be easily changed to adapt to the user. If you give your software to a reasonably knowledgable end user, watch the interaction with your product. Don't argue, or explain why the actions aren't correct. Take notes, and figure out a way to accommodate the user. Don't use the mantra of "Read the man pages, foo!" That only leads to reviews like Petreley's, and the ensuing does not / does too debates on /.

"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution."

--Mike

Nick is worth reading

[Anonymous Coward]

He has been writing about Linux for years. He uses it, and most of his commentary is strongly pro-Linux and pro-Open Source. When he has something negative to say, he isn't doing it to bash Linux. He's doing it to give an honest review of what's good and what isn't.

He's pretty much right

[arashi no garou]

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).

Gnome slamming?

[lightspawn]

Is that anything like dwarf tossing?

(Oh, I see, the subject should read GNOME in capitals. very misleading.)

Nautilus needs to integrate with file chooser!

[austus]

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?

Please stop whining.

[Awptimus Prime]

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."

Does anyone else hear MC Chris's voice when they read that last bit? For real, man. Relax already.

If you hate it so much, why did you submit it? Oh, I know. You wanted to get the link posted so a bunch of /. people will write them bitching and complaining about the "inaccuracy" or "bias" in their article..

How is that going to benefit the Linux/OSS movement? It's not. You are just going to cause an editor to get a lot of nasty mail just because he doesn't agree with your opinion. Perhaps, next time he will just find something besides Linux to write about..

It's great to support the one you love, but why strike out like that? Nobody gains anything from it. Oh, and shame on the moderators for letting this get through. You had to recognize it was soley to irritate the editor.

Re:I don't like either of them...

[rsidd]

K's QT isn't truely OSS since you have to pay out the ass to use it on Windows,

Bullshit. Apparently nothing Troll Tech does is right. I'm sure you guys will find a way to whine if they released Qt into the public domain. The linux version of Qt is GPL'd and you can do whatever you like with it that you can do with other GPL'd software, including porting it to windows. Troll Tech hasn't done that for you, of course, and why should they?

You can browse files graphically in Gnome???!!!!!

[Lodragandraoidh]

Damn, and all this time I thought you just use it to open emacs and your terminal sessions.

As an aside, I wan't aware that Gnome had a 'registry' (a la Windoze?)...I always thought you could just edit flat files...another shock for my delicate constitution.

nah

[N3wsByt3]

I'm sorry, but I just don't like that kind of argumentation. Mainly because it's a flawed one.

I'm not going into the debate of KDE versus Gnome, since I only tried them out sporadically, but the 'if you don't like it, bugger off' reasoning has always been a very weak one, IMHO.

It's the same sort of thing you get from, say, chauvinistic USA zealots that answer to every sort of criticism of the government or state/country of fellow americans with: "well, if you don't like it, why don't you move to another country?"

Why should criticism be unvalid because of the possibility to go away, not use it, fork, etc? If the critique is valid, it remains valid, even if there are a zillion other things one can do.

I'll see your flamebait and raise you a kneejerk

[LightStruk]

K's QT isn't truely OSS since you have to pay out the ass to use it on Windows, so I avoid it on principle.

Comments like this really bother me. What, were you planning on running KDE on Windows?
Here's the truth: QT on X11 has been licensed under the GPL for almost 4 years. This means that KDE is 100% GPL and 100% Free, and has been for a very long time. No matter what Trolltech decides to do to stay in business, my KDE desktop will ALWAYS be Free.

Spread your FUD somewhere else.

The Maturity of the OpenSource Community

[fuali]

When a bad review happens, it is an opinionated peice of flame bait. Any good review is an insightful peice of journalism.

That behavior is very similiar to an ill-tempered 4 year old. Other (more successfull organizations) look at bad reviews and say, "Hey, this is a problem, what can I do to fix this."

Praise benifits image, where as critism SHOULD benefit the product.

Re:The Problem is Nautilus

[pclminion]

Why is griping about something always considered "flamebait?"

Sometimes I think Slashdot readers are too wimpy to handle a real, heated debate on something. They run screaming "Flames, Flames!" at the slightest disagreement. We argue about politics and privacy quite openly on Slashdot. Do people really identify so personally with their computers and software that they literally cannot handle someone with a differing viewpoint?

Are you afraid you can't rebut his points? If you can rebut them, rebut them! The fact that he was a little snarky in expressing his opinion doesn't invalidate it.

Re:What the Linux desktop needs is very simple

[po8]

X has been a thorn in the side of desktop development for two long. The Y-Windows [y-windows.org] paper describes why, and why they are creating a replacement from scratch. It will also be network-transparent and integrated. This hack of emulating a desktop on top of a library on top of a window manager on top of a graphics server is completely amateur and unprofessional.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine why, in the year since its announcement, no one has made any significant progress on Y. Or not. Maybe developing a new window system from scratch is both hard and pointless at this point in history?

You completely misdescribe the X architecture, which does make it easier to criticize. In fact, the X "desktop" window system runs directly on the graphics server, the window manager is just another client app, and all the client apps run on top of libraries. Aside from the fact that this works quite well, and has for "two long" decades, it is also pretty much exactly what Microsoft and Apple do. The only noticeable distinction is that the window management functions are integrated into the graphics server on these OSes: this doesn't appear to offer much advantage in practice, and makes it very difficult to change desktop behavior.

Damn you, X trolls. You get me every time.

Nobody gives a good explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing with "spatial navigation" is that it is only effective with a small group of commonly used folders. Back 20 years ago when you were lucky to fit 800k on your Mac floppy, you could justify the spatial finder as making it much easier to navigate your few folders.

The problem is that this thing doesn't scale! As a pathological example, say I have a 800GB volume with 400,000 files (mostly photos I've taken as a professional photgrapher) spread out over 3,000 directories. I'm not going to memorize the screen location of each of those 1000s of photo shoots. Dragging my mouse back and forth across my 24" monitor half-a-dozen times to get to the photo shoot I'm looking for is almost the worst scheme I can imagine. The Windows Explorer 2-paned tree model (as opposed to the MacOS tree where there's only 1 pane) is about the most efficient I can imagine for this scenario.

Now that disks are 1,000,000 times bigger than they were 20 years ago, why is somebody trying to introduce the metaphor that was only appropriate for use back then? Granted, it works fine if a novice user has maybe a dozen commonly used folders, but beyond that it is unwieldy.

I think the best solution is perhaps to use the "spatial" metaphor only for folders created on the user's "desktop". That way your ad hoc folders work the way your real desktop does (spatially), while proper hierarchies are still navigable the way they were intended -- as a tree.

aQazaQa

FFS

[theantix]

Look dude... you are acting like it's the responsibility of the Gnome developers to produce a desktop that you like. It sounds to me that you like the design choices of KDE over the design choices of Gnome. Personally, I find the KDE applications and general desktop environment ugly and cluttered, while I enjoy the simple and sleek elegance of Gnome. So it should be apparent to you that I prefer the design choices of Gnome over the design choices of KDE.

Two desktop environments for X11, each optimized for users with different preferences for user interfaces. And the best part is that they all interoperate, so I have no problem running KWorldClock in my Gnome environment, and you can run Evolution or whatever you want in your KDE. Check out what Havoc had to say about how modern DEs can interoperate these days.

So by my definitions, Gnome is progressing rapidly. I'm enjoying version 2.6 over 2.4 after using it for only a few days. Do I consider KDE to be regressing because it is getting more cluttered and ugly by my standards? That would hardly be fair... it's progressing in it's own way, and the same is true for the Gnome project. Mr. Rodney King, we _can_ all get along, just don't let slashdot know.

Re:FFS

[theantix]

I'm not attacking his view, I'm simply pointing out that that the design choices he indicated are more representative of the KDE project than the Gnome project. I happen to _like_ the direction that the Gnome developers are taking the project. But saying that KDE works great for people that think like he seems to... how is that unfair?

And like you I also like the XFCE project, and I'd run it myself if I was using a desktop that was sluggish running Gnome. But my problem with KDE isn't the widget set or the icons -- there are themes for KDE that look very pretty. I'm talking about the basic approach to applications -- each project's position on the balancing of neat-o features and usability.

I guess that I've never had the same problems with Gnome that you seem to describe. I appreciate that they've made some hard decisions to produce an incredibly sleek and kickass Desktop Environment. So maybe I resent it a bit when people bitch at the developers of the project for the very reasons that help define it.

What would you think about people that whinged about Ferrari for making cars that were too low to the ground? I'd say, look at Honda, they make great cars for people that prefer those design choices. It doesn't mean you suck for not liking it, it's just a realization that Hondas and Ferraris aren't for everyone, and it's good to have the choice between the two.

Of course, there is obviously a middle ground between the two. Judging by the response here it sounds like some people like Gnome but want just a little bit more functionality. In the case of the spatial browsing option, in hindsight they should have probably made it more obvious how to make the old behaviour the default. But in general, they do a really good job of keeping things simple and functional, and I hope they continue with this general direction.

Thank you, but who?

[Allen Zadr]

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.

Re:Thank you, but who?

[cweditor]

It is indeed me; you're welcome to e-mail me at sharon_machlis at computerworld dot com to confirm. (plse excuse the probably vain attempt to foil e-mail harvesting) I visit Slashdot reasonably often but have never opened an account to post before.

I'm not the editor for any columns that start life in print, so I wasn't the editor on this one. But I am familiar with our open-source coverage in general, and I do feel strongly that it's unlikely Computerworld readers will be turned away from open-source because of this column.

First off, a criticism of one particular desktop implementation doesn't imply that the columnist advocates ditching Linux on the desktop; I can't speak for them, but I don't believe many of our readers would conclude that. But even if we had a columnist suggesting that, we've had a lot of other articles with differing points of view. (One recent example: I was the editor on a reader contributed opinion piece, It's Possible to Ditch Microsoft Office.)

In any case, I've sent along the link to this Slashdot discussion to our print Technology and Features editors.

read it, weep, rant and then, why not think?

[zpok]

This guy's opinion (yes, it's an opinion piece) is worth solid gold. If you can't see it, you should probably not try to develop software for the masses and stick to making stuff for yourself.

Average user feedback is something rare for Linux, firstly because it's unappreciated and secondly because there's not many average users on Linux.

And if they balk at something, two responses out of three are "read the man pages". As if there's any reason to presume the man pages are actually any good or up to date or written with an average user in mind...

As always, I'm writing for linux people who like the idea of linux desktop.

Wait a minute...

[starnix]

His whole gripe was on Spatial Nautilus and themability? What a dumbass. Try covering something like, ease of use, stability, consistancy. I know Gnome isnt perfect but it gets better and faster with each release and if all you have to bitch about is "I can't change my titlebars color." then just keep your mouth shut. No one cares. Next he will complain about how its impossible to change the gnome menu icon easily. I think businesses want their employees to worry about more important things. This guy is a troll and nothing else. I don't hear him complaining about the utter lack of themability in the default WinXP desktop. What does it have, 3 themes? The rest you have to pay for. What a boner.

Re:Does Gnome conduct usability studies?

[sn0wman3030]

Yes. Sun has done some very productive usability studies that have directly affected GNOME. That is why GNOME is the usibility masterpiece that you see today. Check out a few of the studies here.

I will be glad when it works as well as 1.4

[garvon]

Yes I would like to have a autohide task bar that worked again!!! It worked great in gnome 1.4 but in 2.0 2.2 an 2.4 it forgets to hide about as often as it remembers to. Task list grouping that worked as well as it it did in 1.4 would also be nice. If I have 30 aterms open I get 30 buttons on my task bar it compleatly ignores the "Alway group windows" setting.
Now the real fun one is trying to change the window manager to run that has some actual functionalaty. I have used both virtual windows AND virtual desktops since well before the gnome project started and will be using the long after it is dead. Gnome used to be a desktop envirement that could be set up to work the way YOU wanted it now you have to work the way it wants. Try to use the gconf edit to change the window manager.
step1 find setting in gconf
step2 change "metacity" to "enlightenment" exit gconf then exit X
3)restart x and say "WTF?" metacity started again
4)look at gconf see it says metacity again
5)find the file in the ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager
edit it by hand then restart X metacity starts
6)kill X edit file change oner ship to root then chmod 644 start X again metacity is running again.
7) kill X edit file chmod 444 the file and start X again. still metacity starts (thias time the gconf shows that it is suposed to run enlightenment.
8) rm /usr/bin/metacity ln -s /usr/bin/enlightenment .usr.bin/metacity
I have seen the same thing on 2 different distros(mandrake and slack) o it si not disto changes it is the normal activity of the "New Improved (we know better then you) gnome"

I would love to see a updated gnome 1.4 (it actually worked and allowed you to have your desktop instead of one that they want you to use

Re:disagree with your comparison of MS and Linux a

[Angst Badger]

Perhaps Word 97 and AbiWord would have been a more accurate comparison.

Ick. I haven't actually tried the Linux version of AbiWord, but I have tried the Win32 version. My experience ran like this: I loaded a 650 page MS Word document in AbiWord. Some of the formatting was mangled, but not irreparably. The trouble started when I changed from 100% zoom to 75% zoom. Fifteen minutes later, when it was finished resizing, I had pretty much decided AbiWord was not going to cut it for me.

Word 97 launches by itself, OpenOffice launches an integrated suite, so of course OO will take more memory.

This, IMHO, is a bizarre design choice for a free software package. The only real reason for integrated office suites was to lock out competition. Why can't I launch the word processor and the spreadsheet -- the only components I use -- as separate applications? Don't get me wrong, I think OpenOffice is a great product -- I am, after all, about to spend two grand to buy a laptop capable of running it -- but that does make it more expensive for me than continuing to run Word 97.

The reason I am comparing Word 97 and OpenOffice, incidentally, is because there have been no significant added features in subsequent releases of Word for individual users. Almost all of the new development in MS Word since Word 97 has been aimed at corporate groupware applications. Moreover, the OpenOffice word processor really doesn't offer anything Word 97 doesn't have, except for being free and based on open standards. Now, that matters a lot to me, and probably you as well, but odds are that we are a tiny, tiny minority.

Re:News Flash

[Tukla]

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.

As a Gnome user

[Nailer]

I think its got a long way to go til it becomes usable. Too much effort is spent on making Gnome a next generation desktop when its not yet up to the standard of a current generation desktop.

Emblems, spatial Nautilus, contextual sidebars etc are great. So are Evo, Gimp 2, XChat Gnome, etc.

But the current Gnome desktop:

* No menu editor
* No way to modify what a launcher points to
* A file manager that acts like it can display web pages, then can't
* A bloody complex file associations menu that doesn't know about either the programs in my Gnome menu, or $PATH.
* No display of emergency messages when your hard disks decide to melt (apparently users have to be proactive and read /dev/console themselves all the time, you know, just in case...)
* No decent looking, comprehensive theme. Minor in comparision to the rest, but still...

Thanks for fixing the File Open dialog though.