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Stirring The GNOME Fires
uninet writes "Tim Butler and Ed Hurst have discussed GNOME quite a bit. Tim likes the current trend, and Ed doesn't. Read Ed's alternate perspective at OfB.biz."
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"Many would say, "Don't like it? Here's the code; fix it yourself." The Goneme Project is taking that challenge, and building GNOME differently. The project is aimed at a totally different user base: the long-time GNOME user who needs more options. Any claim by either GNOME or Goneme to be "better" really depends on what one likes.
It's about freedom."
Um, am I missing the point, or does the last author completely forget KDE and others ? You already have the freedom, silly.
Surely the poster meant 'stoking the GNOME fires'. Last I heard, fire's not liquid :)
You know? It's been a long time since the KDE fires have been stirred. Just an observation.
BTW this choice quote from Ed's article: The new GNOME is not aimed at folks like me. I have little use for it....I am a member of the Goneme Project as a simple documentation writer.
Ugh, this dude comes off as being an Iiiiddeeeeottt.... He doesn't ONCE mention what his "problems" with gnome are, besides the fact that apparently the devs are "arrogant twits."
Nice plug for Goneme project too. Oh well, to each his own.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It would seem more and more OSes and DM are going to path of "please the unsavvy users FIRST!", and thus simplifying things down to a horrid level. This not only upsets those who have followed Gnome since damn near day one, but it complicated backwards compatability when us vets have resort to the command line yet again, because a crucial tool within Gnome was 'simplified' and the power of it removed.
Don't get me wrong, command line is amazing. But I'm in Gnome for a reason. Here's my idea:
Gnome needs to focus on developing a more intuitive interface that allows for seamless use between gtk2 applications and the Gnome desktop enviroment, while remaining elegant. Follow the slackware principle, basically. Don't include and modify to the point in which it's no longer the origonal intended product, and let people (such as redhat, slackware, debian, etc) modify gnome to their own extent.
Maybe Redhat will want to customize gnome from it's origonal state to make it more user friendly, while slackware wants to keep it the stock power/elegant/simple gnome. The point is that we should give the people a choice, rather than preassume that all vets have suddenly dropped ten years in experience and now need to rely on the bloat that if we wanted, we could find in Redhat.
Maybe I'm ranting, in fact I know I am. But there is a difference between making a DM work well with the OS, versus making the DM ideals forced upon only a certain area of people (linux novices).
Feel free to expand, I'm done.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
From the article: Everything about it seemed rudimentary and unpolished from the standpoint of a Windows user or a KDE user
This was 6 years ago and - to me - little has changed. I've used GNOME, and it is usable, but its far from polished, and this is its big failing. I'm a KDE user (for the most part, but also a fan of fluxbox) and I find the eye-candy a joy. I know eye-candy isn't a necessary requirement for any UI, but it helps. If its easy on the eye, its easier to understand whats going on and to get things done. Having said that, KDE has way more bugs/quirks than GNOME but its still easier to use.
Its not a troll. Its an opinion.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
He'd probably love XFce, if he was willing to give some of his time to understand how to get it working (it's not really that hard!).
I use XFce and love it. Slick GTK interface and snappy response time, and a very minimilistic design. Fits my requirements for a WM exactly.
As one who has used many GUI desktops, I must say that GNOME beats the pants off all of them. GNOME + Linux is an unbeatable combination that puts the Sun desktop (SunView?) to shame.
By way of comparison, Windows 95 takes 4 minutes to bootup and to appear. GNOME + Linux takes only 30 seconds.
Bloat, anyone?
The site's already trashed...
;-) ??
Anybody have a karma-whoratic post of full body text
Well first of all there's no such thing as an average user. There is however such a thing as newbies. Second distributions already customize their GUIs. Remember the RH KDE vs the Suse KDE. Or the Fedora Gnome vs Mandrake Gnome. Personally the whole thing is a one-sided tempest in a teapot, which distracts most people (not the developers though. They stay out of these flamewars).
Don't get me started on Gniggers. They always seemed second class to me. Even when Kikes were 1.0 and Gniggers were pre 1, they looked like arse. Their icons hardly achieve the brilliance that Kike icons have had for the past 1000 years. And then there was the fiasco with fried chicken. Which they still haven't fixed, and probably won't forever.
Hahahahaha!!!!
Just kidding. This is slashdot, where opinion is insightful!
BTW, if you like slick interfaces, try out XFce.
In the context of the orginal story, the sense that already existing issues were being discussed, not new ones introduced, stirring makes sense to me.
But that's just my opinion.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
Even though my opinion runs completely opposite to the opinion of the grandparent, it is indeed an opinion. The parent, is obviously trolling.
All the work I did for the first 3 months was learn vim , edit XF86Config , restart X ... reboot to windows, look up google, repeat .
Then finally one day it worked at 1024x768x24bit and I was like ecstatic. I went around digging stuff and ended up with a really cool desktop which looked and worked the way I wanted.And then Nautilus came out ... and my box started thrashing like anything . I was kinda pissed at having a cool desktop that runs only if I sit really still and don't move the mouse. I did have a nice PIII 450 with 96 MB RAM , but the performance sucked.
I ran into Fluxbox at that point, when I noticed a simple little Windowmanager feature . I could resize windows , and move around windows without touching the mouse. Sometime back my serial port had burnt out (along with my modem on a stormy saturday). So I couldn't plugin both the mouse and the modem together. And I switched to fluxbox. At sometime around, I noticed that I never used the file browsers or desktop icons of gnome. The right-click drop menu of Fluxbox was more than enough for me.
The real question is - how did a Gnome loving fanboy like me shift out ? . Performance. And where is Gnome's future going ?. Virtual Machines and that for a compiled language. *BEWARE*
It sounds to me like he wasted 6 years fooling around with Linux. He should have stayed with windows until KDE or GNOME actually met his requirements. Of course, if he was doing it just for fun, more power to him.
Learning a bunch of different ways to do something is a waste of time. A unified desktop where all the applications work the same is wonderful.
Having said the above, I have always enjoyed having a choice of different applications to do the same thing. For instance, if a site crashes Mozilla, it is good to have Konqueror available. Perhaps a compromise would be to have a set of default applications which are tweaked to be consistent with the desktop. Other alternatives could be so indicated by changing the appearance of their icons.
The availability of alternative applications is one of the reasons that I use linux. (I feel helpless on a Windows box.) I guess that what I am asking for is some kind of compromise. The development effort would go into the default applications but there would still be alternatives.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I thought you said Gnome fries. Heck, I'd eat at Arbys if they had Gnome fries.
The GNOME folks do have some distance to go as well. Desktop integration is still not quite there - some apps play ball, some apps don't. What GNOME does have in its corner is the apps that have the mindshare of most users - Mozilla, Evolution, GAIM, OpenOffice etc. I am not claiming these are "better", just commenting on momentum.
Whats next for both is something new. Both environments pretty much do offer a decent enough environment that you can point Aunt Millie at it. Both need to start innovating with new ideas.
I am all in favor of making Gnome newbie friendly - so long as it does not exclude us non-newbies.
Consider cars as an analogy:
First of all, there are many different models of car - this would be analogous to Gnome/Enlightenment/KDE/Windows/MacOS/*. Few sensible people would assert that we should all be driving Geo Metros or all be driving Grand Marquis or Peterbuilt trucks.
But even within a make of cars, there are degrees of complexity. Most people driving an automatic transmission vehicle use P, R, and D. Those other settings (N, 2, 1) are just needless complexity, right - shouldn't we just remove them? Nobody uses them, right? Now, go for a drive in the mountains. Sure, many people only use D - you can tell them by smelling for burned-up brake pads. Better drives use 2 and 1, and not their brakes - they NEED 2 and 1. And people towing a car need N.
My car has buttons for moving the pedals forward and back. The first thing I did when I took delivery was to run the pedals all the way down, being 193cm tall. Does that mean that NOBODY needs to adjust the pedals up, so we should remove that switch? Or what about the traction control off switch?
My point is that while Granny Fanny may never use those features, some of us will - SO LEAVE THEM IN YOU BASTARDS!
Put an "Expert mode" in. Default it to OFF. Let me turn it on. Let me configure whether I feel spatial navigation is right for me or not. Let ME determine what programs play MP3s if I choose to do so.
And don't treat novice users like read-only dummies - let them know there is more power available to them, should they be interested in learning about it.
There is a GREAT difference between "ignorant" (unlearned) and "stupid" (unable to learn) - and many newbies are the former, not the latter. Don't treat them (and us) as stupid.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The current trend is good, but I would really like to see some oddities gone.
The common dislikes include comparison of 'spatial' Nautilus and 'gconf'/gconf Editor to things that bear a resemblance to it on Windows, which were hideous. However, it is not so, and the GNOME team deserves credit for providing better and good stuff.
I would like to see GNOME's current setup as default, but certain oddities would definitely drive me away. Except for a well organized and very simple home directory with relatively few files, 'spatial' can be quite limiting and makes doing thing very hard.
There should be an option to show a handy location bar (pattern matching and auto completion, for instance) that can be set in the options, at least in the 'Advanced' section.
There must be an feature similar to the 'Explore' context menu item in Windows, since, there are a lot of times a hierarchical view where new windows dont pop up for each opened directory be good.
The file dialog should have a location bar, again a handy one, not just a dumb text box. Again, since GNOME/GTK folks think people are too stupid and get confused, it could be an option, at least in the advanced section. The current file dialog is click intensive and brings up one more dialog to enter our own path.
These features are either not available, or available only through keyboard shortcuts. Having spatial mode which is limiting and a neglected 'browser' mode is not good. Why have two modes in which the system works. The 'browser' mode can be a temporary thing (as in the context menu action of 'Explore').
This, I believe is more inclusive in taking care of wide range of needs without resorting to 'modes' or excessive clutter in which the fork-plan seems to be heading.
Pardon my ignorance.
Thank you Tim, just what we needed.
And an other article that completely misses the point.
Contrary what Tim and countless others want us to believe 99% of the people criticizing gnome don't critisize the simplyfication of the interface but other things, like the gconf-editor, the imho stupid decission to change the button order, introducing spatial nautilus without giving users the chance to easily revert back to managing their files the way they are used to...
So yet an other article not addressing these points but instead attacking some phantom menace simply is a shame to gnome.
And of course it goes without saying that writing an article that goes out to praise gnome and ends up trashing kde with bogus, uninformed arguments and fud doesn't really speak for the maturity of the author.
All in all gnome is a great project though it has it's shortcomings like any project of this size. The problem is that right now you can't criticize anything about gnome without a load of gnomefanboys and sadly some devs to attacking you like this was a holy war.
I installed Fedora Core 2 and used it for a few days, and I must say I don't understand those who think Spatial Nautilus is a boon to new users. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of 'new' users are previous windows users, so emulating the Windows UI, even if you think it's flawed, is the only sensible way to ease the transition into Linux. I mean, how many people who are currently using Linux or are potential future users have never used Windows before?
Besides, I thought one of the selling points of Mozilla/Firefox was tabbed browsing, so I don't have 8 or 9 different windows open on my desktop. Now suddenly having 8 or 9 Nautilus windows open is newbie-friendly? Because the same obscure 5th level subdirectory (one of tens or hundreds of directories a user would browse) opens in the same spot consistently, that makes it friendly? I don't get it.
[Yes, I know this 'feature' can be switched off, same as the new XUL spoofing 'feature' in Firefox can be switched off, but it's about the defaults, right?]
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
So, basically, some people think that GNOME is going about things the wrong way, and are in the process of forking the project. Every time this happens, people have to be reminded that forking a project is usually productive in the long term. Take XFree86, for example. Months ago, the X.org fork was created in response to a collection of issues (the closed development model, and the licence changes, to name a couple). The object was to create a more dynamic (excuse my buzzword) project, quickly incorporating improvements to the codebase supplied by anyone. Fast-forward to today, and their fork is becoming the de facto standard, with XFree86 proper on the verge of disappearance; Darwin in action. I'm not an EMACS user, but I understand that the Lucid fork concentrates on new features, while the GNU version adopts a more considered approach. In that case, both versions have found their own niche.
In all likelihood, these disagreements and discussions about the future of GNOME will lead to one or more better desktop environments. Isn't that a good thing?
Because Red Hat, Sun, Novell, IBM, and the others that are supporting GNOME are nothing more than second rate tech companies that are in danger of going out of business in the next 24.23 seconds.
Ok, I'll bite...
"It's icons hardly achieve the brilliance that KDE's SVG icons have had for the past year."
My GNOME 2 desktop has had SVG icons for over a year. You're talking out of your preverbial arse with this one.
"And then there was the fiasco with the new Nautilus. Which they still haven't fixed, and probably won't for 2.8."
I wouldn't call it a fiasco. A controversial design choice, but not a fiasco. And it's not a bug, it's not something to be "fixed".
In fact, the single most issue that has caused almost all the debate is the lack of a simple way (read: not using the GConf editor) to default to browse mode. The browse mode has always been only 2 clicks away (right click and 'Browse Folder') but it appears the Nautilus developers are relenting and adding an option to default to browse mode.
"Gnome is about as relevant as XFCE and E in the Unix desktop wars of today."
Uh, yeah, ok Holmes. And Microsoft is about as relevent as Be Inc in the Desktop wars of today.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
that there's not any KdeMe fork...
XFCE is much better than GNOME.
Actually, XFCE with the Gnome taskbar instead of the XFCE one is just about perfect.
Man, to think what I'm missing out on since I'm stuck with this 'overpriced' dual G5 Mac.
I really wish some MS fanboy would startup a halfassed Windows desktop clone for Macs just like Linux. It really sucks to have a desktop that 'just works' when I could have 'freedom.'
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard and waits for a line on the screen.
Lives in a dream.
Waits for a signal.
Finding some code that will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Guru MacKenzie
Typing the lines of a program that no one will run,
Isn't it fun?
Look at him working,
Munching some chips as he waits for the code to compile.
It takes a while...
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Eleanor Rigby
Crashes the system and loses 6 hours of work.
Feels like a jerk.
Guru MacKenzie
Wiping the crumbs off the keys as he types in the code.
Nothing will load.
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Just Another F*&king Desktop. But if it makes you feel better every time you shell out $120 for bug fixes, then continue believing you are in nirvana.
The several emacs forks would benifit from being in the same CVS, and possibly even some of the scheme versions of emacs like guile emacs http://gemacs.sourceforge.net/ would benifit from this. (whereas texmacs http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html would probably not.
If your wondering why i've thought about this so much, It's cause I went through the issue pretty comprehensively a long time ago with the dosemu project, and my again with my (bad) idea for a kernel fork.
The enormous amount of buzz about Gnome (and alternatively, about KDE) most often ignores the idea that perhaps there is no one way to serve all users with a single desktop (window manager, application suite, etc) and there is an inherent (although subtle) hostility directed towards other means of acheivin g the same end.
The "desktop wars" occur in an isolated (but large) community of people who somehow have come to beleive that "there is only one way to do it" and have taken as their model of excelence the very designs that many Linux (and BSD) desktop users came to OSS operating systems in order to escape (Microsoft and Macintosh).
I use no Gnome (or KDE) software on my computer, have no Gnome (or KDE) libraries installed, and am capable of the same level of productivity as those who do. I've been unimpressed with these highly integrated desktop environments, not because I beleuive them to be somehow "bad", but because I have found that they are quite limiting.
Gnome is a noble effort (as is KDE) to enforce consistancy onto a bunch of unruly OSS users, a beacon of conformity rising from what appears to be (but is not) chaos. But the truth is that all of the Gnome (and KDE) apps are needlessly complicated under the hood, use far too many resources when running, and have rediculous dependancies (why does a spreadsheet depend on a sound library) that clutter an install and are decidely lacking in Unix-like design philosophy.
That is to say that these desktop environments are lacking those qualities that make using Linux such a dream: elegance, interoperability with other programs and environments, clean non-interactive interfaces, human-readable config files, modularity, granularity, and choice.
I'm all for people continuing their work on Gnome, its fork and it's competitor, KDE. But when Gnome begins to demand conformity from reklated projects, or seeks to embrace other apps, in such a way that it makes those apps suck (Galeon was once one of, if not the best, browser available), it is indicative of a problem that can only be solved by a rewrite (ala Firefox from Mozilla), and I don't see that as possible within the enormously interdependant and complicated collection og Gnome libraries.
Read, L
Times have changed. The license is not an issue anymore, Gnome and KDE have plenty of alternative language bindings, KDE's object model is actually used and is an asset (among other things, scripting GUI actions via the dcop utility is really powerful).
The big change is the dumbing down of Gnome. Its leadership apparently feels there is power in simplicity. I see only weakness in this simplicity, particularly when no "advanced" (read "not butt-dumb") mode is offered for dogma reasons.
After fighting with GConf problems (Gnome's tribute to Window's registry) recently I have given up and switched to KDE. I love it! So much I was missing all this time in misguided loyalty to Gnome.
Today's KDE achieves the power Gnome once strived for. It can be simple, but you can reasonably mold it to work and appear as you please (you will need to - the default theme is still "toyish"). I am regularly finding equal or better (i.e. powerful and polished) KDE apps to replace my old Gnome ones. I will never go back.
If you have not tried the KDE environment in the last few years, give it an open-minded spin.
Disclaimer: not a troll - just a user
Your wrong.
Why is it so damn hard for someone to admit that they are wrong?
I was looking at the Goneme Project website and it seems like everything that they want to change is basically changable by the ways of plug-ins, new themes, different config options and so forth. I don't see anything new or revolutionary about this project.
Wow, this is pretty much exactly what I do. XFCE I think was origionally designed to be able to be used with GNOME, and I still do this because the default XFCE panel and apps are not, in my opinion, very good. But when combined with GNOME, it is very nice.
Look people, from a UI design point-of-view the only good thing about cars is the standardization. That aspect and only that is the reason cars are sometimes referred to in UI design: once you learn how to drive one car, you can drive almost any make of car. They all have the same controls in the same places.
Other than that, cars suck at usability:
- You need to spend a lot of time practicing before you learn how to operate one properly and safely.
- The controls are non-obvious: if you take a man who's lived in the jungle all his life and put him in a car he wouldn't have a clue on how to operate it.
- Cars have little tolerance for user errors and many user errors lead to serious and even fatal consequences.
- When used improperly, cars can breakdown (as in your example of driving down a mountain side in D).
So stop using cars as analogies, you're only fooling yourself. There are much better examples, like many audio systems: standard controls, obvious icons, error-tolerant, and highly customizable with standard plugins.
FYI, there are more window managers than just KDE and gnome.
Programming is an artistic endeavour. However it is totally different from designing a very good GUI. Programming is about being efficient and getting the most out of a machine. Programming isn't exactly like math or drawing but more like logic. I mean Math is of course *logic* but writing Math proofs or making Math arguments is different then programming. Maybe doing analysis is closest to programming but I feel when I do Math I'm doing something more spatially motivated. Programming I believe at least from my experience is not spatially motivated.
GUIs is about space and how to use space efficiently. Now if a programmer tries to apply the same reasoning that he uses while programming to designing GUIs there is inefficiency.
The semantics of programming is the same for every language and there is a consistancy. In x amount of lines I want to achieve y amount of tasks. There is a finite amount of ways to achieve this in any certain language. On the other hand designing a GUI is about taking space and manipulating it so I can move things around and build something. Designing a GUI is like painting or sculpting while programming is like writing a good essay.
There is a conflict between someone who is good at programming trying to design a GUI because they apply the same techniques which in a sense are incompatible. Programming is uniform and arguments over code can be solved by which code *works* the best. GUIs problems can not be solved like this since each individual manipulateds space or translates space at different rates and different ways. Programmers should stay away from designing GUIs because they tend to use programming methods. Spatial artists like painters, sculptors, graphic imagining should be given the task of GUI design. The task of designing a GUI is making space accessible to everyone is a uniform way. This is very different then programming.
I just feel that GUIs should be designed by those who have the talents to do such a thing. People who can take space and make it simple are spatial artists and architects. GUIs is like designing a building while programming is like writing... two different things.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I think the push Gnome made for user friendliness is fabulous, and like the first article author I switched to Gnome a few months ago.
:-(
... but even I think spatial nautilus is stoopid.
Sadly, it seems like a lot of geeks have deserted Linux for the Mac. This leaves only hard-core config crazies on Linux... hence not only the attacks on Gnome, but also the popularity of distros like Gentoo. Gentoo, to me, is a sign of failure. It has a source-based distribution - ie the whole software installation process is predicated on something that Granny cannot do. Gentoo's growth could be a sign that Linux is going to remain in the ghetto of tinkerers and enthusiasts.
Dave
PS
At one point during the 1990's, something critical changed in the computer world forever, and it is this: for any new (version of a) computer program, the number of users who have previously used either an older version of it or a different computer program within its class (OS, Office suite, Graphics suite, Internet access, etc.) *will always exceed* the number of truly 'new' users.
:))
Although obvious once you think about it, the implications of this fact are fundamental. For example, it means that programs that try to 'reinvent the wheel', even if it's an incrementally better wheel, will fail to gain market share. The days when a word processor (Word) could replace a significantly different predecessor (WordPerfect) and succeed are over. Welcome to the world of evolutionary change, where all revolutions are doomed to failure! (sorry for the bit of flowery hyperbole
So maybe 'spatial' is better (though for the life of me, I still don't see how) but the majority of your 'new' users have been using Explorer or a non-spatial Linux file manager. Shouldn't the defaults reflect the preferences of the majority of users, even 'new' users?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
I never used ${APPLICATION}, but I thought I would ${ACTION} it after reading about it on ${NEWS_SITE}. The very first impression was that ${COMPONENT} was taking way too ${SPEED} to ${ACTION}, and I don't know why the ${THEOLOGICAL_CONCEPT} they made the ${COMPONENT} use the ${UI_CONCEPT}, unless they were all ${ALTITUDE} on ${ILLICIT_SUBSTANCE}.
I gave up after ${INT} ${UNIT_OF_TIME} of trying to make ${COMPONENT} work -- the ${UI_CONCEPT} is cludgy, the ${LAYOUT_CONCEPT} seems to have been written by a ${INT}-year-old, ${COMPONENT} is downright ${DEROGATORY_ADJECTIVE}, and such an essential feature as ${FEATURE} is not even present.
The reason why ${APPLICATION} functions so ${DEROGATORY_ADJECTIVE} is ${LACK_OF_DOUBT} related to the fact that it was written in ${LANGUAGE}. ${SOFTWARE_CATEGORY} should not be written in ${LANGUAGE}, as every programmer with even ${INT} years of experience knows -- ${LANGUAGE} should only be used for ${ANOTHER_AREA_OF_PROGRAMMING}, and not in ${THIS_AREA_OF_PROGRAMMING}. ${COMPETING_APPLICATION} is the ${PRAISING_ADJECTIVE} example of that -- it was written in ${ANOTHER_LANGUAGE}, which is precisely suited for this ${SOFTWARE_CATEGORY}.
After suffering for ${INT} ${UNIT_OF_TIME}, I switched back to using the ${COMPETING_APPLICATION}, which I would suggest to anyone who needs to ${ACTION} and actually have it done.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Read people's opinion about the GoneME project:
Gentoo Forum
Hallendal bLog
Hurst bLog
If you want a chance to change something then take the chance to participate to the GoneME project. This could be the only offer for a fork and change that you might be getting. Every help is welcome.
Project GoneME
Mailinglist
GoneME Forum
I agree, its perfect! I do exactly the same. I was starting to feel lonely, soo lonely sooo lonely so loonely, lo lo , i feel so lonely lonely lonely sooo lonely lonely
I also use XFCE. I disagree that simplicity is for the average or dumb user. You pick the right tool for the job. I don't use an electron microscope to read the newspaper. I use spectacles. Of course, if you "need" all of those KDE configuration options, then go ahead and use KDE. IMHO, Gnome is moving in the right direction.
It's been said that "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
So GNOME's development vector has been the inverse of Zawinski's: it started as an environment trying to provide everything, and it's slowly reducing its visible functionality. Every new iteration produces a new fight with users about simplified user interfaces, but the platform still exists. In fact, if GNOME's growth is anything like Linux's, then there are probably more users today than two years ago.
Where have my comments been unfair? Is there another lesson buried in here?
Using GNOME doesn't mean you're forced to do anything, and that can't be stressed enough.
I made the guy in the cubicle across from me answer. Here's what he came up with:
this is a day everyone will remember because it's the birth of two parties: the gnomicrats and the republicagnomes. here's a breif description of the two parties:
the gnomicrats are interested in pleasing the average joe. they want to beat M$ at all costs, and spread their religion to the world. even if they don't enjoy using the software they've created.
the republicagnomes don't care about that. they just want stuff done their way to please themselves. they would rather not try to please the average joe b/c he won't care enough to use the software anyway. they would rather please their own users than try to expand to users who don't care anyway.
and then there's the greencpu party. they are anti gentoo b/c all that compiling is a waste of electricity. their headquartered in california.
oh, and i hate politics. so don't even think about it!
Well, I've heard both terms and the GP's reasoning makes sense, but if you think "Your wrong" is right then you're wrong. Right? :)
The "new" Gnome IMHO is the first GNU/Linux desktop with a sensible default configuration and a simple, elegant and pleasant user interface. IMHO, it's the most pleasant, straightforward and stress-free desktop user interface available today; better than Windows, better than MacOS X, almost as good as the classic MacOS 7.x-9.x from which it has learned a lot. (Most longtime Mac users hate OS X for its flashy, unintuitive and inconsistent Aqua user interface, and rightly so in my opinion.) I also like that Nautilus was freed from the sidebar and toolbar bloat of today's file managers and defaults to spatial view.
On the other hand, I agree with the complaints about dumbed-down configurability and the horrors of gconf. I prefer KDE 3.x in that it allows to customize almost any aspect of the GUI directly through GUI dialogues and not arcane registry-like settings. The solution would be a desktop that is simple by default, but would have an "advanced settings" button in every configuration dialogue which then in turn would pop up a more complex configuration panel. There could be just one central control panel switch to globally turn the "advanced settings" buttons on or off in all dialogue boxes. (And it could be set to "off" for the default vanilla desktop setting.)
There could be two ways to approach this:
My real annoyance with Gnome is the discrepancy between its lean surface and its crufty and bloated code under the hood. I find it quite shocking to run memstat and see how many megabytes of RAM are eaten up by Gnome's components, with trivial panel applets that shouldn't consume more than a few kilobytes eating several megabytes, or the x86 executable of such a simplistic window manager as metacity taking up half a megabyte whereas desktop environments like XFCE show that the same can be done with a fraction of the resource usage. While KDE has a lot of code, too, its abstraction layers - like kioslaves, vfs, kparts - are actually used by K applications. In Gnome, comparable subsystems exist only in a half-broken state of competing, incompatible APIs (imlib2 vs. gdk-pixbuf, Corba vs. Bonobo vs. Mono, gnome-canvas vs. GtkGLArea etc.) that are not even consistently used at all in so-called Gnome applications.
The truth probably is that all these either KDE/Qt or Gnome/GTK specific layers/APIs/subsystems will be eventually replaced by common freedesktop.org standards and partly also improvements of the X.org X11 implementation through the work of Keith Packard and others. It would be a worthy goal for a Gnome 3.0 to eliminate all cruft in its code, standardize on one API for each subsystem, kick out broken layers and APIs to replace them with freedesktop.org's solutions (d-bus, mimedb), or, where technically feasible, KDE's proven solutions (kioslaves).
While choice and competing designs and implementations are generally good, some fundamental standardization of the GNU/Linux desktop is is necessary to allow the whole operating system to be configured and administrated over the desktop. Developers of system components such as bootloaders, MTAs, packet managers etc. need desktop standardization so that they can write GUI control panels which work on all desktops. Without that, GNU/Linux desktops remain relatively abstract, high-level shells, and free operating systems can only be run by people who either are commandline professionals themselves, or have knowledgable system administrators to help them out.
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
Blackbox windowmanager
Lyx for creating formatted documents
OpenOffice for Microsoft Office compatible stuff
TkDesk as a filebrowser (I know it's old, but it works and it's what I like)
vi for text editing (programming, html, etc)
Xine for media (it runs OK on my 450MHz pIII)
Firefox
mutt (I've tried Thunderbird, nice app, but I still like mutt)
I've found that it's easy to avoid Gnome and KDE if your dist has a shitload of available apps, and Debian fills all the requirements quite nicely, I had a few problems with xine bitching about the slow processor, but that went away when I started using a preemptable kernel.
Maybe I'm a luddite when it comes to my desktop install, but I'll choose a clean appearance and simplicity over bells and whistles any day. I'm not sure that this ghost they call "intuitive" will ever be found, as I'm quite certain that you have to learn each app no matter how well designed the interface is. People migrating from other environments always seem to complain about non-intuitive interfaces whenever they encounter something that does not resemble what they've used before.
Read, L
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Adding more fuel is "feeding" or "fueling" the fire.
Oper on the Nightstar
Maybe they should modify the GConf editor to be more graphical like a control panel to suit those "expert" users. That way you have the best of both worlds without modfying GNOME hugely.
How is the diversity of Linux implementations a "failure"? While the less technical among us may prefer something more like Lycoris or Xandros, other people might want something more like plain old Red Hat. Then there are the source code riceboy types that like Gentoo. Me? Slackware or LFS. There's something for everybody. How is this a failure?
Once again more Gnome Posts. Once again more people complaining about Gnomes simplicity and how there should be advanced options. I'm actually a little confused what they all mean. Can someone please elaborate for me what advanced features gnome 2.6.x or gnome 2.7.x is missing? I challange you to list a few, cause I've been using Gnome 2.6 for about 2 months now and find it to be quite refined. To me a lot of posts in this thread are offereing very little insight into peoples experiences with gnome 2.6 but rather are just a rant on someones own ideals on what they want these free software makers to build for them.
Ps in my profile you will see my post elaborating on my own experiences with Gnome 2.6.
Gnome is unfortunately still a political beast - it has been decided what the one true gnome desktop is, and that's the one you get - no themes for you. I suggest divorcing the GUI configuration from the code and allowing the creation of themes, but have a default theme that is always accessable and easy to switch to. That way we'll get a variety of people working on user interfaces that don't know C or whatever soapy .net VM that gnome will progress towards.
By themes, I mean real changes to UI behaviour, making the screen behave like an IRIX box or whatever instead of just changing the shade of blue.
The things that make it look really bad, like gnome crashing again and now the user can't get back into X without the root password because gnome has messed up some permissions are being slowly dealy with - but the UI has been changing at high speed at the same time, because that is more trendy than stability or reading some basic X documentation ( has been used by plenty of people to get out of X for a very long time, but use it with most versions of gdm and you can't get back into X again without root intervention). I don't know how many times a gnome related problem has caused a user to say to me "this linux is supposed to be stable isn't it? Why has my sceen locked up?"
So, GNOME has decided to take a more simple approach. How is this a bad thing? Does every desktop/WM out there have to cater to hard-core Linux geeks? If your an advanced user, there are plenty of advanced windows managers and desktops for you. KDE has options and configurability up the wazoo. KDE too bloated? You can use Ion, or Pwm, along with Xfce. You can also use WindowMaker, OpenBox, BlackBox, and a plethora of others WMs and desktops.
Personally, I think GNOME is going in a good direction, though I still like Ion and WindowMaker. A few things that GNOME could use would be a way to allow for easy arrangement of windows (tile, cascade, tile horizontally, tile vertically), and/or for an option to automatically arranged windows like Ion.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Programmers can be great UI designers if they take the time to learn.
Designing interfaces is as much a science as programming. Programmers only need to approach it as if they were learning a new language. You need to learn its vocabulary, its rules, its recommendations and best practices. It's the same with UI design. You need to learn about Hick's Law and Fitts' Law, and you need to learn about color theory, about modal and modeless design; there are a lot of theories about UI design. You also need to look at examples of what makes a good UI, and you shouldn't limit yourself to just computers, take a look at the UI of cars, toasters, televisions. You can always learn from a good UI design.
Being good at drawing has little to do with being good at UI design. Some of the worst interfaces I've ever used have looked great in screen shots, but once I've tried to do some real work with them, they've turned out to be extremely deficient.
I'm a programmer, but I love graphical interfaces, that's because a well-designed GUI doesn't require me to memorize complex and cryptic commands. I already have to memorize complex and cryptic commands when I'm programming, so when I just want to send an email or read the news, I just want to do it. I don't want to have to spend an hour learning how to use my email program.
0) Shoot all the rest of you KDE-using trolls before they can start bitching again.
1) Keep up the good work.