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Stirring The GNOME Fires

Posted by Hemos on from the battles-rage-on dept.

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."

11 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Thank god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Thank god someone is defending gnome against that GnoME maniac. I really like GTK, and the gnome project has a lot of potential to be a very nice user interface.

    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.

  2. "Average user" by poohsuntzu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?"
    1. Re:"Average user" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Let's consider our options:

      1) We have two (or more) different window managers, one small and sleek and one with every feature under the sun. You switch your damn WM to the second. You're annoyed at the effort and everyone else are in a state of "What's a Window Manager?" (i.e. The Way Things Should Be).

      -or-

      2) We add every feature you want to the small sleek default WM. Now it's not so small and sleek anymore, so we end up with two feature loaded WM's. You're happy, and the users are clawing their eyes out at the sight of the "Snap mouse pointer to X pixels from the window border" preference.

      I think option 1 is better in the long run. Sorry, you're the one who has to make the effort.

  3. why I prefer KDE by hostyle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  4. As a gnome user who's shifted out to Fluxbox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I started my first experiences with a machine which didn't let me configure X11 ...

    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*

  5. Disagreement is often ultimately productive by resiak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  6. Re:Both GNOME and KDE has miles to go by nonmaskable · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And yes I know KHTML is in Safari, and no I don't really think it really has that much meaning for KDE users

    Probably because you aren't a KDE user and don't know any better. Apple's involvement and code contributions have made for a much better, faster browser. Before 3.2, I needed Mozilla installed as a fallback for troublesome sites but it's not on my system now - KHTML has gotten that good, and of course it's got much less of a memory footprint than the alternatives.

  7. loyalty to Gnome by rebel · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I have used Gnome from its beginning. It was a good answer to Qt's license. As a plus, it is written in C vs. C++ and the object model appeared more future focused.

    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

  8. Gnome, apple, Gentoo by dash2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    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 ... but even I think spatial nautilus is stoopid.

  9. Corollary to Zawinski's Law? by timotten · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

  10. Re:The Myth of the 'New User' by NutscrapeSucks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Good point, although there's the counter-example of MS Windows/Office being "dumbed down" and "task-oriented" over the years.

    The other issue is that all of the "High Value" users -- business people, students, gamers, artists, engineers, etc have been using a computer for years and most of them have settled on a a platform and a set of software.

    This leaves Gnome chasing the lowest of the "Low Value" users -- grandmas, factory workers, and anyone else who somehow avoided a PC for the last 20 years and have very limited needs (web and email).

    This seems like a really dubious strategy because of the burden/cost of end-user support is already higher for Linux, and now they're trying to attract the most expensive users of the bunch. Plus the fact that OEMs aren't really pushing Linux on these people, and Linux doesn't have the application the Grandmas really want anyway (AOL).

    At least the "Kommon Desktop Environment" has a realistic idea of who their userbase is -- Unix geeks who like lots of knobs to tweak.

    --
    Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.