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."

Comments

quote:

[haxor.dk]

"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.

Re:quote:

[endx7]

Um, am I missing the point, or does the last author completely forget KDE and others ? You already have the freedom, silly.

Maybe people want -more- freedom?

They may have liked where gnome was, and want to bring it back to that point (but as a project, because you have to move forward.)

I liked the way gnome 1.x worked better, even if it was more ugly over all. Although, I don't use gnome anyway, instead I use fluxbox, so whee, I got my freedom. :)

Re:quote:

[kfg]

You already have the freedom, silly.

Are you suggesting that your freedom is limited to picking between the projects of others?

Um, am I missing the point. . .

It has that appearance, yes.

KFG

Re:quote:

[FyRE666]

"Many would say, "Don't like it? Here's the code; fix it yourself."

I didn't like it when they introduced the ridiculous "spacial filesystem" browser, or whatever the hell that crap is called that opens a new window every time you change to a new directory. I think there's a reason nobody has done that, and in fact several projects are doing the exact opposite (tabbed browsing). It was getting to the point where I had 30 damned windows open just to copy between 2 NFS mounted filysystems!

I did fix the problem though; I switched to KDE.

Re:quote:

[GreenHell]

That's not a fix to the problem, that's just a way around it and for many people it's quite irritating.

Let's pretend you have a web browser that opens every link, regardless of what the target attribute is set to, in a new window. Now, you can get around this by right clicking the link and choosing 'follow link' from the menu everytime you want to do this.

Now, ask yourself this question: if another free web browser that didn't behave like this existed, would you stick with the one that required you to right click every link or would you switch to the new one?

Note: I'm not arguing whether or not a spatial browser is good or not, as both methods have advantages. The problem is that it doesn't really match the current file-system layout with its many nested directories, and as such many people are irritated by it.

Re:quote:

[FyRE666]

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser true

[slaps forehead]

Of course! I should have guessed... Now I can see why they didn't put an option switch on the browser itself to switch between "convenient browsing" and the current "blind arrogance browsing"... It was right there in front of me all the time!

Re:quote:

[gnu-generation-one]

"Um, am I missing the point, or does the last author completely forget KDE and others ? You already have the freedom, silly."

The freedom to let GNOME stagnate as people migrate to other desktops instead of trying to improve it?

It would seem somewhat unfair to GNOME to take-up this freedom... When people offer bug reports, they are trying to help GNOME. Of course, while "use Windows instead" or "use KDE instead" is a valid response, it doesn't help GNOME get any better.

Re:quote:

[B'Trey]

The freedom to code on Gnome yourself is exactly the point that you apparently missed. Some users don't like the way Gnome is going, so they choose to write code which modifies Gnome to a way that they like it. Gnome itself doesn't want their mods, so they're grouping together and making them available as an alternative to Gnome. Some Gnome developers/users don't like that. Too bad. The freedom to do exactly that is what FOSS is all about.

Re:quote:

[Mornelithe]

The thing is, a lot of complaints people have about Gnome were brought about through conscious decisions by the people in charge. Some people don't like the fact that more and more settings are getting pushed into gconf-editor, or eliminated altogether.

People can submit bug reports all they like, but this won't get changed unless Gnome undergoes another radical shift in design philosophy (like it did from 1.x to 2.x). So the only option is to fork Gnome or use something else.

Re:quote:

[Mornelithe]

I think he was jesting a little bit.

But, Gnome has alienated a lot of people since the 1.x days in their drive for 'simplicity.' I don't really care since I don't use it, and I think that's about what the grandparent was saying.

I see a lot of people complain about the direction Gnome is going. Some are KDE zealots who have no business doing so, since they don't use it anyway and shouldn't really care. Some are Gnome users, and I'm sure that unless something changes such users will eventually get fed up and switch to something else.

Maybe the Gnome developers will take notice. Maybe they don't really care. I don't care, and you may or may not care in the future.

However, if that was the most ignorant comment you've read all week, you probably haven't read many. :) Get a grip, guy; he wasn't personally insulting you, which appears to be how you took it.

Re:quote:

[DAldredge]

The defaults are wrong in the eyes of some, however the basic design allows you to change it to suit your needs.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"Average user"

[poohsuntzu]

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.

Re:"Average user"

[bogie]

" and thus simplifying things down to a horrid level. This not only upsets those who have followed Gnome since damn near day one"

Just a quick note on history here. For YEARS Gnome users used to hold the fact that KDE came its own WM as a huge negative. Gnome users used to constantly bash KDE because they "forced" users to use basically only one WM if they wanted the best experience. Why are they taking away our choice of WM used to be the rallying cry. There also used to be tons of threads about how Gnome was more customizeable because of the themeing you could do. In short Gnome was the desktop which upheld the FOSS philosophy of choice while KDE was the one sticking it to its users by offering less ways to setup your desktop. Yes you read that right, GNOME started off by saying choice was most important. My how things change.

Re:"Average user"

[Sunspire]

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.

No, the entire point of the first article was that it isn't just about pleasing the newbies. As a power user and GNOME user since day 1 I love the new simplicity in GNOME 2.6. Just because I know how things work under the hood doesn't mean I want to tweak my desktop all day long. I want the damn thing to just work out of the box. It's all about setting setting reasonable defaults and getting the hell out of the way so I can be productive.

While using KDE 3.2 I regularly go "Holy, shit, you've got to be kidding me" at a lot of the feature-on-crack things I see. For instance opening the context-menu in Konqueror. Have you seen the amount of ludicrous crap they've stuffed in there? Scanning the dialog is mentally exhausting, it's crammed full of completely non-relevant options. "Do I want to add this image I right-clicked to a tar.gz file?", no I blody well do not. It's impossible to find anything in the kontrol center without using the search function, the modules are a patchwork of features laid out haphazardly without any thought given to cohesion. The bookmark manager in konqueror is an monstrous application to itself that I could rant for days about. There's a lot of "import bookmarks from application X" menu choices that don't seem to do anything except open a file dialog in a specific locations based on what application X is. It doesn't understand Mozilla "Personal toolbar" bookmarks, in fact it doesn't matter at all which importer you choose the result is always the same. Somehow this feature doesn't seem quite worthy of 4-5 menu entries... In fact even if they did do different things why not do it with one menu entry and scan the contents of the bookmarks file to determine from which application it comes? Because the developer didn't think things through and shoved the task on to the user, that's why. I'm of the firm belief that every single damn text string you present in an interface must be justified and reviewed by someone else than the one implementing the feature, every single string.

I recently tried to change my clock to 24-hour format in KDE, in GNOME I right-click the clock in the panel and choose "Clock type: 24 hour" which is the first option of 4. If someone can please tell me how to accomplish this in KDE I'd be grateful. I've programmed for god knows how many users, used everything from CDE to OSX and I can't figure out the damn KDE clock. How exactly are all these wonderful KDE features helping me, when in fact they just seem to get in the way?

Overall I find using KDE simply exhausting, nearly every single thing just rubs me the wrong way, from the wording in dialogs to the feel of the start menu (The damn thing keeps being left open, forcing me to return to the start button again and again to close it, though I'm sure there's a really neat preference option somewhere to make the thing behave like I expect).

Okay, end of rant :) I feel much better now. Carry on.

Re:"Average user"

[Sunspire]

I've used a dozen window managers over the years, twm, fvwm, sawfish, enlightenment (which was the default GNOME window manager not so many years ago, back in the RH 5.x days, a real piece of shit. Polished to a shine, but a turd nevertheless.) etc. Today I don't want to hear the damn word window manager, I click the windows and they focus, end of story. At some level I acknowledge that Metacity must be running in the background but that is about as interesting a factoid as that ksoftirqd is the kernel process that loadbalances my two processors. The entire notion, except from a purely technical viewpoint, that your window manager and desktop is somehow different is brain damaged at worst and a relic that refuses to die at best. I'm using a dual-head xinerama setup and NEVER once in recent years have I thought "hmm, I wish I could configure my window manager.

I'm not messing with you, please seriously tell me what needs you have that more configuration options could fix? I'll give you those options as gconf keys so that you, the power user, can change them. But I will not force them upon everyone just because you can't live without them.

It's fringe users and developers pet features that are keeping Unix interfaces in the stone age. We therefore need dictators to keep these seemingly harmless features from clogging up the entire system at every point. It's only because of a benevolent dictator that Firefox has recently managed to rise out of the bog of mediocricity that is the Mozilla suite. You are the kind of person who doesn't even realize that there's something wrong with the suite. If the suite works for you, great, but we're trying to make something bigger over here. The dictator is able to save a project from itself and its developers. It's an ungrateful job but someone has to do it, otherwise we end up with projects like sawfish.

Re:"Average user"

[Sunspire]

Let's look at it a bit further. Right clicking on the clock and selecting "Time and Date Format" (not "Configure clock" which a newbie would likely select) gives you a nice dialog where I can select my country. What the fuck that has to do with "Time and Date Format", the context entry you select, is anybody's guess.

But we tab to the "Time and Dates" page and continue on, probably saving the programmer a few lines of code. No 24H setting here either, but there's a dropdown that allows you to choose between "HH:MM:SS" and "pH:MM:SS". "pH?, wtf" the user is thinking about now. A google search only turn up programming related matches. That's right, it's the fucking formatting string of the unix date function. According to the help the 'p' is "locale's upper case AM or PM indicator (blank in many locales)" modifier. But we can plug in 'N' for nanoseconds if we want, so it's ok!

The user doesn't know shit about any of this of course, so through trial and error we see that the first selection is indeed a 24hour format. But wait, there more! KDE needs to be shut down each time you change something related to the "Time and Date Format" functions, joy. It tells me this in a friendly pop-up dialog (incidentaly the title on the dialog doesn't fit the window).

Re:"Average user"

[dggonz]

Gnome never took out the option of running with a different Window Manager.

You just need a Window Manager that conforms to the WM spec publish at freedesktop.org.

Currently there are several window managers that implemente the spec: kwin (kde), metacity (gnome),
fvwm, openbox, enlightenment & icewm.

Re:"Average user"

[tricorn]

From your description, that sounds like it is changing the default system time format for more than just the clock display. Even if it isn't, an inexperienced user is going to be afraid to change it, and an experienced user is going to waste time determining if it is or isn't. And if it is changing the default, then you still don't have a solution to how to make THIS clock display in 24 hour format and not change the default for other programs that use that setting.

why I prefer KDE

[hostyle]

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.

Re:why I prefer KDE

[unoengborg]

"Having said that, KDE has way more bugs/quirks than GNOME but its still easier to use."

If its easier to use or not largely depends on what you use it for and who you are. If you don't know who the intended users are and their needs you will not be able to build a good system.

If you read the KDE usability list and various KDE development lists, you get the impression that the usability experts and the people that writes the code are working on two different systems.

The usabilty experts tryes to build a system that anybody including my mother can use, while most developers seam to target the needs of advanced usrs at least when the usabilty people doesn't manage to talk them out of it.

I'm not saying its wrong to target advanced users, but if you do, you should do so consistently. The risk is that we end up with systems that is dumbed down in some areas while the it is still too hard to use for some users. End result, it will be hated both by noobs and superusers.

The Gnome people seam a lot more focused at the moment. The KDE people need to make up their mind,
or they will fall behind. This would be a pity since the KDE/QT framework is really slick.

I would say that KDE is in much more need of a fork than Gnome. A fork of KDE that was as simple to use as Gnome, or perhaps even looked like Gnome but built on QT technology. It would be unbeatable.

Then the current KDE developers could continue as usual an focus more on advanced users.

Re:Stir me up a candle

[Chess_the_cat]

The grandparent is right. It's STOKING the fires. You don't stir fires. You stir ashes and that's when the fire is already out. Source: Canadian Scout Handbook.

As a gnome user who's shifted out to Fluxbox

[Anonymous Coward]

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*

Re:Uhoh..

[edderly]

Over the past two years or so, Tim Butler and I have discussed GNOME quite a bit. He likes the current trend, and I don't. Tim's article, "Why GNOME's Got It Right" was partly stirred by the Slashdot article but also by our discussion.

I'm just an aspiring writer. Most of my stuff will never see the light of day, outside a small circle of friends. When I write for that tiny, narrow audience, I often take a good bit of license and engage in hyperbole, dramatic overstatement, and loads of sarcasm. I keep asking when the folks at W3C are going to include an attribute for sarcasm, because most people won't detect it unless they know the writer. My blog entry about the birth of GoneME was full of noise, and bit of substance thrown in for good measure.

By no means am I any kind of coder. I am just barely able to write a brain-dead simple webpage manually. I learned that much because it's the easiest format for storing my archive. I don't use a word processor much at all because I know how to print with HTML and a printer style sheet. Beyond that, I have no real interest in code. I write about computer technology as a side-line, simply because I write everything on my computer. When I discovered Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), I found the best writing tools ever. I'm also by nature a teacher, and I try to teach what I learn about Linux and Unix. Most of what I know about Open Source is what I experience directly or skim from a few technology news websites.

What I have to say about GNOME comes from having used it. Starting with "October GNOME" up through 2.6.1, I've at least tried it out on both Linux and FreeBSD. The new GNOME is not aimed at folks like me. I have little use for it. That's no different than saying pure CLI is not for me. I can get by in both, and have quite a bit at times, but neither of them is home. If you see in that something that marks me as inferior, I'd say that was your personal problem. FOSS is largely about freedom to choose, finding or making what meets your needs. If you can't code it yourself, you are left using what comes closest to what you would if you could. Most humans will make such choices in part from pure logic, but seldom by that alone.

It doesn't matter what I prefer instead, since every other desktop and window manager is competition, in a sense. The point of all this noise is GNOME, and it's virtues and failures as measured by its usefulness to each user. The last time I really liked GNOME was 1.4. Since that time, the project has taken a different path. Never mind whether that path was right; there's little chance it will change. The new GNOME is what it the project leaders make it, for whatever reason. How sad for me. At first I tried to make a bit of noise about it, but that got nowhere. People working on the project itself who dissented were told in various ways to forget it. I have no way of knowing how many went along and how many have bailed. That's the way it works when "free" as in liberty is a primary objective. That same freedom allows the project leaders to ignore my wishes.

Who can say where the watershed was, but somewhere along the way the complaints built up to the point someone decided to do something about it. He started with a patch to allow him some options he felt were missing from the project. His patch was rejected from the mainstream of the project, so he decided he would take his own path. Since he knew there were plenty of coders and users who felt as he did, he published his idea and got noticed. In a week's time, he was swamped with email. Enough of it was positive that he went ahead and established a new project. Enough coders joined right away that it was agreed to make a complete fork from GNOME.

Nobody on the Goneme Project is interfering with GNOME. The project page lists planned modifications to the GNOME base. That so many seem to take this list as a personal assault is beyond silly. How fragile is GNOME's place in the Linux/Unix world? Does it need rabid defense to prevent its evaporation? Persona

"It just works"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

part one.

[SoSueMe]

...never got to part two before OfB was C'd-f-B.

Why GNOME's Got it Right
By Timothy R. Butler
Editor-in-Chief, Open for Business
July 30, 2004, 02:17:00 EDT

Desktop Computing
Last week, some developers disagreeing with the direction of the GNOME Project decided to create what appears to be the beginning of a fork of the project -- GoneME. Like many from KDE Project and elsewhere in the community, GoneME's major complaints boil down to what has proven to be GNOME's most controversial move: simplifying the user interface. While naysayers, including the GoneME developers, seem to feel that the simplification of the interface, undertaken with the encouragement of such GNOME leaders as Havoc Pennington of Red Hat, is actually just "dumbing down" the interface, I think these critics are actually missing the point completely.

A Newbie in the Land of Penguins
Six years ago this month, I bought my first GNU/Linux distribution. I had become intrigued with Linux several months earlier when I had seen a feature in Byte magazine about a new desktop emerging called the GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME), and decided to figure out how to give this mysterious operating system a whirl. At the time, GNOME was not installed by default yet -- it was too early in development, I would find out -- and when I finally did get it installed, it turned out to be a very big disappointment. Yes, of course, it wasn't even at the alpha stage of development yet, but I did not realize that when I had gone out and purchased a copy of GNU/Linux. All I did realize was what I had read in the press: GNOME was a rising star that looked extremely promising. It was next to impossible to even get it started, a fact that, at least for a total newbie to GNU/Linux, was enough to make me feel discouraged not only about GNOME but also about the operating system. Let's face it: FVWM 95 never was and never will be a dream desktop, and that, along with the similarly undesirable Afterstep and FVWM 2 were the choices included with Red Hat Linux 5.1.

I had not figured out how to get a modem configured on GNU/Linux yet (these being the bad old days of manual configuration), so I rebooted into Windows and spent some serious time researching the options. I kept coming across a desktop named KDE, which had just reached version 1.0 and decided it was something I needed to try. I couldn't find any packages for it at the time, so I downloaded the source. KDE was much smaller then, but I was also running a lot slower computer, so it took what seemed like an eternity to compile. Not surprisingly, even simple compilation errors are daunting if you've only been using GNU/Linux for a few days, but after several weeks of head scratching and tinkering, I finally booted into KDE for the first time. It was pretty nice, perhaps it seemed doubly so after all of the hard work.

But it was not nice enough to get me to switch from Windows. And so it stayed for several years. Finally, a few months after KDE 2.0 came out, I started to become convinced that the GNU/Linux desktop could meet my desktop computing needs, and so I made the switch. Throughout all this time, I kept looking at GNOME, but it always seemed less than satisfying. It had so many options and programs; need I remind you that this was a desktop that did not even have a single window manager at first. Everything about it seemed rudimentary and unpolished from the standpoint of a Windows user or a KDE user. KDE remained my primary desktop.

Doubts Creep In
Despite my overall happiness with the project, nagging questions about KDE's planning started to occur to me as I observed it. Projects like Twister, which would have made Kontact -- the Outlook-like PIM that premiered in the last release -- a reality several years before it finally came out, were looked over while time was spent adding multiple address book backends, CVS clients, a growing collection of games and edutainment applets, an ever growing list of features in Konqueror and

Re:part one.

[Amiga Trombone]

My experience has been pretty much like the author's. I initially used KDE from it's inception, and found Gnome to be a cluttered mess. About a year ago, though, I gave it another try, and found it had improved a good deal, and I've been using it ever since.

Personaly, I've come to appreciate simple. Maybe it's just a function of old age and crankiness, but I really don't take much of an interest in tweaking my desktop to death any more. Pretty much my only interest in a desktop is an orderly way to click an icon and start an application, a decent implementation of cut and paste and drag and drop, and reasonable window management. Gnome has my needs pretty well covered.

Also, I have to agree with the author's point that while Gnome has become a more coherent desktop, KDE seems to have lost it's coherency. I can't exactly put my finger on it, perhaps it's partly a function of being overwhelmed with options, but I don't think that entirely explains it. Somehow, it lacks the feel of "togetherness" it originally had. It's basic infrastructure is still great, though, and I expect this is just a temporary slump. Both the KDE and Gnome projects seem to go through phases where they lose their focus, but usually correct themselves after getting complaints from their user communities. I'm still looking forward to checking out the next iteration of KDE. Perhaps it will be interesting enough to make me switch back. I suppose I'll continue switching between the two of them as they leapfrog each other. One nice thing about having 2 competing desktops - they keep each other honest.

The average user

[aardvarkjoe]

"Average users don't want complexity, and without the average user -- your boss, your Aunt Nellie and people like them -- GNU/Linux will remain a niche desktop forever."

Well, if GNOME wants to target the "average user," then of course there will be a lot of non-average users who don't like it. If we've learned anything about the desktop, it should be that no one desktop will be ideal for everyone. I don't know why this comes as a surprise to anyone.

Re:The average user

[SphereOfDestiny]

I agree, we also have the factor that if all the advanced users hate it, then who's going to develop it? I think we should keep all the cool features in there, and have differnt profiles depending on who you are. so when you start it the first time a dialog comes up and says "do you want the stripped down "easy" interface, or the full version for "advanced" users".

If we make the system so it has a easily modifiable interface, then the semi-technical users, instead of bitching about it their problems, can change it how they think it should be. Once they have something they think is good, they send their moddified interface back to the developer, who includes a library of interfaces, with the one that is currently felt to be the best "newbie interface" set as default. This gives us tons of interface developers, rather then the few on the gnome project.

This is the whole open source idea over again. By allowing semi-techincal users to modify it, and use their moddifications, the world can recieve multiple interfaces, and people can choose the best one. presumably the developer would pick the easiest to use as the default for his applicaition, but if not people would change that when adding it as a package to thier distribution.

So by the time the "beta testing" is done, we have a prety good chance that a decent interface is on any paticular application. Even if the developers HCI skills suck. In fact probably multiple decent interfaces would exist for the multiple levels of sophistication in the user base of the app.

(much of this came from a post from last time, that hardly got read. (hopefully some people will see it this time. and maybe i'll build up karma :)

Both GNOME and KDE has miles to go

[Ars-Fartsica]

Much of the heavy lifting of course needs to be done outside of these projects - X.org, Freedesktop.org (DBUS, HAL) etc, in order to make a desktop that "just works". People often talk up KDE reflexively yet fail to address the rot that has existed in many key apps like KOffice, which has failed to remain competitive with the alternatives. Konqueror has clearly lost the mindshare war with Mozilla but hopefully it can get some benefit from the huge swell of plugins emerging if the KDE folks are going to use the new common plugin spec (can anyone confirm?). And yes I know KHTML is in Safari, and no I don't really think it really has that much meaning for KDE users.

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.

Re:Both GNOME and KDE has miles to go

[nonmaskable]

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.

KISS, but allow for complexity

[wowbagger]

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.

Re:KISS, but allow for complexity

[theantix]

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.

In Gnome settings for "expert mode" are configured via gconf-editor and you can turn spatial mode off - not easy for newbies but quite easily for experts. If you are justified in calling yourself an expert you should have no problem with it.

Let ME determine what programs play MP3s if I choose to do so.

Determining what applications open files is pretty simple. Right click on any MP3 file and choose "open with other application" and manage the list through the GUI quite easily. There is also a menu option under preferences for "file types and programs" to manage all of the file types instead of hunting down an MP3 file if that is too tedious.

So your two given examples are pretty much bunk -- one of them even had a user friendly interface to it. To my eyes, Gnome has sensible defaults and the ability for experts to alter the behaviour, which seems to be exactly what you are asking for.

Re:KISS, but allow for complexity

[maskedbishounen]

Ah, the sad truth that is now Gnome.

Just because some of us are "experts" does not mean that we can read the developers minds! While it may have been completely obvious for some people to go through Gconf, find the setting, and change it, many of us didn't (until we started googling).

Being an "expert" doesn't mean a hard-to-find setting is easy to find -- or even that it's in a good location because you can figure out where to find it. Gnome is all about simplicity and ease of use, right? Does throwing options that the devs think aren't easy enough to the "common user" really fit that description?

It seems to me that the simple thing to do is to include a toggle switch somewhere, or perhaps a drop-down to limit the difficulty of choices. Xine pulls this off quite well. While many users may be masters of the known universe, the rest of us are just experts. :)

Current Trend is Good But...

[GrimReality]

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.

yet an other gnome rules kde suxors article

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Spatial Nautilus

[tabdelgawad]

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?]

Re:Spatial Nautilus

[fnj]

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.

Bingo. Unfortunately, what is as clear as crystal to you and me seems to just bounce dully off The Powers That Be at Gnome. I don't have the self assuredness nor presumptivity (nor hopefully the ill manners) to suppose that it's because they're dumb. It's sort of like dyslexia. If you don't have it, it's very difficult to genuinely understand how those afflicted by it can't just concentrate harder and "get it". I don't mean that to sound condescending but it's difficult to make the point (which is why I'm not a first class writer).

In Windows there is a simple, easy to find checkbox in Folder Options that says "Open each folder in the same window" (yes or no). It's easy to understand, and easy to pick your choice.

Does Gnome have such a simple checkbox, that would remove all objections? Noooooooo. It's just one example of what seems almost purposely going out of their way to make choice more difficult. I don't even care that the default is the new in-vogue spatial metaphor. Of course the user has the capability to accomplish his choice, but it's needlessly difficult to accomplish.

Disagreement is often ultimately productive

[resiak]

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?

Re:Gnome

[Deusy]

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.

Eleanor Rigby

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

I have to agree with Ed...

[qtp]

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.

loyalty to Gnome

[rebel]

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

Re:Thank god

[gnu-generation-one]

"He doesn't ONCE mention what his "problems" with gnome are, besides the fact that apparently the devs are "arrogant twits."

Is that not enough of a problem for you?

As to technical problems with GNOME, I think the writer mentions that he filed several bug reports in GNOME's bugzilla. These bugs were never fixed. There would seem to be little point in re-hashing what he wrote in bugzilla, when the problem is of users' opinions being belittled (to quote your comment, for example: "Ugh, this dude comes off as being an Iiiiddeeeeottt.") and that the problem of a hostile environment for those trying to help needs to be fixed before discussions about technical issues become relevant again.

In short, I think he's probably standing on the right side of the fork. Isn't that what open-source people are supposed to do when discussions stop being technical and start being shouting matches? You try out your way of working, and see if it attracts more users than the other way of working. "other" in this sense, consisting of insulting anyone who disagrees with you.

Gnome, apple, Gentoo

[dash2]

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.

Slashdot app critic MadLibs

[Mr_Icon]

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.

Re:Gnome

[o517375]

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.

Corollary to Zawinski's Law?

[timotten]

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?

Re:The Myth of the 'New User'

[NutscrapeSucks]

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.

Truth may be in the middle

[Florian]

Disclaimer: I use neither Gnome, nor KDE, but a radical console-centric non-desktop setup with the ratpoison window manager, but nevertheless eagerly follow desktop/GUI development because I want to see more mainstream adoption of GNU/Linux.

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:

1. Gnome creates the "advanced settings" switch and wraps all gconf options into extended configuration dialogue boxes.
2. KDE does the same from the reverse angle by thoroughly cleaning up and streamlining its user interface, putting all expert settings into separate "advanced settings" dialogues.

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.

Yup...

[qtp]

Debian (Sarge)

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.

what's the big deal?

[dh003i]

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.