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

"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"

[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).

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.

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

[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. :)

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.

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.