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Havoc Pennington on GNOME 3's Future
An anonymous reader writes "Havoc Pennington, lead developer of GNOME, wants to fork GNOME 3.
'So the forces of existing userbase, the easiest-to-reach future userbase, cross-platform applications, and funded development efforts are strongly pulling GNOME 2 toward conservatism. I think GNOME 3 should be a fork for that reason.'" This has been a common practice for not only many open source projects, but proprietary systems such as Solaris for major revisions, so it's not as tumultous a change as the word "fork" may imply.
Spatial Nautilus, frankly. There are about a thousand app launchers that accomplish the same thing as the "foot menu", but Spatial Nautilus is the only file manager avaiable that works the way I want a file manager to work.
As a 90% user of Windows (ya I hate it) and 10% user of Linux (I hate it too), I think the biggest problem with linux is its incessant forking. At least Windows develops some sort of standard and things look about the same on all computers. It's like Windows is monogomous.. It's boring, but reliable.
With linux, every distro breeds more distros.. every project breeds more projects.. They're forking like rabbits!
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Just because Havoc says something doesn't mean it's true. Havoc doesn't own the Gnome project, and doesn't have the authority to make a big, sweeping change like this.
In the past, sometimes his plans for Gnome have been in conflict with other members of the team.
If Havoc wants to fork the project, fine. But don't call it 'Gnome 3' unless it has been designated the 'Gnome 3' project by the board.
Now, if this was a message from the Gnome Board of Directors, I would feel differently.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I know this will sound rude. But I feel like saying it anyway. Gnome has very much been focused on becoming more userfriendly in Gnome2 and it has done this by a less-is-more approach. This has, for me, made it a lot more user-unfriendly. The simple file dialog boxes are a very good example of what I mean: They now by default open up half-opened so users will not be confused by the more advanced options in them. But the problem for me is that the advanced options are things I use every time, meaning an extra click or keyboard press every time I need to use them. There is no good reason for them to appear half-open, it is just done to make it simple. The result of this is only extra time spent using them every time to make it easier to use the first time for complete idiots. Something similar is also done with the features to make it more user-friendly: If a feature is to advanced for a beginner, they are simply removed or placed where they are completely unavailable or require a great deal of effort to use. Gnome2 has come user-friendly to the extend where it is almost impossible to use productive on a day to day basis. I seriously hope Gnome3 will be better. Not that I think I will ever use it as a main desktop again, but as I use a lot of Gnome2/GTK2 programs (like I also use KDE programs in my fluxbox) this annoy me very much.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
It seems that the browser-now-known-as-firefox did this. They forked mozilla, created something quite a bit better, then worked out the kinks, and eventually it'll merge back and become mozilla.
I have no problem with gnome forking and creating a cutting edge version that's unstable for a year or two. It might reinvigorate the project so they can make something that gives kde a run for it's money.
First of all, some xcompmgr support would be nice. Gnome has a few BIG problems with using that program, which is unfortunate because using it on my computer speeds up the sluggish Gnome.
Another thing would be better wireless support. Unlike KDE, there is no app that can do what Kismet can. The network app. lets you connect wirelessly, but no part Gnome lets you scan. In this department many good programs have appeared that would fix this problem. I like- Wifi Radarand this applet
They only need to be incorporated (or packaged with a Gnome distro for the love of diety).
Many people think that Gnome's biggest problem is RAM usage, and they might be right. 256mb feels VERY different than 512mb on the same machine. I personally believe that this problem was made worse in the last release, not made better. I think that 2.12 has intentions on fixing this, so I care more about Gnome 2's interface problems.
Open Source Sushi
I seriously am envious of anyone able to code anything decent. I have developer envy.
In any case, I was wondering some of the same things that you put forth in the blog about fractally "petrifying" the GNOME codebase. It was my first DE i'd used with linux (rh5.2, I think CDE [ugh] was default) and loved it; but it never seemed to add features.
KDE 3.2 grabbed me after a few years of just using black/fluxbox and seems to really have the upper-hand in "creating value" when upgrading from previous versions. Do you feel GNOME has been losing ground for this reason? I'm looking forward to trying Beagle and seeing where Seth's OpenGL hacks lead to for metacity, but outside of that, I can't think of why I'd want to run GNOME anymore. Can you try to give me some insight into why I should be looking forward to future GNOME2 versions, let alone GNOME3?
put the what in the where?
Even though I depend on GNOME libraries for my projects (specifically PyGTK), I think this is a good thing.
The reason why is that having a bleeding-edge version that integrates things like Cairo, xcompmgr, more eye candy, etc will give us who like to have a system with all the eye candy a chance, without having to worry about adding them to GNOME 2.x and possibly disrupting users who want a no-frills desktop. When GNOME 3 becomes stable, it can replace the old version.
But moreover, the Linux desktop is at an inflection point - we're just starting to get the kind of nifty eye candy that other desktops have. GNOME 3 should be a chance to get GNOME ready for the future of the Linux desktop - using Cairo to render the GTK widgets, using Luminosity as the next GNOME window manager, etc.
Sometimes it's healthy to fork off your code and rethink some of the assumptions you made rather than having to deal with the cascading problems that can crop up when you try to muck about and fix those messy hacks we all seem to create.
Forking isn't always bad - sometimes it's necessary to eliminate cruft. If the end result is a better desktop, then that's what should be done.
As a developer I hate it too. However, I understand why the situation is like it is.
Writing software is a lot like creating art. That's one reason why I love it so much. I love creating stuff from nothing. That is the problem though.
How many artists do you know that just like to copy other people's work? I don't know many. The joy is in the creation, not blindly copying what someone else created. People can influence eath other but it's not often that we like to just outright copy someone else. That's why programmers don't like to work on other people's projects. Everyone has their own style. It's too personal. We do it sometimes but there will always be that underlying desire to do your own thing.
This is where commercial companies have a huge advantage. By controlling other people you have one vision but many workers. The workers work either because either they are getting something out of the deal or are otherwise physically being forced to do what some leader says.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
It has: .desktop extensions (like Windows does with .lnk files, but without the arrow telling you it's a shortcut) allowing them to spoof regular documents with icons and everything.
* No menu editor.
* Hard coded un-overridable mime-sniffing that gets lots of things wrong (because it's foolish to even try to anticipate every single file format and code to handle them all) and then forces its will on the user (won't open some of my text files in gedit for "security" reasons).
* A file browser that defeats all that paranoid mime-sniffing "security" by hiding extensions
* Menus that scroll like win95 when very full. A menu editor and/or overflowing into columns would help a lot.
* And a continually decreasing level of configurability.
I suppose aside from that it's very good. It's the desktop environment I'm using now, and the one that I keep coming back too after repeatedly trying to dump it in favor of the alternatives.
Damn. Gnome is my favourite. I'm using it most of the time including now. If it only was as smooth gaming platform as KDE I would never use anything else. Does it need forking? just smoothen up the functionality.
Didn't RTFA and it might show...
And while it might be a good idea in theory, fact is that most users hate it.
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There are many good things worth keeping in GNOME, and many worth changing. Some are foundational issues, and the best way to handle those foundational issues (such as getting Storage implemented and suchlike) is within a fork. I love GNOME (and use KDE under GNOME, rather than the other way around) and wouldn't like to see the GNOME 2 line disturbed too much in the name of progress, yet I wish to see that progress happen.
On a related topic, I'm not up to speed with the details of programming GNOME: in which order should I learn my way round the libraries?
John_Chalisque
Most people I've introduced to Linux have done just fine. The main reason for that is that I completely ignore Gnome in favour of KDE. It looks better and works better. And, on a personal level, I can't stand the arrogance of the Gnome developers.
Shells in X always feel clunky to me because of the lack of an `open' command. On NeXT systems and on OS X, you can simply say `open {filename}' and have it opened in the default application. One really nice thing about this is that you can say `open .' to have the current directory open in the default file manager (useful if you want to do something to multiple files that can't easily be specified by a regex).
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