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Godwin's Law Invoked in Linus/Gnome Spat
lisah writes "The flame wars between Linus Torvalds and the GNOME community continue to burn. Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,' a member of the Linux Foundation's Desktop Architects mailing list suggested that Torvalds use GNOME for a month before making such pronouncements. Torvalds, never one to back down from a challenge, simply turned around and submitted patches to GNOME and then told the list, '...let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they actually improve the code.' After lobbing that over the fence, Torvalds concluded his comments by saying, 'Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it makes things more logical, and code more readable.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Attitude and ego. "Here's a damn big clue: the reason I find GNOME limiting is BECAUSE IT IS." Why? "Because I said so, and I'm the mom, so just shut up and eat your patches, because they are good for you, because I said so, and I guarantee it."
GUI design issues are like fashion. Some people hate plaid. Oh well. Get over it. Emacs/vi, KDE/Gnome, Linux/BSD/Solaris (if Sun really GPLs). Lots of choice, and thats a good thing. I've never understood why Linus had relevance. Has he ever done anything besides the kernel? And this means his preferences for background images should matter to me why?
"Refusing to accept what the rest of the world wants" eh? Not accepting what the rest of the world wants must be why it's the default desktop environment in the majority of Linux distros.
GNOME isn't perfect but it's hardly out of touch with what the average user wants. The average user, upon first using Linux, doesn't say "Hey! How can I set window focus to occur on mouse over instead of click? What is this rubbish?". They might say "Where the hell is modem configuration wizard?" though.
Maybe Linus doesn't know what the rest of the world wants?
(Just for good measure: shit moron fuck idiot stfu ttyl)
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Wow. Even windows power users are stupid.
What the fuck??? Really nobody is that stupid.
evil is as evil does
Linus is a kernel developer. The kind of skills it takes to develop a good kernel have little to do with the kinds of skills it takes to develop a good user interface. But Linus is hardly alone in that; the Windows and Solaris kernel developers are doing something even worse: they are designing user interface functionality into the kernel. Apparently, this kind of hubris is common among kernel developers.
Kernels are like plumbing: you want someone that keeps the hot water coming and the shit flowing, and doing that takes a certain kind of skill (although it's not rocket science). But you don't want your plumber to design your bathroom for you, tell you how to use the toilet, or even pick your colors. In fact, the best thing for plumbers and plumbing is to be entirely out of sight.
So, Linus: the smart thing for you is to keep out of UI questions. Keep the kernel going, that's all people ask of you.
elitist much?