Has GNOME Rejected Canonical Help? Shuttleworth Responds

akgraner writes "When Canonical made the decision to make Unity the default desktop, some questioned the GNOME/Canonical relationship. Adding fuel to this fire was the recent distribution split of revenue generated by Banshee. These decisions caused the Ubuntu, GNOME and even Fedora community members to ask why these things were done. In Dave Neary's 'Has GNOME rejected Canonical help?' post, he states, 'I have repeatedly read Canonical & Ubuntu people say, "We offered our help to GNOME, and they didn't want it."' Neary gives examples in his post of what others have said to back up the 'they didn't want it' claim by Canonical and Ubuntu people. Today, though, Shuttleworth responds on his blog. 'Competition is tough on the contestants, but it gets great results for everyone else.'"

Comments

Nokia had the same problem

[devxo]

Shuttleworth notes to that end, "Weâ(TM)ve failed." He adds, "Much of the language, and much of the decision making Iâ(TM)ve observed within Gnome, is based on the idea that Unity is competition WITH Gnome, rather than WITHIN Gnome."

There was a story on The Register today on why Nokia failed. They had the exact same problem - teams that should be working together are fighting against each other and in the end just losing together. That seems to be a large problem in OSS community too, and it's no wonder Nokia had it too (they had many Linux developers). But when a software company, usually proprietary, is ran good, it doesn't suffer such problems as management makes good decisions and gives orders. That is why Windows works good and why the quality is consistent.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"That is why Windows works good and why the quality is consistent."

Consistently good, bad or meh? Vista, Clippy, Kin One/Two, WinME,... i kid, i kid. Sorry for the sidetrack but it was just too good to pass up.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[VortexCortex]

Shuttleworth notes to that end, "Weâ(TM)ve failed." He adds, "Much of the language, and much of the decision making Iâ(TM)ve observed within Gnome, is based on the idea that Unity is competition WITH Gnome, rather than WITHIN Gnome."

There was a story on The Register today on why Nokia failed. They had the exact same problem - teams that should be working together are fighting against each other and in the end just losing together. That seems to be a large problem in OSS community too, and it's no wonder Nokia had it too (they had many Linux developers). But when a software company, usually proprietary, is ran good, it doesn't suffer such problems as management makes good decisions and gives orders. That is why Windows works good and why the quality is consistent.

Infighting in Microsoft is why we didn't get clear-type for over 10 years after it was available... (Clear-type is the software that gives fonts 3 times the horizontal resolution on LCDs) The Office Suite devs wanted it for their own -- to boost their own team's importance, and refused to fix the the MS Office font system to work with clear-type unless the clear-type devs were placed under the Office Suite team's umbrella.

This is just one small example of MS infighting stifling innovation. Please take your closed source software down from the pedestal. Management is the problem -- That, and a "not invented here" mentality. It can happen anywhere.

Ubuntu and Gnome are diverging because they each have their own goals and any interference with one's goals is not tolerated -- I've found that true collaboration basically requires an alignment of our goals -- Seems to me like human nature.

The difference is that when Canonical and Gnome bicker, I can still use the features that they independently develop... I'm not stuck waiting for 10 years (like for Windows clear-type).

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know Microsoft's failures, but the reality is they are only failures because Microsoft has to program for the 90% of the market that has no idea how to use a computer instead of the 1% that do. If it were somehow switched and 11.04 was installed on 90% of the machines out there and people knew kinda how to use it (I'm hypothesizing OS switching and knowledge switching too) Ubuntu would be in the same situation with driver issues, machine speed issues, 3rd party add-on issues, hacker target issues, etc.

It's really not funny anymore so it is easy to pass up. For the absolute magnitude of stuff that Windows does right, even Vista and ME can be considered good code. Not the greatest, Not Microsoft's best, Not worth the price tag, but still good.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Trufagus]

You are comparing Apples to Oranges.

Nokia and Canonical are companies. It is managements' job to make everyone in the company work towards a coherent goal - the fact that this includes Linux developers is irrelevant. Companies selling/using open-source technologies are just as capable as proprietary companies of doing this effectively, or (as in the case of Nokia) of failing at it.

Nokia and Canonical both also worked within a community. That adds an extra level of complexity. That is where Canonical failed.

No one is suggesting that Canonical failed at internal management in the way that Nokia failed.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Competition is never for good. It causes that competitors starts lowering prices and so on quality. They start pushing products out faster to be first to release something. It just causes problems for all who are part in the development and leading the projects. And customer suffers most of the whole competition. No one actually wins at competition as everyone is stabbing to back to maintain their jobs or marketshare. Even the stores selling the products needs to compete each other with lower price and that means less money what is less people to be hired and less services....

Ripping competition off does not mean that we need to give monopoly for one company.
We need teamwork, standards and higer prices and much higer salaries for low lever workers (bosses has got enough already... they should instead be fired)
We need to discuss about what is best option for most people. We need to support those who are trying to serve minority with own products and services.
We really need teamwork to push up the whole humanity to actually gain something great. Competition is just like shooting own leg while shooting competitors leg as well and everyone runs slower or not at all and the race is very boring to watch.

It is smarter and more beneficent to share information to everyone and get everyone to focus same goal.

Other big mistake in the whole economical world is the revenue. Every money what gets printed, has revenue on it. Every product what gets sold has own revenue on it. Every product what gets manufactured has revenue on it. In the long run, there is less money on the markets than what the total cost of everything is. It just ends up to catastrophic economical situation where poor (80%) people pay everything what rich (5%) people had done to gain more wealth and power.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Patch86]

Apple (dare I say it) markets to an even less tech-savvy demographic than MS, and they've rarely ever had "misses" as painful as some of the MS ones.

Not that I'm an MS hater, mind- they've produced some good nuggets over the years. It'd be much easier to like them if it weren't for all the evil.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Kjella]

To be honest I don't care if Nokia tanks, but I think they took Qt down with them. For the last three years it has moved *very* slowly when it comes to desktop features and by relicencing from GPL to LGPL I think they killed off any chance to reboot the Trolltech business model of GPL/commercial dual licensing. Digia may milk the existing customers but they lost both three years working on mobile features no one will use and many proprietary software vendors will use the LGPL version without paying or contributing. That sucks because whatever you may think of KDE, Qt is actually a very good development platform. If Gnome won't cooperate, I think Shuttleworth should just clone the look and feel and make Unity/Qt instead.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[maxume]

What about everything before OS X?

What about their ongoing questionable hardware issues (you know, stuff like the grip of death, things that aren't fatal to a project but are hard to classify as anything but stupid).

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[pieterh]

It's hard to know if you're serious when you say "Windows works good" but okaay....

You kind of miss the point about how open source teams organize. Competition is 80% of the reason for writing software as a sport. The infighting and hatred you see in these FOSS communities are the flip side of their creativity. Whereas the same infighting and hatred in a business setting is toxic.

FOSS communities that are polite, fully collaborative, kind, and patient, will die. They won't attract people who have emotional ties to the work they make; their contributors won't defend their works against criticism, won't defend them at conferences and in blogs.

I'm very happy each time I see these arguments. They are the best sign that FOSS is not just alive and healthy but an intrinsic expression of creativity that will never go away, and will continue to feed me an endless supply of alternatives.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[blizz017]

Except for that whole period of time from the mid/late 80's to late 90's where Apple was on the verge of being bought about by Sun for $5 a share and doing absolutely nothing to make a mark on the consumer market in any fashion.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Apple (dare I say it) markets to an even less tech-savvy demographic than MS, and they've rarely ever had "misses" as painful as some of the MS ones.

Not that I'm an MS hater, mind- they've produced some good nuggets over the years. It'd be much easier to like them if it weren't for all the evil.

It's the difference between having an established market and custom-building a market. When you're a small player (10% now, 0% at start) you can afford to take some chances and break away from established ways of doing things . You don't really have that option when you're a big player, not without alienating a significant portion of your customer base.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I was going to mod you down, but I couldn't find "-1 Clueless" in the options.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[erroneus]

It is inappropriate to compare Ubuntu and Vista in this way. There is no "if-then" relationship between the two at all.

The struggle of Linux and the struggle of Microsoft are completely different. One struggles to maintain its monopoly and the other struggles to get acceptance and neither of these struggles are rooted in their quality or if one is "better" than the other.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Midnight Thunder]

What about everything before OS X?

What about their ongoing questionable hardware issues (you know, stuff like the grip of death, things that aren't fatal to a project but are hard to classify as anything but stupid).

Apple get's things wrong too. It could be argued this is what happens when you try pushing the edge, but in reality it was probably an oversight due to other priorities getting in the way.

Before Steve Jobs was brought back to Apple, the company was quickly going down hill. Their arrogance cost them the market, and the OS had some serious stability issues. Rebuilding MacOS X on the foundation of OpenStep, and thus BSD, was a big help in changing the appealing, but unstable OS, into an appealing and stable OS. From what I have read Steve Jobs likes to keep a tight ship and the employees benefit and suffer at the same time. They benefit because they end up excelling at what they do and they suffer because the demands put on them are high.

Microsoft from what I read, at the time of Vista, suffered from internal competition that was actually hurting the company, since teams almost acted to sabotage the efforts of other teams. I don't know whether Steve Balmer shaped things up after that, since Windows 7 seems to be a better OS, or whether they are just cruising on the same trajectory, but no one has noticed the direction?

The quality of the leadership counts for as much as anything.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[VGPowerlord]

Apple get's things wrong too. It could be argued this is what happens when you try pushing the edge, but in reality it was probably an oversight due to other priorities getting in the way.

Before Steve Jobs was brought back to Apple, the company was quickly going down hill. Their arrogance cost them the market, and the OS had some serious stability issues. Rebuilding MacOS X on the foundation of OpenStep, and thus BSD, was a big help in changing the appealing, but unstable OS, into an appealing and stable OS. From what I have read Steve Jobs likes to keep a tight ship and the employees benefit and suffer at the same time. They benefit because they end up excelling at what they do and they suffer because the demands put on them are high.

Switching to OpenStep wasnt' a panacea. While I never used it, I heard OSX 10.0 was a real mess too, which is why 10.1 was quickly pushed out as a free update.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[LandoCalrizzian]

It's the difference between having an established market and custom-building a market. When you're a small player (10% now, 0% at start) you can afford to take some chances and break away from established ways of doing things . You don't really have that option when you're a big player, not without alienating a significant portion of your customer base.

I doubt anyone can really argue that Steve Jobs really cares about alienating his customer base. He's designed the iProducts to function exactly how he would want them to be and openly states that you're holding it wrong. He's just lucky enough that millions of people are OK with doing things his way. Sheer dumb luck, not really. Out-innovating everyone else definitely. I find Apple products very restrictive but I am willing to concede that they only trail Google as the most innovative software company out there.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[VGPowerlord]

Infighting in Microsoft is why we didn't get clear-type for over 10 years after it was available... (Clear-type is the software that gives fonts 3 times the horizontal resolution on LCDs)

Maybe I'm misremembering, but hasn't Clear Type shipped in Windows since XP launched in 2001? So, you're saying that this technology was available in 1991 or earlier?

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

My point is that he was able to take those steps in the first place because of how small apple's customer base was. If they had MS's install base at that time, it could never have happened.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[TheRaven64]

The main problem with OS X 10.0 was performance, and this wasn't due to adopting OPENSTEP (not OpenStep - OpenStep is a specification, OPENSTEP is an operating system), but due to replacing code. One of the biggest changes between OPENSTEP 4.2 and OS X 10.0 was replacing Display PostScript with Quartz. This moved to a compositing model, rather than a direct drawing model. This gives a significant performance advantage on modern machines. If you drag a window across the screen on OPENSTEP, every application underneath gets a load of redraw events and has to run some quite processor-intensive code to update the display. With OS X, the GPU just draws a few textured rectangles. With 10.0, however, this was all done in software, and on a 266MHz PowerPC was very slow. Especially since the software paths weren't very well optimised (10.0 was the 'make it work' release, 10.1 was the first 'make it fast' release).

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[MBGMorden]

When the hell did they let out Jared Loughner?

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[SudoGhost]

But when a software company, usually proprietary, is ran good

Ran well.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[turgid]

But when a software company, usually proprietary, is ran good

Ran well.

Run well.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[VortexCortex]

Infighting in Microsoft is why we didn't get clear-type for over 10 years after it was available... (Clear-type is the software that gives fonts 3 times the horizontal resolution on LCDs)

Maybe I'm misremembering, but hasn't Clear Type shipped in Windows since XP launched in 2001? So, you're saying that this technology was available in 1991 or earlier?

No, I'm not saying that at all -- I'm just repeating what's in TFL... But, yes, it does seem to me that it took over ten years to be fully available.

For example, early in my tenure, our group of very clever graphics experts invented a way to display text on screen called ClearType. It worked by using the color dots of liquid crystal displays to make type much more readable on the screen. Although we built it to help sell e-books, it gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for every device with a screen. But it also annoyed other Microsoft groups that felt threatened by our success.

[...]

Engineers in the Windows group falsely claimed it made the display go haywire when certain colors were used. The head of Office products said it was fuzzy and gave him headaches. The vice president for pocket devices was blunter: he’d support ClearType and use it, but only if I transferred the program and the programmers to his control. As a result, even though it received much public praise, internal promotion and patents, a decade passed before a fully operational version of ClearType finally made it into Windows.

--Dick Brass (Vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004).

I agree the time line may seem a bit dubious -- the sub pixel rendering method was patented in 1998 -- it could have been invented before that time... According to the Wikipedia article

ClearType was invented in the Microsoft e-Books team by Bert Keely and Greg Hitchcock. It was then analyzed by researchers in the company, and signal processing expert John Platt designed an improved version of the algorithm

So I suppose, according to Dick Brass, Keely & Hitchcock would have had to invent the system prior to 1991, before a patent was filed for the tech... I don't think he's claiming it was a decade before it was available.

I think means it was a decade before it actually worked correctly in Windows... (at which point I would consider it stable enough to rely upon -- Available != Available to be considered stable) In which case the timeline is less dubios, and my position stands that without the infighting I would not have had to wait a decade for "a fully operational version of ClearType" to finally make it into Windows.

P.S. Bullshit pedantic discussion aside: The ex Vice President of Microsoft says:

"Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers."

To me this means that corporate infighting at MS has stifled innovation in Windows -- Which was my original point.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Fri13]

I don't think it was a joke, as I can find similar problems from current system and hazardous of competition.
If I just would have modpoints (and account) I would mod that up as he (or she) is right.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I can't take seriously anything that begins with the blanket statement "competition is never for good". If he'd said, "Sometimes competition isn't the best thing for consumers" or even "forced competition is never for the good" I could have gone along with it. But to say it's never good without actually explaining it or anything to back it up... either no foundation in reality or joking.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[icebraining]

On the other hand, Apple only has to make their OS work with an extremely limited set of configurations. Microsoft has farms of machines and it's still a minority. GNU Linux distros have to rely on voluntaries.

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[tehcyder]

Apple (dare I say it) markets to an even less tech-savvy demographic than MS, and they've rarely ever had "misses" as painful as some of the MS ones.

So you were never forced to use OS9?

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[DaVince21]

I call bullshit. MS's internal organization is a mess where people fight against each other too. Or at least, so I have read from people who (used to) work there. Maybe this information is outdated and they somehow managed to resolve all that?

Re:Nokia had the same problem

[Tamran]

You are comparing Apples to Oranges.

Is that similar to comparing Apples to Windows?

meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us disabled users are looking for an alternative operating system for our Windows XP netbooks. The compiz magnifier is great, but GNOME is the _only_ desktop environment that has a screen reader. The GNOME screen reader performs _very_ slowly on a netbook though. It even runs slow on a modern system sometimes.

My point? Can we stop with the political issues and try to just produce the best, stable, reliable system we possibly can? Can we stop changing the underlying components every two years? Can we stop changing things that don't make the system any better (like notification bubbles that require more daemons) and fix what we do have?

Re:meanwhile...

[metalgamer84]

I see what you did there.

Re:meanwhile...

[FesterDaFelcher]

Uhhh, how about VoiceOver?

Re:meanwhile...

[advocate_one]

My point? Can we stop with the political issues and try to just produce the best, stable, reliable system we possibly can?

you've obviously never tried to get Gnome devs to change things back... they're absolutely obsessed with making things as unconfigurable as possible for the end user as they believe what they offer is right and the user is an idiot for wanting to changing some options... Just try configuring the screensaver to use images in a directory OTHER than the one they want you to use... it's impossible without doing some manual editing and diving deep... the options are just not there in the screensaver itself...

Re:meanwhile...

[natehoy]

I would like to see Canonical buy out GNOME and do those things that the AC above suggested

Don't get me wrong, I love Canonical. I use Mint, which is one of the "respins" of Ubuntu. Canonical has contributed a lot to the Linux world, and I value those contributions greatly.

Ubuntu doesn't like Gnome 3 Shell, so they want to write their own Shell over the underlying Gnome 3 infrastructure. That does not mean that the Gnome team's goals are not equally worthy or without merit. Having Canonical "buy out" the Gnome team because they want their own shell would be a great loss to the choice that makes the Linux community so vibrant (and, of course, occasionally confusing to the uninitiated).

Ubuntu has the resources to just do the things they want to their own shell, while leaving Gnome Shell alone to pursue its own (possibly incompatible) goals. They're both based on Gnome 3 anyway, so I bet a lot of the features are going to turn out to be portable between the two once any hurt feelings pass and the two project teams start looking at each others' work.

Canonical contributes a lot back, and they do great work. That doesn't mean the rest of the upstream community should be FORCED into accepting their changes. That's not how OSS works.

Re:meanwhile...

[maxume]

You think that will run on the netbook that he owns?

Re:meanwhile...

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I very much appreciate your concern about having choices, which is one of the good things that I love about all things OSS. But my bigger concern has to do with OSS efforts being diluted by forks and people doing very similar things separately.

I think this is similar to the kind of thinking that leaves RIAA execs believing that if people didn't pirate, they would suddenly start buying albums.

Maybe the things are similar to you and me - but obviously not to the people doing it, or there wouldn't be any debate. And the blessing and curse of OSS is that no one entity has the option of saying "No, your way is worse, we're using mine." While sometimes frustrating, that's also a Good Thing.

Re:meanwhile...

[MBGMorden]

You did, but I'm betting anyone needing screen reader didn't.

Re:meanwhile...

[MBGMorden]

This is the main thing pissing me off about the direction of Linux. Too much being different for the sake of being different. Ubuntu moved the buttons on me - ticked, ok, but whatever. I can use gconf to switch them back. Now Gnome is looking into the horrible travesty that is Gnome Shell 3, and recently has decided (in one of the most WTF moves in history) to kill off Minimize and Maximize buttons. Yes, Ubuntu is going with Unity instead of Gnome Shell, but we'll see how that goes. It still was a long ways from ready last time I tried it.

Overall, I think my Linux desktop experience may have peaked with Ubuntu 10.10. I've been a full-time user for 2 years now (and a dual-booter/occasional user for 12 years now), and at this point, I'm really looking at the possibility of just going back to Windows. Palladium/Trusted Computing seems to be dead in the water, and at least Microsoft isn't shaking stuff up just for the heck of it.

Re:meanwhile...

[TigerTime]

I'd agree with that. You'd think improvement would be offering more customization on the platform that already existed. NOT a different style of platform with fewer customizations.

I'm not sure if Ubuntu/Gnome developers are trying to push people away or just keep them on their toes to an infuriating degree.

Re:meanwhile...

[antdude]

How about stop upgrading for those things that work fine? I am still using updated Windows 2000 SP4, XP Pro. SP3, Debian with KDE v3.5.10, etc. I avoid major software updates like KDE4.

Same for electronics like bone conduction analog hearing aid, VCRs from dotcom days, 20" CRT TV from 1996, etc. I know they won't last forever due to hardware failures, support, etc. At least you get more time to look for alternatives.

Re:meanwhile...

[Ancantus]

Before you go back to windows, try other distro. Ubuntu isn't the only linux around.

Re:meanwhile...

[MBGMorden]

Most of my problems with Linux are rooted in Gnome. The only thing I don't really like about Ubuntu 10.10 was the title bar button order changes, which as I said, were quickly changed back. Gnome 3 has been out for evaluation for a LONG time now though, and I dislike virtually everything about it - even moreso as time goes on. Ubuntu is going in their own direction which I admittedly do find more appealing than sticking with Gnome as is, but I'm not sure if it'll be sufficient to keep me there. Then again, I may still be able to cobble something together that meets my needs (I'm already running a fairly non-standard setup). We'll see.

Re:meanwhile...

[Interoperable]

"Buy out"? I think you mean fork.

Re:meanwhile...

[supersloshy]

Now Gnome is looking into the horrible travesty that is Gnome Shell 3, and recently has decided (in one of the most WTF moves in history) to kill off Minimize and Maximize buttons.

If you actually read their reasoning, they removed the maximize window because there's two other ways to maximize: double-clicking and dragging windows to the top. They removed the minimize button, not the feature, because workspaces (in most cases) negate the need for it (the desktop doesn't even draw icons by default, so minimizing to see things on the desktop is no longer a good reason). Even still, if you HAVE to minimize, there are still many other ways to do it (right-click, etc.). They didn't want a feature that was only half-finished and they didn't experiment much with how minimized windows should be handled in GNOME Shell. Cut them some slack.

Re:meanwhile...

[MBGMorden]

Did you not read my post? I don't like the way the whole setup of Gnome Shell 3 behaves. Saying that the minimize function was depreciated because it's no longer relevant in Gnome Shell isn't helping the case.

Re:meanwhile...

[M1FCJ]

So, choice is a bad thing? I thought that's one of the reasons why we run GPL software on your machines!

Re:meanwhile...

[supersloshy]

I don't see a good reason to keep a feature (in it's current state, that is) that is no longer relevant. It is, for the most part, obsolete and the team's working on different ways to handle "hidden" windows in the Shell.

Re:meanwhile...

[msuarezalvarez]

But choice does not mean that every piece of software has to provide you with every choice!

Gnome has decided where it wants to go. You may not like it, and you may surely choose to use something else which is moving in a direction you prefer. But Gnome is under absolutely no obligation to provide choices which go against what it thinks it should provide.

If you think the GPL is somehow related to all desktops environments providing all possible interaction option, you are seriously mistaken.

Re:meanwhile...

[X0563511]

Yea, with what desktop? KDE?

Lets see. Debian for instance (and the last release is quite modern) has:
GNOME
KDE
XFCE
lxde (capitalization?)

I'm also pretty sure enlightenment is available too. All the other tiny or specialist ones such as fluxbox or jwm are all in there too.

You're hardly stuck with GNOME.

Re:meanwhile...

[X0563511]

Windows 7 is pretty solid...

I -prefer- linux, but I have no problems working with 7 either.

Re:meanwhile...

[Jesus_666]

Ever tried OS X? Yes, there are no cheap Macs and Apple isn't exactly the nicest company either but you do get a Unix with a very nice GUI. Admittedly, the latter is subject to taste but they did put a lot of thought into it and it shows. I like customizing the hell out of the Linux DEs I use but OS X meshes well enough with how I work that I can live with the lack of customizability - although that too is highly subjective, of course.

Modern Windows is... different... from the Windows of yore but whenever I use it I get annoyed by the fact that things you take for granted on Linux just aren't there without third-party software. grep, for instance. Also, Windows is the land of developer-side customization where every second program seems to ship with its own set of widgets that look differently (and sometimes are placed differently) than everywhere else and don't obey system settings. So, depending on the program, you have even less control over your GUI than under Linux.

Re:meanwhile...

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

You think that will run on the netbook that he owns?

Well, if it can run on the notebook s/he owns, s/he can simply use the default Apple speech synthesizer, which probably works just as well as anything that runs under GNU/Linux/BSD. Unfortunately, for visually impaired people, MS Windows is probably still the best platform for running graphical applications (i.e. applications that haven't been specially written for blind users).

For users not tied down to using graphical programs like LibreOffice, there are pure console or command line programs like emacspeak and edbrowse, both of which are written by programmers who are themselves visually impaired.

The author of edbrowse, a program inspired by the classic Unix "ed"-itor, has this to say about screen-reading programs:

I believe, and I am in the minority on this one, that totally blind users should employ command-line applications, rather than pasting a screen reader on top of full-screen programs. Manipulating the cursor via speech is irreparably inefficient. To this end I have written a combination editor + browser + mail client that is command-line interactive. You type something and the computer responds. There is no screen, anywhere, ever.

Re:meanwhile...

[LingNoi]

So what's the best solution for notification bubbles?

It's easy to karma whore and say people should be "working together" but it seems like you're just ignoring the fact that software is difficult to produce and not everyone agrees what the best solution for problem X even is.

Re:meanwhile...

[shish]

at least Microsoft isn't shaking stuff up just for the heck of it

Ribbon

Re:meanwhile...

[Risen888]

This is probably a stupid question, but have you tried KTTS?

Re:meanwhile...

[Risen888]

Yeah, KDE. It's better.

Re:meanwhile...

[Risen888]

Then why aren't you using KDE?

Re:meanwhile...

[MBGMorden]

I once did. These days (KDE4 onwards) the flow of the software seems off though. I may look at it again, but I just haven't liked it when I've tried it out periodically lately.

Re:meanwhile...

[MBGMorden]

A fair point, but even on Windows I'd be using LibreOffice ;). I really do like open source apps and would likely still use them for the most part regardless of platform. I just want a good solid and simple underlying OS for it all to sit on. Linux doesn't seem to be happy occupying that position, and hence they rock the boat. Microsoft is changing stuff too, but realistically, I still have the same bar at the bottom, file manager, and window layout as I had back in Windows 95.

Re:meanwhile...

[Risen888]

Different strokes, I guess. I've really liked the direction KDE's been going with the 4.x series. I guess if you're not into the "concept" of it (sorry for the pretentious fucking phrase there, but I think you know what I mean) then you probably won't change your opinion of it (which is how I feel with Gnome, honestly). But if your problem with it was more with the "rough edges," go check out 4.6. I've been really happy with it.

Re:Extremely Aerogant

[Anonymous Coward]

Extremely Aerogant

This is between Unity and GNOME. Leave Windows out of it!

Competition

[Nerdfest]

Competition is good, infighting is bad. People need to realize then they're on the same team.

Aaron Seigo

[molnarcs]

Aaron Seigo also has his say on this topic - collaboration's demise scroll down to see comments from Shuttleworth and others. Quite nice, some entertaining (in a sad way) flamewar towards the end... I do believe aseigo has a point there, and provides lots of specific examples where collaboration was refused for no good reason. Some juicy bits from the comments:

also, this is not an odd "oops, we just didn't get around to it" event on the part of GNOME: how's that job D-Bus implementation in GNOME 3 coming? you know, the one that needlessly duplicates the one KDE implements, which we actually designed with thought of cross-project use including getting some feedback from non-KDE devs? or how about the screensaver D-Bus API which we implemented specifically with collaboration with GNOME devs at SUSE, only later to have GNOME not implement it and then complain to us that it used the org.freedesktop namespace? or how about how GNOME devs specifically blocked the formation of a common git repository for fd.o specs, and then when there was finally agreement (after an in-person meeting) insist on implementing it themselves, ignoring that repo had already been started but by people with @kde.org email addresses, and then after taking months to eventually duplicate that effort not implement the most critical part of it: the metadata?

Re:Aaron Seigo

[tyrione]

From the guy that forced Plasma all over KDE as if it improved one's experience and productivity isn't one person I'd lean on for validation.

Re:Aaron Seigo

[segedunum]

That's your opinion.

Re:Aaron Seigo

[Risen888]

And three years later, he^Wwe've been proven right. Again.

FreeDesktop.org is probably the way to go

[TheModelEskimo]

Shuttleworth suggests that building development around FreeDesktop.org specs (as suggested by Aaron Seigo) is probably a good route to take, especially since Ubuntu is NOT just GNOME, but also KDE (Kubuntu), etc.

I heartily agree with that. I want to see Unity come out and kick butt, and it sounds like as good as GNOME Shell might be, GNOME people are forcing this into a you-vs.-us fight.

(It doesn't help to see Jeff Waugh being all complainy on Mark's blog, either.)

Re:FreeDesktop.org is probably the way to go

[molnarcs]

(It doesn't help to see Jeff Waugh being all complainy on Mark's blog, either.)

He does the same thing on Aaron's blog, only a bit worse - drives the whole discussion off-topic with blathering about timelines and who said what at a conference three years ago and such... He was very good at destroying a conversation and degenerating it into an I said-He-said flamefest with personal insults directed at just about anyone who disagreed with him or who tried to get the conversation back on topic. Ironic, isn't it? He just proves the exact issues and points both Mark and KDE devs have with GNOME (specifically, the lack of cooperation on fd.o standards).

Re:FreeDesktop.org is probably the way to go

[DrXym]

Shuttleworth suggests that building development around FreeDesktop.org specs (as suggested by Aaron Seigo) is probably a good route to take, especially since Ubuntu is NOT just GNOME, but also KDE (Kubuntu), etc.

You'd think this would be a no brainer. Why would GNOME or KDE want to duplicate functionality which they can reasonably share. Both desktops have similar requirements, run on the same OS, and could & should be sharing functionality. It means less bugs, lower install / runtime footprints and more time for devs of both projects to work on other things.

Personally I consider GNOME to be a better desktop but I think it does a massive disservice to be refusing functionality offered up on a plate. I'm not surprised either if Ubuntu laid out what they need for their dist and when GNOME didn't offer it chose to go their own way. What I take away from this spat, is the potential it has to turn into all out war come the time that Ubuntu (correctly) chooses to migrate to Wayland. I can imagine the fun and games that will come with that.

Re:FreeDesktop.org is probably the way to go

[elysiuan]

Jeff Waugh is an absolute cancer in the GNOME project. He adds nothing to the project but is a constant source of frustration and drama. How he maintains the influence he has is truly beyond me. My only supposition is that because in the past he has done some work in the past and runs P.G.O the other members of gnome's super cliquely inner circle (what you thought getting into the foundation meant you were a real part of the project? Think again!) feel some kind of perverse loyalty towards him.

This came across as a bit ranty but Jeff Waugh really pisses me off.

Re:FreeDesktop.org is probably the way to go

[Merk42]

I never really understood GNOME's problem with Ubuntu adopting Unity.

Does GNOME get mad at distros when they include Shotwell instead of F-Spot, Pidgin instead of Empathy, Firefox instead of Epiphany?

Re:FreeDesktop.org is probably the way to go

[neiras]

You speak of tumors and cancer pretty freely, considering the nasty, poisonous hearsay you're spreading, Mr. Anonymous Coward.

You have no credibility. You haven't even made a case for your opinions.

Jeff, on the other hand, has contributed something to GNOME, and continues to participate in the discussions of the day because he cares about the project.

I don't agree with his take on things all the time, but he is worthy of more respect than you are giving him.

Not surprised...

[Andy Dodd]

It's pretty clear that there are some massive egos/control-freaks within those running the GNOME project.

As far as user interfaces go, it is Havoc Pennington's way or the highway. Havoc has this crazy "usability comes from crippling" approach that dumbs down GNOME for entry-level users but makes it wholly unusable for power users.

Whereas KDE keeps "entry level" defaults and makes some of the niche/advanced configuration options (such as edge flipping) harder to find, GNOME's approach is to outright remove the feature. There are only so many features you can remove before your approach becomes unusable for many.

That's why I used to be a staunch GNOME supporter and fairly anti-KDE (I'm still not a fan of how they handled the Qt/GPL license incompatibilities, the issue didn't get resolved until Qt was effectively forced to change their license. The KDE developers had a consistent attitude that there was no problem and refused to take any approach to address), but have now pretty much changed over entirely to KDE. Around the same time the KDE license incompatibility issue was resolved is when Havoc began his reign of "cripple it in the name of usability" terror. Not only did the GNOME team remove edge flipping, they made it as difficult as possible to add it in after the fact (Brightside effectively broke after every GNOME release, and eventually GNOME broke the interfaces Brightside used to the point where the Brightside maintainer gave up.) It's always been there in KDE.

Yes, the KDE team has gotten a bad rep from KDE 4.0 getting shipped too early. I don't think there was any graceful way to do things here - there always comes a time when a project has to do a major rearchitecture, and sometimes that can't be done without some user pain. Later KDE4 releases are excellent. The key here is - KDE went through some pain in order to greatly improve the flexibility of the platform and leave them room to grow. GNOME didn't - in the short term that was good for GNOME, but in the long term that inflexibility is going to hurt.

Re:Not surprised...

[DrXym]

As far as user interfaces go, it is Havoc Pennington's way or the highway. Havoc has this crazy "usability comes from crippling" approach that dumbs down GNOME for entry-level users but makes it wholly unusable for power users.

GNOME is not unusable for power users. Maybe sometimes it doesn't get things right but on the whole it does what it sets out to do - be a modern, clean, intuitive desktop. As a power user myself I'm quite happy to use it. It lets me launch apps, has settings for things I might ordinarily like to tweak and otherwise tries to stay the hell out of my way.

Re:Not surprised...

[nschubach]

How does one get a job as a power user of an desktop environment?

Usually when I use my PC I'm looking to do things other than tweak the interface the entire time. If someone wants to pay me to "power use" a desktop, I'm game.

Re:Not surprised...

[Kjella]

How does one get a job as a power user of a [browser]? Usually when I use my [browser] I'm looking to do things other than tweak the interface the entire time. If someone wants to pay me to "power use" a [browser], I'm game.

With your logic, Firefox wouldn't need extensions. Hey, it lets you view web pages and that's all everybody could ever want from a browser, right? I do agree that there's people that go way overboard and spend more time tweaking their computer than using it, but that doesn't take away that many of those extensions are useful. If all you do when you boot is launch Photoshop and work there all they, you're a power user in many respects but not of the desktop environment. Maybe that's all you need, but it's not all everybody needs.

Re:Not surprised...

[cos(0)]

If all you do when you boot is launch Photoshop and work there all they, you're a power user in many respects but not of the desktop environment. Maybe that's all you need, but it's not all everybody needs.

Like the grandparent, I am not a power user of the desktop environment, and I don't even know what that means. Can you provide some use cases that Gnome doesn't cover?

Re:Not surprised...

[drinkypoo]

GNOME without Compiz is like using a damned Mac, and an old one, but with Unix-y dialogs. With Compiz and you can make it more like a new mac, except more configurable. With Emerald you can make it prettier than any Mac or Windows interface. I do wish Emerald would blow up less.

Re:Not surprised...

[fwarren]

Yes, closing the lid on on a laptop without putting it to sleep.

Gnome has removed that feature and has made sure there is no way for an end user to modify it. Damm it, if you shut the f**king lid then you want it to sleep.

I go from the living room to my office with a download running all the time. I don't want it to go to sleep. I plug it into a monitor, keyboard and mouse. It is stupid that I have to have enough room to set the laptop up were the lid can be open just so it won't go to sleep.

Oh, thats right, it is not a problem for me. I run Fluxbox.

Re:Not surprised...

[DrXym]

Ehh, yeah, that makes you exactly a non-poweruser, of your desktop environment.

A desktop's job is to let you launch programs, access files, be moderately configurable and otherwise get the fuck out of the way. So no I'm not a "power user" of my desktop, whatever the hell that means. I want to use it for doing other things - development, running servers, browsing etc. To use a car analogy I buy a car to drive places, I don't buy one simply to play with all the switches and dials.

Re:Not surprised...

[segedunum]

As far as user interfaces go, it is Havoc Pennington's way or the highway. Havoc has this crazy "usability comes from crippling" approach that dumbs down GNOME for entry-level users but makes it wholly unusable for power users.

It doesn't have to be like that. Windows and even the Mac present most things in a coherent and usable with way with a vast number of powerful options available if you need them. I've never got this mental disease from Gnome when it comes to usability. Entry-level users become more powerful users quite quickly, and most people are going to be severaly confused with the lack of functionality in Gnome coming from Windows or Mac.

That's why I used to be a staunch GNOME supporter and fairly anti-KDE (I'm still not a fan of how they handled the Qt/GPL license incompatibilities, the issue didn't get resolved until Qt was effectively forced to change their license.

The license wasn't a problem. Look at how far Qt has come on with the dual licensing approach versus the problems in manpower and resources that GTK now faces as it tries to catch up with features in other development platforms. Eventually LGPLing made things simpler, but no one is going to use a LGPLed toolkit if it's just not good enough. Besides, I didn't see a ton of non-GPL licensed applications being developed for Qt, GTK, KDE or Gnome that would have necessitated anything different.

Re:Not surprised...

[Andy Dodd]

Edge flipping is something I consider to be a MAJOR boost to my productivity, compared to having to minimize/maximize windows to manage my screen real estate.

This was actually the #1 reason for me leaving GNOME - not only was it removed as an option, they seem to have made it a crusade to prevent it from even being added as a third-party addon. There was a program called Brightside that added edge-flipping to GNOME, but eventually the APIs it used were broken in such a manner that the Brightside maintainer gave up. The day Brightside finally stopped working is when I finally made the switch to KDE.

Re:Extremely Aerogant

[Trufagus]

I don't know the details of how Canonical handled communications/relationship with Gnome, but I think we need to give some leeway to a business that is trying to pursue profit.

Let's remember, the vast majority of companies out there use open-source daily and give nothing back at all. Canonical has given back tons.

GNOME Shell vs Unity

[gQuigs]

I've tried them both and GNOME Shell is sooooo much better than Unity. I really have been disappointed by many UI changes in Ubuntu in recent releases. All heralded as being great usability decisions.

Cleaning up the Status panel, by adding more clicks to get to functions... Why?
The notification system I just have never gotten used to. Why must I be notified of new IM's by seeing the IM text, but when I go to try to get rid of it, it fades out.

Perhaps their just not as good as "usability" as they think they are? Hardware that just works is different, they still are the best I've found in that category.

For GNOME Shell, I'm currently testing out Fedora 15 Alpha. They also now offer nightly builds so you can test without breaking your system (http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/).

Re:GNOME Shell vs Unity

[bluefoxlucid]

Yeah the notification system needs to give me a clickable bubble. I've had a couple years to get used to it, and I learned how to get to IMs and such, but really... Thunderbird uses its own system, and when I click on the window it pops up I get those messages. This is fucking AWESOME, groundbreaking, amazing... it'd be a huge step forward if the entire notification system behaved like this.

Re:GNOME Shell vs Unity

[LateArthurDent]

The notification system I just have never gotten used to. Why must I be notified of new IM's by seeing the IM text, but when I go to try to get rid of it, it fades out.

I believe that settings for everything should exist so that you can set things up to your personal liking. That said, for the notification behavior that they've set as default, you're not supposed to try to get rid of it. You're supposed to look at it, read the text message, and ignore it until it fades, while keeping doing your thing. Unless you want to reply, but the point of the notification isn't to help you reply, it's to help you decide whether you want to stop what you're doing and actually reply.

I like it a lot. That said, I completely see your point in that you want it to do something else, and there should be an easy way that you could change the behavior so that it does what you want it to do.

Re:GNOME Shell vs Unity

[tyrione]

The same notification behavior has spread across KDE. It's nauseating feedback that is mainly useless dribble. A notification for a service that is failing is useful, but a notification that I've deleted 500 files after deleting 500 files is pure mental masturbation. I'm looking forward to GNOME Shell.

Re:GNOME Shell vs Unity

[fwarren]

I've tried them both and GNOME Shell is sooooo much better than Unity.

Back when I first ran RedHat in 1999, I could only stand Gnome for about 2 hours. I HAD to switch to KDE. Still to this day, GNOME has been my least favorite DE.

I want to see open source leapfrog ahead of Apple and Microsoft by being bold and trying something new. I thought Unity would have a better chance at delivering that than Gnome 3. Neither are shipping products yet. So far, Gnome 3 has proven to have a better workflow and does not have the stability issues that Unity is suffering from.

Now if GNOME would not put my laptop to sleep every time I shut the lid.

Re:GNOME Shell vs Unity

[jrumney]

Now if GNOME would not put my laptop to sleep every time I shut the lid.

That's not GNOME doing that, it is handled in the ACPI configuration. You can change it to hibernate or shutdown if you prefer, or if you really want, you can overheat your laptop by leaving it running with the lid closed, though you'll probably have to disable some more ACPI triggers to avoid suspending and obtain the ultimate Windows experience of a system crash when the CPU or GPU decides to protect itself against overheating (or not, in the case of some NVIDIA GPUs from a few years back).

Re:Shuttleworth is an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not as if all the vital pieces of a FOSS operating system are mainly developed and maintained by paid developers. Oh wait...

Some more details

[halfaperson]

Some interesting details from Aaron Seigo in a blog post here. While his post makes a pretty strong point, for those of us who are looking for more specific critique, I found the most interesting parts hidden in the comments, such as this, also from Aaron Seigo:

@Lennart: "If you list this notifier spec, then I can list you the sound theming/naming specs which KDE has shown no interest in."

that's an incorrect comparison.

if we (KDE) had offered a bunch of critique on the sound theme spec, had someone come to us with an implementation in Qt and then still gone off and done our own thing instead, then it would be an adequate comparison. but that isn't what happened, is it? :)

we (KDE) simply haven't gotten around to implementing the sound theming spec. why? as you note, it's not a high priority for us. but i guarantee you that if someone stepped up to do some work on the event sounds infra in kdelibs, stop #1 would be that naming spec.

also, this is not an odd "oops, we just didn't get around to it" event on the part of GNOME: how's that job D-Bus implementation in GNOME 3 coming? you know, the one that needlessly duplicates the one KDE implements, which we actually designed with thought of cross-project use including getting some feedback from non-KDE devs? or how about the screensaver D-Bus API which we implemented specifically with collaboration with GNOME devs at SUSE, only later to have GNOME not implement it and then complain to us that it used the org.freedesktop namespace? or how about how GNOME devs specifically blocked the formation of a common git repository for fd.o specs, and then when there was finally agreement (after an in-person meeting) insist on implementing it themselves, ignoring that repo had already been started but by people with @kde.org email addresses, and then after taking months to eventually duplicate that effort not implement the most critical part of it: the metadata?

in contrast, we could see how KDE implemented support for the visual notificatons D-Bus protocol as implemented in GNOME, even though it has evident limitations and is a 100% subset of something we already have in the form of KNotify ... simply to provide compatibility. would GNOME devs do that today? doubtful, because our priorities, as you point out, are indeed different.

what GNOME needs is not more apologists making excuses for poor behavior but people who will stand up and take ownership of their actions.

Ummm... not "canonical", then?

[macraig]

I find it thoroughly ironic that this commentary issues from the head of an organization named Canonical. So does this mean that Canonical will shortly be changing its name? Will there be a contest - err, competition - with a prize to choose it?

Sign in Mechanic's shop

[FudRucker]

Labor 15.oo dollars an hour

if you watch 20.oo an hour

if you help 30.oo an hour

metaphorically speaking: i bet the Gnome developers had something like this in mind,

Power users and GNOME

[tjwhaynes]

As far as user interfaces go, it is Havoc Pennington's way or the highway. Havoc has this crazy "usability comes from crippling" approach that dumbs down GNOME for entry-level users but makes it wholly unusable for power users.

I'd most definitely stick myself into the power user category. I've been a GNOME user since 1.4, anything I do more than once has been scripted or bound to custom keys and I have Kupfer for the fast access to anything I can think of, including custom plugins for work-specific tasks. GNOME stays the hell out of my way and that's the way I like it. When I need to reach for something unusual, I can normally hook it via DBus or gconf.

I'll just watch from the sidelines.

[Beelzebud]

I use Arch, so I'll always have the choice on exactly how I set up my desktop. Personally I don't see a need for Unity. I'll just use Gnome-shell when it comes out. Although I'm starting to see why some people in the FOSS community are starting to view Canonical in a negative light.

Re:Jump that Shark Mark

[jdgeorge]

Hmmm... Sounds as if it's Canonical that wants GNOME's help, but some of the GNOME leads don't want to give it.

In any case, Canonical will likely do better to support and work with Freedesktop.org than tying themselves to a single desktop implementation.

At the end of the day, Ubuntu will succeed because it is well funded, and because it has something similar to the great virtue of Apple; a technically involved leader who has the final say on the user experience.

Sigh...

[ChunderDownunder]

With all this bickering of rival interests, here's proof it wouldn't be the 'year of the Linux desktop' any decade soon. It certainly could be the 'year of the Linux phone', with Android steadily encroaching on other platforms.

And what's all this bickering over? Gnome and KDE (bring back kicker!) weren't fancy enough it seems, so now we have this meaningless 3D eye-candy that the average user doesn't give a flying crap about.
} // end rant

There was a discussion yesterday on webOS. A functional linux environment with an intuitive touch screen interface. I'm not sure if HP is pitching for world domination here but its plan to upscale webOS to desktops could actually succeed if they can pair the card-based UI with X11. As I understand it, webOS uses directfb on phones - primarily as a technical constraint that no ARM SoC has a working gallium3D-acclerated Xorg driver. Target an X11/Wayland backend on nvidia/ati/intel and instantly you gain the entire Linux back-catalogue. :) Any 'native' app on webOS uses SDL/OpenGL for rendering, so should be trivially portable, i'd guess.

Maybe it's just me but I'd gladly take a semi-proprietary UI deployed on millions of actual devices over some over-polished hotchpotch of ideas. One consistent minimalist but intuitive interface that runs on phones, tablets and desktops sounds like a great advance.. Oh darn, I think I just described the Apple vision. :) Long live Meego!

Re:I'll just watch from my rooted Arch box

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ridiculous to run a distribution that doesn't have package signing. Especially one that pushes out updates as frequently as Arch does. Arch's complete disregard for basic security measures is truly amazing.

Power users today

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when a "power user" was someone who tweaked compile time options or applied a little patch. These days it seems that if there isn't an option right there in the UI then the "power users" aren't happy. They accuse projects of "dumbing down" but in reality I think it's (self proclaimed) "power users" who have dumbed down to the point that they see having to touch anything vaguely approaching the internals (such as gconf) an outrageous hurdle.

Re:Extremely Aerogant

[CnlPepper]

Yes, let's ignore the fact that Canonical's distribution has brought us millions of new desktop users.

Re:Summary of whole GNOME Vs Canonical, freedeskto

[supersloshy]

Wonderful link! Mod this AC up; all of the GNOME-haters really need to read this before they make hasty assumptions that GNOME simply doesn't want to collaborate with Canonical.

Re:Extremely Aerogant

[Merk42]

Linux: For Coders, By Coders

UI testing? Marketing? Working with OEMs to get it installed on desktops? Nope, apparently that's not contributing to Linux at all.

Re:Shuttleworth is an asshole

[Merk42]

but... but.... my entitlement!

Re:Extremely Aerogant

[Jason Earl]

I suppose that you could look at it that way, although I think that the Canonical devs generally had good intentions when it came to working with Gnome. Either way, Canonical put Gnome on the map, and it still provides the bulk of Gnome users. Now the Gnome leadership has pissed the Canonical folk off so badly that they have basically created a fork, and worse, they've put most of their actual users squarely in the other side's camp.

Gnome 3 may be awesome, but how is anyone going to know. The former Gnome users are all going to be running Unity.

Re:Jump that Shark Mark

[Jason Earl]

I suppose we will soon see. All I know is that I have put stock Gnome and Canonical's Gnome in front of real live people, and there is no question which they prefer (it's not stock Gnome).

I think that it is much safer to say that Gnome owes nearly all of its success to Ubuntu, and that when Ubuntu takes its developers, and more importantly it's end users, Gnome is going to become irrelevant. Sure, there will still be *some* people that use Gnome. Then again, there are apparently still people that use AfterStep.

Ah, those were the days.

A different hat

[vluhd]

Can we dig down to the root of the problem here? and that is, Unity can't even begin to compare to Gnome. imho, it's nowhere near as intuitive.

Ubuntu will (sort-of) kill the scrollbar

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

Well, if you hate the Gnome and Ubuntu interface changes, here's another. MS(huttleworth) has announced that the next (Natty) version of Ubuntu will have disappearing scrollbars. Basically, the Natty scrollbar will be a moving scroll button that only appears when you need to vertically or horizontally pan a window.

The so-called "overlay" scrollbars will be shipped in a special "liboverlay-scrollbar" package.

To be sure, there will still be a permanent indicator to show relative position within a window. But this narrow indicator, which kind of resembles the tube in an analog thermometer, itself won't be clickable. The blog post includes a video illustrating the concept. It looks cool, but I don't know how it will work in practice (how near must you be to the scroll indicator before the scroll button appears?).

Re:Linux != Gnome

[goose-incarnated]

I've been using Linux as my primary desktop since Redhat 7.2, so about a decade.

Noob ;-)

Copyright Assignment A Reason?

[duncan]

I'm wondering if the fact that contributions to Unity require copyright assignment going to Canonical has anything to do with the GNOME resistance to working with them on Unity.

Mark neatly does not mention this aspect of the division in his blog post.

Re:I'll just watch from my rooted Arch box

[Risen888]

1. Package signing certainly isn't a silver bullet in terms of package security. You're still trusting someone.
2. If you're that bent out of shape about it, Arch makes it insanely simple to roll your own packages from upstream sources. It is a one step process.
3. They're working on it anyway, if only to shut you up.

Re:Extremely Aerogant

[Barsteward]

I think the main mistake Mark made was to use GNOME in the first place. GNOME were always a "me too" desktop group who produce an inferior product from a technical and design point of view, it was just a matter of principle, and not technical, to create something that didn't use QT because QT was closed at the time. GNOME, Canonical - learn to collaborate and stop working in your elitist silos, use fd.o and discuss with everyone when a spec doesn't quite meet your needs because at the moment, GNOME especially, is behaving just like Microsoft by going off using their own specifications/standards. Perhaps we could rename GNOME to MSGNOME