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Proposal For Gnome To Become Linux-Only
Moderator writes "Could Gnome drop support for non-Linux operating systems? That was a recent proposal on the Gnome mailing list, although there were significant objections in response. Quoting: 'It is harmful to pretend that you are writing the OS core to work on any number of different kernels...the time has come for GNOME to embrace Linux a bit more boldly.'"
I support this because it can only help to make Gnome more irrelevant.
Since developers from other OS's have contributed to Gnome. KDE would then be the only recourse for them. I think gnome would quickly lose support based on the ill will that would generate alone.
on windows. haven't tried it on linux, though.
Hasnt GNOME already been abandoned and replaced by Unity ?
on windows. haven't tried it on linux, though.
Sun has invested truckloads of money and man-hours into Gnome, adopted it as the default Solaris UI. I don't follow things very carefully regarding Gnome and Sun(/oracle) lately, so it may be that Solaris doesn't use Gnome animore, I don't know, but after all the investments that Sun made into Gnome, I would be surprised if it would be so easy to just make it for Linux. There's lots of code to support other platforms, in Gnome.
Not that I would mind, to be honest. I couldn't stand Gnome back in the 1.x days (it was really a lump of caca), and for a brief period I thought that it may become a usable GUI - but with the "novel ideas" of Gnome 3.x, I really don't care animore. Becoming Linux-only is just a tiny step towards further irrelevance.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I'm not sure what benefit we'd see from this. Unless they want to tie metadata in the file system with the user interface (like OS/2 had with HPFS extended attributes) I don't see what would be gained. Maybe I'm being short sighted.
Either that, or it is another move by the Gnome folks to remove features. Being multi-platform was a feature. We also know that too many features confuse the user. Therefore removing this feature helps reduce confusion. Personally, I'm waiting for Gnome to reduce itself to a short, generic series of animations that requires none of this confusing and stressful interaction on the part of the user.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
And therefore Lennart Poettering, who has said this sort of stuff A LOT.
I have no major objection to change, or to things like PulseAudio (not that I use it on many systems). However the "leave it all behind, let's do cool stuff with the advanced features of the linux kernel" argument is an odd one.
For an init process like systemd, sure, I can see that. For a desktop manager/wm/application suite? Not so much.
Really folks I know that Linux right now is the big users but there are BSD and Solaris users out there as well. Not to mention the tech unicorn HURD. Gnome is GPL so it could still be ported but I think just requireing a Unix Like OS should be good enough.
Anyone know how xfce is doing these days?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's open source. If there are people who want it on other platforms, they can just fork it. Right?
BSD: Pretty much super niche. Gnome is probably too bloated for their lean and mean servers anyways
Solaris: Only got support because Sun dumped a pile of money to replace CDE? Maybe not but none the less, the dream of thin client computing in the form of remote desktops seems a distant dream that is thankfully dead.
Linux: The duopoly of desktop environments means that Gnome needs to be very competitive here
Windows: On windows, the gnome support helps port over many familiar Linux based apps to a windows world which is great for Linux people who are forced to work in a windows world, but the apps have little to zero adoption from 'Windows users' themselves, or so I've noticed
OSX: I can't really say much about it. Are OSX Gnome apps considered first class citizens or are they marginalized much the same way it is in windows?
Embedded: Well, as long as its embedded Linux, I guess it wouldn't be a problem
Other OS? Opinions?
Bye!
Gnome is supposed to be written to support X Windows.
I currently use gnome on my Linux and FreeBSD platforms, and have for quite some years. Now they're looking to tell the rest of us to PFO because they've tied themselves too tightly to Linux ... why is it even tied to the kernel anyway?
The end result will be that I and others won't use Gnome at all (not even on my Linux installs) ... but, hey, if your "be all you can be" plan is all about working on only one system, that's fine. Just don't be surprised when the number of people who use it drops off.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
GNOME / Linux
My blog
I am not so sure this is a good idea.
I want GNOME to be a competitor to KDE, and I want it to work on a variety of platforms or the KDE guys could get complacent.
It might also complicate the idea of a Universal Desktop standard API. Essentially, the direction I think the open source community is heading with KDE, which would mean GNOME would have potentially a lot more work to do themselves reinventing the wheel.
I also don't like the packager ramifications of GNOME desktops existing with KDE in the future where is GNOME sets out by itself could put it against the freedesktop.org guidelines.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
That's their vision... One Linux OS, running on only Redhat technology. Distros become nothing more than different flavors of Fedora with their own wallpaper theme. Other OSS communities, startups, and distros with different platform architectures, get ready to be royally screwed over by the Microsoft of the opensource world
As a dev of Dungeon Crawl, I see that systems that smell like Unix these days are a monoculture of Linux and Linux only. Even though you'd expect roguelike players to be biased towards obscure systems, I don't recall a single bug report from a *BSD or Solaris user. Even Hurd had one. Big-endian systems are dead too (two distinct users, one with an old MacOS X, one with Debian on powerpc).
Everyone these days uses either Windows, Linux or x86 Mac.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If I were a non-Linux dev who'd contributed to Gnome, I'd be seriously considering a fork no matter what the outcome of this is. If there's one thing I've learned from working on open-source projects, it's that once the Linux Zealots' radical proposals start gaining real traction it's time to bail.
Outside a few egomaniacs with a one distro to bind them all mentality, this is not how things have been done up till now. I don't think the larger community wants to change either.
FreeDesktop.org has turned out some nice software but I don't like what they doing. Its one thing to suggest some high-level standards and try to create some consistency among projects that are already tied to a set of core libraries, its another to have to assume your specific daemon systemd or whatever is running. There is no reason to require something like that when it would be simple enough to abstract things in away that highlevel stuff like a gtk dialog can start an stop services in whatever way a particular distro wants to set things up.
Taking Gnome entirely Linux specific is the same deal, it means you have to accept a whole heap of stuff and conventions or you can't use it all. Thats dumb, ultimately its going to make distributions more varied not less. As a few core decisions will determine the entire software stack.
Over the short term it will enable people to polish up somethings and make them work real nice, as time marches on though its going to mean that something written for a Debian based distro wont be portable at all to something based on REHL or Slackware, or any of the BSDs. We will all end up with few software choices not more.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The problem is that Gnome has always fit in an odd spot. Above X11 (which is OS/Hardware Dependent's) and below the Windows Manager (In which GNOME often lets you choose who you want, to an extent). I would think Gnome Development if becomeing a Linux-Only product should be used to help remove X11 from Linux.
X11 has become Linux's problem.
The XWindows system was designed as a way to view a GUI over a network. For its time it was quite good at what it needed to do. Sending vector images, common commands to the X Server to display the images worked wonderfully in a world of simple graphics and low bandwith. Today it is becoming extra overhead. Performing rather slow over the network compared to newer tools even RDP is fast compared to X11. And more time is being spent to make it perform well. Problems with trying integrate Open And Closed source drivers and stability issues. Have made the need for X11 out of date. Gnome having a large applicationbase already using its API could create a situation where it can replace X11 and give Linux a Modern approach to the UI. Much like how Apple did it with OS X over a decade ago. Being able to Give Linux a GUI that is more advanced the Windows or OS X because its new core for UI is based on the 21st century technology vs. 20th century. Things like Resolution independent displays, better integrated 3d, and multi-touch. Many things we have now but are made as a hacked add on vs a core development of the UI.
Linux should no longer bother wining the desktop. Let Microsoft keep the desktop, Linux need to win Mobile, and Touch pads. Otherwise Linux will win the desktop space only after the desktop is irrelevant. Although much of us Old Fogies will fight against the idea of the Desktop demise, I doubt it will die but it will become like the mainframe a generation ago, moved from a needed device for computing to reserved for functions that it is really good at. We still have mainframes new ones running and selling but not for every company. Just as with desktops/laptops it will move to software development and CAD firms. Pushing other companies to go with more mobile devices, and perhaps like the iPad with an optional external keyboard just for writing letters.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So... not a big deal. you can always build it yourself (if you have the skills). I would bet a third party would come along and pick up the task of porting if there is enough interest.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
So why are you complaining about it not existing here?
NO SUCH INTERFACE EXISTS.
Everyone these days uses either Windows, Linux or x86 Mac. ... to play dungeon crawl.
"Please don't sigh like that, maam"
Not to say there isn't a few good ones. They wouldn't have to worry about cross platform library's and focus more on core functionally. Lets face it, we are never going to see Gnome on windows, Apple uses their own thing and Google is going with the whole web thing.
Why not just make the gnome project its own distro? I mean seriously, this is the first project that has the momentum and even the people to make linux a decent desktop system where I don't have to go into command line evey time I want to use the thing. Hell, maybe even get rid of the X11 layer and really give it that performance boost.
And as everyone is so willing to say in opensource, if you don't like it go fork (it) yourself:)
That's cause BSD users fix the code on their own.
Just because you aren't aware of it, doesn't mean it's not happening. The BSD's are alive and well, thank you.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Excuse me, i don't write code for non-cross platform software environments. For a long time. Being single platform by definition excludes an environment from the list.
Wow, I thought Gnome and KDE etc. were X11 Window Managers.
I go look at how people talk about them, and they seem to be lifestyle choices now.
there will be a fork. besides, it isn't like everyone is sticking with the gnome interface.
http://tuto4log.blogspot.com/2011/04/ubuntu-411-arrives-with-unity-new.html
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
This "GNOME to drop non-Linux support" sensationalism on the net is ridiculous. There has been no such proposal! Yes, I RTFA and the full mailing list discussions.
The proposal in GNOME's desktop-devel-list was by the author and maintainer of systemd to let GNOME adopt systemd as the mechanism to configure certain system-wide settings, like locale and timezone data. This would be implemented as a dbus interface which would spawn a mini-daemon via systemd when that was required. This would solve the age old problem of every distro having their own slight variation on how to configure these things.
Notice the key part of the proposal: the dbus interface. This is the proposed dependency, and not the whole of systemd which, yes is Linux only, but in reality is just a reference implementation for this dbus interface which can be VERY easily reimplemented on any system (the minidaemons themselves are very trivial, porting systemd to other platforms however is not).
What this proposal ACTUALLY means: (a) Non Linux platforms, or Linux distros not yet using systemd, would initially have grayed out certain configuration options in the control center, like locale for example. (b) These settings can be made available just by implementing a trivial dbus interface.
Nothing of this dropping non-Linux OS support nonsense. Hope this clears up the nonsense somewhat
I hate KDE. I've tried it repeatedly with each new version and it simply does not work for me. I was really excited to see PC-BSD becoming more desktop-agnostic, because I love Gnome. It's simple, it looks professional, and it works. I've been trying to move to XFCE which comes close, and certainly works much better for me than KDE, but still isn't quite there.
So how are you going to get objects moved around. The problem is that the "Desktop application" has to have a lot of stuff that isn't do to with display and everyone and their dog ALWAYS complains "it's too slow", therefore you need to write to the OS, not an abstraction.
This is why this question is raised.
Whether it's good or not, I can't say, but there IS a reason.
So stop whinging, OK?
Actually, for real I do. Let me explain...
So with that if Gnome wanted to make their own GnomeOS and then Fedora/CentOS/Ubuntu/whoever would have to do their own ports of the Gnome GUI who does it bother? No one. Sure at some point I'd have to reinstall my machine with GnomeXYZ instead of Fedora, but I have no invested interest in Fedora over CentOS or whoever. I use Fedora simply because I used to use RH and I prefer typing yum instead of apt-get, that's it. I don't really care about the various differences between flavors as all I use on my system is VI and BlueFish to edit various file types, Firefox, Chrome and Opera for Browser testing. My day job is managing Drupal/Wordpress sites so I'm rarely ever needing anything more than Firefox, Filezilla and my console to work in. If you broke into my home and swapped my Fedora OS with a CentOS one I probably wouldn't notice or care.
I've been very impressed with Gnome3 on my Fedora box as it's somewhat similar to my Apple machine with it's expose features, which is my favored environment. KDE has always just looked like a linux version of WIndows to me and sure you can configure it a gazilion different ways, but I don't enjoy fiddling with my computer. (Apple guy remember, I plug shit in and it works.) But more so Gnome3 has had my wife (a non techie person) feeling very comfortable using the machine as she bounces between my Apple and the Fedora laptop I bring with us on trips. That to me is a win - having my wife embrace an "alternative desktop".
So all that to say, if Gnome made their own distro, those who like Gnome would probably continue to use it, those who don't like Gnome probably won't. The end result is life moves on and causing all this internet ruckus just makes all you nerds look silly :P
Ave Molech Setting
Gnome has become a mental disorder. While I believe, as tvelocity has pointed out, that the headline is not altogether accurate, still this is just one in a series of steps Gnome has staggered into, by which it is rapidly degenerating into a pool of crap. Witness: the train wreck of Gnome3 and Gnome Shell, which is complete garbage. Gnome2 should be forked and development continued by people with functioning brains. I'm not going to go ballistic, because KDE does not seem to be losing its mind, notwithstanding the strange preoccupation that was the pointless KDE4 re-architecting. And there is always Xfce and LXDE, though these are nowhere near as rich as Gnome2.
There is plenty of this madness going around, like ubuntu pushing Unity like a drug dealer, where there is no user demand at all to change from Gnome2.
Merge Gnome and KDE!
Too much low lever efforts in two places. XFCE and LXDE could merge too.
I used to use FreeBSD and Gnome was becoming an annoyance back then. Gnome started doing things like dumping OSS for ALSA and using video standards taht only worked under Linux.
If you used Gnome 2.0 or 2.2 under BSD you are using a heavily patched version that grew more and more significantly different as Gnome matured. Sun called their gui the Java desktop as it was mere Gnome based for Solaris. I remember an interview with the FreeBSD team where they were clashing with gnome developers. The problem is KDE 4 was so aweful that many Unix users wanted to switch to Gnome as a result.
I have not ran FreeBSD in many years as I use Linux on a VM partition inside Windows 7 but it seems Unix is still more a server oriented platform anyway which is why I do not run it natively anymore. I do admit Gnome-Shell/Unity and KDE 4 is what made me dump Linux for good as my main OS so I am prejudiced agaisn't Gnome.
http://saveie6.com/
Gnome went from being the most usable, stable, "just works" DE for unix-like systems, to a steaming pile of crap, IMHO. I'm still in shock that they took a stable, functional foundation that was Gnome 2, and just literally threw it all away. I tried to give Gnome 3 a chance, but it's like a damned cell-phone UI.
As a dev of Dungeon Crawl, I see that systems that smell like Unix these days are a monoculture of Linux and Linux only. Even though you'd expect roguelike players to be biased towards obscure systems, I don't recall a single bug report from a *BSD or Solaris user. Even Hurd had one. Big-endian systems are dead too (two distinct users, one with an old MacOS X, one with Debian on powerpc).
Everyone these days uses either Windows, Linux or x86 Mac.
It's nice that you have your pet OS in that list and suddenly you've developed the same attitude you likely despised from windows devs ten years ago.
Being single platform by definition excludes an environment from the list.
It's a tradeoff. There are cases in which one environment is so dominant in the market that excluding other environments saves you more money than you would have earned by including those environments. That's why, for example, very few professionally produced video games are officially ported to Linux during their commercial shelf life, and some are even released only on consoles.
I'd rather see Linux drop support for GNOME.
" time has come for GNOME to embrace Linux a bit more boldly" Nothing says bold quite like the phrase, "a bit"
This has to be the crappiest piece of confounded (and I *mean* "confounded") pseudoscience I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Let's do a thought experiment, and interpret the results according to the method proposed. We show subject A a picture of a black cat, and subject B a picture of a white cat. Looking at an MRI of each subject, we note there's considerable overlap in the brain areas activated. From this we conclude that "black" is really the same thing as "white".
That's pretty much what we have there. We show group A religious art. We show subject B product design art. Seeing that some of the same brain areas are stimulated in either case, we decide that product design and religion are somehow the same thing. Now that's in intriguing hypothesis, and the experiment certainly doesn't *preclude* that hypothesis, but neither does it prove the hypothesis. That there should be considerable overlap in the response to two different kinds of art is hardly surprising. Visual stimulus is translated into pleasure and aesthetic appreciation; recognition of common motifs; maybe even (if we want to stretch a bit in this case) the anticipation of reward with just a frisson of anxiety over whether one is going to actually receive it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Me thinks the Ubuntu Unity people saw trouble ahead for Gnome.
I8-D
Please!
I've honestly tried KDE a few times, but it just feels like being trapped in a heavily-branded Kartoon with gears scattered everywhere.
No, BSD is just so stable that it has a stablizing effect on all application running on it. It automatically detects and repairs bugs on the fly.
So will SCO Unix users have to switch to Linux? Will they pay their $699 / cpu SCOsource license fees like all other good Linux users do? Enquiring minds want to know.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You're forgetting mobile and other embedded OSes, which are mostly *nix, but mostly very different from desktop GNU/Linux. Even Android is vastly different from a typical GNU/Linux distribution, though there may not be much call to run GNOME apps on Android.
I don't support this at all. OpenBSD runs gnome very well, arguably better than Linux. I didn't want this to become a fanboy vs fanboy comment but it is going to turn out that way because dropping support for other operating systems is antithetical to the whole purpose of openness. I don't see Linux's technical superiority to the BSDs. They complement each other well but if a few hard-nosed devs want to rekindle that flame, so be it. OpenBSD is the most secure operating system in the world and I'll trust it over a Linux box any day. OpenBSD's inteldrm(4) and radeondrm(4) work much better. I guess OpenBSD devs will consider forking Gnome and making it way better.
How about some humility there? I write iOS apps and can claim I haven't had a crashlog report from Apple after two years... if only it weren't because nobody is using them... I mean, using an obscure game I haven't heard in about a decade to measure platform usage? Netcraft wants to hear from you boy!
*BSD and solaris users fix their own bugs.
These days, it is BSD that is the "pet OS", in one line with HP-UX and other relics of the past. You can't call an OS which runs most servers today "pet".
KDE has been moving to support more platforms than ever - even (eventually) replacing the Windows Explorer shell on Windows with KDE4's Plasma. Meanwhile GNOME has of late seemed to be isolating itself from the rest of the world, and there seems to be movement to drop support for anything but their one desired platform.
Guess they can't really get over the GNU+Linux thing too...too bad for them that Linux works with a lot more than just the GNU tools, and will continue to do so.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
These days, it is BSD that is the "pet OS", in one line with HP-UX and other relics of the past. You can't call an OS which runs most servers today "pet".
missing the point
Wow...so after all these years, Gnome wants to stay LINUX only? Wow...and here I was looking forward to Gnome3 for Windows...(NOT)
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
Oh dear, all I had to do was list 4 major features that Windows and OS X both benefit from, and some Slashdotter w/mod points gets a bug up his buttocks.
Does Gnome becoming Linux-only provide:
1) ...an SDK and IDE designed to make it easy to get started with coding on the so-called platform?
2) ...a tool, integrated with the above, to create single package files that can install even a complex application onto any 'Linux' released within the last file years?
3) ...a GUI that contractually forbids major changes by the distributor, to provide a consistent and recognizable UI?
4) ...a quick and effortless way to determine if a piece of hardware is fully supported?
Let's see, No, No, No and No? OK then, 'Desktop Linux' will continue on its current path.
As a BSD user; I strongly suggest that Gnome become BSD-only.
KDE seems more appropriate to the part of the Linux market that wants the OS to be a Windows clone, anyways.
I take it you've never heard of a "server" before...
As a dev of Dungeon Crawl, I see that systems that smell like Unix these days are a monoculture of Linux and Linux only. Even though you'd expect roguelike players to be biased towards obscure systems, I don't recall a single bug report from a *BSD or Solaris user. Even Hurd had one. Big-endian systems are dead too (two distinct users, one with an old MacOS X, one with Debian on powerpc).
Everyone these days uses either Windows, Linux or x86 Mac.
It's probably just because everyone who used it on *BSD or Solaris had it work fine out of the box.
I've ran it myself under FreeBSD 7.x and 8.x using tiles without issue, simply have to pass the right parameters to the ./configure script.
The real truth is that if software is developed correctly, (that does not have to relate to kernel interfaces/s/ystem heir/etc directly) it should work pretty much out of the box with little or no modification.
As a giant "fuck you" to FreeBSD as the backing was from RedHat.
If they wanna do this, that's fine. I'll stop using AbiWord and Gnumeric (as both worked on Open Source Unix and Windows) as its no longer portable. Perhaps I should start down that path now.
WRT FreeBSD Why have the fight?
After you fight with developers over patches - at some point you gotta get your work done and if that work is being done on GNU/Linux...that is where ya go.
Oh, wait. Doesn't that sound like what people say about using Windows? Gee, thanks you GNU/Linux only coders.....you are now no better than Windows developers.
What the dude is saying is: Why do you need OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux, when they do the same things anyways, with Linux being the most common. It would help if things wouldn't have to be implemented five times. That's how I understood his argument, and he actually has a point.
The problem with this is that BSD, Solaris and Linux users are comparable to Baptists, Anglicans, Lutherans, etc. It's not reasonable to keep five different implementations, but one little aspect might discourage someone and he does his own, which does just the same thing - nobody will admit it, but who does really care whether your computer runs a microkernel or a monolithic one? Even a mobile phone is what was a supercomputer when people came up with those things. It doesn't matter anymore, maybe except for servers - which don't run Gnome in the first place.
The GNU/Linux community is finally getting to the extinguish part of this. I've always said that that's what the GPL is for; the main purpose of the restrictions is erecting barriers to competition. This just shows it coming out in the community as well.
Not much more to say. Only MW stack out there with some potential to embrace both embedded and enter into pos and alike single purpose pc as well as general desktop pc apps aiming for self-destruction. Add linux-specific mechanisms, but keep others as working is most conservative way. Otherwise its 100% aim and miss.
Greetz.
Uhm, I do test if it at least builds on BSD every a few months. Just as I test that it builds on mipsel or s390.
My point was that there are no users who gave any feedback, and there is plenty from those on Linux and Windows, and a bit from Mac. There is a guy who maintains a bunch of ports for BSD, but no bug reports from those who actually play. And with a fast moving code, there's always a bunch of bugs, most platform independent.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Heh... one thing: there is no ./configure in Crawl...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I have some GTK-based software that I use on both Linux and Windows. What would this switch, if made, mean for GTK?
I am not devoid of humor.
Actually in my experience i get more segfaults from shitty code on BSD than anywhere else. The OS is rock solid, and if told to run shit doesn't put up with it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.