Proposal For Gnome To Become Linux-Only

I support this! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 03:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

I support this because it can only help to make Gnome more irrelevant.

Re:I support this! by rjmx · 2011-05-19 03:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

Agreed. Even as it becomes less customisable (so as not to frighten the less-experienced, apparently), Gnome gets ever more bloated as time goes by.
Methinks the Gnome developers have totally lost the plot.
Re:I support this! by hedwards · 2011-05-19 03:40 · Score: 1

I'm guessing that there's going to be a backlash from the various people that are writing programs using GTK+. Seriously, I'd be thrilled not to have to choose between the best utility of a type and not having to install GTK. It's a serious pain that one almost inevitably ends up with both kdelibs and GTK installed because there's invariably that one application which uses the other set of libraries for which there is no suitable replacement that uses ones preferred set of libraries.
Re:I support this! by clang_jangle · 2011-05-19 04:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

I was waiting to see if they screw up the 3.0 branch and piss everyone off like kde4 did, but I guess the anticipation was killing them so they had to find a way to start alienating users now, in spite of having no newly-designed crappy interface yet.

Good time to be a wmaker and openbox user...

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Caveat Utilitor
Re:I support this! by Aighearach · 2011-05-19 04:15 · Score: 4, Informative

Gnome isn't the controlling factor for Gtk+, and that support would never have OS lock. We're only talking about "Gnome" here, not Gimp or the Gimp ToolKit (Gtk). Gnome is just another user of the widget set that happens to share a first letter.
We're actually not even talking about most of Gnome. Just Gnome Shell.
Re:I support this! by dmacleod808 · 2011-05-19 04:31 · Score: 1

by this, i presume you shave your ass and have objective opinions about it's 'features'

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There Can Be Only One...
Re:I support this! by X0563511 · 2011-05-19 04:43 · Score: 1

Oh wow, because GTK+ is so huge!
Really, it's something along the lines of 30mb. It's all the other Gnome crap that makes it look like bloat incarnate.
Just remember - Gnome depends upon GTK+, but GTK+ most certainly does not depend upon Gnome.

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For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:I support this! by monoqlith · 2011-05-19 05:10 · Score: 1, Interesting

I don't give a shit about Gtk+. However, Glib is critical to my ability to port certain software to other OS's; lots of Unix software uses a Glib event loop, GObject's, GModule's, and GThread's underneath. If Gtk+ goes Linux only, how long until Glib also does?
Re:I support this! by meerling · 2011-05-19 05:22 · Score: 1

and just where do you rate your unshaven ass and is there a rat involved by any chance?
(I've always hated undefined metrics, they are so confusing.)
Re:I support this! by MrHanky · 2011-05-19 05:48 · Score: 2

What are you talking about? Gnome 3.0 is out, and it does have a totally new interface, some kind of weird tablet-desktop hybrid, which does alienate lots of users.
Re:I support this! by clang_jangle · 2011-05-19 06:05 · Score: 1

Oh, how did I not notice that? Well I guess they decided to one-up the KDE boys then.

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Re:I support this! by arose · 2011-05-19 06:32 · Score: 2

Good time to be a wmaker and openbox user... Just use plain old console, if you are not going to move forward at least do it with style.

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Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:I support this! by DrXym · 2011-05-19 06:56 · Score: 1

Gnome 3.0 has its faults but taken in its entirety it is a bold and will be ultimately successful in making the desktop more task centric and attractive. As I said it has problems, some of which I've ranted about myself but I believe given a .1 release or two people will be wondering what the fuss was about. Same goes for Unity. I'm sure some masochists would prefer to use Window Maker or similar, but hey Linux allows that too.
Re:I support this! by tyrione · 2011-05-19 08:05 · Score: 2

I don't give a shit about Gtk+. However, Glib is critical to my ability to port certain software to other OS's; lots of Unix software uses a Glib event loop, GObject's, GModule's, and GThread's underneath. If Gtk+ goes Linux only, how long until Glib also does?
How about you stop shitting yourself and actually research the discussion, before making a complete picture of yourself as a mix of paranoia.
Re:I support this! by clang_jangle · 2011-05-19 08:26 · Score: 1

Gnome 3.0 has its faults but taken in its entirety it is a bold and will be ultimately successful in making the desktop more task centric and attractive. As I said it has problems, some of which I've ranted about myself but I believe given a .1 release or two people will be wondering what the fuss was about. Same goes for Unity.
You may believe you're psychic, but I don't.

I'm sure some masochists would prefer to use Window Maker or similar, but hey Linux allows that too.
Calling users of lean, efficient interfaces (who often script in additional functionality to fit our needs) "masochists" just makes you look like a n00b.

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Re:I support this! by AliasMarlowe · 2011-05-19 10:16 · Score: 1

I was waiting to see if they screw up the 3.0 branch and piss everyone off like kde4 did
They did. Gnome 3 sucks like a poxed corpse. Shun it, for your own good.
LXDE and Xfce (among others) are likely to gain some users at Gnome's expense. Our desktops are sticking with the LTS version of Ubuntu because it is not threatened with Gnome 3 for a few years. The laptop recently migrated to LXDE anyway, because Gnome was sucking too much cpu from its meagre abilities.

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Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Re:I support this! by CondeZer0 · 2011-05-19 12:08 · Score: 1

I agree, and it will give *BSDs another competitive advantage.
The average quality of the software available for *BSD will go up, and the amount of bloat will go down. Win, win.

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"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
Re:I support this! by jon3k · 2011-05-19 13:21 · Score: 1

Or even better, a dwm user.
Re:I support this! by arose · 2011-05-19 14:20 · Score: 1

Then let me ask you, "who's not moving forward?"
People stuck with wmaker or openbox. Context, use it.

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Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:I support this! by Sri+Ramkrishna · 2011-05-19 19:13 · Score: 1

Let's see how you feel about that after 10 years. I started off like that.. scripting my functionality, making my desktop conform to whatever I wanted to do to make it totally efficient. Wasted days perfecting it. As I got older, I didn't give a rats ass because everytime a new version came out I had to do re-do it. I just want a desktop that works, because these days I'm more concentrating on my tasks than I am my desktop. The modern linux desktop is all about that. KDE4, GNOME 3, Unity, all of that is about doing it. If you want to stick with Windowmaker or just use console, hey more power to you.
Re:I support this! by DrXym · 2011-05-19 20:08 · Score: 2

Calling users of lean, efficient interfaces (who often script in additional functionality to fit our needs) "masochists" just makes you look like a n00b.
Actually it's because I've endured numerous desktops under UNIX / Linux over the 20+ years I've been using them and I dislike those that make me spend more time fixing & tweaking the desktop than doing the things I'm running the desktop for in the first place. The desktop's job is to facilitate stuff the user wants to do, to adopt a sensible set of defaults, to provide a reasonable amount of customization, to be forgiving of errors, to provide all the functionality a normal user needs through a GUI (i.e. no trips to bash to edit files), to provide services & facilities to apps such as drag & drop, notifications etc., to allow users to efficiently managed files and apps and to generally stay the fuck out of the way thereafter.
Which is why I suggest that people who use desktops which don't do those things are masochists. Maybe you like your wmaker, and you're free to run it. It doesn't mean it's suitable for the majority of users however. It is very clear that while GNOME 3 and Unity have glaring flaws that both are going in the right direction and a point release or two will address those flaws.
Re:I support this! by DrXym · 2011-05-19 20:19 · Score: 2

My sentiments too. The perennial problem with Linux is usability, that users are expected to have in depth knowledge of their operating system just to use a desktop and work around its flaws. It makes no sense at all. If Linux is more usable, it becomes more productive. If Linux is more usable, more people will use it which is a net benefit to the platform and people who make a living from the platform. I suspect there are people who see Linux as an exclusive clique and that attempts to open it up are somehow a threat to that.
Re:I support this! by wertigon · 2011-05-19 21:00 · Score: 1

It won't ever be threatened with Gnome 3.0. Unity OTOH...

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Re:I support this! by clang_jangle · 2011-05-19 23:44 · Score: 1

This is how I feel about it after 10 years. , so your unwarranted assumptions fall flat. Also, you clearly have very little experience with wmaker. Otherwise you'd know just how out of line your "criticism" is. In reality, I haven't had to make any big changes in my wmaker config since 2004. From what I've seen, gnome and kde can't even go one year without making changes that muck up everyone's previous config. In light of that, you have a most curious POV.

Besides, I never claimed to be an "average user", nor is my advice targeting said mythical creature.

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Re:I support this! by DrXym · 2011-05-20 00:52 · Score: 1

Don't be ridiculous. I've used wmaker numerous times in the past (Google shows me first commenting on it 12 years ago). And grow up your self rather than starting with the ad hominems.
Re:I support this! by arose · 2011-05-20 03:34 · Score: 1

Well fuck, Unity is supposed to use double the RAM (16 GB according to you) of GNOME now, so how comes it runs like a screen space saving dream on my 2 GB Eeepc?

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Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:I support this! by Sri+Ramkrishna · 2011-05-20 03:43 · Score: 1

You are exactly right that people see Linux as an exclusive club and they don't want the noobs comign in and spoiling it for them. I've long suspected that. Good observation. sri
Re:I support this! by clang_jangle · 2011-05-20 06:19 · Score: 1

Then don't say idiotic things like being a wmaker user means constantly having to futz with the desktop -- it's a lie and either you know that or you're talking about things you don't have experience with. Don't blame me for calling as I see it, ok? Besides if you're sincere, then you'd be what we call a "perpetual n00b". It's gnome and kde that have stability issues and constant config revisions, obvioulsy -- not wmaker.

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Re:I support this! by improfane · 2011-05-21 19:15 · Score: 1, Interesting

Man I'm just reading this conversation and this kind of talk is the reason why people are afraid of Linux.
You're aggressive, classroom jeering, calling people 'n00bs' (using the word n00b rather than newbie makes people lose any respect for you, whatever you're saying) you're taking something so minor in the scheme of things and unable to accept that someone can have a different opinion to you.
One day you will need to get over yourself and respect others opinions. I'm a fan of one of your posts and that doesn't excuse how you're acting like an ass.

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Re:I support this! by clang_jangle · 2011-05-22 02:15 · Score: 1

When a troll like the one I was responding to butts in and starts impersonating a competent user and telling lies about wmaker. it annoys me a bit. I don't tend to be very patient with bullshit or bullshitters, and happen to be quite good at spotting them. Couldn't really care less what people think of me or my posts, frankly. Mod me up, mod me down, ignore me -- whatever. This is just a discussion site for geeks, it ain't life or death.

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Re:I support this! by DrXym · 2011-05-22 20:32 · Score: 1

It's called a difference of opinion. I've explained my reasons for preferring task oriented desktop and why it's an important goal to pursue. Then you just pissed and moaned about your beloved wmaker and started hurling insults that I'm a n00b, a troll etc. Grow up will ya. A more reasonable person might wonder why the likes of OS X even exists if it's progenitor (and lookalike clone) was the be all and end all of desktops as you seem to pretend.
Re:I support this! by smash · 2011-05-25 18:42 · Score: 1

And that's the point, kids.
Infinitely customizable flashy desktops are nice and all, but back in the real world people just want to get shit done in the most efficient manner possible.
There needs to be more focus on this sort of thing than the newest imitation of some feature Microsoft implemented 5 years ago, or NEXT implemented 18 years ago.
Give me a usable scripting interface that I can point/click on (like say, automator). Build in support into every app so that they can communicate with the system-wide scripting engine.
Fix bugs. Make hardware (and software) less painful to configure. Design a good, extensible API and for fucks sake, stick to it - rather than changing things and breaking compatability every 3-5 years "just because".
Its all about the APPS and what you can do with them - the desktop environment is merely window dressing to enable you to interact with the tool you are using.
I'm quite sure there are plenty of older Linux peeps out there who are of a similar mindset.
Again, creating a flashy desktop is fine, if thats what you want to do. But you're never going to win substantial market share with it.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:I support this! by smash · 2011-05-25 18:45 · Score: 1

I agree with you on windowmaker config, but thats basically because development has been pretty stagnant since the early 2000s. I used it as my primary desktop in 1996-2003, and installed it again the other day to see what had changed. Very little.
Its a good product, but its only a Window manager, not a desktop platform. I'm keen to see the actual important stuff from Next like the openstep framework actually get implemented properly.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:I support this! by smash · 2011-05-25 20:27 · Score: 1

OS X exists because it's pretty bloody good at what it does. Unfortunately, gnome does very little of the important aspects of this, despite copying vast amounts of the GUI window dressing.
Attention gnome developers: The OS X GUI is pretty shit in a lot of places! The GUI is NOT necessarily why a lot of power users actually like it (I happen to like it DESPITE a lot of the GUI choices). We like it because of things like filesystem metadata, apps that automatically become aware of things that other apps do, or changes to the filesystem. Things like open standards support for zero configuration networking, excellent hardware support (given that you're restricted to certain hardware), sensible defaults, easy to use tools to configure things, etc.
Copying the global menu, the window frame style and icons is merely scratching the surface of what makes OS X - and its the more important stuff that has nothing to do with the GUI that makes it awesome.
Replicating that superficial crap without bothering to make things work anything like OS X under the covers just makes you look like a cheap imitation that will fool the uninitiated.
That said. I wasn't intending to have a rant at the state of the unix desktop, but there we are. The world is crying out for something that actually works (and etoile shows promise) but so many people are caught up with the latest eye-candy that we're progressing towards that at a glacial rate.
And before someone tells me to write the code myself - I'm happy to just buy it if it works. Its simply a shame that the direciton of free software is caught up with so much of the "shiny" superficial bullshit that doesn't actually matter.
*sigh*

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:I support this! by smash · 2011-05-25 22:05 · Score: 1

or just move onto something better and contribute to etoile

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.

Dumb Idea by Perl-Pusher · 2011-05-19 03:39 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

Re:Dumb Idea by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 03:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is a dumb idea for software architecture reasons, too. I'll explain.
When writing a Windows application, you must recognize that the interface between your application and TODAY'S version of Windows must remain fluid such that you can support changes delivered by patch or by OS release. This is known formally as "decoupling" and it is necessary to isolate big systems that need to communicate. Decoupling is important for unix applications as well, because kernels change over time and APIs vary slightly between unixes.
If you truly believe your application gains anything by eliminating a decoupling library/layer, you have missed the point of the past few DECADES of object-oriented programming.
Re:Dumb Idea by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 03:47 · Score: 1

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.
Exactly that.
KDE needs all the support it can get and it's time for GNOME to step up and provide it.
Re:Dumb Idea by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 04:13 · Score: 4, Informative

KDE on the next release is looking to be the same. Hello? release it as early beta and do NOT call it a release until all the tools that are used to make it useful to noobs are ported to the changes.
Instead we get a mature interface that is abandonded and will not support it anymore because they all moved to the new shiny.
The "mature interface" was quite frankly the result of years of hacks, that were somehow superglued together.
The most basic change sometimes involved rewriting major subsystems, and tons of projects ended up being abandoned because they were practically impossible to incorporate into KDE 3.5.
The real problem with KDE 4 though, was distros making it default AGAINST THE WISHES OF KDE DEVELOPERS.
KDE Developers has specifically stated that distros looking for stability and feature-parity should wait until later KDE 4.X releases, but distros wanting to be "cutting-edge" forced it on users.
KDE 4.0 was intended as a call to developers to port their applications over with a promise of relative stability in the KDE libraries from that point, and a call for theme developers and the like to do the same, and a chance for the morbidly curious or advanced users to get used to the new system, it was never intended to be "finished".
I won't say I agree with their decision to bump the version number, but it was already delayed and they decided that to not put it off further would speed up the porting of applications and the finishing of the DE, and they were very clear about what the release was and wasn't.
Re:Dumb Idea by sarhjinian · 2011-05-19 04:32 · Score: 1, Insightful

1. Resize Konsole on Nvidia. Kernel panic.
2. Change network config, watch kded consume 100% CPU.
3. Unplug, go to power saving profile, watch panel lose transparency, have to clean out /var/tmp/kdecache
4. Connect to an SMB share with Dolphin and watch it crash every single time.
I found those in the first half-day with KDE4.6. And that's my best track record with KDE4.
It's interesting: KDE4 looks fundamentally strong, but seriously lacks polish and has serious usability trouble. GNOME gives the opposite impression: a kludge of technologies underneath the hood, but polished mercilessly. The two projects could really teach each other a a thing or two, and a combination of the best of each would give MacOS and Windows serious discomfort.

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--srj/mmv
Re:Dumb Idea by Anonymuous+Coward · 2011-05-19 04:46 · Score: 1

1. Resize Konsole on Nvidia. Kernel panic.

How could be a kernel panic the fault of KDE?
Re:Dumb Idea by rtb61 · 2011-05-19 04:50 · Score: 1

It could all be pressure from the Android/Chrome world creeping into Linux GUI landscape.
Lateral thinking would be to start openly reviewing what really works in Android/Chrome and start shifting what can be shifted to Linux/Gnome/KDE.
Thta is the whole principle of open source and creating choice, whilst allowing for forks and feature mergers.
Android/Chrome will have an impact on Linux distributions not a severe as the impact on windows (slow creeping death) but more GUI, feature set and, some core functionality. Interesting times coming up for the desktop and consumer computer devices.

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Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:Dumb Idea by SomeKDEUser · 2011-05-19 05:13 · Score: 1

None of these is true. I know, I run both 4.6 at work and trunk (sorry, master, now) at home.
Re:Dumb Idea by Jonner · 2011-05-19 05:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

KDE is far from the only recourse, as there are a number of other Desktop Environments already in common use, including XFCE and Unity/GNOME 2. However, GNOME requiring systemd would be a giant mistake as it would be a kick in the face not only for non-Linux based OSes, but for any Linux-based distro that use a different init. I haven't followed the Canonical /GNOME controversies much, but this inclines me to think Canonical isn't being as unreasonable as some think to diverge from GNOME. Optional systemd integration is probably a good idea.
Re:Dumb Idea by elrous0 · 2011-05-19 05:53 · Score: 1

Why cant we get a nice polished and WORKING desktop UI group of programs that has a full click and drool interface that is complete and working? Why is it that every time they get close, KDE or Gnome, they decide that a radical change is needed that utterly breaks everything?
It's the basic formula that has plagued OSS software for decades:
100 programmers = 100 big egos + 1000 ideas of "must have" features (most of which conflict) + 0 experiences designing real GUI's

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Re:Dumb Idea by karper · 2011-05-19 05:59 · Score: 1

1. Resize Konsole on Nvidia. Kernel panic.
Others have mentioned that this is nvidia's territory. kde, particularly kwin works around many of bugs in video card drivers, but for now, the best thing to do might be to use nouveau, instead of nvidia.

2. Change network config, watch kded consume 100% CPU.
kded is supposed to be a single daemon that watches over multiple things like when someone pops in a disk or whatever. There's a recent blog by a kde dev on planetkde identifying that this is a single-point failure prone design as any one of the tasks it's doing could hang it entirely. I don't really have a fix for this one. It's quite rare and when it does happen, I usually end up logging out and back in.

3. Unplug, go to power saving profile, watch panel lose transparency, have to clean out /var/tmp/kdecache
Okay, this one made me laugh. The reason why your panel became opaque is because kde switched your power profile when running on battery. This power profile probably disables desktop effects. You can keep desktop effects enabled (On an eepc 1015, I don't see a significant difference in battery life eitherway) and change other things by going to System Settings and looking in the power kcm.

4. Connect to an SMB share with Dolphin and watch it crash every single time.
Haven't seen this one and can't reproduce it. I have seen Dolphin choke on smb domains with spaces in their names, though.
Your point is valid --- while the fundamentals are strong, kde definitely needs more polish.
Re:Dumb Idea by MaskedSlacker · 2011-05-19 06:21 · Score: 1

This is like blaming your plumber for your electricity not working, and justifying your idiocy by saying that if the plumber wants serious market share he should fix that too while he's there anyway.
Re:Dumb Idea by jd · 2011-05-19 06:22 · Score: 1

Decoupling pre-dates object-oriented programming by some ways, but that increases the importance of the point. It is a requirement of sound software engineering that you have appropriate abstraction.

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Re:Dumb Idea by Grishnakh · 2011-05-19 06:27 · Score: 1

Gnome3 is complete fail because you have to revert to 1998 and editing text files to configure it. WTF is that?
You're totally missing the point. You're not supposed to configure it. You're supposed to accept that the default configuration was made by people who know what's best for you, and be happy with their choices. Haven't you learned anything from the way Apple designs its UIs?
Stop trying to think for yourself!
Re:Dumb Idea by Grishnakh · 2011-05-19 06:41 · Score: 1

The real problem with KDE 4 though, was distros making it default AGAINST THE WISHES OF KDE DEVELOPERS.
KDE Developers has specifically stated that distros looking for stability and feature-parity should wait until later KDE 4.X releases, but distros wanting to be "cutting-edge" forced it on users.
That's definitely a problem, but part of the blame lies with the KDE team for calling it "4.0". When you change from a "beta" name (i.e., KDE 3.95) to "x.0", that implies it's ready for prime-time. It's been like that for decades. Of course, MS has a reputation of the first couple releases being crap, but that's still different from being "beta" (i.e., lots of major features missing or broken), and that's just MS.
KDE should never have changed the name to "4.0" and then expected everyone to still treat it like a beta product.
However, I still think the distros hold most of the blame, as they're the ones who are supposed to keep track of everything going on upstream, and make sure what they put out to users as a complete release is working and complete and not full of bugs (at least, not more bugs and fewer features than the previous release).
Re:Dumb Idea by sarhjinian · 2011-05-19 06:43 · Score: 1

You're correct on #1; it is an nVidia bug, but it should have been worked around by default as soon as it was discovered. Resizing the console window is not uncommon, and gnome-terminal doesn't do this. Admittedly this is as much the fault of the distro as it is of the DE developers.
#3 I didn't explain: yes, I know compositing gets turned off on battery, which is a good thing and something I wish GNOME did. The problem is that when you go back on AC power (and compositing is turned on) the panels don't go back until kdecache-user is cleared out. Stale tempfiles shouldn't really happen.
#4 is depressingly reproducible. General network filesystem weirdness abounds with Dolphin.
I haven't hit this kind of thing with GNOME, outside of Evolution (which is awful; anything that recommends daily backups of it's DB and metadata is something that has fundamental design problems***ahem***Nepomuk***ahem***Akonadi). Again, I can see where KDE is going, but I wish they'd spend a little more time on polish and a little less on pushing the envelope.
I'm hoping the Ubuntu/GNOME split results in Canonical getting the chance to polish KDE a little. I like KDE. I really want to use it, but it feels like a fight every time. Credit where credit's due: Canonical raised the bar for GNOME distributions' user experience.

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--srj/mmv
Re:Dumb Idea by BitZtream · 2011-05-19 07:54 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Its completely justified to blame the plumber if the electricity went out because he cut the wire.
You're right. Its not Gnome's FAULT that the nvidia driver is buggy and crashes the machine.
But ...
When the guy tries to do something with certain aspects of the Gnome environment he wants to do, it crashes, so its effectively not useful to him. The ultimate reason is not important in the grand scheme of things to the user, only the developer. The user doesn't give a fuck why it works or doesn't, just that it does or doesn't. Beyond that, its the developers image and problem. Nvidias fault, clearly, but because its triggered by Gnome, he doesn't use Gnome. Either way, Gnome loses support because of its actions, even though its not directly Gnomes fault.
You see this sort of thing all the time with tech people.
Techies like to wax on about what specific technological reason something broke. We'll argue about the actual cause on our bug trackers and forums. Come up with a bunch of alternate ways to solve the problem. Spend 6 months blaming it on a hardware vendor. And ultimately ... a year later the bug is written off because of lack of interest from the original submitters ... BECAUSE THEY'VE GOTTEN SO TIRED OF WATCHING TECHIES CIRCLE JERK themselves on forums and bug trackers that they just moved on to something else ... which may not be free ... or it may not be under some ideal license ... but it fucking doesn't piss them off regularly.
OSS continually fails to get that. Plenty of companies miss it as well, but they tend to go out of business. OSS projects just continue to push on due to the sheer number of geeks who 'believe' in the project.
If every time I call a certain plumber, my electricity goes out ... I'm not going to call that plumber anymore, I'm going to find another plumber who can manage the problem without breaking shit, even if it means I have to give up the fact that the plumber I'm dumping was a hot chick, I'd rather not miss the fucking super bowl.

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Re:Dumb Idea by sxeraverx · 2011-05-19 08:00 · Score: 2

The first rule of computer architecture is that any problem can be solved by an additional layer of abstraction.
(The corollary to this is: ...except for too many layers of abstraction.)
Re:Dumb Idea by quickOnTheUptake · 2011-05-19 08:42 · Score: 2

While there is something to what you say about the final user experience being what matters, you are also a little too short sighted. Sometimes working around other people's crappy product is just too much for developers to be reasonably expected to do.
So to go with your example, say the electricity on one floor of your house goes out after the plumber came, and the plumber explains that it seems the incompetent ass that wired your house didn't bother running a negative line to that floor, but just twisted the negatives to a copper water line (which the plumber had to replace). This is not really the plumber's fault, and the plumber wouldn't reasonably let himself be held accountable for the bad result, but would tell you you need to go and bitch to the incompetent that ripped you off with the shoddy work in the first place.
A self-respecting developer will only fill up his own code base with ugly hacks to accommodated other poorly written programs to a certain point before he tells his users to bark up another tree.

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Re:Dumb Idea by mysidia · 2011-05-19 09:23 · Score: 1, Insightful

Too many layers of abstraction creates problems when you need to repair bugs or troubleshoot issues.
Because the abstractions hide what's really going on, the more abstractions you add, the less you know, and too many layers ultimately makes the computer more opaque to both developer and user.
And ultimately results in a buggy mess, when you get bugs and it takes years to trace due to the massive number of wrappers you may have to pass through to ultimately figure out where the bug might be.
Re:Dumb Idea by Blakey+Rat · 2011-05-19 09:37 · Score: 1

The Cascade of Attention Deficit Teenagers development model.

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Comment of the year
Re:Dumb Idea by PipsqueakOnAP133 · 2011-05-19 10:06 · Score: 1

Makes it kinda obvious why Google won't release Honeycomb source code, eh?
Re:Dumb Idea by eric_herm · 2011-05-19 11:26 · Score: 1

Kernel and KDE start by the same letter, so the link is obvious.
Re:Dumb Idea by eric_herm · 2011-05-19 11:29 · Score: 1

By treating as beta product, you mean "avoiding it and waiting for the stable release to do testing and bug report in the last minute" ? IIRC, people who tested kde4 before the release were quite happy of running it, it didn't crash much and few people complained. And I doubt that they decided to add bug just in the last month of coding. See gnome 3, it was delayed 2 times, ( for 6 months each time ) and people still complain. And when it take too long to release people complain that "this is dead" ( see bsd, see debian ).
Re:Dumb Idea by Grishnakh · 2011-05-19 11:58 · Score: 1

IIRC, people who tested kde4 before the release were quite happy of running it, it didn't crash much and few people complained.
My understanding is that most people complained about all the missing features, which they had back in the 3.5 series. Maybe the beta testers had low standards, but you don't need beta testers to tell you you're missing features that you previously possessed.
Re:Dumb Idea by Jonner · 2011-05-20 05:00 · Score: 1

Everyone has an opinion, which is why all these Free desktops exist in the first place. I think Unity's fine on my desktop. I need to try GNOME 3, but I don't care that strongly about details of look and feel as long as they don't get in my way.
Re:Dumb Idea by smash · 2011-05-25 22:08 · Score: 1

And that can be saved by throwing cpu/ram at the problem.
CPU/ram is cheap, getting more powerful per $ at an exponential rate.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Dumb Idea by smash · 2011-05-25 22:11 · Score: 1

Not necessarily.
The more abstraction, the less you NEED to know to build a functional app. The smaller the individual components can be, and as a result, the easier they are to debug in isolation.
Badly coded abstraction with no logging facility or spaghetti code may be bad to debug, but if you have an appropriate level of sanity in your code with a properly documented API there is no reason it needs to be difficult to debug.
Further, if a bug IS found, and the API is stable, then there a shitload less code that needs to be re-written, lessening the likelihood of NEW bugs being introduced in the process.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Dumb Idea by smash · 2011-05-25 22:16 · Score: 1

blah.
I've used KDE between 1.0 (compiled on slackware back in the day) and 3.5.1. With brief, painful forays into 4.x during the past couple of years.
KDE4 is a turd. There's no other word for it. I am what one would consider a power user, and the breakage of my workflow between 3.5.1 (which i picked up without needing any degree of reading of documentation) and 4.x, combined with the truly unstable/glitchy nature of every 4.x release I have tried is totally unacceptable to me.
I am not alone.
Earlier versions of KDE were revolutionary and truly pleasant to use in the way I could simply get shit done.
KDE4 is/was painful and unstable to boot.
I don't give a fuck about plasmoids and shiny desktops. They broke core functionality.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Dumb Idea by smash · 2011-05-25 22:21 · Score: 1

If it is KNOWN TO BREAK on certain combinations of hardware/driver then the sensible thing to do would be to fucking DISABLE THE FEATURE (or work around it, in a sub-optimal manner) on such hardware, no?
Not simply wait for bug report, pass the buck and piss off your userbase.
As the GP said, the end user doesn't give a shit WHY it broke. If it broke while he was running X piece of software and is stable running something else, he's going to run something else. Especially if the response he gets is a "not our problem"

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Dumb Idea by smash · 2011-05-25 22:25 · Score: 1

The most basic change sometimes involved rewriting major subsystems, and tons of projects ended up being abandoned because they were practically impossible to incorporate into KDE 3.5.
end user = don't care
harsh? yes, at the end of the day, it if works and i can get my job done using it, the end user doesn't care how it works under the bonnet.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Dumb Idea by smash · 2011-05-25 22:26 · Score: 1

Evidently, the testing was "w00t, i can get a desktop login and plasmoids work!"

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Dumb Idea by sxeraverx · 2011-05-26 05:57 · Score: 1

Yes, but that exponential relationship is slowly becoming linear as the bulk of the $$ is becoming energy.

Can they do that? by blind+biker · 2011-05-19 03:42 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Can they do that? by spauldo · 2011-05-19 13:43 · Score: 1

Last time I went to Sun's website, I got the impression that Oracle was pretty much discontinuing any non-RAY workstations. They seem to be only focusing on the large server segment, as far as hardware goes.
There's no point in using GNOME on these (except for RAY setups, of course) since they'll mostly be administered remotely anyway, so I'd imagine that any considerations about Solaris are pretty much moot at this point.

--
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.

Why? by AntEater · 2011-05-19 03:42 · Score: 1

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.

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Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....

Re:Why? by houstonbofh · 2011-05-19 04:46 · Score: 1

So you are saying that this is a gnome 4 preview?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuOvqeABHvQ

Oh look, it's in relationg to systemd by Nursie · 2011-05-19 03:42 · Score: 2

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.

Re:Oh look, it's in relationg to systemd by Skapare · 2011-05-19 05:14 · Score: 1

And if the advanced feature is not present on the kernel that is running, then the desktop app has to just panic and quit? Why not just not use that feature that isn't there? The Gnome Grave is now over a meter deep. Are they still digging?

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now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Re:Oh look, it's in relationg to systemd by eric_herm · 2011-05-19 11:34 · Score: 1

The idea was to reuse systemd for gnome-session. Booting your computer is starting lots of software running in background, and so does the session of gnome. The fact that systemd restart software when they die, allows to have upgrade wthout breaking conexion, etc is IMHO something that could be interesting. I also think that cgroups could help to isolate process, to make sure that nothing is left behind ( think firefox + out of browser process in the same group of process with cgroup ), being able to make sure that CPU is limited for some task ( again, flash ), etc.
Re:Oh look, it's in relationg to systemd by CondeZer0 · 2011-05-19 12:10 · Score: 1

I think *BSDs will be quite happy to be "left behind" by Poettering.
It is thanks to Poettering and his creations that I have been seriously considering switching back to OpenBSD from Linux.

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"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
Re:Oh look, it's in relationg to systemd by walshy007 · 2011-05-19 18:43 · Score: 1

I have no major objection to change, or to things like PulseAudio
Jack handles all the functionality PulseAudio does but also appeases the high-end audio folks by providing a means to do low latency work and connection of different programs to each other in an ice and easy fashion.
The PulseAudio developers reasoning for it's existence was to provide a solution that can scale the latency to up to seconds(!) for things such as video and the like that are pre-determined to save a few fractions of a percent battery on context switching. In doing so the trade-off is it is absolutely useless for anybody who actually cares about their audio subsystem. Now we have all of the professional and some of the non-professional audio applications using jack. And some end-user only things using pulse that have to be wrapped to jack. This is far from ideal.
The ironic thing is the pulseaudio developers own talk on the two is almost a diatribe against it. Most of his main points against jack are moot (it apparently requires powerful hardware.. tell that to my eeepc that is running a whole heap of high cpu requirement services) And that the system is usually static (I plug in new midi devices all the time, no need to restart jack they simply appear). And finally that audio is the only thing going on in jack systems, I use it system wide even for my youtube playback as most others that use jack do.
Basically, all the perceived downsides of jack are moot except the few points of a percent difference in cpu usage, and I for one fail to see why we still continue to inflict this pain that is pulseaudio on the audio community. - end rant.
Re:Oh look, it's in relationg to systemd by Nursie · 2011-05-19 21:15 · Score: 1

I hear a lot of good things about Jack, I've never used it though because my audio needs are -
music player
movies
flashplayer stuff on the net
occasional editing of audio in Audacity
Skype
So low-latency doesn't really show up on my radar, other than the network latency in Skype. The only reason I have pulse installed don the one system I have it on, is that Adobe's flash was NOT playing nicely with others with ALSA.
I don't really have a problem with the stuff that Lennart does, just the attitude. "So what if it breaks everything, we're forging new ground! Of course we're going to include it as default in the next fedora!"
Re:Oh look, it's in relationg to systemd by walshy007 · 2011-05-20 07:07 · Score: 1

music player movies flashplayer stuff on the net occasional editing of audio in Audacity Skype
i use jack for all of those things except skype, since I avoid skype like the plague. but everything else I can confirm working and working nicely.
Anything that tries to use alsa directly will also integrate with jack because of the jack alsa sink (this is how I have audio from flashplayer with the other things), I just redirected the default alsa device to a jack one in asound.conf (you basically just copy paste it from the one on the jack website) Your mileage may vary though as I have found one or two programs that do not like this transition layer (mainly quake4)

So low-latency doesn't really show up on my radar, other than the network latency in Skype.
Even without low latency requirements, the ability to route audio to/from different programs with complete ease is a godsend. One of those things which you never realize how handy it is until you need it, and when you don't need it you just don't have to worry about it and it's business as usual.

I vote no. by LWATCDR · 2011-05-19 03:43 · Score: 1

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?

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See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.

Re:I vote no. by DarkOx · 2011-05-19 03:58 · Score: 1

Its doing great. It still runs like top even on the underpowered netbook, and its every bit as pretty and functional as Gnome and KDE. Try it I think you will like it very much.

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Re:I vote no. by Beelzebud · 2011-05-19 04:05 · Score: 2

Xfce seems great to me. I dumped Gnome3 for it, and haven't looked back. I still do not see the logic of taking Gnome 2 and just throwing it away.
Re:I vote no. by houstonbofh · 2011-05-19 04:51 · Score: 1

Me too... I hate the trend of making new UIs more candy and less functional. I was hoping someone would buck the trend.
Re:I vote no. by LWATCDR · 2011-05-19 05:13 · Score: 1

I have used it in the past but it wasn't as usful as GNOME for me. I liked GNOME but the new Gnome and the Ubuntu split makes me not want to upgrade.

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See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Re:I vote no. by CharlyFoxtrot · 2011-05-19 11:01 · Score: 1

XFCE is suffering (through no fault of their own) from the same mindset that seems to want to restrict open source to Linux-only. From the 4.8 release :
"We hope that everyone will enjoy this release as much as we do. Sadly, this will not be the case as the folks using any of the BSD systems will notice a sudden loss of features. We think that this announcement is a good opportunity to express our disagreement with the recent "Linux-only" developments in the open source ecosystem, especially with regards to the utilities we need in desktop environments."
More info here.

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So what? by airfoobar · 2011-05-19 03:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's open source. If there are people who want it on other platforms, they can just fork it. Right?

Lets look at it by ADRA · 2011-05-19 03:46 · Score: 1, Interesting

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?

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Re:Lets look at it by sremick · 2011-05-19 03:52 · Score: 2

Gnome works wonderfully on my (and others', including other posters in these comments) FreeBSD desktops. I can't stand KDE.
Re:Lets look at it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 03:56 · Score: 2, Informative

In the BSD community, there is a desktop movement (PC-BSD, several smaller forks out there). While I haven't seen a lot of support behind Gnome (most BSD desktop projects default to KDE or something even leaner), Gnome going Linux only would force the desktop movement in BSD to pretty much go KDE.
Frankly Gnome is too bloated for most users at this point. Going Linux only wouldn't fix Gnome's problems, their projects are much, much bigger.
Re:Lets look at it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 03:56 · Score: 1

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?
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
Re:Lets look at it by hedwards · 2011-05-19 03:58 · Score: 2

You do realize that some people do use *BSD for a desktop, right? It's stable, flexible, and with the coming of projects like PC-BSD and DesktopBSD, it's more or less trivial to get it running for a user. As trivial as it is to get some of the more consumer oriented Linux distros up and running.
Personally, I'd shed no tears at all if both KDE and Gnome were to disappear, the environments seem to want to install all sorts of things which I may or may not want, and while they are useful for some people, it's annoying to have to install them just for a couple of irreplaceable applications.
Re:Lets look at it by he-sk · 2011-05-19 04:09 · Score: 2

Most Gnome apps require an X server under OS X meaning they suck donkey balls. They don't use the global menu, copy-and-paste works differently, and they generally don't "look right." I have seen GTK-applications compiled natively for Aqua and while the situation is better from a UI point of view, the build process is the worst thing I've ever encountered. For instance, Gnucash requires to be installed into /opt and insists on starting its own dbus instance (even though there's already one running) and doesn't bother to terminate it when finished.
Having said that, I love the Unix support that comes with OS X. I get much of my work done on the command line (mutt FTW) or in programs that started out on Unix and were adapted to the OS X GUI such as MacVim and Aquamacs (an Emacs clone).

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Re:Lets look at it by fusiongyro · 2011-05-19 04:15 · Score: 4, Informative

I think you're missing out on PC-BSD, which is a more desktop-oriented FreeBSD. There's also DragonflyBSD which was developed to improve SMP support, again largely for desktop performance.
If you'd run CDE, you'd be in a better place to appreciate GNOME's usability on Solaris. I don't see what this has to do with thin clients either.
Gtk support on OS X has traditionally been kind of iffy. I haven't had luck running Haskell + Gtk on OS X. I am not aware of any apps that use it. It doesn't help that Qt supports OS X natively.
Ultimately, I think the question is whether or not the loss is worth the gain. I don't personally use GNOME but I also don't see the potential gain here as being worth the loss of community. It's not a great idea to abandon any segment of your userbase, because the rest of your userbase will get skittish. Not something you need with a combination of high-profile competition (Unity) and consistently eroding support. I don't think this is likely to go through, but if it does, I'd say you can expect GNOME to be dead within two or three years.
Re:Lets look at it by Sancho · 2011-05-19 04:25 · Score: 1

Clearly overlooked is Debian Gnu/kFreeBSD, as well.
Re:Lets look at it by houstonbofh · 2011-05-19 04:53 · Score: 1

Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
Priceless!
Re:Lets look at it by bcrowell · 2011-05-19 05:12 · Score: 1

You do realize that some people do use *BSD for a desktop, right? It's stable, flexible, and with the coming of projects like PC-BSD and DesktopBSD, it's more or less trivial to get it running for a user. As trivial as it is to get some of the more consumer oriented Linux distros up and running.
I used BSD as my desktop system for several years, back in the early 2000's, then switched to linux because of endless hassles trying to get a full set of desktop apps working. Last year, because of hassles with poor quality in some ubuntu releases, I decided to try switching back to BSD. It would be fair to say that PC-BSD was "more or less trivial to get it running." However, I was only able to get about half of my desktop apps to work, which was exactly the reason that I had originally switched from BSD to linux years earlier.

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Re:Lets look at it by scharkalvin · 2011-05-19 05:19 · Score: 1

There are some Linux apps that are used by Windows people who don't want to pay for the 'real thing' or pirate them.
IE: Open Office instead of MS Office. (probably doesn't NEED GTK anyway)
the GIMP instead of Photo Shop (this would be a problem....)
Re:Lets look at it by Jonner · 2011-05-19 05:28 · Score: 1

Since there isn't a mature Gtk+ port for Cocoa and X11 apps are second class on OSX, GNOME apps are definitely marginalized on OSX similar to how they are on Windows. I use Gtk+ Emacs, but Emacs is not really "native" anywhere so it hardly matters. I've heard it may be possible to avoid running OSX's GUI stuff entirely and just run an X11 DE, but that's hardly worth it compared to simply replacing it with GNU/Linux or some other Free OS.
Re:Lets look at it by Shadowmist · 2011-05-19 05:28 · Score: 1

BSD: 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?
Considering that by it's nature, Gnome doesn't really place nicely with the OSX api, it's more like that it inherently marginalizes itself. Of course there is nothing preventing it from making use of OS X's BSD core or working as a main desktop in a Darwin system which would make that the same as a BSD answer. That of course would require more specific work in each case.
Re:Lets look at it by quanticle · 2011-05-19 05:32 · Score: 1

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.
I disagree with this. Two GTK apps, at least (GIMP and Pidgin), have very strong adoption in the Windows world. Pidgin is a damn good multi-platform/multi-protocol chat client, and lots of Windows users use despite having never been exposed to Linux. GIMP doesn't have as much adoption (thanks to Photoshop), but its used by Windows users who can't afford Photoshop, and don't want to go through the risks of pirating it.

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We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Re:Lets look at it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 05:56 · Score: 1

You do realize that some people do use *BSD for a desktop, right?
I'm sure the two of you can fork gnome and keep it running. Can we talk about relevant OSes, please?
Re:Lets look at it by X0563511 · 2011-05-19 06:21 · Score: 1

There are exactly three things that prevent my use of BSD as a desktop, and they are all related to the same demon.
1. ATI drivers/code is still atrocious
2. nvidia is still taking their sweet-ass-time on amd64 FreeBSD support (ok ok, so they pushed it on freebsd saying "implement these things our way first")
3. Any other option isn't an option for me. I need something that works and doesn't perform like it's 1995.

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For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:Lets look at it by tyrione · 2011-05-19 08:07 · Score: 1

You just lost all credibility proclaiming GNOME is bloated and KDE is lean. KDE is nothing but bloat. There is a reason that Debian has 5 base package options for KDE installs and ultimately if you want most of the stuff you end up using in KDE it forces you to use most of the packages. It's not lean, by any stretch of the imagination. GNOME 3, on the contrary, is extremely lean, both on system resources and app resources.
Re:Lets look at it by lucian1900 · 2011-05-19 09:18 · Score: 1

On OS X, GTK+ is utter crap. No chance of any Gnome apps being first class.
Re:Lets look at it by fusiongyro · 2011-05-19 12:50 · Score: 1

First I've heard of MidnightBSD. What other issues have you had with GNUstep and GNOME? I thought the main problem with GNUstep was needing obscure gcc features to compile Objective-C. Is there more to it than that?
Re:Lets look at it by beardz · 2011-05-19 17:42 · Score: 1

You do realise that nvidia has had freebsd amd64 drivers for over a year and a half now? The latest of which is 270.4106
Re:Lets look at it by X0563511 · 2011-05-20 04:09 · Score: 1

Thank you!
This is annoying. It was done maybe months after my last checking, and I had not heard anything since. ... I have me some backups to run and a reinstall to do :D

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:Lets look at it by jon3k · 2011-05-20 14:40 · Score: 1

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.
Maybe in the linux world, but in the corporate world it's alive and well. Between VMWare View, Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix XenDesktop people are deploying thin clients en masse.
Re:Lets look at it by smash · 2011-05-25 22:36 · Score: 1

I really can't see why there isn't more BSD support behind gnustep/etoile.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Lets look at it by smash · 2011-05-25 22:39 · Score: 1

Any X application on OS X stands out like dogs balls and looks like shit. Sure, OS X has a built in X server, but you really don't want to be running X applications unless there's no real alternative.
I say that as an OS X and BSD / Linux user. Imagine running motif apps on your shiny new gnome install and you'll understand what i'm talking about.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Re:Lets look at it by smash · 2011-05-25 22:47 · Score: 1

I'd they they're worse than they are on windows. At least all applications in windows have the one menu bar per app thing - mac apps don't. Trying to run X11 only on an OS X install would be pretty pointless - all your funky OS X apps won't work, you may as well just run darwin (or hell, Linux/BSD these days) and be done with it.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.

WTF? by gstoddart · 2011-05-19 03:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

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Lost at C:>. Found at C.

Re:WTF? by FooBarWidget · 2011-05-19 04:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

The days that desktop environments are only GUIs and only consisted of a bunch of windows that paint stuff on the screen are long over. These days desktop environment handle a lot more lower-level stuff, and users rightfully expect them to do so. Think for example user interfaces for managing hardware, system settings (user accounts, security, firewall, wired and wireless network), etc. GNOME depends on various background daemons that must be started at boot. All of these things have system-dependent mechanisms. Configuring the wireless network is completely different between FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux. All 3 of those OSes have a completely different init system, completely different firewall system, etc.
Re:WTF? by Lunix+Nutcase · 2011-05-19 04:07 · Score: 3, Informative

Because it's claimed that systemd will provide "better user experience" as espoused here. I don't really buy most of the arguments like since many them don't seem to be things that should require a dependency on an init system to fix.
Re:WTF? by qpqp · 2011-05-19 04:47 · Score: 2

I have to disagree. I believe, it would be possible to work with a common configuration api (e.g. what the user sees and interacts with) with modules for each OS; much like the webhosting control panels do. Configuring wireless parameters can also be brought to a common denominator.
Re:WTF? by Billly+Gates · 2011-05-19 04:55 · Score: 1

Gnome has not supported BSD in a very long time. The one included with FreeBSD (Keep in mind I quit using it when 5.x came out) is heavily patched as Gnome only works with ALSA and not OSS and other weird Linux specific things. It is heavily patched to even compile yet run on non Linux platforms for these reasons.

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Re:WTF? by DarkOx · 2011-05-19 05:10 · Score: 2

And none of that stuff is hard to deal with. Look end users don't build Gnome unless they are pretty advanced. Distributions package Gnome or they don't. So all you have to do is have a middle layer. That middle layer has a specified backend. You tell the distros look you need to create a /etc/gnome.rc directory (or something else if you pass option to configure). In that directory you need to have scripts for the following named rd.wireless, rc.firewall, rc.adduser, rc.deluser, rc.moduser and so on and so forth. Those scripts will take the following arguments blah blah blah.
The people packaging gnome for the distro then simply write the scripts to do what they have to do make the configuration changes. This is not a hard problem to solve... It would mean Gnomes firewall, wireless, widgets would work everywhere!

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Re:WTF? by yarnosh · 2011-05-19 05:18 · Score: 1

All 3 of those OSes have a completely different init system, completely different firewall system, etc.
Not to mention the differences between various LInux distributions.
Re:WTF? by yarnosh · 2011-05-19 05:22 · Score: 1

Sure, but at some point you're going to have to write and maintain all that platform dependent code. Who is going to do it? GNOME, of course, so what's the advantage over what they're doing now?
Re:WTF? by quanticle · 2011-05-19 05:39 · Score: 1

Think for example user interfaces for managing hardware, system settings (user accounts, security, firewall, wired and wireless network), etc.
There's no reason that any of those things require low level hooks. Every single one of those functions is managed by a command-line program that can be called from anywhere (GUI control panel, CLI, shell script, etc.). All GNOME has to do is call the same command line utilities that shell scripts do.

GNOME depends on various background daemons that must be started at boot.
Indeed it does, and this very discussion is about one of those daemons. The Linux-only crowd is saying that GNOME should require systemd as a dependency. Unfortunately, systemd only runs on Linux. I think that GNOME should not depend on systemd until it has been ported to other operating systems (e.g. BSD, Solaris). Once systemd is available on all the platforms that GNOME supports, GNOME can rely on it being available.

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Re:WTF? by c · 2011-05-19 06:14 · Score: 1

> Gnome is supposed to be written to support X Windows.
Well, sure. But it's more than just a GUI. A desktop environment also has hooks into things like device management (USB drives, networking, etc), and there's the whole virtual filesystem thing (gvfs?). The more seamless you try to make the experience, the tighter you might end up binding things to the O/S.
Not that I have an opinion as to whether Linux-only is better or worse for the GNOME project, but there's a lot more to it than just being an X11 application.

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Re:WTF? by Just+Some+Guy · 2011-05-19 07:08 · Score: 1

Because it's claimed that systemd will provide "better user experience" as espoused here.
Ah, it all makes sense now. From that link:

With systemd we can replace some core functionality such as ConsoleKit which would allow for a smoother multi user experience.
In other words, it's standard Gnome NIH posturing. Some dev wrote something shiny that's 95% similar to what everyone else is using, but with half the configurable options, and now Gnome wants to inflict it on everyone ASAP.
Whatevs. I said I was getting a Mac, and FedEx says the one I just bought has made it to Alaska on its way home to me. From now on it's OS X for my main desktop and awesome wm for when I'm using Linux or FreeBSD. I feel bad about giving up on KDE, but Gnome can die in a fire for all I care.

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Re:WTF? by qpqp · 2011-05-19 07:13 · Score: 1

Because, it would make this part modular, hopefully allowing simpler modifications more contributions. I believe webmin, et. al already did a lot of the heavy lifting in this respect.
Re:WTF? by WorLord · 2011-05-19 07:42 · Score: 1

The Gnome guys have completely lost the plot. This is evident with only two words: "Gnome Shell". Which is 1337 for "your workflow sucks, and so does multitasking."
Re:WTF? by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-05-19 08:01 · Score: 1

A DE is not a monolithic piece of software, however. E.g. that UI for managing hardware & system settings? Even today in Gnome, it's effectively a plugin (even if it ships in the "base install"). I don't think anyone would have a problem with Gnome having a systemd config plugin, and only shipping that by default - BSDs would just exclude it from their install, and possibly write their own. But there's no reason why these kinds of dependencies have to go so deep that DE wouldn't run on anything but Linux at all.
Re:WTF? by Darinbob · 2011-05-19 08:16 · Score: 1

Thus following in the footsteps of Windows, Linux also becomes bloated and requiring faster processors and more memory just to keep the same level of performance you had a decade ago.
Re:WTF? by FooBarWidget · 2011-05-19 11:08 · Score: 1

The difference between distros is a lot smaller than the difference between any Linux distro and, say, FreeBSD and Solaris.
Re:WTF? by FooBarWidget · 2011-05-19 11:10 · Score: 1

Yeah but those differences are nowhere near as big as between OSes. All Linux distros use iptables. All Linux distros have /proc and /sys. Now compare with FreeBSD and Solaris.
Re:WTF? by FooBarWidget · 2011-05-19 11:11 · Score: 1

Wait a minute, you call GNOME NIH but applaud Apple for inventing their own stuff?
Re:WTF? by FooBarWidget · 2011-05-19 11:14 · Score: 1

And your hyperbole is based on what evidence? Linux 2.6 runs fine even in an x86 emulator written in Javascript.
Re:WTF? by eric_herm · 2011-05-19 11:40 · Score: 1

Yes that's network-manager. So now, someone has to port network-manager, or something offering a compatibiity API to others OS. This is doable, but I see more people complaining than people sending patch for that. ANd for systemd, that's the same. Lennart keep telling "Reuse interface ( dbus one ), not code". Also, people tend to forget that's just a proposal being discussed at the moment, and if it is accepted, it would still take time for that to appear.
Re:WTF? by Just+Some+Guy · 2011-05-19 14:46 · Score: 1

Ironically, Apple seems (to me) to be better about incorporating good software from other sources, from FreeBSD to LLVM to KHTML, etc. And the stuff they do reinvent is infinitely better (IMHO) than the Gnome equivalents.

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Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Re:WTF? by smash · 2011-05-25 22:52 · Score: 1

Congrats. I made the move in 2008 and haven't looked back. You get the best of both worlds really - a nice UI and actually useful apps for your home stuff (iLife), ability to play with shell stuff if you need it, and a built in X server for remote display from your headless linux box in the corner.
When you consider that iLife is free and actually pretty useful for basic stuff, and the fact that your hardware just works out of the box, the cost of a mac isn't too bad at all.

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Re:WTF? by smash · 2011-05-25 22:53 · Score: 1

The stuff apple invent/fund and release is actually good. See: bonjour, launchd, clang, etc

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.

what are they gonna call it by lytles · 2011-05-19 03:47 · Score: 1

GNOME / Linux

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LINUX Only by hackus · 2011-05-19 03:48 · Score: 1

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

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Non-Linux? What's that? by KiloByte · 2011-05-19 03:49 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

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Time for a Fork by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 03:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

Re:Time for a Fork by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 04:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

These changes are not being proposed by zealot's. These changes are being made through corporate decisions. Almost every single gnome dev in favor of this move works for Redhat. It's an effort will eventually shut out competing companies like Canonical and Oracle unless they either fork the project, or switch to another DE. Oracle has the money to throw developers at it, but they only care about their hardware. Canonical is way too small to do it, barely breaking even in revenues (if even that).
Re:Time for a Fork by hedwards · 2011-05-19 04:30 · Score: 1

Well, Canonical is already in favor of that unpolished turd that is Unity, so, they're not going to be hurt by this particular move. They just haven't yet removed Gnome.
Re:Time for a Fork by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 05:01 · Score: 1

Shells have nothing to with it. This is about systemd being a required external dependency to gnome. It's about fracturing the Debian support for Ubuntu provided tech like Upstart. It's about making sure that only Redhat tech is dominate on Linux platforms.

How the community wants to do things by DarkOx · 2011-05-19 03:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

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Re:How the community wants to do things by icebraining · 2011-05-19 05:01 · Score: 1

something written for a Debian based distro wont be portable at all to something based on REHL or Slackware, or any of the BSDs.
In this case, it wouldn't inside of Debian itself, since there is Debian/kfreebsd.

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Can you get Gnome to replace X? by jellomizer · 2011-05-19 03:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Lumpy · 2011-05-19 04:15 · Score: 5, Informative

"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. " says the man who does not manage a large deployment...
Sorry but MOST linux enterprise installs used X heavily. it's call thin clients and the biggest selling point to get Linux in the door.
$250.00 per user cost with no per seat costs and a reduction of IT staff by 50% is HARD to ignore..... X is what delivers that ability.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Microlith · 2011-05-19 04:36 · Score: 1

This is what Wayland is for. Not some desktop environment specific rendering subsystem that will require drivers built custom for it. We'd run into the same disaster we have with Android, where no video drivers built for it work with anything else.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by jedidiah · 2011-05-19 04:56 · Score: 1

The faults of X are grossly overblown and mostly made moot by modern systems that are vastly more powerful than what existed when X was first created.
People like to whine about X but it's by no means the worst thing out there.
Infact, Apple is a great example of a GUI that actually sucks more when put to use rather than just held up as some academic ideal dissasociated from the real world.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by jedidiah · 2011-05-19 05:03 · Score: 1, Interesting

Apple is a big fat loser when it comes to remote display. Now many people might be willing to abandon that feature but it can be a very handy thing. In fact, it's such a handy thing that it has been a standard feature for Windows users in corporate environments. I can see how people might criticize the features of remote performance of X when compared to Win7 RDP but this stuff is a disaster in MacOS. It's the sort of afterthought bolt on hack that the OP is whining about. ...and the wayland idiots seem intent on recreating Apple's mistakes here.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by jellomizer · 2011-05-19 05:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

You are doing it wrong.
1. If you are an adminstrator of any worth you can do it without X via command line.
2. Almost all enterprise Applications that are fairly new are Web Based
3. There are other just as affordable or more affordable remote access "thin client" solutions available.
X11 is an aged and out of date protocol. It had its use, today it is a dinosaur. Just because you work on badly managed enterprise or aged model, it doesn't mean everyone else does.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by jellomizer · 2011-05-19 05:15 · Score: 1, Interesting

The fact that we put a lot of resources to keep X modern is besides the point. If you are going to switch your resources to make Gnome Linux only then Gnome should do more of Linux Only type of work, bypassing all the legacy the X11 has been carrying around.
I also fail to see how the Apple GUY actually sucks especially when you compare it to Linux, on the Mac I never had problem with Copy and Past, and still Linux still struggles and it is a crapshoot if it work across applications or not.
I don't know about you but over a Decade Linux you still cant duplicate a feature that has been working solidly in other systems for over a generation.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by yarnosh · 2011-05-19 05:34 · Score: 1

And lose X support? Unable to run that one KDE application you need or basic applications like Firefox? I don't think so. It ain't gonna happen. Linux desktop apps are just too fragmented. X11 is the only thing holding it all together. Remove X11 and Linux on the desktop is dead. Ok, you could probably write an X server that uses GNOME instead of the other way around like OS X does, but that sucks form a user perspective. I hate running X11 on my Mac. I can do it, but it is a last resort. Applications just don't work right in that mode. It is like running stuff in Parallels/VMWare on a different platform, which I also try to avoid when I can.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by MobyDisk · 2011-05-19 05:35 · Score: 2

What kind of customers use this configuration?
I haven't seen a deployment like that since the mid 90's. Most places I knew of that did this were replacing them with FAT windows machines because they could do so much more with them and they had gotten so cheap. I just assumed web apps finally displaced that last holdouts to remote X windows usage.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by yarnosh · 2011-05-19 05:51 · Score: 1

Not a big deal since there's not a lot of OS X business apps anyway. You can run an RDP client on OS X. I've done that in a corporate environment and it works fine. You just can't have OS X "thin" clients, but then.. why would you want to?
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by pmontra · 2011-05-19 05:55 · Score: 1

Linux is only the kernel and it is doing well everywhere it runs. With that I mean doing well the things a kernel should do, not the things applications do.
What you called Linux is actually GNU/Linux, that is the GNU software distribution on the top of Linux kernel, plus a lot of other applications. I agree that it got used almost only as an OS for servers, even if it served me well as a desktop for the last couple of years. Android, which we could call Google/Linux, is doing well almost only on phones but it's too early to say that it already lost tablets. We have to wait a could of years before assessing its success or demise.
But actually, do I care about the kernel I'm using to write this answer? It could be Linux, it could be something else. What I care about is the applications I'm using to do my job, that is the GNU part of the GNU/Linux pair. Maybe what you really meant to say was that GNU has really succeeded only on servers? I agree. Google seems to be succeeding on phones.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Kell+Bengal · 2011-05-19 06:43 · Score: 1

You, sir, speak volumes of truth and wisdom well attested to by your equally impressive UID.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Smurf · 2011-05-19 07:21 · Score: 1

Apple is a big fat loser when it comes to remote display. [...] I can see how people might criticize the features of remote performance of X when compared to Win7 RDP but this stuff is a disaster in MacOS.
Mmmm.... care to elaborate? I use RDC, X, and MacOS X's screen sharing on a daily basis (CT related stuff on Windows systems, MRI on Linux, and cheap kick-ass visualizers on Mac). Even though the Mac screen sharing is clearly more sluggish than the other two (or said in another way, it's slightly sluggish) I find it perfectly usable and extremely useful.
And things always display perfectly, unlike RDC where regardless of the client some windows come up with the colors screwed up one third of the time forcing me to re-launch the program and other windows always display pure gibberish. Other than that, RDC is my favorite Microsoft application, but I still love both X and the Mac's Screen Sharing.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Guy+Harris · 2011-05-19 07:31 · Score: 1

The faults of X are grossly overblown and mostly made moot by modern systems that are vastly more powerful than what existed when X was first created.
People like to whine about X but it's by no means the worst thing out there.
Infact, Apple is a great example of a GUI that actually sucks more when put to use rather than just held up as some academic ideal dissasociated from the real world.
X isn't a GUI, it's a framework atop which various GUIs have been implemented. It would be more appropriate to compare the OS X GUI with, for example, GNOME, KDE, XFCE, blackbox+xterm, etc.. (And I've used the OS X GUI, GNOME, and KDE; they all have their good points and bad points - the OS X GUI works pretty well for me, but, then again, one of the apps I use the most on OS X is called "Terminal", just as one of the apps I use most on GNOME is called "gnome-terminal" and one of the apps I use most on KDE is called "Konsole".)
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Guy+Harris · 2011-05-19 07:34 · Score: 1

on the Mac I never had problem with Copy and Past, and still Linux still struggles and it is a crapshoot if it work across applications or not.
Still? Even with, say, modern GTK+-based or Qt/KDE-based apps?
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by dotancohen · 2011-05-19 07:43 · Score: 2

You are doing it wrong.
1. If you are an adminstrator of any worth you can do it without X via command line.
2. Almost all enterprise Applications that are fairly new are Web Based
3. There are other just as affordable or more affordable remote access "thin client" solutions available.
X11 is an aged and out of date protocol. It had its use, today it is a dinosaur. Just because you work on badly managed enterprise or aged model, it doesn't mean everyone else does.
1) No real Scotsman
2) Just rewrite all your existing enterprise software to be web based!
3) Money is never the issue in enterprise

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by jedidiah · 2011-05-19 07:43 · Score: 1

> it's slightly sluggish
That is putting it mildly.
It is painfully slow. It's too slow to be useful even on a fast wired LAN.
If you are putting up with it and even defending it then I would characterize that as religious self flaggelation.
X and Windows are engineered specifically to accomodate the remote GUI use case and it really shows.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by colinnwn · 2011-05-19 07:45 · Score: 1

on the Mac I never had problem with Copy and Past, and still Linux still struggles and it is a crapshoot if it work across applications or not.
Really? I've never had it not work on Linux.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Nethead · 2011-05-19 09:37 · Score: 1

Pepboys & LensCrafters are two that I "refreshed" this last month.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by shibashaba · 2011-05-19 10:58 · Score: 2

1. I think your missing the point. They probably do, but this is for end users.
2. Ones that are fairly new. Most enterprises are not fairly new and have had computers before the web.
3. Buying something to go on top of something is just not as elegant a solution as something that has been around for decades. X is a very mature platform, whether your using Xorg or one of the many commercial X servers available.

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Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by Smurf · 2011-05-19 11:59 · Score: 1

> it's slightly sluggish
That is putting it mildly.
It is painfully slow. It's too slow to be useful even on a fast wired LAN.
I care to differ. Totally. As I said, I use it on a daily basis (alongside RDC and X) for 3D visualization of CT and MRI data (and PET and SPECT).
Does it feel like sitting on the computer itself? No. Is it totally usable? Hell, yes!
It is true that I use it on a Gigabit Ethernet network, but it is a quite congested one. It is pleasant enough to use that I prefer it to walking to the room where the computer is, around 40 feet away.

If you are putting up with it and even defending it then I would characterize that as religious self flaggelation.
Or maybe I have faster hardware than you so the inefficiency of Screen Sharing becomes irrelevant for me. (Or maybe you are basing your comments on outdated experiences with outdated hardware under subpar conditions, or maybe you have a religious hatred for Macs, hell if I know).

X and Windows are engineered specifically to accomodate the remote GUI use case and it really shows.
Oh, yeah, I agree with that. It shows. They are better. Are they better by much, in daily use, under my conditions? No, not at all.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by sjames · 2011-05-19 19:21 · Score: 1

The division of labor there is part of the Unix way and is part of why Linux doesn't suck like Windows does. We do NOT want to lose that.
I can buy the idea that there might be a better API out there that should be used, but if there is, I doubt very much that the Gnome developers will implement it. We don't need an elephantine, one size fits all, all-in-one display app.
Ideally, it will continue to retain a separation between the display server, manager, and apps. Preferably the various control widgets (like desktop selector, menu system, etc) will remain independent pieces that mix and match.
All we really need is a cleaner on the wire protocol and perhaps a way to send lightweight programs to the display device to run there, perhaps a new take on display postscript.
Re:Can you get Gnome to replace X? by sjames · 2011-05-19 19:30 · Score: 1

I can buy the idea that a better API and wire protocol are needed, but I absolutely do not want to see the elephantine, one size fits all, all-in-one sort of thing we might get from Gnome. The separation between the pieces is part of the strength of Unix.If I don't like the desktop selector, I can run another one. If I want a different menu system but like everything else about an environment, I should be able to easily switch it out.
Not that whatever the API and protocol, it should be possible to intercept and proxy it (given adequate permission).
One potentially good idea would be a new take on display postscript where the app can send applets to the display server to handle some events quickly and without clogging the network connection.

Source would still available I assume? by bl8n8r · 2011-05-19 03:56 · Score: 1

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.

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Re:Source would still available I assume? by gstoddart · 2011-05-19 04:25 · Score: 1

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.

Except, those 3rd parties have already been contributing to it ... as has been pointed out, Solaris has adopted and invested time and effort into it ... it's been ported to the BSDs and likely has benefited from some bug fixes from them ...
This more or less throws away the fact that people who aren't tied to Linux have been contributing to Gnome for as long as it's been around. Hell, Gnome originated as a cross-platform toolkit -- to suddenly pretend otherwise is self-serving.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:Source would still available I assume? by DaVince21 · 2011-05-20 07:57 · Score: 1

You can build it yourself... but you would probably have to remove/port any Linux-specific code. That's what they're talking about. So yes, you can build it yourself, but then you have to port the code yourself, first, and that's probably no small task.

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I am not devoid of humor.

Re:Abandoned by Dr_Barnowl · 2011-05-19 03:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

This is about the GNOME Toolkit (GTK) rather than the GNOME shell itself (which doesn't run on Windows AFAIK). The Windows port allows applications like GIMP to run on Windows.

Removing support for other environments would be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it would allow you to concentrate more efforts on making the Linux features better. On the flipside, it could really hurt open-source adoption - if GTK apps become unavailable on Windows, you obviously can't try them out without running Linux, which is a bridge too far for many people. If you try out GTK apps, and like them, they become a bridge to adopting Linux ; you can be sure that the apps you found useful are available to you on your new platform.

I'd probably not have too many qualms about dropping support for OS/X - after all, they are in a minority. But I can't help but feel that dropping support for Windows is a mistake.

Why isn't this a good idea? by WarlockD · 2011-05-19 04:02 · Score: 1

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:)

Re:Why isn't this a good idea? by outZider · 2011-05-19 04:07 · Score: 1

There are other operating systems beyond Windows and OS X. Linux is one of many with a miniscule desktop market share. FreeBSD is another contender, and to drop support completely is short sighted with little benefit. Interface with abstractions, maybe create the Linux interface to that abstraction, and allow others to interface to those abstractions. Two birds, one stone.

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- oZ
// i am here.
Re:Why isn't this a good idea? by formfeed · 2011-05-19 07:28 · Score: 1

There are other operating systems beyond Windows and OS X. Linux is one of many with a miniscule desktop market share. FreeBSD is another contender
There are other countries besides the US and Canada. France is one of many minuscule countries. Monaco is another one.

Re:Abandoned by Dr_Barnowl · 2011-05-19 04:05 · Score: 4, Informative

Or maybe I'm talking out of my butt, and it IS about the shell. Should RTFA.

Very funny by drolli · 2011-05-19 04:11 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Abandoned by theshowmecanuck · 2011-05-19 04:11 · Score: 1

Are you calling GTK a gateway drug? Next you'll be having Windows users smokin' that marajew-wanna and dancing to that shakin' rock and roll music.

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-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.

Isn't Gnome a X11 window manager? by shoppa · 2011-05-19 04:15 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Isn't Gnome a X11 window manager? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 04:56 · Score: 2, Informative

Nope. Neither GNOME nor KDE are "X11 window managers" by the accepted use of the term.
You may want to look through this website
http://xwinman.org/
to get a better idea of what distinguishes a window manager from a full fledged desktop

it is open source by sgt+scrub · 2011-05-19 04:15 · Score: 2

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.

Re:Abandoned by Tubal-Cain · 2011-05-19 04:17 · Score: 1

This is about the GNOME Toolkit (GTK) rather than the GNOME shell itself (which doesn't run on Windows AFAIK). The Windows port allows applications like GIMP to run on Windows.

GIMP Toolkit, actually.

The proposal is nothing of the sorts! by tvelocity · 2011-05-19 04:17 · Score: 5, Informative

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

Re:The proposal is nothing of the sorts! by Bj�rn · 2011-05-19 05:54 · Score: 1

Clearly the most sensible post in this thread.

--
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Re:The proposal is nothing of the sorts! by Draknor · 2011-05-19 06:00 · Score: 1

Wish I had mod points!
Instead I'll just say "+5, insightful" and hope it comes true for you!

Re:Abandoned by Dr_Barnowl · 2011-05-19 04:23 · Score: 1

Apologies, I thought they'd backronym-ed it by now.

I for one welcome my new GNOME overlords! by greymond · 2011-05-19 04:30 · Score: 1

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

Re:I for one welcome my new GNOME overlords! by jon3k · 2011-05-20 14:53 · Score: 1

Calling someone ELSE a nerd in slashdot comments is the greatest irony one can commit on the internet.

Gnome developers and mental disorder by fnj · 2011-05-19 04:43 · Score: 1, Interesting

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.

Re:Gnome developers and mental disorder by msuarezalvarez · 2011-05-19 14:33 · Score: 1

Gnome2 should be forked and development continued by people with functioning brains.

Well, then: do it.
The ones currently developing are quite free to do the same: exactly what they want.

Re:gtk is buggy by X0563511 · 2011-05-19 04:44 · Score: 1

It also looks like ass.

You should try GTK+ instead.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...

Re:Abandoned by X0563511 · 2011-05-19 04:46 · Score: 1

BTW, the G in GTK does not stand for Gnome. It stands for "GIMP Tool Kit" - and really has no dependence upon Gnome at all.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...

Merge Gnome and KDE! by G3ckoG33k · 2011-05-19 04:47 · Score: 1

Merge Gnome and KDE!

Too much low lever efforts in two places. XFCE and LXDE could merge too.

Gnome has dropped Unix more than 6 years ago by Billly+Gates · 2011-05-19 04:50 · Score: 2

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/

Re:Abandoned by Filip22012005 · 2011-05-19 04:53 · Score: 3, Informative

GNU's not Unix Image Manipulation Program Toolkit is the foundation fro the GNU's not Unix Network Object Model Environment. So getting that wrong isn't really your fault.

--
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?

What are these guys smoking? by Beelzebud · 2011-05-19 04:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

It's a tradeoff. by tepples · 2011-05-19 05:02 · Score: 1

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.

bass ackwards by glebovitz · 2011-05-19 05:06 · Score: 2

I'd rather see Linux drop support for GNOME.

Re:bass ackwards by supersloshy · 2011-05-19 06:42 · Score: 1

And yet the /. groupthink-people mod the baseless troll up. How logical! There are no people in the world that like GNOME and agree with their decisions, nope... *cough*

--
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen

a bit bold by gumbi+west · 2011-05-19 05:07 · Score: 2

" time has come for GNOME to embrace Linux a bit more boldly" Nothing says bold quite like the phrase, "a bit"

Unity? by Kamiza+Ikioi · 2011-05-19 05:08 · Score: 1

Me thinks the Ubuntu Unity people saw trouble ahead for Gnome.

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I8-D

Re:Unity? by Skapare · 2011-05-19 05:23 · Score: 1

It seems some developers of Gnome want it to become a distribution, and eventually even the kernel. First abandon other Unix systems for Linux. Then abandon Linux itself to be its own OS. Given how crappy the GUI based system admin tools are now, I see this as heading over the cliff.

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now we need to go OSS in diesel cars

Mod parent up by WeatherGod · 2011-05-19 05:22 · Score: 1

Please!

Re:Wow. by WeatherGod · 2011-05-19 05:23 · Score: 1

Heh, must be a bug in slashdot... your post ended up with the wrong article...

KDE by ThatsNotPudding · 2011-05-19 05:25 · Score: 1

I've honestly tried KDE a few times, but it just feels like being trapped in a heavily-branded Kartoon with gears scattered everywhere.

Re:Non-Linux? What's that? by yarnosh · 2011-05-19 05:26 · Score: 2

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 you're saying Gnome won't run on SCO Unix? by DickBreath · 2011-05-19 05:31 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Non-Linux? What's that? by Jonner · 2011-05-19 05:32 · Score: 1

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.

NO! by DaMattster · 2011-05-19 05:33 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Non-Linux? What's that? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-19 05:44 · Score: 1

*BSD and solaris users fix their own bugs.

Re:Abandoned by Hatta · 2011-05-19 05:44 · Score: 1

Nice. A completely wrong post, and self-reply correcting it in one line nets you +5 insightful and +5 interesting. Good job.

--
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!

KDE for platform independence, GNOME against it by TemporalBeing · 2011-05-19 06:40 · Score: 1

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)

Gnome - for what? by YankDownUnder · 2011-05-19 07:54 · Score: 1

Wow...so after all these years, Gnome wants to stay LINUX only? Wow...and here I was looking forward to Gnome3 for Windows...(NOT)

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YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire

Re:Abandoned by wooptoo · 2011-05-19 08:02 · Score: 1

And GIMP stands for GNU Image Manip Program, and GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix... woah.

Re:Abandoned by X0563511 · 2011-05-19 08:48 · Score: 1

Don't try to hard, or next thing you know you'll be a gimp!

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...

I offer a modest counterproposal by mysidia · 2011-05-19 09:15 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

Re:gtk is buggy by eric_herm · 2011-05-19 11:30 · Score: 1

No oe seems to maintain it on windows, unfortunately. So unless someone volunteer to do so, I doubt bugs will fix by themself ( they do from time to time, but not often ).

Re:Non-Linux? What's that? by KiloByte · 2011-05-20 04:07 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Non-Linux? What's that? by KiloByte · 2011-05-20 04:09 · Score: 1

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.

What does this mean for GTK? by DaVince21 · 2011-05-20 07:56 · Score: 1

I have some GTK-based software that I use on both Linux and Windows. What would this switch, if made, mean for GTK?

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I am not devoid of humor.

Re:Non-Linux? What's that? by smash · 2011-05-25 22:56 · Score: 1

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.

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I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.

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Proposal For Gnome To Become Linux-Only

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