Linus Torvalds Ditches GNOME 3 For Xfce

kai_hiwatari writes "In Google+, Torvalds criticized the direction that GNOME has taken with GNOME 3. He called GNOME 3 an 'unholy mess' and said that the user experience is unacceptable, adding that because of GNOME 3, he has ditched GNOME for Xfce. He said that Xfce is a step down from GNOME 2 — but a huge step up from GNOME 3."

Comments

Change for the sake of change?

[damn_registrars]

I think both the GNOME group, and Torvalds as well, are guilty of change for the sake of change. Sure, he calls GNOME 3 an "unholy mess", but if

Xfce is a step down from GNOME 2 â" but a huge step up from GNOME 3.

Then why didn't he just stay with GNOME 2?

Of course as a KDE user myself I want to ask why he didn't switch to KDE instead, but I know better than to open that can of worms. It is almost like asking an emacs user why they don't just switch to vi...

Re:Change for the sake of change?

[calmofthestorm]

Unfortunately that's not always an option. Code tends to rot in a number of ways -- old bugs go unpatched, it no longer plays nice with system libraries. Particularly with an octopus like GNOME that interferes with every part of the system, you can start to see package conflicts, dependencies on old system libraries, etc. This is slow, gradual, and can often be worked around item by item, especially for a hacker like Torvalds, but it takes time and energy.

I had this experience myself with Amarok. I really loved the old amarok (1.4), when it had all the features of the full-on bloated clients like iTunes yet was still light and fast like Rhythmbox. Also fully customizable and scriptable with dcop. I kept pulling it in from backports, and eventually even compiling it myself, when Amarok 2 started coming standard (hoping that the developers would realize the mistake they'd made in throwing away such a perfect interface for that crap). Eventually, I gave up, as it failed to compile due to newer libs one time too many.

Thankfully, some kind folks forked 1.4 and made clementine, but it still lacks many of the features Amarok had at its height (automated album art and lyrics fetching being some of my favorites).

All change is relative. When you stand still, the world moves around you.

The beauty of the desktop vs the cloud is you at least have some control over when you migrate to the new interface.

Re:Change for the sake of change?

[mrchaotica]

Them - "So what, do you think you are smarter than me or something?"

You (correct answer) - "It's not that I think I'm smarter than you; it's that I spend my life learning this shit and you have better things to do."

Re:Change for the sake of change?

[Haeleth]

I think the problem is that GNOME/KDE decided to become the DEs for the rest of us

Not the rest of "us". That's the problem: GNOME (and, to a lesser extent, KDE) have decided, for some reason, to become desktop environments primarily targeted at the sort of person who isn't even remotely interested in using GNOME or KDE.

It's like the Pope turned round one day and said "okay, we're going to rewrite our doctrines to make them more appealing to atheists!"

He's not the only one

[MetricT]

I've worked as a sysadmin in academic HPC for 10+ years. 1000+ Linux servers. I've worked with Gnome for years, since the 1.x days.

Gnome 3 is so bad I've switched to using Windows 7. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot were the Gnome3 developers "thinking"?

Want to refactor a crap ton of code? I understand completely. Want to completely trash the most usable Linux UI? Go die in a fire. Seriously.

Start listening to your user base, or you'll quickly cease to have one.

Re:He's not the only one

[blai]

The problem here might have been that they actually *are* listening to the user base, but the user base doesn't know that it wants. "I want it easier to use", oh "let's make something something more prominent" and here's what you get.

Instead of just listening, I think developers need some sort of intelligence of their own, too.

Re:I don't get it

[geek]

Because he is a brilliant and positive influence in the community who is outspoken and contributes in a major way. Because if it weren't for him there wouldn't be a gnome or kde. The man has created more jobs than Obama with his "free" code. I may not always agree with him but I'll be damned if I don't lend him my ear.

Re:They're all apeing OSX

[Baloroth]

They fall into the trap that all GUI makers do. Once the GUI works, and works well, it only needs to be maintained, not changed. But, since they want to feel like they're doing something, they actually change it. The result is a different feel, which whether it technically works better or not alienates users. Witness Firefox. Now, it is possible to make changes that result in improvements, or at least maintaining the same level of usefulness. But those are rare. The GUI system has been in major use for 20 years or so, and it more or less reached maturity 15 years ago.

There is a reason the GUI for XP is nearly the same as that for Win95. It looks a bit different, but someone could go from one to the other almost instantly. (Compare that to OS X, which I've only used a couple of times but managed to confuse the hell out of me. Worse, every similar implementation has its own rules that make shifting from one to the other nearly impossible without relearning the whole system.) Refinements have been made to the point where no further changes were needed. GUI designers still wanted to find something better, not realizing that for the way we use computers, it doesn't really exist. And then we got KDE 4, GNOME 3, and to a lesser extent Win 7 and Vista (MS prudently, for once, made pretty minor changes that were easy to revert. And actually work pretty well, because they didn't abandon the old system entirely). Minor change is the key. The Desktop isn't going to undergo any paradigm shifts anytime soon, and that is a good thing. It works, it works well, and new interfaces are just solutions looking for problems.

Re: Listening to the user base

[Kernel Krumpit]

There's a sig out there by someone in Slashdot land attributed to Henry Ford: If i'd 've asked my customers what they wanted they'd 've said "a faster horse"...

Re:Change is too radical in Gnome 3

[Bloodwine77]

Gnome 3 and Unity both have a hard-on for tablets. It is as if the people behind the projects think desktops and laptops will disappear within the next couple years and everybody will either be using tablets or smart phones instead.

Re:Tiling window manager

[smash]

Perhaps because linus is not interested in a window manager holy war, and just wants to "get shit done" in a sane and efficient manner. KDE used to allow this. Gnome used to allow this. When KDE4 came out, my workflows were broken to the extent that I couldn't be bothered spending the excessive amount of time required to get them back. I have not yet used Gnome 3, but I suspect Linus is in the same situation. When its easier and less painful to change to a competing desktop environment than it is to use the new version of your previous choice, something is seriously wrong.