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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."
He actually was a KDE user before hand and switched to GNOME 2 when KDE4 came out. The question is what will he switched to after Xfce gets a big upgrade?
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.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
To answer your unasked question, he did use KDE a few years back (and I think that he had some rather harsh words for GNOME at the the time). Thing is, he left KDE when it had its radical overhaul.
I think the problem is that GNOME/KDE decided to become the DEs for the rest of us: environments that are more suitable to entertainment than actual work. It also strikes me that Torvalds is the type of guy who works pretty hard, so neither environment is suitable for him anymore.
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.
pretty obvious: he will write his own Desktop Environment. after the linux kernel and git, 'lo and behold: the BASTARD!
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.
no, OSX is a plugin for iTunes
Is everyone in the Gnome / KDE / Unity groups a Microsoft mole, engaged in sucking out utility from those desktop environments? Is there no one there who realizes how big a mistake they made?
It's one thing for a single group to screw the pooch, but for all three to get the same brain-dead urge to redesign smacks of conspiracy.
Tiling? I'd be very surprised if Linus didn't use overlapping windows. There's no need to limit the number of visible windows to those who can be fully visible - most of them are waiting for your input, or compiling something (in which case you usually only want to see when it stops).
Of course, overlapping windows work better with focus-follows-mouse and no-raise-on-click; that allows you to copy/paste between windows without any of them popping up to the front.
Back on topic, I have ditched Gnome 3 myself, for multiple reasons: .gvfs goes against everything that is holy.
- The amount of mouse movement you have to do is ridiculous. Sometimes all the way to the left, then all the way to the right again, to do something really simple.
- As Linus said, the assumption that you only want to run one of each app is truly braindead.
- Multi-monitor support is even more broken than in Gnome 2. Which makes the first point even more of an issue, when you can't even open a menu on your second monitor, but have to drag the mouse over to the first one.
- You can't run it in a VM - you have to use the fallback mode, which means you have to relate to two different interfaces. (And the fallback mode is way less functional than Gnome 2)
- I don't have Windows keys on my keyboard. The shortcuts assume that you do. Well, Gnome 3 devs, if you really like Windows that much, run it!
- No way to set fonts? Or DPI? I don't want "larger", I want a 10 pt font to be exactly 10 pt (~3.5 mm), so it's the same size on all my monitors and printers.
- The superuser is not allowed access to a user directory?
- Lack of man pages. In a terminal, I don't want to deal with graphics-laden help files. Lack of documentation in general, for that matter.
- For having been so simplified since Gnome 2, it's strange that the memory usage skyrockets. Or perhaps not, given it requires three different interpreted languages (not counting bash, sed and awk), and lists of libraries longer than my arm. (just do ldd on a gnome executable).
- I take back that the Gnome 3 users have Windows envy. It's Mac envy too - disable all but one mouse buttons.
- How can I unmount a USB drive? Or eject a CD? Or... pretty much anything where either a desktop icon or the "places" menu would have come in handy.
But most of all, the excessive mouse waving required makes it completely unusable, especially with more than one monitor (in which case virtual desktops become completely unusable).
It's a steaming pile of technology, and must be aimed at iPad users incapable of doing more than one thing at a time, and who get confused by more than one mouse button or difficult things like "font size" or "minimize".
This is why I stick with Fedora 14 and gentoo, and not F15, nor will I go to F16 unless Red Hat forks and brings back Gnome 2.
New study out shows a distinct correlation between desktop preference and IQ.
Preemptive: Looks as though it might have been a hoax.
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."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz