Interview With GNOME 3 Designer Jon McCann

An anonymous reader writes "In an extensive interview, GNOME 3 designer Jon McCann talks about the future of GNOME 3 — why it's all about the apps and why he is convinced that KDE and Ubuntu are actually different operating systems. He also reacts to the outspoken criticism against GNOME 3, which has been making the rounds lately."

Comments

Don't Listen!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even care what this guy has to say. I'm convinced he's a secret agent out to destroy open-source communities everywhere.

Somebody PLEASE get rid of this guy so we can continue to take steps forward with the GNU Desktop environment.

Re:Don't Listen!

[Dracos]

Nah, that's Miguel de Icaza.

Re:Don't Listen!

[Richard_at_work]

Why do you have to get rid of him? Isn't that part of the point of open source free software, that you can disagree with the project maintainers enough to fork it yourself and take it in your own direction?

So why do you need to get rid of the person you disagree with? There's little stopping someone from coming up with a fork based on Gnome2 and running with it...

Re:Don't Listen!

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, it's not just him. Many of the major open source projects have a similar problem, where "graphic designers" and "UI experts" are calling the shots instead of real software developers.

Second of all, we shouldn't completely exclude people like this from open source software development. We do need somebody to make icons.

It's just all about people knowing their role. Those who are good at graphics can make icons, logos, and crap like that. Those who are good at programming should be creating the UIs and deciding how the application actually work.

Re:Don't Listen!

[UltraZelda64]

Too bad forking doesn't happen more often. On the top of my head, IMO KDE 3.5.10, GNOME 2 before they started fucking it up with the last few versions, and Firefox 2.0.0.20/3.6.18 all need forked and (key words here) actually get somewhere. Sure, there's Trinity as a continuation of KDE 3.5.10, but what support does it have? Good luck even finding a distro with it; wake me up when it's in Debian or some other major or growing distro. Firefox is also in severe need of forking... I wish I had the ability to perform such a task, but I don't.

Yeah, open source is great for allowing you to fork if you don't like the way a project is going. But, that's a hell of an undertaking that not just any person can do. Especially when you're talking something as complex as a Web browser or even a complete desktop environment.

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and spout the useless (but inevitable) open source bragging that "the source code for Trinity is out there. Just download, compile and install it for your distribution!" But just as a reminder, not everyone is a developer/programmer and is capable of, or wants to, compile a whole damn desktop. :)

Re:Don't Listen!

[ynp7]

I wouldn't even care if a "UI expert" were in charge, so long as they were actually an expert at making UIs instead of being a complete clown without the first clue about how to design a UI. Apple has the same problem with clowns running their UI designs, but at least they have first-rate clowns rather than the third-rate ones calling the shots on projects like GNOME.

Re:Don't Listen!

[boristhespider]

People who are good at programming creating the UIs is also someone overstepping their role, surely? They should be programming the UIs. Someone who knows how to design UIs should be designing the UIs -- and no offense meant, but one of the biggest problems with open-source software is the plethora of shitty UIs obviously designed by the programmers with little thought as to how a user would *want* to interface with the software.

What there should be is decent designers, a lot of UI testing, and then communication between all of them. Designers should know at least some coding, coders should understand some design philosophy, and artists should understand what is and isn't realistic. That way they can actually get each other to understand the limitations in the system and the boundaries that can actually be pushed.

Re:Don't Listen!

[DMFNR]

I was thinking about this last night, because I was planning on forking the GNOME 2 codebase myself. I love GNOME 2, and I've spent a ton of time tweaking my environment and I don't want to learn something new. I'm not incredibly knowledgealbe as to the inner workings of GNOME but I've worked on large codebases before, I'm familiar enough with GTK+ and GNOME libraries that I know I could break in to it. Then I thought about Trinity. Sure they have a few developers that are dedicated to working on it, but if it was so in demand, I would think that it would actually be used and supported somewhere. So many people are screaming "fork GNOME 2", but nobodies tried it yet and there has to be a reason for it. It's just one of those things that I think would be awesome if it worked out, but the chances of it being successful are close to nil. Obviously a lot of people like it, but if somebody wanted to and was capable of doing so, they would have scratched that itch a long time ago. It takes a lot of people to maintain a project the size of GNOME, if only 4 or 5 people maintain a codebase like that in their free time, it will go to hell very quick.

This is how I see this situation working out: Fork GNOME, a few people are initially interested and try to get involved, no major distro wants to get involved with a desktop environment with such and uncertain future so user and developer interest is low, the few coders that contribute to the project aren't that good so the codebase either goes to shit or stagnates, security bugs go unpatched, obscurity, failure, death. A ton of work goes in to a project like GNOME, even something as mature as GNOME 2. There's still bugs, there's still going to be security problems cropping up, and there's still unfinished work. I think the best bet is to stick with distros featuring GNOME 2 that are going to be supported for quite awhile yet, and then after that find a new home. GNOME 2 is probably done, and we'll see what happens with the GNOME project as a whole in the future. What I do know, is that if it really is a majority of users that are against GNOME 3, and they make themselves heard, developers and distro maintainers might just get the message. If few people use GNOME 3 distros, the distro maintainers will eventually have to find something else lest they fade in to irrelevancy. If enough distros aren't putting GNOME 3 in their work, just maybe those dense bastards at GNOME will get the message. My question is: Is it really a majority of people against GNOME 3, or is it just a very loud minority?

I've never used a full GNOME 3 distro as my computer has some serious show stopper power management problems with kernels after 2.6.35 and I don't really want to me with trying something else again anyway until my distro is no longer recieving security updates because I'm happy with what I have. However, I did pull GNOME Shell from the repos and give it a spin, and I was not very happy with it. Maybe I just needed to spend some more time with it, but time isn't something I have a lot of and I see no reason to throw away something that works perfectly for me and start all over from scratch. What I will say is that some of the things Jon McCann talks about in this interview sound really cool, and I like the ideas. For example, I think the stuff he is saying about replacing the file manager for ordinary browsing of media would be awesome for a computer I used primarily for entertainment. Instead of opening a folder, finding my song, opening it in the music player, and then listening to it, everything could be done all in one place. Sort of like current music players with library management features, but all integrated in to the desktop environment. Most of the stuff an average user does with his computer is much more simple in nature and it doesn't require the kind of complexity a lot of programs offer. Hell, I'm totally a power users and do all sorts of things with my computer from software development to music production and image editing, but most of what I d

Re:Don't Listen!

[unixisc]

For example, I think the stuff he is saying about replacing the file manager for ordinary browsing of media would be awesome for a computer I used primarily for entertainment. Instead of opening a folder, finding my song, opening it in the music player, and then listening to it, everything could be done all in one place. Sort of like current music players with library management features, but all integrated in to the desktop environment. Most of the stuff an average user does with his computer is much more simple in nature and it doesn't require the kind of complexity a lot of programs offer. Hell, I'm totally a power users and do all sorts of things with my computer from software development to music production and image editing, but most of what I do in my free time is pretty simple. I would totally use something like that as long as I could configure it how I wanted and I didn't make things more of a pain in the ass than they were originally. Unfortunatly, that's exactly what GNOME 3 seems to be doing, hopefully it will mature in to something beautiful.

That's doable w/ KDE. I open a Konqueror window w/ the folder that has those music files - be they mp3, wma, m4a or whatever, and I just put my cursor on the file - don't even open it. As long as my cursor is on top of it, the song in question plays. If I move my cursor away from that file, it instantly stops. If I wanted the playing to be uninterrupted, I'd go ahead and open the file in question w/ the music player of my choice - and under KDE, there are some 6 or more of them, not counting the video players. It's not doable under Gnome 2. I'd welcome it's being doable under Gnome 3, but not if a whole bunch of functionality that I used to have is suddenly gone - like not being able to save to desktop. So essentially, one would have to either do a search, or open Dolphin and drill for files there. Which is fine if it's not a file I frequently access, but if it is, I like the ability to have a desktop shortcut, or soft link, which I can use to then open the required file. Gnome 3 fills up the screen w/ all apps, which are better off in the background like in KDE or Gnome 2. This view of having all the apps upfront could have been just a certain view setting, and everyone would have been happy.

In fact, there are plenty of things that I do on KDE that I can't do on Gnome. In KDE, if I have 3 virtual windows, I don't accidentally get thrown from one window to another - but this has happened under Gnome. If I want to move a running app from one window to another, I can do it under KDE, but not under Gnome. So from what's being described, in some respects, Gnome 3 is playing catch-up, but in others, it's falling back.

If simply having the simplest UI was the goal, why not take the MacOS System 7 interface, and implement that over X (or Wayland)?

Re:Don't Listen!

[TheRaven64]

Many of the major open source projects have a similar problem, where "graphic designers" and "UI experts" are calling the shots instead of real software developers.

I disagree. We've seen what happens when real software developers are in charge - see 20 years of crappy *NIX UIs. The problem is that "UI experts" are now in charge of these projects, instead of UI experts. Most of these people have no actual experience of human-computer interaction and have never even read papers in the field (or, if they have, they've read papers from 30 years ago that were addressing completely unrelated sets of constraints, and none of the follow-up work). There are good programmers who are also UI experts, but they are not the majority.

Re:Don't Listen!

[ReinoutS]

I open a Konqueror window w/ the folder that has those music files - be they mp3, wma, m4a or whatever, and I just put my cursor on the file - don't even open it. As long as my cursor is on top of it, the song in question plays. If I move my cursor away from that file, it instantly stops. If I wanted the playing to be uninterrupted, I'd go ahead and open the file in question w/ the music player of my choice - and under KDE, there are some 6 or more of them, not counting the video players. It's not doable under Gnome 2

Funny that you should give that as an example. Nautilus has been doing the same thing since at least 2004, probably earlier.

Re:Don't Listen!

[Anonymous Coward]

There IS a gnome2 fork. It's called MATE (http://matsusoft.com.ar/redmine/projects/mate)

Re:Don't Listen!

[DMFNR]

Thanks for letting me know about this, I've never heard of it before. Gotta love the Overview from the web page:

MATE Desktop Environment, a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop for users, using traditional computing desktop metaphor. Also known as the GNOME2 fork.

Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: The newest butthurt diva within the FOSS community has scathing words for why users should just unquestioningly bow down to the decisions of the almighty developers rather than *gasp* criticizing their work when it's crap. First Asa, now this turd? Who's next in the FOSS lineup for being a butthurt diva?

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: Yet another AC who uses a ton of FOSS yet contributes nothing back to the community except endless bitching.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same syndrome as people who has been on a stage a couple of times and suddenly become iconic superstars.

Re:Translation:

[Lokitoth]

The whole point of FOSS is that if you do not like something, you can change it to make it more efficient and useful for you. Stop crying about changes/decisions the original development group is making, fork the project and write you own.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately on the internet - and in free software in particular - we have a lot of people whose voices aren't heard very loudly, and we have to take their needs into accounts as well as those who are vocal.

People didn't actually tell us that they wanted us to make a lot of the changes we implemented for GNOME 3, but we made them anyway. Basically, we decided to change things first and then went out and hunted for evidence to support our pre-conceived notion of what was "correct". I am fully confident these people exist, even though I've already just said no one ever asked for these changes and therefore it's impossible to prove that they want them.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, instead of listening to what users want, tell them to fork your project or shut up! And people wonder why Linux desktop market share still sucks balls?

Re:Translation:

[Certhas]

I know I'm new here and reading the article is not recommended but he actually says:

Highlights: It's [the criticism] certainly valid...

derStandard.at: Recently there has been some very vocal criticism of GNOME 3.0, how do you deal with that as project? McCann: I think it does affect us as a community more on a personal level than it does on a professional level. It's never nice to hear people that you have so much respect for offering their opinion very mean spirited. But that is their right, everyone has a voice on the internet and can express what they think. And we listen to it all and don't want to ignore it. However: We do have to remain focused on what we are trying to accomplish. Unfortunately on the internet - and in free software in particular - we have a lot of people whose voices aren't heard very loudly, and we have to take their needs into accounts as well as those who are vocal. And that's very challenging to do and very tricky to know what the less vocal people are looking for. So we have to remain sensitive to both sides.

As how we react to those latest criticisms: It's very difficult cause not all of those necessarily agree with one another. In some sense people who are against something think they have something in common, but when you look at it in more detail - which of course we try to do - very few actually agree on much of anything other than that's not what they are used to.

derStandard.at: But would you say there was some valid criticism voiced or is all this just "people hating change" for you?

McCann: It's certainly valid in the sense that people are not making it up and it may indeed not be what they like. And that's fine, there are a lot of different products out there that may fit their way of working better. But if you look at it from a historical perspective, this isn't the first time we have encountered such reactions. Even many of the same people who are now claiming that GNOME2 was such a great thing for them were some of the most vocal opponents of the things we did in GNOME2. People forget that we are the same group of folks that built GNOME2 and it's not that we don't know what was good about it. But we also know what didn't work.

Some of the feedback is certainly valid and we are going to use that to make informed decisions in the GNOME3 cycle - remember we've only had one release so far. In couple of the talks we pointed out that it took us eight, nine years to get to where GNOME2 ended up and we've had like four months of GNOME3. So there are plenty of things we still have to do. There are a lot of holes in our story. People will look at some things and say "Why is this there? Does this really make sense?". And in many cases that's because we didn't get to really finish that off. And that will start to fill in, the story will become a little bit more complete as we go through this cycle. I'm not saying that all this people will be completely convinced and that's unfortunate but I think over time people will realize what we are doing has been at least thought through.

Re:Translation:

[Snarky McButtface]

The whole point of any software is to make something efficient and useful. Gnome 3 is anything but efficient. I used it for several weeks. I do not mind making minor changes to make something better suit my needs but the changes the Gnome team made were ridiculous. Rather than fork it, I did what most users do when a FOSS project makes changes they find unacceptable. I uninstalled Gnome and installed something else.

Re:Translation:

[Grishnakh]

The whole point of FOSS is that if you do not like something, you can change it to make it more efficient and useful for you. Stop crying about changes/decisions the original development group is making, fork the project and write you own.

Except that this guy, in the interview, even tries to discourage people from customizing their desktop environment:

Everywhere we go people look over our shoulders and say "Hey that's cool, what's that?" and then we get a chance to talk about GNOME, a chance to talk about free software. And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different. So when people are looking at it, they don't see something that is idiosyncratic, they see you as part of a larger movement. And I think that's worth considering when customize [sic] your desktops.

So this person, who's apparently pretty important in the FOSS world, is against what you say is the whole point of FOSS. That indicates a problem to me.

Re:Translation:

[grumbel]

The whole point of FOSS is that if you do not like something, you can change it to make it more efficient and useful for you.

Yes, that should be the point. The sad truth however is that because of the way dependencies and distributions works that you can't just go around and change or replace such a central piece of software like Gnome without a major maintenance headache that just isn't worth it for an individual.

I think a large part of this problem and many problems similar to this is that to much focus in the FOSS community is given to source code and far to little is given to actually empowering the user. Source code is of course a very important step to accomplishing that, but its by no means the end. If software gets so huge and monolithic that modifying it becomes practically impossible for the individual user, then a very large part of the benefit, that FOSS should provide is lost. There should be a lot more focus in the FOSS community on making software not only open source, but actually flexible and modifiable by the user. If I need to dig through layers of source code and spend hours compiling, building packages and messing around just to customize a toolbar a little, something is seriously wrong.

Re:Translation:

[UltraZelda64]

I have to question when things like these happen if they are actually developers, or primarily marketers trying to force their views of how things *could* be done (ie. prototypes) onto people.

Re:Translation:

[Kjella]

Instead of finding good ways of working that most people would like to use, we'll just remove all other ways of working. On top of that for everyone else apps and mobile is something that comes in addition to, not instead of the desktop. Why OSS seems so busy destroying the desktop I don't know, but at least Microsoft and Apple still seems to keep a normal desktop OS. I switched back from KDE to Windows and it seems more and more like the right thing to do.

Re:Translation:

[RobbieThe1st]

Well, erm, actually... At least in Ubunt all you need to do is "apt-get install *ubuntu-desktop", * being nothing, k or x. Simple and allows for complete replacement of, say, gnome as your DE.
Also, mixed desktops aren't a problem... at least not for KDE.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

*facepalm* He's talking about modifying the source to a program and then dropping that in as a replacement on a distro not about using apt-get you fucking idiot. Did you even read his post? This is not usually easy since so many distro make all sorts of patches of their own. It's even worse when you are trying to modify something like Gnome which is a bloated POS.

Re:Translation:

[grumbel]

Completely replacing isn't the issue, that's pretty easy. The far harder hard part is keeping an older version around, as a hell of a lot of the package and library packages will conflict as they use the same name. The .deb package management system simply doesn't allow keeping two versions of the same package around.

Re:Translation:

[couchslug]

"So this person, who's apparently pretty important in the FOSS world"

Find who hired him and put THEM on the spot. His influence is a result of decisions made by other people.

They fucked up.

Re:Translation:

[Grishnakh]

What's your beef with KDE? I'm using it now and it mostly works fine, though admittedly I'm on an older version (4.5.5) on my desktop (4.6.2 on laptop), as I haven't yet upgraded my distro to one with 4.6, and I'll probably skip that since 4.7 is almost here. KDE isn't the one that's going bonkers trying to make desktops look like tablets and smartphones, that's Gnome and Unity.

To be honest, I really don't see that much difference between KDE and Windows in fact, except that KDE looks nicer than Win7 and things are more logical and less annoying, and of course multiple desktops are supported. The menu is the biggest problem with Windows; everything just goes wherever the vendors want it to, with no organization whatsoever, whereas in KDE they're organized by software category (office, games, utility, graphics, etc.), so it's easy to find things if you don't know the name. (In Gnome, apparently you just have to memorize everything now as they've eliminated the menu, since it's "too confusing".)

Re:Translation:

[Grishnakh]

Find who hired him and put THEM on the spot. His influence is a result of decisions made by other people.

That would be Red Hat, which is easily the biggest vendor for Linux used on servers. Apparently, RH thinks that sysadmins really want a dumbed-down, tabletified UI for their servers, so that when they bring newbie users to their office to play around on their servers, they'll have an easier time.

KDE

[camperdave]

he is convinced that KDE and Ubuntu are actually different operating systems

Um... last I heard KDE is not an operating system.

Re:KDE

[sakdoctor]

Had to check TFA to see if he was on about apps as in applications, or apps as that mobile marketing bullshit dejour.

It was the latter.

Re:KDE

[Locutus]

A big WTF came out when I read that line too. then I figured it out. Given that this guy is a/the "GNOME 3 Designer" and he does not know the difference between Ubuntu and KDE, this explains why GNOME 3 sucks so badly.

LoB

Re:KDE

[Ant P.]

The statement that he's convinced that they are should tell you all you need to know: he's a nutcase that just doesn't get computers.

Re:KDE

[SlashdotOgre]

Well the actual quote was, "I really think from an end-user perspective and a third-party-developer perspective GNOME and KDE are different operating systems. As much as MeeGo is a different operating system," and to an extent I can see his point from a end-user perspective. Obviously the underpinnings are the same, but for non-technical users who only use the GUI and never see/care what's below,l it's a significantly different experience. Especially with how Gnome and KDE these days even handle interacting with hardware slightly differently (e.g. GVFS v.s. KIO).

For example my wife currently runs Gnome 2.32 on Gentoo (which I maintain). Switching her to KDE would be a much more significant change than say switching to a different disto running Gnome 2.32. I know this to be the case because I originally had her running Ubuntu before we were married, and the switch to Gentoo (but maintaining Gnome) was painless for her.

Re:KDE

[gl4ss]

but it's just what the user sees that matters to the user.
if they had same configuration menus on both or maybe codebase that would generate it to work with both sets, it wouldn't seem so much like so. but the design people don't work like that, so the ui kit becomes more than the ui kit.

personally i just hate gtk+.

(the linked interview is just general level blah blah blah blah blah by the way, he could have given that same interview about gnome2)

Re:KDE

[MurukeshM]

But I really think from an end-user perspective and a third-party-developer perspective GNOME and KDE are different operating systems. As much as MeeGo is a different operating system.

Moronic summary. Last I heard, Ubuntu != GNOME != OS != KDE.

Re:KDE

[vikisonline]

Off topic but. You just didn't want to put the time into configuring her kernel before you were sure and married her? LOL! Thats awesome.

Re:KDE

[obi]

Read it in the context of "Gnome OS" which was mentioned in the interview. He knows it's not an OS on its own, but he places it (KDE+linux, implied) on the same level as WebOS, Android, MeeGo, etc.

Re:KDE

[DShard]

He also says touch is the most important outstanding feature. How they can say gnome 3 isn't a tablet UI with a straight face is beyond me. I just love that they decided to fork and drop the desktop portion of their desktop environment and expect people not to call them out on it.

Re:KDE

[crutchy]

Technically and traditionally KDE isn't an operating system, but the traditional "operating system" was termed during a time when window managers weren't even thought of. No individual part of a Linux distro (such as kernel, x server, window manager) is really an operating system on its own any more because of the open and modular nature of the unix philosophy (different for Windows because of the MS all-or-none policy). Tthe Linux kernel may operate computer hardware, but its just the lowest level that controls the cpu and allows other programs and drivers to run. I think the new operating system as far as the rest of the world outside slashdot is concerned is becoming what the user operates, not what operates the hardware.

Re:KDE

[crutchy]

Occasionally I get to configure my wife's kernel but I have to be a bit careful it doesn't accidentally spawn a child process.

Re:KDE

[wozzinator]

It came from the summarizer who wrote a bad summary about TFA. The GNOME designer himself is not the idiot in this case.

Re:KDE

[Rob Y.]

Well then he may as well give up right now. If Gnome OS is on the same level as Android (i.e. a 'mobile' OS that runs apps specifically targeted to it), then it's gonna fail. Android has already won that battle, and for good reason. There are tens of thousands of developers who have chosen to target Android, and the network effects have already kicked in. Android ABI's are (mostly) backward compatible, so it's posible to actually release binaries that work on most Android devices. And speaking of Android devices, the hardware vendors make sure everything works.

Gnome (and KDE) still work on traditional PC's and netbooks - I still use them. If they understood why Android is successfull, and worked better together, they may have achieved that kind of success already in their hardware niches. Hell, this stuff's open source, how come there's no community building custom Gnome OS ROMs for, say, the Nook Color? Because it won't work well there. But, hey, they're all scratching their itches, and I guess I'll piggyback on top of them as long as I can still get a PC with drivers for my hardware. But they're not making it any easier for the Linux boosters inside nVidia, Adobe, etc to make their case to their management.

Re:KDE

[jo_ham]

The beauty of open source though is that you can have many contributors of the source, you are never quite sure who it ultimately belongs to...

Re:KDE

[Grishnakh]

Um... last I heard KDE is not an operating system.

No, it's a desktop environment, just like Gnome. However, according to this prominent Gnome dev, they are operating systems; just look at his last comment in the interview.

Re:KDE

[Grishnakh]

There really shouldn't be any noticeable difference when changing to a different distro running Gnome2.32, as most of the software is the same; distros just do a slightly different job of putting things in different places and setting default configurations.

But switching to KDE doesn't make it a different OS, any more than switching from LibreOffice to Koffice to Abiword & Co. makes it a different OS. The DE is just a layer on top of the OS that lets you interact with it. If your choice of DE restricted your choice of apps (say, you weren't allowed to run Gnome apps in KDE), then this would make more sense, but that's not the case; it's easy to run Gnome apps in KDE and vice versa.

Re:KDE

[Grishnakh]

Gnome (and KDE) still work on traditional PC's and netbooks - I still use them. If they understood why Android is successfull, and worked better together, they may have achieved that kind of success already in their hardware niches. Hell, this stuff's open source, how come there's no community building custom Gnome OS ROMs for, say, the Nook Color? Because it won't work well there. But, hey, they're all scratching their itches, and I guess I'll piggyback on top of them as long as I can still get a PC with drivers for my hardware. But they're not making it any easier for the Linux boosters inside nVidia, Adobe, etc to make their case to their management.

The sad thing is that this Gnome fool is a Red Hat employee, and RH is paying him specifically to do this BS. If he were just some guy living in his mom's basement making this stuff on his own, then the "scratching their itches" thing would be true, but it's really not: there's a large, publicly-owned corporation backing and supporting his work.

So you can really blame Red Hat for screwing up Linux on the desktop and making it harder for Linux boosters inside nVidia and Adobe to make their case to their management.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo takes so long to get up and running that you didn't wanna settle on the OS before settling on the wife, hah?

Typical sysadmin... :P

Re:KDE

[lennier]

The DE is just a layer on top of the OS that lets you interact with it.

I'm not so sure that that's strictly true - or, if true, that it's a useful distinction to draw.

The big difference between KDE and GNOME is not just that they are different desktop environments but that they are different software frameworks for applications running on them, including different object/component models, inter-process communication and sets of running daemons. Some of these differences are being smoothed over via the Freedesktop.orgs (or were prior to the whole GNOME3/Unity/Plasma debacle where the DEs started chasing "teh shiney" instead of functionality) but major incompatibilities remain.

Yes, you can load a KDE binary under GNOME and if you have the appropriate KDE libraries installed, it will instantiate at least part of the KDE runtime framework (but not the whole daemon set), and it will sorta-kinda run. And yes, if you want to make a hard distinction between "OS" and "framework", you can do so.

The point I would like to make is that there are approaches to software development - for instance, the original Smalltalk vision - where it simply isn't relevant to make a hard distinction between "language", "framework", "runtime", "component system", "library", "set of deamons", and "operating system". If you blur your eyes and squint a little from the perspective of a user, what you have in any of these is a single "system of software components intended to operate together", which most people not involved in kernel development would call an "operating system". It's a system, ie it's made of multiple separate parts, and it operates together, and you can't do stuff without it.

You can sort of break these things down into layers: the OS deals with the hardware and is composed of kernel and drivers and library loaders and a shell, a runtime or virtual machine implements a language and its object model, a component model mediates between multiple language runtimes or VMs, frameworks are libraries which abstract all the other stuff... but it's not always clear why any of these roles should logically belong in any of the levels other than mere historical accident. And we're not today running the kind of machines - 1960s batch-processing mainframes moving toward 1970s time-sharing terminal-server systems - on which these distinctions made sense. Perhaps we should rethink some of our definitions a little?

At the end of the day, the user is faced with various "systems" or "platforms" made out of other premade chunks of software, some of which work together, some of which are shipped together, some of which contain others -- and only a few of these work well with the others. It would be nice if, from the user's perspective, there could be less arguing about exactly whose fault it is that their system doesn't do what it should, and more agreement on how to work together to resolve things.

Re:KDE

[oursland]

Uh, he does kinda say that the goal is to design a tablet interface.

derStandard.at: Are you going to write totally new apps for that or reuse existing ones?

McCann: Whether or not they are new code - that's up for the developers to decide. We really don't want to specify anything about the implementation and let the people who do it choose. But at least for a handful of things we want to design something that's specifically for GNOME3. That's consistent with the rest of the interface, uses all of the right interactions, uses the application menu properly, is designed for a laptop or a tablet. So we want to lead by example.

Emphasis mine.

Re:KDE

[jones_supa]

Try defining the environment variable CONDOM=1 while configuring. I've used it on many obscure platforms and I've never seen any child processes running. It also has a nice double function of protecting the system from most instances of malware.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME and KDE might as well be OS's. They have their own filesystems, sound systems, graphics APIs, networking layers, etc., all abstracting away from and managing access to hardware / other resources.

Re:KDE

[Stuarticus]

Ubuntu before you were married but Gentoo after? I'm sure there's got to be a joke in there somewhere...

"Before we were married everything was stable, now he spends all his time fiddling with his kernel." (OK that was terrible...)

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

But Linux is not, and will never be, for non-technical users. Why is GNOME going after people who'd never use linux in the first place?

Re:KDE

[Grishnakh]

Some of these differences are being smoothed over via the Freedesktop.orgs (or were prior to the whole GNOME3/Unity/Plasma debacle where the DEs started chasing "teh shiney" instead of functionality) but major incompatibilities remain. ...
It would be nice if, from the user's perspective, there could be less arguing about exactly whose fault it is that their system doesn't do what it should, and more agreement on how to work together to resolve things.

I don't see how that's going to happen when the most popular DE team is too busy "chasing teh shiney" and making it as hard as possible to turn off their computer instead of working on functionality. Maybe if the distros would just dump this afflicted DE, and move to other DEs that value functionality more than some weird notion of "usability", then the DE(s) they move to would receive far more resources and mindshare to help them with their work, but instead all I see is everyone bitching and no one doing anything different.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Random

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

...end-user perspective and a third-party-developer... Obviously the underpinnings are the same, but for non-technical users who only use the GUI... Switching her to KDE would be a much more significant change...

Yes, we have a descriptor for that. You actually used it; it's a *user interface*.

There's no giving this asshat the benefit of the doubt. They are not different operating systems in any way, shape, or form. They are different user interfaces plain and simple. Next I'll have people telling me that when I use GIMP under OS X I'm booting a different operating system (protip: X11 isn't an operating system either).

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you trust the summary to be accurate. It isn't. From TFA:

But I really think from an end-user perspective and a third-party-developer perspective GNOME and KDE are different operating systems. As much as MeeGo is a different operating system.

Nowhere does it say he is convinced they are different OSes, just that he thinks they are from certain perspectives.

The summary was disappointing, I expected a bit of explanation of that viewpoint, but what I quoted was pretty much it on that topic.

More time?

[UnknownSoldier]

"There's always things when you look back that you wish you would have had a little more time to finish or polish."

Why does an open-source project have a deadline?? The point of open-source is that _you_ as a developer decide when it is ready, not customers/shareholders/marketing dictating your release schedule.

I work on a open source project. If a feature takes a year to do, we take the time to do it right, rather then hack something up that "works now", but needs to be re-written later.

What am I missing??

Re:More time?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing: open-source != no-deadline.
But I do agree with you, to some level, that it would be better to take some more time to make something better.

Re:More time?

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I missing??

That excuses need to be made for poor decisions. Open source does not guarantee good management (in fact, in my experience, mostly the opposite). The good people acknowledge their mistakes, learn from them and do better next time. The not-so-good people make excuses.

Re:More time?

[webheaded]

The openness of the source has absolutely nothing to do with this at all. I don't even get why you're saying that. Redhat is open source and they are anything but this. There are plenty of examples of open source COMPANIES. Not every OSS developer is some kid in his mom's basement like some people seem to think. Some of them actually do have deadlines.

Re:More time?

[Jimbookis]

"There's always things when you look back that you wish you would have had a little more time to finish or polish."

Well really, just how long does it take to polish a turd?

Re:More time?

[oldmac31310]

That sentence needs some serious polishing! 'There's always things...'. What kind of grammar is that? I won't even bother with the rest.

Re:More time?

[Anonymous Coward]

was that really required?

Re:More time?

[godrik]

I think you are missing that open source software are human that have personal goals. Sometimes, making a perfect open source software is not one of them. So you release what you have even if it is not perfect, and you move on with your life. (Which might involve a new open source projet or not.)

Re:More time?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Perhaps we should ask the Mythbusters?

Re:More time?

[crutchy]

Re: "Why does an open-source project have a deadline??" ...because paying customers expect things in a timely manner (its actually required by law - you can't just accept payment based on an open-ended promise to deliver). Gnome is a product. Your open source project most likely isn't in the same league as Gnome. Re: "rather then hack something up that "works now", but needs to be re-written later". You haven't developed software in a commercial environment have you? Customer requirements ALWAYS change, so you ALWAYS have to re-write stuff. That's why the concept of "extreme programming" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming or http://www.extremeprogramming.org/) came about, which I use in my own work. You can spend all your budget planning the perfect product before you realise there is no such thing. Paying customers want results, and are quite happy to pay money for something that isn't perfect but does the job, and they will keep paying money to improve it gradually. If you ask for top dollar to build the perfect software, not only are you setting yourself up for failure, but when you can't deliver after spending your client's investment, you will deliver a half-baked perfect product which is likely to be riddled with bugs and will have to be rewritten anyway because it meets very few of the proposed "perfect software" objectives. Gnome is an evolving product, and given the huge demand for (and already existing user base of) smartphones running Android, it makes sense to me that they would put more effort into targeting that market. Who really cares what a bunch of slashdot whingers want? After all. those who want a better Gnome3 are welcome to fork it themselves.

Re:More time?

[crutchy]

before people get on their lunchboxes and tell me that gnome isn't a product, it is contributed in large part by commercial interests (redhat, canonical, etc), so it does form a significant visible part of the products offered by these companies. i'm stating the obvious, but there are a lot of slashdot users that are just that stupid.

Re:More time?

[DShard]

Alas, it is too late for gnome to do anything in the tablet or hand held space. The market is huge, but the OS and stacks are well defined. If you doubt this, look no further than how windows phone 7, meego, RIM or webOS have done in the market. Gnome is never going to crack this nut. Anyone who believes it can is delusional.

Considering Red Hat and Novell are the employers of the developers and designers, I wonder how they convinced the Server OS vendors that a tablet interface was good FOR A SERVER. It just doesn't make any sense. Whoever manages these teams for either of those companies should be fired. They are clearly incompetent at explaining why the designer is confused about what pays his/her salary. What sort of workflow FOR A SERVER favors a single app per workspace?

As far a forking, there are plenty of DE that already have developers. Gnome isn't worth saving it from itself.

Re:More time?

[0123456]

Considering Red Hat and Novell are the employers of the developers and designers, I wonder how they convinced the Server OS vendors that a tablet interface was good FOR A SERVER.

This is what I don't understand. Red Hat's primary customer base are people who do real work with their systems and they're apparently paying for someone to cripple the desktop to make it far less efficient for doing real work.

Re:More time?

[Grishnakh]

This guy isn't working on this in his spare time, he's an employee of Red Hat.

Re:More time?

[jmorris42]

This! The GNOMEs could go as insane as the wanted to and not cause much harm if RedHat didn't enable them. If Fedora announced it was making GNOME Desktop an alternate spin for F17 the problem would be over. Port the old Gnome parts to Gtk3 and put the standard desktop oriented desktop back as the default environment. Then the diehard GNOMEs could officially declare they are doing a tablet OS to compete with MeeGo and Android and go off and either succeed or fail without harming the rest of the FreeDesktop efforts. But too many GNOMEs draw a paycheck at RedHat and are decisionmakers in the Fedora Project.

Back when GNOME was working with Sun on usability this probably wouldn't have happened either.

In the end it isn't the horrid UI of GNOME3 that scares the crap out of so many of us mortal users, it is the corrosive attitude radiating from the GNOME camp, exemplified by the article under discussion here. They don't care if we don't like it. Because they know better what we should want and are intent on 'giving' it to us if they have to come to our house and ram it down our throats. Because they are convinced they are RIGHT and will of course eventually learn to love it and admit we were wrong.

I can make the quite reasonable (to me at least) argument that there is no way I could deploy GNOME3 in a public lab because the same users who almost instantly know how to use GNOME2 wouldn't have a clue what to do with GNOME3. And they don''t care. I could try to migrate to something else but what? KDE is also pretty weird (but pretty and actually usable with user training) these days, I can wrangle XFCE into shape for my own use but it isn't ready for the general public. The small fry desktop environments are oriented for UNIX heads or embedded (Enlightenment). Unify is as bad as GNOME. So what is left? Stay on RHEL6/Fedora14/Ubuntu10.04 for the forseeable future and eventualy declare Linux a dead end when hardware support peters out? Migrate to Windows? What is the official suggestion? Come on GNOMEs, lets hear it.

Re:More time?

[Grishnakh]

Yes, this is indeed very perplexing.

It makes perfect sense with Canonical; Canonical isn't much of a server company (who uses Ubuntu server? It's a niche player at best), but has been concentrating on the desktop for years with Ubuntu, and with good success, because they rocketed past all the other distros some time ago and became the most popular desktop distro (though they're probably slipping badly on that now).

But Canonical's efforts on the desktop haven't paid off monetarily, so now they're trying to run after newbies and tablet users in an effort to become profitable before Shuttleworth gives up, so that's the impetus for Unity.

This simply isn't the case for Red Hat; it's a very strong server distro, which spun off its desktop part into Fedora because they weren't able to become profitable there. So why are they still paying this guy's salary, when everything he does is obviously contrary to the preferences of server users?

Re:More time?

[crutchy]

Re: "Gnome isn't worth saving it from itself"... I agree (personally). I still use Gnome 2.x but I've installed Xfce and I may switch to that. Re: "it is too late for gnome to do anything in the tablet or hand held space"... seems reasonable, but why should that stop them from trying (per windows phone 7, meego, RIM or webOS)? People who buy smartphones will buy anything as long as they think it will impress their friends, so if Gnome wants to have a go at coming up with "the next big thing" for smartphones then good on them for trying. It might result in a moronic UI, but that doesn't mean it can't make money. Gnome is probably in a slightly more desperate situation compared to Apache because all web servers need Apache (Microsoft zealots go home), whereas the market for a window manager is a bit more loosely defined and more difficult to target, and considering the geeky end of town (excluding corporate customers) doesn't buy RH support and is less likely to rely on any one window manager anyway, targeting average joe morons buying smartphones doesn't really seem like that bad an idea.

Re:More time?

[unixisc]

For me, both KDE and GNUSTEP are good alternatives. I had some problems w/ Konqueror, but if that's fixed, I'm happy. They can be the DE or the UX (user experience, not Unix) for Linux, BSD, Minix and Hurd. There's no reason to declare Linux, or any of these operating systems dead just b'cos Gnome can't get its act together, and is as banal as the original System 7 MacOS.

Re:More time?

[timbo234]

Konqueror is 'fixed' in that it's no longer the file manager - Dolphin is, and it's a much cleaner implementation of the idea of a 'file manager'. As for a browser every distro uses Firefox as default and you can install Chrome or Opera if you don't like that.

(Konqueror is still there and still maintained if you want to use it as file manager or web browser)

Re:More time?

[jmorris42]

> There's no reason to declare Linux, or any of these operating systems dead...

From my POV it is. I run public labs in a public library setting and have been using GNOME since 0.x days because you can drop a random user in front of it and they can figure it out.. You could have done the same with KDE up through the 3.x series but 4.x is different enough I suspect I'd have problems. GNOME 3 I don't wonder, I know I'd have problems. None of the other desktops are suitable out of the box but if I invested enough time I think I could make XFCE work. That is my perspective, Linux as usable by folks off the street. When I can no longer buy hardware that works with distros old enough to still be shipping a working desktop I will be forced to Windows. Hopefully this fiasco won't last that long, I am not the only one who actually uses Linux in a public setting so some solution should get worked out. I'm just bitchin' because this situation is so dumb.

Re:More time?

[lobotomy]

You need to be modded up to +100. I could not agree more. I plan on running Fedora 14 until long after its expiration date. I refuse to run that tablet interface known as Gnome Shell and I don't see a usable alternative right now.

You will get my Gnome 2 when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Or something like that.

the past 15 years epitomized

[Anonymous Coward]

I call it "Microwave UI". It's what the past decade plus tendency in Mac OS X, in the Ruby on Rails framework, in Gnome 3 epitomized. Just pull the top off the can and microwave -- if there's anything to "configure" why isn't it that way in the can to begin with???

This design philosophy is simply wrong. The design philosophy, "put it all in the can", can only ever result in "Microwaved food from a can." Honestly, the only thing that is better than is nothing or the very worst chef.

Hitler

[MrEricSir]

...is still mad about Gnome 3.

Re:Hitler

[sakdoctor]

This is bullshit. I'll configure everything back to how it was in GNOME 2.

Brilliant! Best Hitler reaction video yet.

Re:Hitler

[0racle]

Totally agree with Hitler here.

Re:Hitler

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilarious! Loved it. But, this video should have been made about kde4 which lost a lot of users.
And KDE is/was German.

Re:Hitler

[Anonymous Coward]

Never thought I would sympathize with the Führer. Good job Gnome.

Re:Hitler

[MrEricSir]

Well, this video was presented at the Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin...

Re:Hitler

[geminidomino]

Really? I thought that sort of thing, even in parody, was illegal in Germany. Of course, that was like 4th generation information, so I may well be wrong.

Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's never nice to hear people ... offering their opinion very mean spirited. [We] don't want to ignore it. However: We do have to remain focused on what we are trying to accomplish."

OSX usage ....

[UnknownSoldier]

"You do see a lot of hackers using Mac OS X these days and I think that's a little bit unfortunate and probably there are many reasons why they do that, but that's not immediately what you might think of as a super hacker-focused OS."

Gee, you think people get tired of constantly tweaking this and that, fixing broken apps/models, relearning a UI, and just want shit to work as they get older, so they can work on other things? Go figure!

Re:OSX usage ....

[Jimbookis]

>

Gee, you think people get tired of constantly tweaking this and that, fixing broken apps/models, relearning a UI, and just want shit to work as they get older, so they can work on other things? Go figure!

I agree. My i7 laptop came with Windows 7 and since I bought it I have stayed on Planet Windows having dicked around with KDE and Kubuntu for so long on my old PC. I think Aero uses the right amount of eye candy to make using a GUI nice and smooth without getting in the way with BS like wobbly windows. That said, with Firefox, putty, cygwin, mingw, winscp, TortoiseGit/SVN, etc etc etc all working very nicely for me in Win7 I am not compelled to boot into *buntu any more and deal with Gnome shit or KDE shit any more.

Re:OSX usage ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, OS X zealotry, world famous wankers, unbeatable. Back in the real world, the rest of us don't have UI issues. Strange that it's limited to OS X and the pathetic inconsistencies Apple force onto their customers. But don't worry, like the sheep you are, you put up with it because you are so incredibly insecure, anything resembling an Apple cock-up, you take personally. Don't worry, your HIV+ leader won't be around for long. Freedom isn't far away.

Re:OSX usage ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, your HIV+ leader won't be around for long. Freedom isn't far away.

Did you ever see that episode of Southpark where they found the cure to HIV/AIDS?

It's simply money, lots of it. Unfortunately their "leader" has a lot of money too so he will be sticking around for some time.

Re:OSX usage ....

[Billly Gates]

I switched to Windows 7 as well. I had a tendancy for Windows 7 due to Photoshop and Dreamweaver anyway which I want to learn. I saw the writting on the wall and watched the marketshare on gStat show Linux losing half the marketshare. Even Microsoft announced they won in their annual threat report announced on www.zdnet.com.

Linux looks uber cool but I am sick and tired of playing with it rather than doing work to get it just right. There is always something to do on it.

Windows 7 is nice and it is great to know if I hate Firefox and Chrome I have IE 9 as a backup. If I support PCs for a living it only makes sense for me to familiarize myself with the platform. I do miss somethings with Gnome 2 and Unix, but KDE 4 and Gnome 3 showed me the writting was on the wall.

Re:OSX usage ....

[Anonymous Coward]

...OS X is hacker-focused as long as you're not running it on genuine Apple hardware.

Wow, never knew McCann was so ghetto

[elrous0]

That part in the interview where he called the KDE designers a "bunch of punk-ass bitches" was a bit uncalled for, I think.

Re:Wow, never knew McCann was so ghetto

[RanCossack]

I actually RTFA to see if he said that.

<spoilers>Not in so many words...</spoilers>

Re:Wow, never knew McCann was so ghetto

[pak9rabid]

lol...same here. Brilliant method of getting people to RTFA.

Re:Wow, never knew McCann was so ghetto

[heathen_01]

Real slashdot readers would not be fooled so easily.

Hmmm Gnome App, KDE OS like DE....True.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadnt thought of it this way before, but its true. I like gnome on my laptop because I pull up something to work on and thats it. On the other hand KDE on my desktop gives me a full suite of tools that I can use like a Swiss army knife. Context, shells, protocols, and the blessed single click and decent file management with KDE, an app at a time with Gnome.

Measure Twice Cut Once

[jimmerz28]

At cursory glance I initially read "John McCain" and almost had an aneurism.

Re:Measure Twice Cut Once

[Mister Liberty]

I initially read "John McCan't" .

bjd

Shutdown is preferred

[Anonymous Coward]

But specifically for shutdown we do think that suspend should be encouraged. It is the easiest way to use your system.

Bullshit. Suspend was a dumb idea to start with, trying to replace poweroff with suspend is even dumber. If I'm done using my computer, I turn it off. If I'm not, I throw up xscreensaver and lock it. A computer is either on, or it isn't. Suspend is just a screensaver that takes ages to come back from. /rant

Re:Shutdown is preferred

[someSnarkyBastard]

Actually, Suspend-to-RAM is damn useful for laptops, you can keep all your documents, windows, webpages, whatever up as you move from place to place and you don't have to wait for your computer to power up/down, it all just comes back instantly. For a minor powerhit on the batteries I consider that a more than satisfactory trade.

Re:Shutdown is preferred

[armanox]

Assuming your laptop still has a functioning battery.

Re:Shutdown is preferred

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this is why "hibernate", "restart" and/or "shut-down" is missing from the GNOME3's user menu? Of course, there is no (at least intuitive) way to add them there. Also, where are laptop power profiles. I want my backlight reduced when on battery, yet it's nowhere to be found.
Red Hat, please get rid of that destructive force.
(I'd actually agree to have one way for everything if his ideas were sane, but he tends to get rid of everything he doesn't like - without some kind of usability testing)

Re:Shutdown is preferred

[perryizgr8]

i assume suspend is what you call 'sleep'? if yes, then i must disagree. it takes only 1-2 seconds for my win7 laptop to wake. and battery usage is negligible while sleeping. why the fuck would you wanna kill all processes, close all apps every time you stop using your pc? just let it sit inside the ram.

GNOME3 is missing the basic utilities.

[Anonymous Coward]

As for which apps we do want to write in GNOME we have a list of about 6-10 that we consider a "different class of application" than core utils. Things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities,

Straight from the horses mouth - GNOME 3 is missing things that "every computer needs to be able to do"

I'd like it to be able to manage my multiple screens without dying at boot. I'd like it to be able to manage my ati cards without that girly rainbow effect. I'd like it to be able to provide cpu/net/disk/sensor information in a panel.

Re:GNOME3 is missing the basic utilities.

[wsxyz]

As for which apps we do want to write in GNOME we have a list of about 6-10 that we consider a "different class of application" than core utils. Things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities,

As if no one up til now ever worked on GNOME applications to manage photos, music, and documents.

Oh wait, I forgot those were written by some guy who no longer bothers to waste his time with GNOME, and the API has changed twice in the meantime, so they have to be rewritten from scratch, only this time we'll do them right!

Re:GNOME3 is missing the basic utilities.

[Billly Gates]

Hell I want a minimize button. Good god even Grandmas using Windows 98 will be looking for this

Re:GNOME3 is missing the basic utilities.

[wzzzzrd]

Things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities

That clearly shows that Jon is, well, not outright an idiot, but a man with a very limited view. "Things that every computer needs..." Yea, as he would know. If I want my computer to manage documents, I install a document management application maybe? Why must my development machine, which is just fine running gnome2, manage photos and music? And if it must, well, there is my brave package manager and the internet.

And the dumbest thing ofc is..."So we want to write some of those..." Ouch. Because yea, these applications don't exist. Or maybe they do, but they where not written by you, and since only you know what people want, the existing applications (so obvious now! how could I miss it!) are crap.

Man, nearly every sin a developer can make...Knowing what everybody wants, Wanting to do it all by yourself, Turning every form of criticism into a "yes, but I know better".

Get rid of him. Pleeease.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really ...whoever is in charge of gnome. Please, I beg you, get rid of this guy. Remove his commit rights. Reverse all the changes and design"improvements" he made in the latest version. The UI is absolutely horrific. Unusable.
I don't know anyone who likes it. Really.

Re:Get rid of him. Pleeease.

[couchslug]

Who IS/ARE in charge of GNOME?

Sadly OSX is not an option

[SmallFurryCreature]

I am addicted to focus follows mouse and silly OSX can't handle that because of its insane menu (you would loose focus of the windows whose menu you are trying to reach, Unity has the same problem).

The real problem is that Gnome2 worked, yes it took a long time, yes it was not perfect either when it started but recently it became simply usable.

And suddenly almost every distro out there throws it all away for a new window manager that is not just incomplete but even downright buggy. What else do you call it when you have to kill processes for browsing windows/samba shares? Is that such a complex hardcore hacker task?

KDE ain't much better, open a file from the network and it will often try to copy it locally first before it can play. Very useful for large movie files I can tell you.

The alternatives? Not much better either. xfce seems determined to use 100% cpu power for showing its native cpu widget.... why bother writing code at all, just put a red picture on the taskbar and call it a day. Same result.

Gnome 3 should have been a side project and an optional desktop. Wanna play with it? Go ahead but if you don't, you don't see it. Ubuntu sorta allows this if you don't upgrade to the next big release but many small distro's just throw it in an update. And there you are, suddenly nothing works anymore and when you reboot you go "Oh shit".

It just ain't ready yet. It crashes randomly, misses functionality, forgets to suspend when a laptop is closed (which finally started to work perfectly and now they broken it again). This is a beta, no an alpha release. Why is everyone using it as their main desktop. Ubuntu and Fedora/Red hat. WHY? They didn't start to use Enlightenment a mere decade after its first alpha release? Why use Gnome 3 straight away?

I think there is a desperate wish for the year of the linux desktop. Fuck it, ain't gonna happen. Never. Why not? Because of this kinda crap. I have converted people to Ubuntu, it is easy, it works, it plays farmville and has no malware. Buttons the wrong side? Noobs don't care they literally just shrug their shoulders and click the other side of the window.

But the Ubuntu 11.01 upgrade? I converted them all back to a pirated windows system. I installed Ubuntu for them because I was fed up constantly supporting them, now I was going to explain to them Unity/Gnome3 instead with more bugginess and unwanted changes then Vista? Is there some opensource developers penis envy? MS can produce a desktop nobody wants, we want it too?

This weekend I will be installing an old ubuntu on my desktop (this is written from a windows game machine) having tried various releases. I have come to a conclusion. I am old. I did gentoo, I did linux from scratch, I made skins, I tweaked, I compiled. Now I just want a fucking simple desktop that just fucking stays the fucking same for longer then two seconds. I REALLY do not give a fuck WHERE the close buttons is but I expect my fucking laptop to fucking suspend when I fucking close it and NOT for this YEARS old GODDAMN issue to come back because some fuck face wants to do a touch desktop and then forgets to include touch because he has some jerkwad fantasy about Linux on some device.

Upset? YES.

Nerd rage? Abso-fucking-lutely.

The proof that Gnome 3 sucks? They had to kill off gnome 2. If they are so convinced 3 was going to be the hottest thing ever, then they could just have let gnome 2 running in low maintenance mode and given the people a choice. You only have to pull a new coke if you know people don't WANT your new crap so you are not giving them an option and hope the rage dies out before you do. Well, I am nerd, hear me roar!

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Mister Liberty]

I'm with you 100 percent in all the facts and sentiments and rage.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Ragondux]

You should try XFCE. I recently made the switch due to un-ending frustration with the new Ubuntu; it mostly looks the same as Gnome 2, or can be configured to, but it's more configurable, and its window manager is better than Metacity. And for some reason the bugs I attributed to my video driver must have been Metacity bugs, since they all disappeared.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[rubycodez]

uh, that 100% cpu widget thing is fixed. xfce is nice, I dumped Ubuntu for Debian 6 with xfce. better than the Xubuntu, even.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[MonsterTrimble]

Just a few different points:

And suddenly almost every distro out there throws it all away for a new window manager that is not just incomplete but even downright buggy. What else do you call it when you have to kill processes for browsing windows/samba shares? Is that such a complex hardcore hacker task?

There are still a lot of distros which are using Gnome 2. Beyond Fedora I can't think of a widely-used distro that uses it by default yet

KDE ain't much better, open a file from the network and it will often try to copy it locally first before it can play. Very useful for large movie files I can tell you.

I have done that numerous times and never had that issue.

Why is everyone using it as their main desktop. Ubuntu and Fedora/Red hat.

Unity has Gnome underpinnings but it is not Gnome3.

But the Ubuntu 11.01 upgrade? I converted them all back to a pirated windows system. I installed Ubuntu for them because I was fed up constantly supporting them, now I was going to explain to them Unity/Gnome3 instead with more bugginess and unwanted changes then Vista? Is there some opensource developers penis envy? MS can produce a desktop nobody wants, we want it too? This weekend I will be installing an old ubuntu on my desktop (this is written from a windows game machine) having tried various releases. I have come to a conclusion. I am old. I did gentoo, I did linux from scratch, I made skins, I tweaked, I compiled. Now I just want a fucking simple desktop that just fucking stays the fucking same for longer then two seconds. I REALLY do not give a fuck WHERE the close buttons is but I expect my fucking laptop to fucking suspend when I fucking close it and NOT for this YEARS old GODDAMN issue to come back because some fuck face wants to do a touch desktop and then forgets to include touch because he has some jerkwad fantasy about Linux on some device.

If you didn't want to do support nor deal with tweaking why did you choose a normal-release Ubuntu, which is notorious for breaking things? Why not use Debian Stable or even Ubuntu LTS to start?

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[serviscope_minor]

I am addicted to focus follows mouse and silly OSX can't handle that because of its insane menu (you would loose focus of the windows whose menu you are trying to reach, Unity has the same problem).

For extra fun, try using a REALLY EXPENSIVE OSX setup. The sort with a mac pro and dual cinema displays. Have you any idea how bloody far it is from the bottom left corner to the menu bar? It is utterly silly and not very usable. I have no idea why someone would shell out for such an expensive setup when the user interface is utterly inadequate for dealing with it.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[roman_mir]

I don't know how to explain this any better - I want GNU/Linux with Windows XP interface and behavior in terms of GUI.

Can I have it? Obviously not unless I completely write it myself. Would anybody want it except me?

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

> But the Ubuntu 11.01 [sic] upgrade? I converted them all back
> to a pirated windows system.

you should have gone with xubuntu 10.04 FTW.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me up until loose.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[supersloshy]

The proof that Gnome 3 sucks? They had to kill off gnome 2. If they are so convinced 3 was going to be the hottest thing ever, then they could just have let gnome 2 running in low maintenance mode and given the people a choice. You only have to pull a new coke if you know people don't WANT your new crap so you are not giving them an option and hope the rage dies out before you do.

System Settings -> System -> Graphics -> Forced Fallback Mode. You're welcome ;)

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there a keyboard shortcut for the menu in OSX? I don't really use Macs, but I just assumed there was -- having to go up there with a mouse would be insane with a T221 or two (or array of however many Apple Cinemas or similar low-quality displays make up 9+ Mpx), let alone focus issues.

Anyway, I've settled on a mix of awesome, dwm, and e17 on my various machines, years after I ditched GNOME for FVMW2 when it went to 2.x and slowed down my 500MHz k6-2 too much, plus they were killing off too much configurability in the name of "user-friendliness". So now I sit back with a bemused expression, watching all the goings on about KDE4 and GNOME3 with a largely undeserved sense of smug superiority. It's a good feeling if I don't think too much about what a silly hipster I'm being. ;)

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[segedunum]

KDE ain't much better, open a file from the network and it will often try to copy it locally first before it can play. Very useful for large movie files I can tell you.

That's not down to KDE and that's going to happen everywhere I'm afraid, unless you mount something specifically as smbfs through the kernel or something.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[digitect]

Not even close. I used it for two weeks prior to the nvidia driver fix (for GL, now required by Gnome 3) and it was worse than G3.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[CronoCloud]

Yes, yes you can. You could have that in Gnome 2 and XFCE. "Applications Menu" quick start icons, minimized windows, notification area and clock, on the bottom as God intended.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[capink]

I can do that in Gnome using sftp without mounting anything. No luck with kde and sftp, it still copy it to local hd.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[CronoCloud]

Fallback mode is NOT Gnome 2, and it's not configurable to be like Gnome 2. You're stuck with Fallback mode exactly as it is without the ability to configure it to behave properly.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

Try paying somebody for it. Ha Ha.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[capink]

The proof that Gnome 3 sucks? They had to kill off gnome 2

Using the same logic, Gnome2 sucks! They had to kill off Gnome1

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[couchslug]

Strongly agree, which is why I avoid promoting Linux to non-geeks. They don't understand such things and it's not worth explaining it to them.

BTW, there are plenty of alternatives to KDE and GNOME.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

>I have done that numerous times and never had that issue.

What do you expect people to do, line up outside your house to use your computer?

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[supersloshy]

Hold Alt and right-click the panels. You can still adjust things there. Exactly what kinds of "configuration" can't you do in this that you could do before that you want to do? Maybe I could help with that.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[roman_mir]

I am using Gnome 2. It's nowhere near that. Things don't work right, mouse and keyboard are doing weird shit, it's not terrible, but it's not XP.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[DCFusor]

Check your hardware for being broken then. I have gnome 2 (U 10.04) set up so close that people who've only used windows can barely tell any difference. One new hire, after being productive in their first hours on a system, finally grinned and asked what super reliable new, fast, version of windows I'd put on the machine. Nuff said.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[roman_mir]

oh, please, stop with the fanboyism, I've been using unix variants since 1992 now. If the noobs can't spot the clear difference between gnome 2 and windows XP interfaces it does not make the differences magically disappear. Ever tried using Eclipse for java in GNU/Linux environment? I've been using it that way for 2 years now, and I am constantly forcing myself to continue doing it on a linux platform, though every time I boot into XP and use it there I just start hating myself more for all that masochism.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[jmorris42]

> You should try XFCE.

I'm there. But it ain't perfect.

If you want icons on the desktop you have to accept they will be in random order every time you login.

That the file manager won't show thumbnails.

That even after you do a force remove of gnome-power-manager you still have issues. Yes you can configure xfce to leave power on when you close the lid if AC power is connected. But if you then yank the plug it will stay running until the battery dies. Yank the plug and then close the lid and it does the right thing.

Desktop links that work in GNOME don't work in XFCE. Unless a .desktop file opens a terminal the process doesn't inherit the environment so no SSH_AGENT so no remote X apps automagically launching.

These are all bugs in F15. Hopefully they won't be for long and then we can all kiss GNOME goodbye. But they also need to offer an option for XFCE to be preconfigured to look like GNOME (ok, Windows) out of the chute for a new user. Then I could roll out an updated lab image for our public labs.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

I never thought of that, but it's interesting.

The whole purpose of menu at top is defeated by the size of modern displays.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

You can just select 'Classic' at the bottom of the Ubuntu 11.04 login screen. Problem solved.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[boristhespider]

Personally I really like OSX for almost everything, except those stupid menus. They were even OK until I started using a dual-monitor setup. It's not even crazy resolution on the second monitor, but it's an enormous drag to go from the bottom left of one screen all the way across to the menu on the right-hand screen. Or I can have it set up the other way round, which is even worse -- the menu clusters on the left of the screen, so if I put it on the left-hand monitor and the mouse is at the bottom of the right-hand monitor it takes even longer. I'm not sure what Apple's solution should be, given that they're heavily invested in maintaining a Mac look, but they're losing usability from their UI at a rate that should be unacceptable for a company that prizes "intuition" and "usability" above almost anything.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[boristhespider]

"oh, please, stop with the fanboyism"

I'm not sure you quite know where you are.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[boristhespider]

And in 11.10? 12.04? That Classic option isn't going to stick around. Last I heard it probably wasn't going to stick around until 11.10 - and even if they've changed that and it will, it's going to go.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[m50d]

Try installing the GNU userland under SUA, that's behaviorally what you're asking for.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[m50d]

KDE ain't much better, open a file from the network and it will often try to copy it locally first before it can play. Very useful for large movie files I can tell you.

If you use a kde-integrated movie player it won't need to copy it. If you're running a program from outside KDE, what else can it do?

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[MichaelSmith]

Gnome2 should be available in the package repositories for a few years yet, even if it is not installed by default.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[segedunum]

You're not going to be able to manipulate anything directly over sftp without it being downloaded first. sftp does not give you a filesystem to work with.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[bmcage]

Using KDE here, it stayed the same for 2 years now, and they promise to keep it like that with KDE 5. Different shells available though...

For the samba issue, dragonplayer and vlc have that, I use kaffeine now, and play from a samba share starts immediately. In other words, it's related to the app you use. Do which I found a good upnp client app though, then I could skip even browsing the samba share.

Played with Win 7 and Mac OS X last week. Whatever ideas I maintained to get a laptop with one of those are gone now. The hoops I'd have to jump through to make it do what I need it to do are far too frustrating.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[rl117]

Err, yes, it most certainly does. Take a look at the underlying SSHFXP protocol; it's essentially a serial protocol that provides the UNIX filesystem API, i.e. open/close/read/write/lseek/chown/chmod etc., over the wire. This does allow it to be used directly as a filesystem, and is why we have the sshfs FUSE filesystem which utilises it.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

100 % agree. Fuck Jon McCann, fuck GNOME, fuck unity and double plus ultra FUCK Ubuntu for this fucking shit.

I am in the same boat of having got loads of average users off virus riddled Windows boxes onto Ubuntu and they pull this shit on us.

Selfish, arrogant bastards the lot of 'em.

The only future Gnome has is on the end of my steel toecapped boots.

capture: shambles (how apt)

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[boristhespider]

Unfortunately, most likely with growing library conflicts and unpatched security holes.

To be honest I'd add my voice to people who want to fork it and keep it up-to-date and in repositories for a variety of distros for a lot longer - but like many others saying that, I don't have the ability to do anything of the sort myself. It'll be either KDE or XFCE for me when I next use Linux.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[walshy007]

KDE ain't much better, open a file from the network and it will often try to copy it locally first before it can play. Very useful for large movie files I can tell you.

Let me guess, using smb? I've never encountered this, but that is because the programs can't tell the difference between local and network when you are using nfs like a sane person.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[Anonymous Coward]

100% agree with you, SmallFurryCreature. Recently I've choosen a Linux distro for the school class and it is U10.04 with Gnome 2.30. At last all is working more or less stable with a small number of twicks.

Re:Sadly OSX is not an option

[MichaelSmith]

Yeah I noticed than when I installed gnome 3 on ubuntu it pulled in something which broke the pager on gnome 2.

Quote: "GNOME and KDE are different OSes"

[tepples]

The actual quotation from the article is "from an end-user perspective and a third-party-developer perspective GNOME and KDE are different operating systems." The GNOME platform is as different from the KDE platform as it is from, say, the Wine platform. All three are toolkits that run on top of X11/*n?x.

Re:Quote: "GNOME and KDE are different OSes"

[Rob Y.]

The problem is that people want (and need) to be able to run apps from these different 'OS's' simultaneously. And it can be done, of course - as you said, they're just toolkits on top of X11 on top of Linux. But all the aspects of apps that need to work together are out of sync. I don't care how your preferred launcher and window manager look (after all, that's all GNOME 3 is), but I do care that they at least attempt to conform to some 'linux desktop' standards so that all kinds of apps can behave as similarly as possible, regardless of your choice of launcher and window manager. That is, if you chose to run under KDE, you get a KDE file dialog in your GNOME apps, and your GNOME apps can embed previews in the KDE file manager (and vice versa). There's no technical reason that can't be done, if it were a high priority for all the players. But statements like "from an end-user perspective and a third-party-developer perspective GNOME and KDE are different operating systems." treat toolkit coexistence as unnecessary, and perhaps not even desirable. And that's why Linux will never get 3rd party apps.

Re:Quote: "GNOME and KDE are different OSes"

[lennier]

And it can be done, of course - as you said, they're just toolkits on top of X11 on top of Linux.

If only they were. But KDE and GNOME aren't just X11 toolkits and widget sets, they're not even just tightly integrated sets of window managers and file explorers and MIME type registries and sound servers and search engines and mail/calendar databases and instant messagers and event notification systems, they're also two fundamentally different component/object models, and sets of IPC daemons - KParts, Bonobo, D-BUS, Pl and friends. They have two different low-level implementation languages and object systems - C++ with the KDE signal/slot preprocessor macros vs C and GObject - and so on. They implement their own entire virtual filesystems in userspace code.

Sure, there's whole chunks of Linux which remain agnostic about what desktop framework is running on top of them, including X11. But a raw Linux and X11 isn't actually that useful to a modern user, unless all you want to do is edit text files in EMACS and browse the Web with Lynx. Generally, you want some kind of runtime support for mounting USB devices when you plug them in, navigating compound documents and ZIP archives as if they were folders, and registering and instantiating component frameworks from dynamically loadable libraries. And most of that stuff is all done at the "desktop framework" level.

One could argue that this kind of file-and-process management functions should be the job of an OS, but it's too late - the Microsoft/Apple approach of "shove it all together into the graphical desktop shell" has won, the open-source DEs have copied the big boys, and now there's a war.

If your platform falls behind

[tepples]

The point of open-source is that _you_ as a developer decide when it is ready, not customers/shareholders/marketing dictating your release schedule.

If your free software or open source project is a platform, and your platform falls behind the competing platform, then third-party developers are more likely to develop for the competing platform, and your platform will be compatible with fewer and fewer maintained programs over time.

So much wasted time...

[Beelzebud]

I still find it utterly unreasonable to just scrap the Gnome 2 desktop. It was the most stable, "just works" DE for *nix, and they just threw all that work out for eye candy. I tried to like Gnome 3 but it feels more like a toy than KDE4 did when it came out. It makes me wonder how many thousands of development hours were just flushed down the toilet for this. I could understand it if they used Gnome2 as the foundation, and added to it, but they didn't.

Re:So much wasted time...

[lennier1]

On the bright side, Gnome 3 and Unity are some of the best things that could have happened to Xfce, LXDE and other competitors.

Re:So much wasted time...

[Arker]

I still find it utterly unreasonable to just scrap the Gnome 2 desktop. It was the most stable, "just works" DE for *nix, and they just threw all that work out for eye candy. I tried to like Gnome 3 but it feels more like a toy than KDE4 did when it came out. It makes me wonder how many thousands of development hours were just flushed down the toilet for this. I could understand it if they used Gnome2 as the foundation, and added to it, but they didn't.

I really got a chuckle out of this. A wise man said "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" and GNOME is posterchild for that saying. The GNOME 1.x series had a lot of potential and was starting to be really usable when they scratched it entirely in favour of GNOME2. It wasnt just that 2 was released in a very early unusable state, though that was true too - but deeper design level decisions consistently ensured that, even once the bugs were worked out and the project more finished, it would certainly never be useful for me. Sure, if I had forced myself to use it for all the intervening years I suppose I could have gotten used to it - the way people eventually get used to having leprosy or chronic excema. But why would I do that to myself, and why would anyone else? Even if you agreed with the design atrocities involved in GNOME2, surely seeing that transition should have warned you that they would just scrap it and make something even more monstrous once it started to get properly polished.

And now all you fools that stuck with them through 2, submitted to their control of your computer, taught yourself to work with their broken interface and even convinced yourself it was an improvement... now they tell you to get screwed and just break it all again. I laugh.

Re:So much wasted time...

[Beelzebud]

Look at my UID number. Do you honestly think I even used Gnome 1? I mean really. Not all of us got started in the 'good old days'. For me, Gnome 2 was the reason I finally started liking Linux. When I got started with Linux the popular DEs were Gnome 2, and KDE 3. So for me this is only the second time I've seen an enormous amount of work just flushed down the toilet. Now years later KDE is actually getting pretty good, but now here we are right back at square one with Gnome.

Now you can proceed to call me a n00b fool that doesn't know wtf I'm talking about anyway, and that I should just STFU and not have an opinion, because it's just free software. Right?

Re:So much wasted time...

[Arker]

Uh, no, I wouldnt say that to you. And I certainly wasnt trying to poke fun at you personally. I know nothing about you. And lots of older posters have high UIDs.

Regardless whether or not you personally were around to see the first GNOME or not, many people now crying about GNOME 3 certainly were. I was more laughing at the collective stupidity of humanity than trying to single you or anyone else out.

But it's a fact. There once was a GNOME that was designed with user needs in mind. It was customisable and flexible. You could set *nix keyboard shortcuts and use a real WM with it, and while even the very last version lacked a bit of polish the design was pretty solid.

That design was thrown in the toilet in favour of one that consciously aimed to make everything good about it go away - forget about preserving sane shortcut keys, we decide, you comply! Repeated entreaties from users to simply restore the functionality that would allow them to *partially* undo this received rude answers. WM choice? Forget that noise. You use what we tell you to or you can screw off. The file manager? Don't even get me started. An interface to a hierarchical file system that attempts at every turn to make it look like something else? And on top of that the same program is also supposed to be your web browser? I hadnt imagined anything could be worse than IE, but Nautilus proved me wrong.

You personally may not have known the history, but lots of people did, and they get no sympathy from me now, upset that this same group of people who have already proved once that they hate *nix and hate their users would pull the exact same stunt a second time? Excuse me my chortle, and understand that it isnt aimed at you personally.

Re:So much wasted time...

[supersloshy]

I still find it utterly unreasonable to just scrap the Gnome 2 desktop. It was the most stable, "just works" DE for *nix, and they just threw all that work out for eye candy. I tried to like Gnome 3 but it feels more like a toy than KDE4 did when it came out. It makes me wonder how many thousands of development hours were just flushed down the toilet for this. I could understand it if they used Gnome2 as the foundation, and added to it, but they didn't.

RTFA:

Some of the feedback is certainly valid and we are going to use that to make informed decisions in the GNOME3 cycle - remember we've only had one release so far. In couple of the talks we pointed out that it took us eight, nine years to get to where GNOME2 ended up and we've had like four months of GNOME3. So there are plenty of things we still have to do. There are a lot of holes in our story. People will look at some things and say "Why is this there? Does this really make sense?". And in many cases that's because we didn't get to really finish that off. And that will start to fill in, the story will become a little bit more complete as we go through this cycle. I'm not saying that all this people will be completely convinced and that's unfortunate but I think over time people will realize what we are doing has been at least thought through.

Also, every single person that has a complaint, please try to read the interview instead of just trolling about GNOME 3 not being exactly what you want. John McCann is a very respectable man and he certainly knows what they're trying to do. Even if you don't like GNOME 3 as it is right now, their direction seems to make a lot of sense for the long term (pro tip: don't forget that you can use extensions to modify it to behave exactly how you'd like it to).

Re:So much wasted time...

[0123456]

pro tip: don't forget that you can use extensions to modify it to behave exactly how you'd like it to.

Yeah, that lame old excuse: 'if you don't like the default you can always write your own extensions to make it work in a sane manner'.

I'll just switch to XFCE so I don't have to spend an age working around the retarded Gnome 3 design.

Re:So much wasted time...

[deander2]

well, i do remember gnome 1. it was no panacea.
more like "barely usable" and "ugly as sin".

i agree that they {unity/gnome3} uselessly through away years of good UI engineering work. and i understand the need to move to clutter. but moving to a new framework is tough enough - don't try to re-invent the whole desktop paradigm while you're at it.

but what do i know? i'm sure a 4-digiter will swoop in here and save us from our delusions. =P

Re:So much wasted time...

[supersloshy]

I'm sure you don't use any Firefox or Chrome Add-ons, then...

Re:So much wasted time...

[supersloshy]

Jon McCann

Fixed that for myself...

Re:So much wasted time...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is exactly what I told my friend today. The history happens again :)
Gnome was working pretty well with Sawfish in 2.x but they dumped it and choosen Metacity - buggy and 10% features of Sawfish.
Then they started to produce the Nautilus. It started to be a file manager - next they wanted it to do all the things, but not file browsing (opening other applications in Nautilus - using bonobo), but the file manager function was left in semi-finished state. After 2 or 3 years wasted, it was decided that maybe it is better for a file manager to be a file manager - not a Boeing 747. The same with spatial mode - we just know better what users want. Took 2 or 3 years - I don't remember now exactly. After almost 10 years it still has no built-in support for ACLs. The speed is awful, the look no better :)
Next thing that comes to my mind is Evolution. It is like running in circles.
The sad thing is that I know no better DE for Linux. So after trying to use Linux as a desktop for about 15 years, I use Windows XP and 7. For servers I use Linux only, but for desktop? maybe in another 20 years...

Re:So much wasted time...

[Nite_Hawk]

s/through/threw

oh, and emacs sucks!

teehee

Re:So much wasted time...

[J. J. Ramsey]

I don't remember Metacity being buggy. What I do remember was that with Sawfish, the seams between it and the rest of GNOME still showed. It had its own control center, for example. On the other hand, with Metacity as the default window manager, a user wouldn't even need to know that there was this application called Metacity that provided window titlebars, etc. Configuring Metacity--what little there was--was done through dialogs that just looked like another piece of GNOME. In short, Metacity's integration with GNOME was far more seamless, and for users who didn't want to dick around with configuration and didn't even know that a focus model other than "Click to Focus" even existed, Metacity was perfectly adequate.

Re:So much wasted time...

[theolein]

Absolutely. Devs will (actually have already) start moving to XFCE and LXDE and interest in Unity and Gnome3 will die down to become a joke that people will use to refer to when discussing how to lose your user base.

Re:So much wasted time...

[lennier]

John McCann is a very respectable man and he certainly knows what they're trying to do.

Sure, but is what GNOME's trying to do even remotely close to what GNOME's users want to do?

Re:So much wasted time...

[supersloshy]

Vocal minorities != "majority of GNOME users". GNOME users like me really enjoy it, and many of the developers and designers like it too.

Re:So much wasted time...

[rubycodez]

instead of "jumping the shark", we'll say something "went all GNOME3" or "rolled out the Unity UI" or "shat the Firefox 4 5 6 7 8 9..."

written on a machine that NO LONGER runs ubuntu nor firefox nor gnome

Re:So much wasted time...

[bhampton]

ROTFL. Thanks, I really needed that.

Re:So much wasted time...

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually say nothing concrete. Why don't you name one of Gnome 2's unusable broken deeper design level decisions?
How you got modded "Interesting" is beyond me.

Re:So much wasted time...

[pwhysall]

No, you're quite correct. GNOME 1.x was a pile of bugtastic arse. It kindasorta worked, but I'm certainly not dewy-eyed about it.

Re:So much wasted time...

[Arker]

It was no panacea. 'Ugly' is a subjective judgement, I found the default ugly (but no uglier than the defaults I have seen on later versions) but at least it was open to direction.

The point, though, was it had a decent architecture at the core, one built around openness and interoperability and allowing the user to control their own box. All principles that the GNOME project clearly wants nothing to do with these days.

Re:So much wasted time...

[Arker]

Removing choices, removing interoperability, discouraging/making impossible user customisation, hiding the real attributes of the file system behind a facade... there are a few specifics to get you started.

Re:So much wasted time...

[couchslug]

I try a variety of WMs and switch back and forth between them often.

I also try a variety of distros (Virtualbox makes it absurdly easy) and find it good mental exercise.

I'm not thrilled about GNOME turning to shit, but it's no great loss either and GNOME/KDE bloatage is IMO giving a boost to light, fast alternatives.

Re:So much wasted time...

[Arker]

What I do remember was that with Sawfish, the seams between it and the rest of GNOME still showed. It had its own control center, for example.

You say that like it's a bad thing. That's exactly the sort of b0rked thinking I am talking about.

What you appear NOT to be remembering is that GNOME 1 was intentionally WM-agnostic, it had an open interface that any and every WM was welcome to use, so the user was in no way stuck with Sawfish. I didnt care much for Sawfish myself, and other than trying it out and coming to that conclusion, I never used it. You didnt have to, you could use whatever you wanted.

In short, Metacity's integration with GNOME was far more seamless, and for users who didn't want to dick around with configuration and didn't even know that a focus model other than "Click to Focus" even existed, Metacity was perfectly adequate.

Sure. Those same users dont even know *nix exists either, and they certainly dont use it. So GNOME decided to screw their entire existing userbase in order to serve... the people that are least likely to ever use it.

Re:So much wasted time...

[ReinoutS]

I could understand it if they used Gnome2 as the foundation, and added to it, but they didn't.

That makes so little sense I can hardly believe you actually wrote that. Basically, the major (visual) change between Gnome 2.32 and Gnome 3.0 is that Metacity and gnome-panel have been replaced by Gnome Shell, in the default configuration that is. Did you really think that the Gnome developers put thousands of man-hours of development effort in the trash and started over from scratch?!

Re:So much wasted time...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find it utterly unreasonable to just scrap the Gnome 2 desktop. It was the most stable, "just works" DE for *nix, and they just threw all that work out for eye candy. I tried to like Gnome 3 but it feels more like a toy than KDE4 did when it came out. It makes me wonder how many thousands of development hours were just flushed down the toilet for this. I could understand it if they used Gnome2 as the foundation, and added to it, but they didn't.

I agree. And you just wait,when they finally get this up to speed,someone will get a wild bug up their ass and they will throw it in the bin as well and start over following the latest trend like dogs after a garbage truck.
  Gnome was fine...I could do what I wanted to do with a minimal of clicks and hassle.
  Same for KDE before the same wild bug goes up the ass and inspired KDE4.
And don't even get me started on Unity.

Technical solution to cultural problem

[tepples]

From the article:

Photos were like the first to be cloud-enabled - if you will, Flickr and Picasa are enormously successful. And Documents are also increasingly cloud-hosted. Music was the latest, that was a sort of a hold-out because of a all sort of legal complications

Why would music be a hold-out? People could publish photos that they took on a web server and possibly distribute them under a license for free cultural works. (Case in point: Picasa and Flickr.) Likewise, people could publish songs that they wrote and performed on a web server and possibly distribute them under a license for free cultural works. (Case in point: the old MP3.com, and later Myspace.) Might the "legal complications" have something to do with a cultural preference for songs that established professionals in the music industry have written over songs that members of the general public have written? That says more about the lack of participatory culture in the industrialized world than about any underlying technical problem.

Re:Technical solution to cultural problem

[rekrowyalp]

Bad analogy, a photograph is a form of recording, a better analogy to publishing a photograph is to publish an MP3 of a live concert which you recorded, and that would probably have legal complications.

Re:Technical solution to cultural problem

[westlake]

Might the "legal complications" have something to do with a cultural preference for songs that established professionals in the music industry have written over songs that members of the general public have written? That says more about the lack of participatory culture in the industrialized world than about any underlying technical problem.

The first profssional songwriter in the U.S. was Stephen Foster, who was born in 1826. In 1850 the showman P.T Barnum offered Jenny Lind $150,000 for her first American tour, all expenses paid.

$3,882,061.04, adjusted for inflation.

Which suggests that the still quite rual nineteeth century American audience had had all of the "participatory culture" it could stand.

Spelling Nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

du jour meaning "of the day" in French.

yeah, I changed alright, to xfce4

[rubycodez]

eos eof

Removing the file system

[loufoque]

is what it seems they want to do.

They want to give up on the idea of organizing your files as trees. Put all your files of one type into one "application" and then use a search engine or the "recent documents" feature whenever you want to open it again.

Lately, web browsers have been trying to replace the URL bar by a search engine. This was utterly stupid.
But what they want to go? It is way beyond that. It makes absolutely no sense. UNIX was built on the idea that the filesystem is the centre of the operating system. Clearly, they have forgotten that.

Re:Removing the file system

[supersloshy]

Removing the file system is what it seems they want to do.

They want to give up on the idea of organizing your files as trees. Put all your files of one type into one "application" and then use a search engine or the "recent documents" feature whenever you want to open it again.

Lately, web browsers have been trying to replace the URL bar by a search engine. This was utterly stupid.
But what they want to go? It is way beyond that. It makes absolutely no sense. UNIX was built on the idea that the filesystem is the centre of the operating system. Clearly, they have forgotten that.

RTFA:

The file manager won't go away by any means. But it's a pretty advanced interface, that's something if you want to really mess around with your file system, if you want to do complex file organization. Also it really only works with stuff that is local - or at least pretends to be local, as we do with network file systems today.

Where in the world did you get that idea? He specifically says that file managers definitely won't go away. He's basically saying that they're not appropriate for some usages (like organizing cloud-based media) and that you shouldn't have to use one unless you'd really like to for most common use cases.

Re:Removing the file system

[loufoque]

This is exactly the bit that motivated my comment.

Notice the words 'advanced', 'complex' and 'mess around' to qualify what should be the primary paradigm to manage the computer.

Re:Removing the file system

[supersloshy]

If you don't have to use a file manager to do something that a program can automatically do for you, how in the world is that a bad thing by any means? File management will still be there of course, but most normal users shouldn't need to use it for everyday tasks.

Re:Removing the file system

[jmorris42]

> UNIX was built on the idea that the filesystem is the centre of the operating system.
> Clearly, they have forgotten that.

Nope. They (along with folk like Poettering) are members of the UNIX Haters Club. They know UNIX, they just hate it with every fiber of their being. They want to replace the UNIX Way, they disagree over exactly what the brave new future looks like but they know what they don't like.

We allowed unassimilated immigrants commit access to our cultural heritage. There is a lesson in this in/for the meatspace immigration debates.

Re:Removing the file system

[lennier]

If you don't have to use a file manager to do something that a program can automatically do for you, how in the world is that a bad thing by any means?

Because file management is a data-centric use of a computer, while applications are task-centric. And what people want to do with computers is as much or more about data-centricity than task-centricity.

If you restrict people to only manipulating files through applications, then you prevent them from using those files in unexpected (to the application designer) ways. That's not a good thing.

The correct answer is to make file managers more powerful and more easy to use, not to hide them.

Re:Removing the file system

[21mhz]

what should be the primary paradigm to manage the computer.

I'm not sure I agree. Seeing what most non-techie users do to their home folders, I can confirm that filesystem hierarchies are indeed for advanced usage and would be considered complex by the majority of people. I do prefer to keep my files neatly stacked in nested folders, but I find that my own hierarchy is often contrived; I have to fit my data organization to the limitations imposed by the folder hierarchy. What I would absolutely love is to be able to tag documents with arbitrarily many topics in the system-wide file management UI, and then find them quickly using the tags. Full text search is also great if it can be made to work fast. Kudos to anyone innovating to make this possible.

Re:Removing the file system

[supersloshy]

They're not being hidden, they're just making other programs easier to use without one.

Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[he-sk]

Early in the interview he says that they need to write apps for "things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities, that are more part of the OS than a third-party-application would be."

The only conclusion I can draw from such a statement is that the existing Gnome apps are crap. Why else reinvent the wheel?!

Re:Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[0123456]

Why else reinvent the wheel?!

Otherwise they might have to actually, you know, fix some bugs.

Re:Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[Dracos]

If these are the types of apps Gnome is focusing on, they clearly are chasing after a market that they don't have (and won't get anytime soon) while abandoning the market they do have.

Re:Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the old wheels are round and don't fit into new Gnome's triangle holes.

Re:Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[stdarg]

Being as charitable as I can, I'm thinking maybe he meant improvements to the file manager for photos music and docs. I seriously doubt they're trying to reinvent e.g. openoffice.

Perhaps it's more like the way file managers all handle thumbnails these days, and extending that to stuff like full-text search for documents, or "sounds like" search for music, etc. His comment about "basic utilities, that are more part of the OS than..." makes me think it's some non-ui stuff, like a framework for applications to plug into.

Re:Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[segedunum]

Early in the interview he says that they need to write apps for "things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities, that are more part of the OS than a third-party-application would be."

That can only make me laugh in astonishment because they spent the past decade trying to get decent apps for GTK and Gnome, and many of them had a crapload of venture capital funding pumped into them that no one got back - Nautilus and Evolution to name two. We then got a whole framework called Mono to try and develop more applications for GTK and Gnome. Now there needs to be new ones developed? Oh dear.

Re:Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[arth1]

Early in the interview he says that they need to write apps for "things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities, that are more part of the OS than a third-party-application would be."

Somehow, I doubt that the Gnome bundled apps will ever be more than token and dumbed down. Or do they really have ambitions to integrate full-featured apps in Gnome, that people can actually work with, and not just play around with?
Cause if they're not work grade, people are going to install their own apps anyhow, and the integrated features just becomes distracting bloat at best, and directly interfering at worst (like music "preview" when accidentally hovering ruining a master, or two apps fighting over the colour profile).

Re:Another photo app, document app, music app?!

[timbo234]

Exactly, with that and the comments about making a 'GNOME OS' they have some huge problems with the 're-invent the wheel' and 'not invented here' syndromes.

There are already quite capable GTK-based programs that manage photos, music, downloads and whatever else you can think of. They've been in development for years and years, often with real money (ie. paid developers) behind them at various times. It sounds like they want to create a perfect little GNOME3 world where all the apps are specifically designed for GNOME3 and follow the GNOME3 developers' user interface guidelines to the letter. They're free to try of course but it's not going to work, and even if it does it'd be pointless duplication of what we already have.

Even worse is the comment about suspend in Linux. Huge amounts of effort and resources (both paid and not) have gone into the Linux kernel and the major 'plumbing' components such as X, open-source drivers for ATI and NVIDIA, D-Bus, udev and so on to get things running as smoothly as they do today on different hardware. Starting off with a GNOME OS (even if it uses the base Linux kernel) is not going to somehow magically require less effort to get everything running smoothly, even in the extremely unlikely event that gets enough traction and developers to get off the ground.

I'm a KDE user and this confirms what I've always thought about GNOME's politics - they are focused on creating their own little world and really not that interested in interoperability.

Gnome lost me when...

[advocate_one]

they decided I didn't need to be able to tell the screensaver where my directory of slideshow images was... crap like that pi55ed me right off especially when the gnomescreensaver dude told us he wasn't going to fix it... Anyway... KDE 4 came and went... and now I'm happy with LXDE on Mint... no fscking plasma desktop memory leaks anymore... I can leave myself logged in for ages on the desktop and connect to same desktop from wherever I'm currently roaming...

Downright Nixonian... or totalitarian?

[jejones]

"Unfortunately on the internet - and in free software in particular - we have a lot of people whose voices aren't heard very loudly, and we have to take their needs into accounts as well as those who are vocal."

Go ahead and call them the "Silent Majority". You know you want to.

What really surprised me, though, was how he just came out and said you don't want to make it too easy to figure out how to change things, and that letting the user customize things is undesirable..."And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different." I think that GNOME3 really carries through the premise of gnome-screensaver, another result of Mr. McCann's work--in it, the user is the enemy, and can't be trusted not to do something evil if you let him configure things, (Kind of like the justification for DRM, come to think of it.)

Re:Downright Nixonian... or totalitarian?

[theolein]

That stood out to me as well. He basically went ahead and said "LA LA LA LA LA, I can't hear you". What was even more hilarious was when he said that the "vocal minority" was basically saying "you're wrong, I'm right" when he basically said the same thing, too.

Fuck him. Gnome is dead for me.

Re:Downright Nixonian... or totalitarian?

[advocate_one]

he's the same guy? no wonder... that gnome-screensaver debacle turned me right off gnome

Firefox release schedule

[Billly Gates]

Problem would go away with a Firefox release schedule. The old 7 year releases just do not add innovation enough. Just ask Asa Dolzter?

If we had a Firefox release schedule where every 6 - 8 weeks we have a complely new UI and to top it off ... a new API so all the scripts and preferences will need to be changed we would truly be 21st century modern. I mean Gnome 3 is sooo last April. Its August come on where is Gnome 7!

lost his way

[iggymanz]

Open source projects and their developers are losing their way, ignoring user needs and input, going off on a tangent and off the cliff

No one bothers to fork bad wares, they're just left to die

Only one?

[SwedishPenguin]

Am I the only one who actually likes Gnome 3? I've been using KDE for years, but when I wiped my laptop a few months ago, I decided to give Gnome 3 a shot and I haven't gone back. I'm still using KDE on the desktop, but I will probably try Gnome 3 there too when I have the time.
I would like an quick way to switch between windows within an application though, Alt-Tab switches between applications and each application can be expanded for all the windows, but I would like a shortcut for switching between application windows.

Re:Only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like an quick way to switch between windows within an application though, Alt-Tab switches between applications and each application can be expanded for all the windows, but I would like a shortcut for switching between application windows.

Alt+[key above Tab]

For more shortcuts see:
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

Re:Only one?

[coffee_bouzu]

I didn't care for GNOME shell at first but it's been growing on me as I use it more. The last remaining thing that I don't like are the huge buttons and menu headers on the windows. I think that it would be possible to hack in some changes for that but I haven't tried.

alt+` on a US keyboard layout (whatever the key above tab is for other layouts) switches between windows of the same application. There are some other good shortcuts in the GNOME shell cheat sheet .

Re:Only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a RedHat employee? Certainly there must be some employees there whose desktops
must have been switched to Gnome3 (or else they would get fired).

Re:Only one?

[SwedishPenguin]

I saw the cheat sheet and tried that before, but ` on the Swedish keyboard is accessed by pressing shift and the button next to backspace, didn't work. Looks like I didn't look hard enough for the configuration option though, I switched it to alt-section character (still no unicode on slashdot, wtf), works great.

Re:Only one?

[SwedishPenguin]

They should really use a key that is always in the same place regardless of keyboard layout, caps-lock would have been a better choice IMO.

Re:Only one?

[coffee_bouzu]

I thought that it wasn't limited to ` but was whatever the key is above tab for the layout currently in use. Then again, I don't know a whole lot about non-US keyboard layouts so I could well be wrong on that one.

Re:Only one?

[FireFury03]

Am I the only one who actually likes Gnome 3?

Nope, I hated Gnome 2 and have been using E17 for years instead. Just recently switched to Gnome 3 and really like it. Other than some lack of configurability (e.g. having to dig through gconf to turn off the screen saver - would it have killed them to stick a "Never" option in the screen saver timeout drop-down), I think my only real complaint is the insane OS X-alike modal application launcher buttons. (The launcher buttons change behaviour depending on whether there is another window from that application already open - if there is no other window open belonging to that app the launcher buttons open a new window, but if that application has other windows open, the launcher button simply raises all of them. i.e. if I have 15 terminal windows open and I click the terminal launcher button to get another one, it will instead raise all 15 of those windows to the foreground. This is totally nuts - as a user I don't want to have to look to see if an application is running before clicking a button in order to know what that button is going to do. If I click the application button it means I want a new window; if I wanted to switch to an existing window I would've used the window switcher; and I *never* want to raise all windows belonging to a certain application at once.)

I would like an quick way to switch between windows within an application though, Alt-Tab switches between applications and each application can be expanded for all the windows, but I would like a shortcut for switching between application windows.

Alt+` (the key above tab) does that. But one thing that I will say is that I don't understand the idea of grouping windows by parent application. It is an OS X feature I never got on with at all. As a user, I simply don't care what application owns a window - all windows should be treated equally. I don't need to know the difference between viewing a web page and viewing a PDF, as far as I'm concerned it is just content that I'm reading and I don't really care which application is being used to display that content.

Re:Only one?

[r6144]

I'm using gnome3 in Fedora 15 in almost the same way I used gnome2 a month ago or WindowMaker 10 years ago. Quite a bit of configuration and a few small patches are needed though; in particular, dynamic workspaces is unbearable when I'm used to being able to switch to another workspace with a single keystroke, although disabling it only involves removing a few lines of Javascript.

Re:Only one?

[GoingDown]

down), I think my only real complaint is the insane OS X-alike modal application launcher buttons. (The launcher buttons change behaviour depending on whether there is another window from that application already open - if there is no other window open belonging to that app the launcher buttons open a new window, but if that application has other windows open, the launcher button simply raises all of them. i.e. if I have 15 terminal windows open and I click the terminal launcher button to get another one, it will instead raise all 15 of those windows to the foreground. This is totally nuts - as a user I don't want to have to look to see if an application is running before clicking a button in order to know what that button is going to do. If I click the application button it means I want a new window; if I wanted to switch to an existing window I would've used the window switcher; and I *never* want to raise all windows belonging to a certain application at once.)

You can use middle-button or right-click/New Window for that.

But, there is interesting difference:
if you click terminal launcher with middle mouse button, it opens it on new workspace. If you click it with right mouse button and select "New window" terminal starts on current workspace.

Why is that happening? I usually want it always to start on current workspace.

Re:Only one?

[GoingDown]

For me, Alt+{key above tab} works for jumping between application windows. And I am using Finnish keyboard, so it should work for Swedish as well.

Re:Only one?

[SwedishPenguin]

Looks like it just wasn't configured by default in the arch distribution of Gnome 3, or maybe I unwittingly screwed something up. :P

Re:Only one?

[Tranzistors]

You can use middle-button or right-click/New Window for that.

But, there is interesting difference:
if you click terminal launcher with middle mouse button, it opens it on new workspace. If you click it with right mouse button and select "New window" terminal starts on current workspace.

Why is that happening? I usually want it always to start on current workspace.

Solution -- press Ctrl key and then left click.

Re:Only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

All windows should be treated equally. I don't need to know the difference between viewing a web page and viewing a PDF, as far as I'm concerned it is just content that I'm reading and I don't really care which application is being used to display that content.

+1. The designers claim their interface is "document-centric", and then group the documents by the applications that created them. Why not let the user group them by subject - that's what's important. I've never understood that to this day.

Re:Only one?

[uigrad_2000]

Alt+` (the key above tab) does that. But one thing that I will say is that I don't understand the idea of grouping windows by parent application. It is an OS X feature I never got on with at all.

I'm also impressed with Gnome 3, and have settled on it. I couldn't stand Gnome 2, and gave it up for fluxbox, but have come back now to Gnome 3.

I posted in the other gnome 3 story what I had to do to eventually accept gnome 3. Some of the default options are really bad (like disabling multiple workspaces on multiple monitors), but I've been able to cope with most, if not change them.

The Alt-` issue is something that I forgot to list. I hated it on mac, but actually think it's good on Gnome3, just because the number of terminal windows I have open is quite large (pretty much one for each workspace).

I'm still wondering how to remove this behavior. I'm sure that it can be tweaked to work like Gnome2, but haven't found the option.

That's a good sign

[dbIII]

It appears it's not meant to be taken literally, as in "different kettle of fish" or "horse of a different colour".

A what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a second ... GNOME 3 has a designer?

Re:A what?

[rubycodez]

Wait a second ... GNOME 3 has a designer?

yes, in the sense that the contents of a backed up toilet at a gas station, after a busload of passengers defecated, have designers.

Re:A what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... Designers, the people that design stuff for mystical hypothetical Just Ordinary Users(TM), not for us, real users.

Apple envy

[Anonymous Coward]

It always strikes me how obsessed some people in OSS seem to be about emulating everything that Apple does lately. File managers are a "pretty advanced interface"? It's like they couldn't quite get over the assault on their egos by all those grandaunts and Excel-using businessperson parents deriding their OSes as weird and overly complicated stuff for hackers and pimply teenagers because they couldn't start up Solitaire with one click.

I'd offer a generous donation for Apple to make McCann an offer he can't refuse. It would be a good riddance.

gnome3 - disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

I was eager to upgrade Fedora (14 to 15) but the new version was a big disappointment. After playing a bit with F15, I decided that F14 was better, but sadly had't backup. But F14 hasn't possibility to set the system-wide default theme "Solar". So I did F13 clean install, set the mentioned default theme, and did system upgrade to F14. Now for kernels 3.x rpmbuilded module-init and firmware tools from Fedora development branch. All works and I am happy. It is hard to believe, that in near future (2 years or so) I will upgrade my Gnome2/F14. Let's hope, all this mess will find some reasonable solution.

iPad envy

[greg1104]

The fact that the top thing mentioned as still needing improvement for 3.2 is "touch" reinforces the idea that this whole insanity was aimed at being more touchpad friendly all along. Why all these desktop GUIs feel they should work toward that unproductive metaphor lately boggles my mind; it's like the hipsters have taken over open-source development. When I can get a cheap touchpad 30" monitor to replace the one I use on my desktop, maybe I'll be willing to consider a move in that direction. Seems a long way off.

Re:iPad envy

[Raenex]

When I can get a cheap touchpad 30" monitor to replace the one I use on my desktop, maybe I'll be willing to consider a move in that direction.

You wouldn't want a touch interface for the desktop even then, unless you like the idea of either looking down at your monitor or having tired arms.

Re:iPad envy

[Tranzistors]

The fact that the top thing mentioned as still needing improvement for 3.2 is "touch" reinforces the idea that this whole insanity was aimed at being more touchpad friendly all along.

Conformation bias? It would be strange, if the main feature of a UI would turn out to be afterthought.

Re:Only one? No.

[spopepro]

I really like it. There are many things that work very well for me, and where I developed an immediate and natural workflow that trips me up when I switch to a different computer. I love that it uses CSS for appearance settings.

That said... it is buggy. I had to make scripts to reset my customizations that get written over every time I update. I'm a Fedora person, so I work with a reasonable expectation of what comes when living in the area between cutting and bleeding edge changes, but it doesn't quite seem ready for primetime in all honesty. But I still like it.

pigeon holed or lame duck

[Anonymous Coward]

Change for the sake of change -- It's time we all woke up.

Is It All About the Developers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am neither a GNOME 2 nor a GNOME 3 user. I am just curious to understand, given this is such a huge ongoing controversy.

I have to say that reading this interview, I am not at all surprised this all turned out so bad. He talks about 10 times as often about developers than about users. It's all about developer experience. He talks and talks about the developing process, and he seems to be totally amazed to let this all just play out (when the developers get it their way). I think this is a totally wrong approach, and there is an apparent huge disconnect between developers and users. I am not saying developers shouldn't have fun (I actually like coding), but if the #1 (or #2, soon #3?) linux desktop, targeted for hundreds of millions of users is developed like this, something is wrong.

My Daily Rage Hero

[theolein]

I absolutely agree. I was a big fan of Ubuntu until 10.10. 10.10 was amazing. Packages worked, Gnome worked, the proprietary Nvidia drivers worked and I could concentrate on installing pgAdmin, Java and other dev tools and just frigging work.

Then along came 11.04 which I tried first on a Netbook, and was wondering what the hell was happening. This was some braindead fuckface who had Mac OSX nerd envy. I'm a Mac system administrator, I own two Macs and if I want a Mac I'll use a Mac, not a fucking half-assed braindead clone by some idiot far removed from the mainstream Linux users (Yes, Shuttleworth, that's you). And peripherally I heard about Gnome 3. When I saw the first releases of Gnome 3 and that idiot presenting it, I burst out laughing. I actually did.

Who, in the name of all that's fucking holy, do these shitheads think are going to use their systems? Mac users? I find it hysterical that McCann even thinks that any casual computer using Mac user would even think of using Linux. Netbooks? Somebody ought to inform Shuttleworth and McCann that Netbooks are dead as a concept, killed by Apple's iPad, which bring us to Tablets and Smartphones. Do they honesty think that any major manufacturer is going to use any of these craptastic distros where Android fits the bill perfectly, is as open as they need it to be and satisfies almost all who use it (so much so, that Microsoft and Apple are fighting a huge legal war against it in terror).?

McCann babbles on about the cloud, because someone showed him an iPad and he came. Google has this down pat with ChromeOS. Native C/C++ code is coming to Chrome and will make ChromeOS the perfect cloud OS for anyone who wants that. I am willing to bet good money that ChromeOS with native code will have more apps written for it in its first month of existence than Gnome 3 will have had since it was released.

Who is going to write apps for Gnome3, or Ubuntu 11.10? Is someone going to port Blender, Inkscape and Gimp to either fit into Unity or Gnome 3's UI concepts? I seriously doubt that.

Don't they realise that the people who use Linux use it because of its flexibility? Here's a big hint for them: The Windows95 Windowing concept lived so long because it works. Microsoft will discover this when Windows 8 rolls round with its fucktastic HTML5 tiled interface and MS's user start complaining that although Windows Explorer was shit, at least they could find their fucking files.

Fuck them. I wish them good luck in their journey towards obscurity. Me, I'm on Mint with XFCE. Mint is switching its XFCE distro back to Debian and I'm very, very glad about that.

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[boristhespider]

I agree with absolutely all of this, except that I'll be putting Arch with XFCE on my machine instead of Mint - though I've always quite liked Mint.

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[Anzhr]

+1

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing between the tiled interface and the "classic" Windows 7 interface in Windows 8 is going to be as easy as changing virtual desktops in Gnome, so I think Microsoft is not going to discover anything. They know it, and have been knowing it for 20 years or so. They know their enterprise users want API and UI stability over any other consideration (training and migrating costs in enterprise are really huge), and home users want shiny new things, so they always manage to give the choice between both.

It's open source developers who seem to don't get it. You can't do custom aplications for a customer using a modern linux framework, because you know it will be deprecated soon, and never know when. And maintaining the deprecated version yourself is not an option, unless your customer is really huge (and why should they pay for it in the first place?). Radical changes in interface, without allowing an easyly accesible, backwards compatible GUI, is a non starter, too. No surprise Linux is nearly inexistent on enterprise desktops. It will require a lot of years of stability and confidence to reach that. And desktop developers are currently doing the opposite of what they should be doing.

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[couchslug]

Adding XFCE as an option takes a few minutes. I encourage anyone who hasn't given it a shot to try it.

You can run as many WMs as you like and try a diifferent one every login if you like, so enjoy the options!

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[walshy007]

Netbooks? Somebody ought to inform Shuttleworth and McCann that Netbooks are dead as a concept, killed by Apple's iPad, which bring us to Tablets and Smartphones.

So ipads can replace $200 or less laptops with a fully functional keyboard and complete software stack?

when you can type as fast on the ipad touch interface as you can on a physical keyboard call me

And no, I will not carry a usb keyboard around with an ipad in order to turn it into a fast, expensive but gimped laptop.

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[theolein]

I own a Netbook, a Lenovo S10. The keyboard is so cramped that it's very difficult to type at full speed. The tiny 10" sceen is pretty crap as well, with its resolution just above a moden smartphone. You want small laptops? The MacBook Air, the Acer UX21 etc, they've got it covered, with OSes that don't heave and crap out on one when all you want to do is email, web, write, photos and music. Nope, the netbook as a concept is dead. The only OS that actually makes any sense on it is currently JoliOS, a fully web based OS like Chrome. Shuttleworth and McCann made UIs for computers that went from being in to obsolescent in two years.

Tough for them. And tough for us who actually enjoyed their work until they got Mac envy.

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[walshy007]

When mobile I do all of my stuff on a eeepc1000H (oldish netbook)

It's running fedora 15 using kde as the main window manager. (and had been for years before this even became an issue)

Typing speed after the first 2-3 minutes (getting used to size change) is identical.

with OSes that don't heave and crap out on one when all you want to do is email, web, write, photos and music.

I do a hell of a lot more than that on my netbook, Although I will say I wouldn't prefer it for heavy photo editing simply because you have so much more screen real estate on a 24 inch desktop. Also for extremely heavy cpu loads (things that would typically max a 16 core machine for a few minutes) I most definitely ssh into a remote machine for it. But a macbook air isn't going to be able to take that kind of load and not be overly pressured either.

Shuttleworth and McCann made UIs for computers that went from being in to obsolescent in two years.

They can do what they like, I'm still running the latest and still just getting work done, with a far more efficient interface than that of an ipad.

So again why are netbooks 'dead'?

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't get is why upgrade? I am sticking with LTS and Gnome 2.

Re:My Daily Rage Hero

[Perky_Goth]

Because he doesn't use them, hence, they don't matter.

I like gnome 3

[Anonymous Coward]

As one of the 9 people who actually like Gnome 3 I think I need to speak up on this. When I first installed Gnome 3 I was like - coooooooooool. Not cool but coooooooool because it looked awesome. Suddenly my desktop wasn't as cluttered as it was in the days of Gnome 2 or KDE. I mean, yea I really didn't have a Desktop anymore and had to open a separate window to access files on my Desktop, but it was finally clean. I could even actually now find applications quickly. Granted, I never heard of these applications before or never would end up using them, but I really liked the ability to discover them, even if they weren't the applications I was really looking for or would ever use. After, I learned how to add my own apps to the menu and could access them in the disappearing side menu, I had easy access to my apps, well except for the ones that were open. I had a little trouble with them, but as soon as I learned how to move open apps to different Desktops and could alt tab to move between them, I was in heaven. I mean sure I could do this in Gnome 2 but being forced to have to do this because of difficulties with regular windows made me smarter. The time I spent with Gnome 3 was an awesome experience, I mean sure I totally ditched Linux to Windows 7 because of the stability I needed for development but it was really an awesome environment.

On a more serious note - I really do like Gnome 3. I think it will be an interesting platform if you have a touchscreen available. I don't like the lack of options and the difficulty in switching between it and another desktop environment. I think forcing it on users is a big mistake this early in its life cycle but I think it might evolve into something that will fit the trends that computers are headed in general.

Tablet fail

[gr8_phk]

Uh, he does kinda say that the goal is to design a tablet interface.

But he also says touch hasn't really been figured out yet. WTF? admit you're moving to something for cloud-based tablets but touch is an afterthought? Abandon the desktop and "redesign" for something else without actually doing any design. This guy has far too much word vomit and no substance.

Re:Tablet fail

[MichaelSmith]

Enlightenment has a great tablet oriented desktop and it still works fine on the desktop, and it is more configurable than gnome.

Not listening

[craigc05]

While I don't care to read anything posted by this man ever again, I can see his perspective and appreciate that he genuinely cares about the project... even if his take on things seems a little silly and sometimes tramples on my idea of what free computing should mean.

I can only believe that he doesn't speak for everybody involved with GNOME 3, and that a good many of my current negative views of GNOME 3 will be put down by 3.2 which will hopefully fuss about my video drivers a bit less (working suspend doesn't mean much if the UI doesn't load). Right now it just occupies space on my session menu and I look forward to the day that I can choose between KDE, XFCE, GNOME, and Openbox when I log in depending on how I feel at the time. There's a bit of promise in GNOME 3 and I would be happy to see it fulfilled, with the caveat that I already have an Android phone and I'm not interested in downgrading to a netbook user experience any time soon.

That said, I wasn't using GNOME 2 when it was scuttled and wasn't around when KDE 4 was brand new so I don't know what it's like to have my favourite environment of many years pulled out from under me.

Off-topic: I understand that everybody and their cousin is all about the "cheap server-side storage" ... err... "cloud" thing now, but the more I see it the more I'm reminded of my 60GB/mo. limit (+$2 per gig after... the lovely world of Canadian ISPs) and horribly slow upload speeds, am I really the only one with a worthless ISP? Is computing really getting that far ahead that everyone using their own hard drives, networks, and removable storage devices needs to be left behind? Is it even going down that path at all? It still feels like some kind of gigantic industry ploy to convince the world there's been some kind of new technological revolution (was geocities a "cloud" service? photobucket? what the hell?) , and it still sickens me to see people that should know better even using the term.

The most telling thing about it

[gr8_phk]

Slashdot comments usually have some input from "both sides". We argue about nuclear power, dark matter, illegal downloading, you name it. Sometimes there is a majority opinion and sometimes it's more divided. I just read all of the top-level comments and all of the subject lines on this and it looks unanimous. There is no debate here, gnome 3 is crap. If slashdot agrees that much, someone fucked up - and bad.

Re:The most telling thing about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Some might claim that if slashdot agrees on a subject, the opposite is clearly correct.

Re:The most telling thing about it

[SwedishPenguin]

I'm willing to out on a limb and say that most people complaining here have never tried Gnome 3 for any extended period of time. Taking one look and saying "this isn't how I usually do things" is not a valid criticism.
Personally I like Gnome 3, but to each their own.

Re:The most telling thing about it

[rhendershot]

I've had Fedora 15 installed in a VM as well as a native partition since it came out. I'm bit by the ATI graphics problems but the VM works fine - after several weeks of updates from both the dist, rpmfusion, and virtualbox. I've kept them both updated at about once a week and try them at each of those points. I knew going in that it would not be "how I was used to", but that is a valid criticism - just weighted differently from the following:

I *hate* the gnome shell.
- I want Seconds displayed wherever possible (eg. Calendar and Clock as well as file times)
- I want to easily encrypt my sensitive files and settings
- I want to have a one-click shortcut to launch an application. An extra click is acceptable to open a collection of similar favorites (eg. Drawer), though why hover never was implemented I don't know
- I want such a shortcut to always (try to) initiate a new instance of that application. [note below]
- I want a quick large storage area for temporary shortcuts (eg. Desktop) which might be files, applications, links, mounts, etc. - the more variety of supported types the better.
- I think the distinction between /home/username/.gconf and /home/Home/.gconf is important
- I want to be able to resize as many dialog windows as possible
- I want a visual indication of activity on other virtual desktops
- If I start typing on an empty virtual desktop I would like a search dialog to open. Both G2 and 3 make me go into a Search context, with differing levels of complexity to get there, before I see results. (eg. G R ). It's odd that GnomeShell makes ALt-F2 run dialog modal.

Fedora built the infrastructure to examine Gnome3 as a Spin but then did not. It's buggy and premature and should not have been released as the primary system.

I took this as a chance to finally try out Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity and truthfully as I match up my reqs I think it comes closer than does Gnome3/GnomeShell. I installed linuxmint on my laptop for a late-July travel vacation b/c of home/ encryption and expectation of a longer life for Gnome2. There's a fair chance that a month from now I'll have switched to Unity but that depends a lot on Fedora 16. I'm finding no reason to push my laptop back to a RedHat-related dist and Gnome3/Shell is a huge factor there.

I cannot truly emphasise how big the "not how I'm used to" is. A big problem with the rollout was the lack of information readily available towards transitioning from Gnome2. I think Jon McCann seriously undervalues its reception and is failing ivory-tower style.

YMMV
-RSH

@SwedishPenguin - I think you have a vested interest in the success of Gnome3/Shell.

[note] I was unaware of the context menu in Favorites that allow launching a new instance. Why does running instances not show on hover?

Re:The most telling thing about it

[rhendershot]

that should be:

  eg. G R

the search term is GR so Gramps program is displayed in results.

Re:The most telling thing about it

[graphius]

I think the problem is that designers think everyone uses a computer the same way. There are features of Gnome(x), KDE, Windows and OSX that I like, and things that drive me nuts. For my daily personal desktop, I have a gnome 2 system tweaked to the way I like it. Every once and a while I try something else, and even start customizing it, and there it is. Sometimes a desktop is just not customizable enough for me to live with. Why can't designers leave us options, even if they are hidden? For example, the Ubuntu Unity bar HAS to be on the left hand side of the monitor. Why can't I move it to the right? Even in win7 I can move the taskbar to the top or right as I see fit...

Re:The most telling thing about it

[Tranzistors]

Slashdot is not a tolerant bunch. All my friends I have shown the GNOME 3 shell rather liked it. Some have even dropped their favourite distribution to one that supports gnome shell properly. I (and others) could join this conversation and fight to death about why gnome shell is better, but why would anyone do that? Nobody so far has even mentioned that gnome panels continue to live in gnome 3 and can be accessed with a flip of an option. That alone is an indication, that this is mass psychotherapy where everyone just releases the steam and no intelligent conversation is welcomed.

Re:The most telling thing about it

[SwedishPenguin]

@SwedishPenguin - I think you have a vested interest in the success of Gnome3/Shell.

Haha, the only vested interest I have is as a user, I do speech recognition and machine learning, not UI design. I haven't had any problems, but then I haven't installed it on my desktop with Nvidia video yet, only on my laptop which has integrated Intel video...

Re:The most telling thing about it

[rhendershot]

ok I stand corrected. sorry.

Gnome3 and RHEL

[tuxicle]

What I'd like to see is what Red Hat will do when it has to release RHEL 7 - will it go with Gnome3 or stick with something sensible? I can't imagine running a workstation on which one is expected to do actual work with Gnome3.

Keyboards and Touch interfaces

[BobDowling]

As someone who uses a Linux desktop at work essentially non-stop the great thing about the "old" GNOME 2.x interface was how powerful the keyboard access was. The HI Guidelines did a fine job of making sure I only needed to touch my mouse for certain positioning operations and object selections in a few apps. Navigation through the system didn't need me to move my fingers away from the keyboard.

To date, though I'm still practicing, I can barely launch applications from the keyboard. It used to be [Alt]+[F1]+[arrow keys through categorized menus]. Now it seems to be [Alt]+[F1]+[guess the name of the application]. I can't seem to browse categories the way I used to.

Tabbing now seems to be between applications rather than between windows in an application so I have to reach for the mouse to select a window. I never needed the mouse to select a window before. Am I missing something?

There used to be a geometric layout of desktops. I bound semantics to my layout for really fast mental switching. Now there is only a growable, linear list of desktops. How is this linearity an improvement? (If you are interested my approach is to have two rows. The upper row is for running applications and the lower row is for support activity: browser windows at docs, terminals set for screen capture etc. Each column - and I have six on the fly by default - is for a separate activity.)

The comments on touch suggest to be that the designers of GNOME 3 have fixated on a single user group: the light-weight occasional user. They seem to have screwed the heavyweight user in the process, though.

Note that there's a lot of "seems" in the text above. Another annoying shortcoming of GNOME 3 is the lack of documentation about keyboard shortcuts. Is there a definitive list of all of them anywhere? I searched the GNOME website but came up empty. Perhaps "keyboard" is the wrong term to use.

Re:Keyboards and Touch interfaces

[greg1104]

For the launching from the keyboard problem, I solved all those issues for myself by installing Synapse; I believe I used install instructions here. Once installed and setup to run at startup, I have mine configured to work by hitting Ctl-Space. Bring the UI up, it quickly learns about any application you use regularly and makes launching faster than any of the approaches you mentioned.

A similar app you might consider instead is called Gnome DO.

Think different.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. I could have written this very same rant before I went and got my first PowerBook several years ago. Since switching to OS X, I have never looked back. Linux is fine if you feel like spending your free time dealing with idiot crap like this, but some of us have reached the point where we need to stop fucking with our operating system and do something productive.

What about XFCE & LXDE ?

[luk3Z]

Now I'm waiting for interview with XFCE and LXDE designer.

OS vs DE

[unixisc]

Well the actual quote was, "I really think from an end-user perspective and a third-party-developer perspective GNOME and KDE are different operating systems. As much as MeeGo is a different operating system," and to an extent I can see his point from a end-user perspective. Obviously the underpinnings are the same, but for non-technical users who only use the GUI and never see/care what's below,l it's a significantly different experience. Especially with how Gnome and KDE these days even handle interacting with hardware slightly differently (e.g. GVFS v.s. KIO).

When I started, I started w/ Gnome2, but found it pretty limited. Then one day, I logged in w/ KDE, and pretty much liked it. On my laptop, I have 2 user logins - one for my work related stuff, and another for my personal stuff. I made KDE the default for one, and Gnome the default for the other. Eventually, after working on both for a while, I finally switched the other account to KDE. Just used different KDE themes on them. I just love how KDE even allows you to go retro and use themes from DEs like CDE, Motif, OpenLook, etc. Gnome is sooo limited in this department - and for themes, say I picked a certain theme, it locked too many other attributes (such as my Window look, icon appearance, etc) to it. But back to my point - on the same OS, I used both Gnome & KDE, and sometimes, KDE applications like krita under Gnome. Sometimes, the colors i set in the KDE control center was used by those KDE apps in the Gnome environment, which didn't necessarily turn out well, but that was something I had chosen, and not the default behavior. But from everything I'm reading, Gnome3, instead of putting more flexibility in one's hands, is more restricted. I do wish Gnome had focused on the Object Model Environment or borrowed concepts from GNUSTEP, instead of just trying to make the desktop dumbed down - people who want that ain't likely to use Linux or any Unix OS (OS-X doesn't count here) in the first place.

No deadlines == No accountability

[unixisc]

Well, Hurd is open source, and it has no deadlines. They can take forever to fill up that last piece of the GNU jigsaw puzzle.

I do think that the first working model should be available in a reasonable amount of time, and then do incremental improvements/improvisations regularly, not only so that people know that the project is actually alive, but also to keep people's interest alive, and also have more people use those changes. When you have developers go into a black hole and see a page that still has stuff from 20 months ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that the project is hung out to dry.

total crap moving to lxde

[Anonymous Coward]

Best thing to happen to Lxde, Xfce

Interview claim is made that it touch based (whoops no keyboard)

The interview explains a lot

[xiando]

I actually read the whole interview and it explains why GNOME 3 turned out to be such a big pile of donkey dung. Yes, I tried it, I actually decided that I had to try it a whole week since it's apparently the future of GNOME. I switched to XFCE, I do not think I will switch back ever. As for the future of GNOME, I seriously do not think it has any and the interview made that much more clear. What this guy said indicates, to me, that GNOME 3 will only get worse. "Let's listen to those users who are not voicing their opinion because they DON'T EXIST, NOBODY LIKES GNOME3, EVERYBODY HATES IT, and just ignore 99.8% of the GNOME 2 users who hate GNOME 3 completely.". Sure, good luck with that. Slashdot should do a pull: Do you a) hate or b) like GNOME3. Really. I'll be amazed if more than a few percent prefer GNOME3 over GNOME2.

Re:The interview explains a lot

[maxwell demon]

I actually read only part of the interview. But that part was enough to show me that I'll go away from GNOME. Their vision simply doesn't match my expectations. I don't want a tablet-cloud interface on my desktop. I want a desktop interface. Also, I want unification of handing of different file types, not specialized organisation for different file types.

gnome-shell is actually quite easy to fork...

[r6144]

I can modify the Javascript in gnome-shell and then restart it with Alt+F2 r. Other applications on the desktop just keep running. So it is really much easier to fork than OpenOffice or the kernel.

git is really a godsend for those who want to modify the source. I do wish that Fedora make it easier to prepare a git tree from a .src.rpm though. Currently I have to clone from upstream, find the exact version that the .src.rpm is based on, then apply the patches in the rpm, which is definitely not very user-friendly.

For Balance

[rdnetto]

I can see the value of a touch screen oriented interface. I'm running Ubuntu on an Asus Transformer, which has a touch screen* (and the keyboard disconnects, effectively turning it into a tablet). But I'm using KDE over Gnome 3. Gnome 3 looks like it may have potential, but only as a tablet OS. For anything else, Gnome 2 / KDE are better choices. Maybe in a year or two I might revisit it, but for now it's far too unstable.

*Actually, since I'm yet to get the touchpad working (the kernel is a work in progress), the touch screen is the only interface apart from the keyboard.

Konqueror as web browser

[unixisc]

I was talking about Konqueror as web browser - my main problem w/ it in that aspect was that I couldn't view YouTube videos there due to their problems w/ Flash. I hope the latest version has some standard implementation of HTML5 for video, such as webM or 264.H, so that I don't run into that issue. I'd keep Konqueror as web browser - had no problems w/ it. Do hope that I have the option of not installing redundant utilities like Dolphin, Nautilus or anything else - I'm happy w/ one app doing the job. I normally use several browsers for different websites - and the ones I had been using were Konqueror, Firefox, Opera & Flock. Of course, Flock is now gone, so I plan to use the other 3. Only other thing I wish all browsers had - the same ability as Firefox to stage RSS bookmarks on the Bookmarks toolbar. Right now, all Firefox derivatives, as well as IE8+ have it, but not Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany and Safari. Wonder about Camino, though!

silent majority

[Anonymous Coward]

The lurkers support me in email ...

No it is a known bug

[SmallFurryCreature]

The problem is simple, KDE doesn't realize that most apps can understand samba like paths so it thinks, "Hey, I don't know this app (mplayer) so it might not get this url so I just copy it to temp and give it that". It is a known bug.

Gnome/Ubuntu does it different by mounting samba shares on the fly and simply giving the path to that. It is not perfect either because that mount point is in a hidden dir which not all programs can open in their file open dialog.

Try this. Kubuntu, install smplayer or vlc and open a file on a samba share. Happy copying.

Solaris 12

[unixisc]

I have the same question on Oracle - what will they do when they release the next version of Solaris? Will they go w/ Gnome 3, can they stick w/ (and even fork) Gnome 2, or switch to KDE or XFCE or revert to CDE? Maybe, they could even go to OPENSTEP/Solaris, or try porting GNUSTEP to Solaris?

Or have they decided to freeze that and use Linux instead? Incidentally, which DE/UX does Oracle prefer for Linux - KDE or Gnome? Or something else?

GNOME should be ASSIMILATED...

[unixisc]

...by GNUSTEP!!!

Same as gnome?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Mplayer can read samba url, so simply pass that url?

There are many non-kde apps, making it hard to use them with network shares just is not userfriendly. Come on, other desktops handle this, KDE can to.

It for me is a sign of the big two, they focus on next generation wet dreams but can't even get the basics right.

GNOME 3 drove me to KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

As I read this, I'm currently migrating to KDE. Memtest86+ is running on the machine I'm migrating to right this moment. I have been a Fedora user since the Red Hat Linux days, and used GNOME exclusively. GNOME 3 is so crippled that I am migrating to KDE to get the functionality back that GNOME 2 has.

I am one of the silent majority. I don't do flame wars, or ideological debates. I just use Linux to get my programming work done. GNOME 3 is a huge, gigantic disruption that will cost me a lot of time as I migrate (I needed to migrate to a new computer anyway, though) and learn all the KDE quirks (like I learned the GNOME 2 quirks).

GNOME 3 is a travesty, an intentionally crippled and useless desktop that violates every workflow approach I've adopted over the past decade. Random virtual desktops coming and going are crippling to me. I have ten virtual desktops, all of them with specific purposes, and I want all of them to be there, in order, all the time.

I wouldn't mind if GNOME had added a few experimental features. What i don't like is that GNOME INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLES ITSELF IN VERSION 3 FOR NO REASON, BY REMOVING FUNCTIONALITY THAT IS ALREADY THERE. This is stupid, and I don't care what rationalization the "designer" has for it. They can add and remove eye candy, which I don't care about as long as Emacs and Tomcat run and I have a JDK I can use. But to destroy a decade of user interface usability for no reason and replace it with an unusable mess that has no forethought or planning, just random features that look like an embedded operating system, is stupid. GNOME is stupid.

I almost pulled the plug on Fedora itself. I have to use IBM software (WebSphere, etc) and it works first and best on Fedora, so I haven't, but I came --that-- close to moving to SuSE or some other Linux.

For an actual user trying to get work done, GNOME 3 is a total loss. Besides users trying to get work done, I don't know who the target audience for GNOME actually is.

GNOME OS

[unixisc]

Why not declare GNOME OS == HURD? As it is, HURD's capabilities are not mature, so put GNOME 3 on top of HURD, so that all HURD has to do is provide the limited services that GNOME 3 needs.

Oh, and the device drivers - I'm sure they'll be GNOME drivers, not HURD drivers! /sarc>

Re:GNOME OS

[obi]

I see you're out to prove that sarcasm really is the lowest form of wit.

Photo of a copyrighted painting or sculpture

[tepples]

Bad analogy, a photograph is a form of recording, a better analogy to publishing a photograph is to publish an MP3 of a live concert which you recorded, and that would probably have legal complications.

What more legal complications would an MP3 of a live concert have over a photograph of a copyrighted painting or sculpture? I expect the answer to begin with the form "Most photographs are of X, whereas most MP3s are of Y."

Re:Photo of a copyrighted painting or sculpture

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a hell of a lot easier to take a good photo than it is to record a good piece of music.

Follow the money

[Anonymous Coward]

He is at Red Hat. Who put money into Red Hat?? Go figure........

I'm still bummed he didn't win the election.

[gjcamann]

He would have made a great president.

Fork Gnome

[CFBMoo1]

I seriously hope someone forks Gnome 2.x. If I had the time and knowledge to work on something this big I'd do it but I don't. Till then I'm using Gnome 2.x till the 10.4 LTS runs it's course and then going to XFC. I didn't need this crap when KDE did the 3.x to the 4.x transition and I don't need it with Gnome either. Start a new project and leave the old one chugging along as it is if you want to play with touch screens. That way those of us who don't want that can live happily with our existing interfaces that just work.

On a side note, if you think Windows is stable for an interface look. They've already started talking about similar changes and had some early previews of the nightmare that is to be Windows 8. It's getting the touch screen makeover as well but at least they're keeping the Windows 7 look somewhat even though it'll be married to the Windows Phone 7 tile interface.

Gnome Not Listening to Users, Ignoring Usability

[BrendaEM]

Gnome turning its back on usability. They are making a bimbo GUI that looks good, emulating Mac's, but time after time, they are making style sacrifices usability for style. While it might look clean, there they are putting more and more mouse clicks between the user and their documents.

We don't need a program driven GUI; we work with file and documents. We always work with files and documents. Those who believe that things should be program driven -- sell programs for a living.

They should center on Gnome and a file manager, perhaps still nautilus, which never gets enough attention or bugfixes. Gnome just works on what gets people's attention, but does not work on the basics.

Gnome should focus on modularity and devote more time on their core functions. Presently Gnomes "improvements" come from Rojin-z program additions, which have to be maintained and integrated. Just make a GUI, will you!

Some years ago, I made a donation to Gnome. I don't see that ever happening again. I want the current leadership removed, and I think that they should start listening to users. Until then xfce would seem like my next desktop.

Android UX?

[unixisc]

Is Gnome the UI that's used in Androids? I don't have an android, so no idea, but if it is, I'd say the Gnome 3 limitations are right for a phone. Just that I'd not make the same conclusions about a desktop, and would have re-named Gnome3 something else and forked, instead of continuing on the Gnome tree.

Fork for Gnome 2?

[zaivala]

So is someone going to step up and fork Gnome 2.6.x to keep a good thing going (and supported)? It seems every time I find good software, they "improve" it. 90% (subjective) of the "improvements" take the product farther away from what I find "useful".