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Interview With GNOME 3 Designer Jon McCann

Posted by samzenpus on from the point-and-counterpoint dept.

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."

4 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. Translation: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  2. Re:So much wasted time... by Arker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  3. Another photo app, document app, music app?! by he-sk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?!

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    Free Manning, jail Obama.
  4. iPad envy by greg1104 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.