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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."
...is still mad about Gnome 3.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
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!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"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.)
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:
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.