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GNOME 3: Beauty To the Bone?
someWebGeek writes "According to the GNOME design crew, as reported by Allan over at As Far as I Know, GNOME 3 will represent a new approach to GNOME application design. The design patterns being developed and employed may effect a new, prettier interface, but more importantly a new mindset about the entire project, a mindset intended to encourage greater deep beauty in the application layers below the user interface. Maybe...for now, I'm sticking to the sinking ship of KDE in the Ubuntu ocean."
Developers at Gnome have reduced the entire UI to a single button and they're even trying to get rid of that.
Awful desktop design. I *need* multiple windows displayed, *NOT* maximised to a single task view.... *LAMERZ*
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
It takes just a minute to make XFCE look and act pretty much like GNOME 1.
I think you can clone GNOME 2 as well, but I always configured that to be like GNOME 1 so quickly that I barely saw it. :-) Why you'd want bars at top AND bottom of the screen is a mystery to me, but XFCE does support it. The same goes for desktop icons: you can have it if you want it.
I have my menu, my task switcher, my desktop switcher, my clock, and my xterm launcher. Life is good with XFCE.
and that damn sidebar that interferes with the app you are trying to use.
Can I say it? Please?
XFCE4
I wait with baited breath for a hopefully usable system, unlike the current gnome shell, and most especially unlike unity. I want applications that remember their states and can be saved and restored (gconsole, I'm looking at you in particular) and otherwise the ability to organize my working day properly on desktop and laptop.
Support tablet all you want, but don't remove support for desktop and laptop - like unity did.
I have been using Gnome 3 for the last 3 months and I really like it. I got it using Debian http://cut.debian.net cut release and it works great and was an easy way to get into Debian testing. I have Gnome 2 at the office with an LTS Ubuntu and I am just waiting for some free time to switch.
Things I like:
- Look seems updated & clean (simple top menu bar)
- Hidden dock (containing my favorite apps)
- Hot corner (shows all running apps)
- Instant app / file search
Things I hate:
- No minimize buttons
- Hidden desktop icons
- The bottom notification area
- Needs better UI consistency behind the scenes (ex. System Settings looks unorganized and messy, etc...)
- Consider putting any common app menu items in the top menu bar
I do prefer it over Ubuntu's default UI and KDE so far... :)
Just my two cents
- stoops
How many xterms fit on the screen? And does it do edge-flip?
Everything else is fluff.
I see that the GNOME 3 developers have resorted to posting anonymously.
I tried Mint 12 and went back to 11 because I did not like GNOME 3. Why are they saying "will" like it hasn't come out yet?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
"but more importantly a new mindset about the entire project, a mindset intended to encourage greater deep beauty in the application layers below the user interface" No. Not "more importantly". No one cares about the "deep beauty" in the application layers or anywhere else besides the user interface. The most important thing for a desktop to get right is the user interface. Everything else is just codemonkies masturbating.
Plenty of people use tablets and phones that don't have multiple windows. And not to sound like an old fart, but let's not forget that up until the mid 80's most computers barely had any multi-tasking at all, let alone multiple windows.
And what do multiple windows really give you? Inefficient usage of your screen? The hassle of dragging titlebars and fiddling with window grips? A paradigm where dragging and dropping an object causes an unpredictable IPC interaction?
Seems to me multiple windows is more of a bug than a feature.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
at KDE.
But that's what the usability studies indicate that users want this.
The ONLY reason you don't love it yet, is because you haven't learned the new paradigm, or you're too stupid to do so.
Ok, no more negative feed back please, La la la la la la la I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
I for one, love cinnamon. http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ :D
g0t b33r?
Just when I thought I could maybe settle in with Gnome3 on my Fedora 16 running, 11" laptop, I read this and was reminded why I hated Gnome3.
They go on about the efficiencies of maximized windows? REALLY? I'm not one of those users. I prefer overlapping windows so I can see movement in them when something changes. Yes, I know I can still do that, but tweaks are necessary.
Another thing that's getting to me is the wild mouse movements required to navigate around. Go to one corner to change to the window changing mode, then go to the opposite corner to do something with the windows like move it to another virtual display or something. Did they consider what a pain that actually is for people with touchpads or those stupid keyboard joysticks? Worse, what does it mean for the disabled?
It's not just different. It's different without a cause or a purpose. It's really stretching things to assert "an old person's user philosophy" where windows should always be maximized over others where people like to be able to easily and more quickly select and work with objects between windows. (Ain't much drag-n-drop with maximized windows is there?)
Linus Torvald's words keep coming back to mind... "unholy abomination" I believe they were.
I want applications that remember their states and can be saved and restored (gconsole, I'm looking at you in particular) and otherwise the ability to organize my working day properly on desktop and laptop.
WINDOWS doesn't run on Linux.
Why you'd want bars at top AND bottom of the screen is a mystery to me, but XFCE does support it.
I understand why you say this but really there is a menu at the top and a dock at the bottom. In the early days Gnome and KDE were cloning Windows-like paradigms, but increasingly they clone Mac paradigms, which is why they opted for a dock I'm sure. Honestly, unless you are stuck on a small monitor, there is no real reason to cram UI elements in the corner and even Windows these days is becoming much-much more doc-like. First, they made their task bar into a large pseudo-dock and with Windows 8 they are going to remove the start button, making it even more Mac-like.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I really tried using Unity for a week or so but NEEDED to move the launcher / dock thingy to a different screen edge. (reasons below)
First, I tried the obvious click-dragging move - nothing happened
Ok, I told myself. This is open source software! must be a config file somewhere so I googled. Found a post from Shuttleworth himself saying:
Fixed by design? but I want to move it! I'm running ubuntu inside Virtualbox. I NEED both 'dowze and 'nix and the windows host / linux guest config works best for me. I also give that Linux guest a monitor to itself - on the right. Because it's on the right, the left edge of the linux screen jumps the mouse pointer back to the left screen and into the windows host system. So when trying to use the dock with autohide on (i want to use all of my screen when coding) I'd keep touching the edge of the screen and the dock would disappear.
I've got no problem with these design decisions from valuable end-user testing being used to setup defaults but both Gnome and unity seem hell-bent on FORCING you to use their new design paradigms and guess what? It just doesn't suit all use cases.
This being open source, it didn't take long for a whole bunch of options, wokarounds and custom docks to appear but for fuck's sake stop telling me how to use MY computer.
Am currently reasonably happy with KDE - Don't think I'll be going anywhere near Unity or Gnome for a very long time.
If you like Mint then you might want to check out Cinnamon, that clem is making.
I can't wait for it to be available for debian (may end up building it myself) but it looks like the start of a sane desktop based on GTK3 and GNOME 3, but without the steaming pile that is GNOME Shell.
This looks horribly annoying. I don't know what they are aiming for, but it appears they are making Gnome like iOS. Who thought that would be a good idea? Bye bye gnome!
If it breaks my way of operating a computer. Yes gnome3 is pretty, yes gnome3 does have some interesting idea's, yes gnome3 is a fucking pain in the ass and gets in the way all the damn time.
I lasted a whole 3 months with it, then rolled back to gnome2, sure its ugly, sure it has its problems as well, but wow its like using a modern computer, not mac OS6, I can put shortcuts on my desktop without switching DM's, I can right click options that in gnome3 require 3rd party shit and editing a text file, I can make a pile of virtual desktops and not play mind games to get them to show up (like maximize 1 app so desktop2 shows then right click and move bullshit), and if my mouse happens to hit the corner of the screen the whole fucking thing doesnt insta break, zoom out, and require me to select something before I can get back to what I was doing (even windows7 got that right)
Have the tried the MATE fork of Gnome2? http://mate-desktop.org/
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
For you, maybe. Not for everyone.
I prefer multiple monitors with multiple windows on each monitor. And none of them maximized.
Yeah. It's 2012 now.
I don't agree with those design changes. I don't see the advantage of trying to copy a single interface from the most limited systems to all systems. Particularly ones without the limitations of the systems that drove those restrictions in the first place.
My work requires me to frequently copy and paste from one window to another, or to compare the contents of one window to another, or I switch to another task while I keep an eye on window waiting for a task to finish. A single maximized window would be horribly inefficient for me, not to mention a stupid waste of space (I have a 2 monitor setup -- there is only so much usable width in a broswer window).
It's one thing to set the default to be optimized for maximized windows, but make it impossible for me to reconfigure it to work well with multiple windows and your window manager becomes useless for me.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is absolutely horrible, and whoever came up with this thing, should resign from GNOME and go work for Google on Android-without-Java, because this is where it belongs.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Long live MATE.
Strangely, I just recently installed Ubuntu 11.10, and GNOME 3 on top of it. I couldn't be happier with it. I can move some stuff to another desktop if I need to, and it's easy enough to switch between them. It's also easy to switch between programs. I don't get the hate, to be honest. I also finally took the plunge and installed OSX on my mid-2009 MacBook Pro, which had been running Windows since I got it. Now that's a freaking great user interface.
I tried Mint 12 and went back to 11 because I did not like GNOME 3. Why are they saying "will" like it hasn't come out yet?
I'm using the MATE UI (GNOME 2 fork) on Mint 12 and it's great.
Hey, GNOME team - I really want to like & use your stuff. It looks neat. But - I earn my living with this 'user interface' each and every day. I don't spend the day playing music and splashing paint on brick walls wondering what bark is made of...
I write code. Lots of code. I have 10-15 editor windows open on 2 or 3 desktops. I deal with 200 emails a day, while on conference calls with customers, while trying to 2 other things (usually poorly, but that's not the point). My computer life isn't as simple as opening 1 program.
I need the ability to be productive all the time. Please, write up user-stories based on what your kernel developer friends needs. Look at what people like Linus need. Please help us!
The problem is not they are trying to innovate, that is fine and needed, but they are trying to do it at the cost of what is old, familiar and functional when you could have both things. Just look at all the work with Cinnamon and MATE to have what we already had but lost without much reason. With Gnome 4 they probably will remove the terminal. Why should we bother with another level of complexity?
No i haven't but will take a look when/if i get time.
Generally, I spend a bit of time playing with desktops when a new linix based project turns up and my current distro is starting to look old. I then spend time installing a new distro but it's not long before system tweaking time starts in eat into what should be productive dev time and my patience starts to tip downhill.
I've never yet seen a Linux system I can just start using straight away - but maybe I'm just too fussy.
open source design i.e. design by commitee/mob has not and will never work.
Seems like a million years ago now that I left Windows 98 for Mandrake Linux running KDE 2. I was amazed at how good it was and how easily it installed. I still kept Windows around so that I could play games and deal with multimedia, but most of my work was done in Linux.
Then came KDE 3. I liked it. Then came KDE 4. I hated it. I tried Gnome 2, got used to it and decided I liked it. Then Gnome 3 came along and I almost gave up.
Instead of all of this "me, too!" stuff, and trying to emulate Android on the desktop, why not something really revolutionary? Here's just one example: most of us have lots of resolution and nice big monitors now. Why not a USEFUL 3D desktop? For example, opened windows can be scrolled into the background with the mouse wheel; just hover the wheel over it and a pop up reminds you what that particular window is, and if you want to bring it back to the foreground, scroll the mouse wheel the other way. Make it a true 3D desktop that lets me navigate through everything just like I'm strolling through a neighborhood.
No, instead, we get windows that fade in and out (when they don't hang my system -- I had to turn Plasma off) and other *extremely* useful innovations.
I've never understood. There are no rules, so why not just try something completely different? After all, one of the killer apps that made the original PC indispensable was a little program called Lotus 1 2 3 (showing my age now; for you kids, it was around LONG before Excel even existed).
Linux has a very, very, VERY good kernel. It's about time that it had a really, really revolutionary desktop, one that doesn't copy anything else, or try to be anything else, but one that simply revolutionizes how we work on these bloomin' little thingies called "pee cees."
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
to make everything look like an interface suitable for tablets. Contrary to what developers think, not everyone wants an iPad-like interface. It doesn't simplify anything. I want elegance *and* the ability to configure my DE/WM the way *I* want it. Gnome 3 basically reduces my idea of what usable is. KDE has too many options and they are not centrally located. Gconf is OK, but is based on XML. I want old-school text should I want to edit something. I really miss WindowMaker. It's a shame it's not being developed anymore. Maybe LXDE...
This is why I uninstalled the Gnome 3 desktop on my Ubuntu 12.04 system and I managed to get the MATE desktop installed instead. I do not want a glorified tablet interface on a desktop machine. Even the Afterstep and Enlightenment E16 interfaces are better than Gnome 3. Afterstep at least is based on a NextStep interface and has some sort of heritage. Gnome 3 is just stupid. Sure I am running a alpha release of Ubuntu, but this is Linux and I expect my software to work and not copy the tablet interface just because it is the trendy thing right now.
The Gnome 1.0 interface http://www.blogger.am/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/gnome-1.gif was a simple interface, the Red Hat desktop kept this style of desktop for a while with the single panel on the bottom of the screen just like Windows `95, then they moved to the two panels, but you could still change it to look like Gnome 1.0. Nowadays the whole interface is crap.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
Lots of comments about "I like multiple windows". good. in GNOME 3 they still have multiple overlapping windows. What the article is about is making applications maximise by *default* ***when it makes sense for them to do so*** .... which for a lot of apps I think will work well, especially on smaller screens. Now I hope they don't forget the use cases where multiple windows are a plus but my reading of the article is that it is up to the application designer to apply the pattern and design the application so that it will work well maximised by default if possible. So the kneejerk reactions of "OMG its different to what I already have" and "GNOME3 designers are facists" are a bit premature. Personally I encourage any attempt to eliminate the time wasted trying to optimally arrange windows or time spent fruitlessly changing customisable preferences because the designers are too lazy to find sensible defaults.
I have a 24" screen. Why would I ever maximize a window other than, say a game or Google Earth? I have a "windowing" system for a reason. Fixed-width layouts on the web are common as well and on a large, high res screen you're going to have either a very large window with a lot of blank space, or a window with very zoomed-in text. Maybe they are catering to the ADHT-type people, but I run a Window Manager for a reason. I can kind of see where they are going (and apps aren't forced to be maximized), but I have some serious doubts.
I can't stand Gnome anymore. Not with the unity thing, and especially not with this crap. I keep asking myself who their UI designers are really trying to please with these asinine ideas. All this maximized by default crap says to me is "wasteful". Look at all the whitespace around the application contents. Why is that preferred to having a titlebar and being able to see more than one window? It certainly isn't to me. I would very much like to be able to see more than one application at a time thank you very much. I've since moved to XFCE. Much more sane in my opinion.
Uh huh. Huhuhuh he said "Bone". Uhuhuhuhuh!
I've got no problem with these design decisions from valuable end-user testing being used to setup defaults but both Gnome and unity seem hell-bent on FORCING you to use their new design paradigms and guess what? It just doesn't suit all use cases.
This being open source, it didn't take long for a whole bunch of options, wokarounds and custom docks to appear but for fuck's sake stop telling me how to use MY computer.
That sums it up for me as well. Do what you want but let me keep my shit!
Am currently reasonably happy with KDE - Don't think I'll be going anywhere near Unity or Gnome for a very long time.
Probably why Ubuntu is dumping it, then. There are not enough face-palm pictures on the entire Internet for this shit.
Virtual desktops are great for organization of your open windows. Having everything on one desktop, gives you no logical grouping of applications. Indeed, the keyboard shortcuts for switching between open applications are different if those applications are on separate desktops.
For example, one may have the following:
Desktop1: console
Desktop2: todo list, notes, and time tracking for billing
Desktop3: Gimp and all of its toolbars, file browsers
Desktop4: Gvim or editor of choice
Desktop5: Web browser(s)
Desktop6: Music player
Once you become consistent, you know that you can use a keyboard shortcut to switch to any of these windows, without having to Alt+Tab cycle through them. This is a great reason to keep Gimp on it's own virtual desktop, since there is an application window created for the main program, each open file, and each toolbar. The same can be said for browsers and their developer plugins. Applications which are related, logically, and that you switch between often can be on the same desktop. YMMV.
BATED breath. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bai1.htm
I'm totally cool with misuse of the language to be ironic or whatever, but that requires a degree of cleverness I don't detect here. Please learn language idioms before you try to use them. Just sayin'.
Oh rly ?
upvote parent. downvote grandparent.
We fail to learn the difference between a touch interface and a mouse centric interface.
With a touch centric interface the average screen size is smaller, and the required screen size is larger to display the same level of information. (It has to be large enough to be touched, and small enough to be convenient to use with hand motion). Trying to map this onto an arbitrarily large display, one which can have a significantly higher information density is stupid. As well, a mouse based interface should reduce the number of motions, or mouse clicks to get around it.
Design for the target interface, don't hybridize them.
Seriously, same stupid reason for development (Comic Sans was made for MS Bob, if anyone forgot), same attempt to achieve the look of a different and hard to imitate medium (comic book font on a 800x600 bitmap, phone UI on a multi-monitor desktop), same failure, same amount of suffering inflicted on the unsuspecting users.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Where you see stagnancy, those with actual perception see maturity, competence, and highly optimized design. If it ain't BUSTED, don't FIX it. If it's not only not busted, but in fact is pretty optimal, don't even THINK about fixing it from the ground up. Gnome3 is like trying to turn a perfectly good hammer into some shitty linear monstrosity that you have to punch nails with straight ahead, instead of economically swinging the hammer at it.
Caveat. I do actual work with desktops and notebooks. I have absolutely no use whatsoever for teeny tiny touchscreens, but for those who do, I recognize those need a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT UI with a different paradigm. But there is absolutely no call to DESTROY the oven when you are designing a microwave.
OS UI got stagnant for about 10 years in there, so I'm happy that they're experimenting with things
Window managers manage windows:
I use GNOME 2 with Compiz and I'm very content. What are the killer features for me? Focus follows mouse, I can press Alt-click and drag windows by clicking anywhere, I can press Alt-middle-click and resize windows by almost clicking anywhere. I made a shortcut where if I press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+I it maximizes my window only vertically (great for terminals). One big killer feature with Compiz is an OS X-like Expose thing that lets me easily select windows, and shows me everything on my screen at once. What do all these awesome things have in common? They are all about managing windows, and nothing else, which is what a good window manager _should_ do. GNOME should keep going this way and not philosophize over what the default ought to be.
How I use my terminal window(s) depends on what I'm doing (developing, debugging, scripting, writing LaTeX, etc...). I don't care if my web browser is maximized once the fonts are readable, it looks pretty, and I can see everything I need. What do all these things have in common? The window size is _not_ the problem, only the application and the user know how the window ought to be, and only the user knows how it ought to be relative to other windows. There is no good default. I used Chrome OS for a couple weeks and hated it. The window manager ought to manage windows and focus on that.
GNOME 3 Gets Search and Beauty, Good:
What GNOME 3 is getting right is bringing back 'Beagle' and extending it to do more stuff. I love Spotlight on OS X, it has made the Dock, the start menu, desktop shortcuts, the Launcher (in Lion), and all the rest of it obsolete. Spotlight is king, bow down to spotlight. GNOME 3 gets this, good. GNOME also gets that the UI needs to be pretty, its just depressing when its not. My Linux machine isn't as pretty as my OS X machine, and that makes me sad, there is no reason that has to be. GNOME gets this, good.
GNOME 3's Direction:
I guess GNOME 3 should keep making stuff prettier, definitely keep focusing on search, and make me a wizard-God when it comes to managing windows. I want to do Expose, I want to effortlessly save window configurations and have GNOME 3 remember them when I open up the same applications. I want to re-size, drag, tile, layer, focus-follow-mouse, and make my windows do back-flips, effortlessly. I want GNOME 3 to not presume to do anything by default, but listen to the application and me.
--"You are your own God"--
I heard that Bob is the UI feature the Gnome team plan to copy next.
In a lot of ways the Windows XP-esque interface was the pinnacle of UI design, and everything since has jumped the shark. And no, this is NOT a troll; it's true. I could resize and place windows. I could put things in the task bar. If I wanted to run 47 instances of the same application I could do that. There was a clear distinction between running programs and taskbar shortcuts. There was no "pinning" applications, no bloated, psychotic ribbons where my menus should be, no deciding how big my windows should be for me, or any of that bullcrap. If Gnome went back to that style of interface with the stipulation that users also had to put up with Clippy AND Bonzi Buddy perpetually onscreen it would still be totally worth it.
I can't wait for a system where each application automatically takes up the entire screen!
Just imagine, reading facebook.com on my 30 inch screen, FULLY MAXIMIZED, so that no other applications can distract me. Or, if I decide to code, EACH terminal could span the entire desktop. No longer will I have to struggle with seeing two things at once -- from now on, it's peace of mind with GNOME 3.
Thankfully I can now give gvim the space it has always deserved -- a fully uncluttered 2560 x 1600 space. And when I decide to listen to music, my music app can take up the entire space too! Imagine, seeing nothing but whitespace. Thank goodness someone thought of this. I can finally relax and do what I've always wanted to do: use my computer, one app at a time, in FULL SCREEN!
If you think about it, this is almost as good as DOS. No more annoying window title bars and multi-app desktop usage. No more extra buttons and widgets. Just one thing and one thing only -- what you're going to work on. I can't wait to develop kernel drivers and work on my apps this way. The fact that when I currently work I can actually see (and be distracted by) about three to four windows at a time is just devastating. I have to (currently) *navigate* to each and every window, and precariously drag the window across my entire desktop to achieve this effect, only to remain haunted by menu bars, title bars, and application switchers.
If only they could put a stop to all those pesky background processes and really get it down to just one single process. Then all the processes on my computer wouldn't have to compete for computer resources. Just like DOS, I'm telling you, I can't wait, we're getting back to the single-purpose one-thing-at-a-time operating system!
Obligatory slashdot sayings:
I for one welcome our maximized-app overlords!
In Soviet-Russia, window manager maximizes YOU!
One app to rule them all!
It was as if millions of apps suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced, replaced with calming whitespace.
I want applications that remember their states and can be saved and restored (gconsole, I'm looking at you in particular)
With respect for the ridiculously-lacking gnome-terminal, use konsole. Even if your DE is Gnome or Xfce. It is very liberating.
From the article:
Judging by the comments it would seem that there is a bit of confusion about what is meant by maximising windows by default, so let me try and clarify:
1.) Not all applications will use this behaviour – only those that have been designed to do so. If an app won’t work being maximised, it won’t be.
2.) Although these applications will maximise by default, it will still be possible to unmaximise them. If you want to be able to view more than one window at once you will still be able to do so.
3.) There will be mechanisms put in place that will adjust the behaviour to compensate for large screens. We are currently investigating a number of options here, including not automatically maximising windows on these large screens or adjusting their layout to make best use of the extra space. Everyone involved is well aware of the need to work well with large screens!
i.e. "Yeah, we know this wont work in every case, you ninnies who are going to nit pick at the corner cases like they're the only things that exist."
I, for one, like gnome3. I use it when I reboot this machine and it works great.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Ha! Windows cmd.exe is a ridiculous piece of shit. You can't resize it in the normal way like any other application. You can't cut and paste in the normal way like any other application. It makes even gnome-terminal look brilliant, let alone konsole.
i think i will stick with it for 5 years if i have to.
God, topics like this show how much nonsensical groupthink occurs in slashdot. May be it's the overflow of rage from not having a date tomorrow.
I swear the GNOME development team follows the logic that if they're creating controversy, this must mean they're on the right track. No, this does not follow at all my friends. It means you're ignoring the complaints from your fucking userbase.
Maybe they think they know better and that it will pay off in the future. I've heard such things about the Linux desktop for years, and nothing has happened and if history is suppose to be nature's greatest teacher, nothing will happen. Smartphones and tablets are likely to be the best destination for these new UIs, but why the fuck are these braindead developers (Unity developers included) thinking that everyone wants convergence with their UIs, as if having the same interface for both smartphones and desktops makes any sense. Shit, at least Microsoft will allow you to switch to a full, non-gimped* traditional GUI in Windows 8 without additional tinkering or installing extra software.
* Then again the "start" button was removed in the latest builds, so who knows what'll happen.
I remember when Linux was good... too...
Gnome 3 is unbelievable crap and a fork is unfortunately necessary.
What angers me is that Debian developers foisted this piece of shit onto Debian testing/unstable (and soon stable) users without providing a way to continue to run Gnome 2.
Gnome 3 is not an upgrade to Gnome 2. It is a lobotomised design without the functionality of Gnome 2. And Fallback mode provides the most ugly, quirky desktop in decades.
Thankfully a partial solution is provided by http://mate-desktop.org/ . This fork provides a beautiful Gnome 2-like environment to continue working in. There are currently IA32 and AMD64 packages available. However Debian is supposed to be a Universal Operating System. I should be able to install Mate on ARM, PPC, etc. Hopefully we will see Mate integrated into Debian in the future so Debian can become a complete Universal Operating System again.
By forcing the elimination of Gnome 3's best competition (Gnome 2) I believe Mate is likely to continue to be a viable fork and Gnome 3 developers have doomed themselves to irrelevance.
I used to believe software development was an incremental process of improvement. In reality misguided developers can cause great harm to existing software ecosystems. Both the Gnome and Debian projects would be better off right now if the developers responsible for forcing Gnome 3 onto Gnome 2 users had slacked off and done nothing with their time.
I wish software developers had a philosophy of "first do no harm".
its almost as bad as the program manager motif that KDE tried to use in early versions of 4
I only use Mint as a live CD (USB flash drive actually). Since you can't use MATE on a live CD, that's a deal breaker.
Is the "Command Line Applet" still there? That is the most freaking amazing thing in UI ever - a simple black box that can open any app on my computer with couple of key strokes - even Mac doesn't have it.
Please tell me that the command line applet is still there in Gnome 3 .. please!
Sigh. While I understand that some may like this kind of thing and it may make sense in some circumstances. I have never - ever - run any application maximized in the 25+ years I've been working (or in college). Not on my Xerox 1108 Dandelion, Sun I (through present) workstations, SGI Indy, or any number of Unix graphical workstations or Windows/Linux/Unix PCs. With any sufficiently large display, running maximized is almost retarded. As a system programmer/admin, multiple windows are basically required to be efficient and effective. Just my well-worn $.02.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Window managers should enable users to do more; not limit them in what they want to do.
It is ridiculous that in age of high-def screens, main GNOME idea is that we want to see one window at a time.
young kids growing up with touch screens will think this is the totally natural way to compute and all you old dads ranting about multiple windows will sound like some old school commandline crank going on about how mouses ruined human computer interaction.
With GNOME3, we know that the GNOME folk have jumped the shark. They took the nice, tuned, usable interface that everyone understood and was okay with in GNOME2 and threw it all away for something that looks like it was somebody's experiment in making a tablet UI. It's utterly full of fail.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Haters like myself. I don't get why GNOME had to go the direction it did, but it's clearly not for the users they have. It's like they are designing for some ludicrous platonic ideal? Or something?
Lemme just throw in with the "GNOME 3 sucks" crew. I hate it lots. It's like, what would come after GNOME 2? Well, apparently instead of adding stuff, they just substracted things, and made them suck, and then turned off all ability to customize without motherfucking recompiling it your fucking self. Such user hatred hasn't been seen in commercial software in a long time, and that hurts to say.
If you like KDE, why not run it on (e.g.) openSUSE, where it is a primary offering?
This here goddamn country went down hill the moment Erbammy Hussein got inter office. He plans on replacing our bones with some fancy polymer he's been puttin' in the fleride in city drinkin' water, along with that filter for schools to aid in indoctrination of youngin's.
Now, depending on who's got the moderator itch, I do have to throw in some absolutes:
Gnome is one of the worst attempts at stealing Winders for hackers who don't wanna pay shit for shit. It's only a hair worse than KDE, which doesn't got no shit for it that wasn't goin' for that awful mexican girlfriend system with the bouncin' ball. That was almost as bad Beboss thing that's always comin' back, but it still looks like 80's shit. Only IBM ever made a good Windows knock off in that Star Trek thingy, but it wasn't no good compared to what Bill in the buddies cooked up. That Winders is better than Meth!
Now, in case a funny counter-corrects an offtopic, allow me to inform you that all metamoderators have a history of raping their own mothers and burning stray cats. Now a score of 1 is still possible, and anyone who sees that should mark it as overrated.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Where's the love, KDE is unsinkable!
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
"Displaying multiple windows at the same time means that screen space isn’t used efficiently, and it means that you don’t get a focused view of what it is that you are interested in. Windows that aren’t maximised also create additional tasks for people. Often you need to adjust their size, or you have to move them around."
So I'm now too stupid to use a GUI? Why not take this to it's logical conclusion and only allow one window to be open?
From the (bottom) comment(s): " Also, this has nothing to do with GNOME Shell – the maximisation behaviour is specified by individual applications." -Allan
This is what truly worries me.
At least have a glance at some of the motion prototypes the GNOME designers have put together. Slick.
I recently switched to i3: loads instantly; easily manages multiple workspaces and windows; and is very configurable. It even has a system tray taskbar to load the network manager applet (important if you weren't one of the folks that wrote iwconfig) and the gnome-sound-applet. I've used gnome for a long time, and I can tolerate linux mint's version (my wife thinks it's pretty usable). But if you are going to use multiple programs to code or whatever a tiling manager is really the only way to go...
Hey, I don't know what you say to someone who doesn't offer by default the option to power off. Okay, you think hibernate is the way to go, then fine put it and power off right there together in the menu. You don't hide that simple function away and act like it only makes sense. If you cannot get that through the head of someone making UI decisions without a 2x4 up side the head, you aren't going to get through to them.
I actually use Gnome 3 on a netbook and a laptop because Fedora 16 running them does such a fine job. I am hopeful it may come around. But I am not optimistic. I also fail to see how people continually call these decisions based on tablet design. You can't use the freaking stuff without a ton of keyboard shortcuts effectively. Notice the lack of keyboard on a tablet? Make sense to you? Doesn't to me.
Gnome was an absolute dream to move to for me a couple years back. It's completely broken now, I don't like this tablet interface, my pc is a pc and not a tablet. I've been running ubuntu 11 now for a month coming from ubuntu 9. Boy am I sorry I upgraded, it means I'll have to dd my image back from before the upgrade.
Its a cumbersome interface. Sure, desktop design has been stagnant but this doesn't mean we need to change just for change.
Maybe we already have a very good working solution for 2D desktops?
If the backup goes tits up for some reason I'll move to centos, it looks .. calm.
Sorry GNOME, I've been hoping that your were going to get better as 3.x progressed, but now that I've read your plans for the future I see that this will not be the case. Been nice knowing you.
From the (bottom) comment(s): " Also, this has nothing to do with GNOME Shell – the maximisation behaviour is specified by individual applications." -Allan
This is what truly worries me.
Hoo boy. I can see that working really well with GIMP.
Comic Sans was made for MS Bob, if anyone forgot
So *that's* where all the hatred comes from.
fuck it. build your own comp-decompulator, define 0 as 11, divide by it all day and keep suckin up to harry truman
I wait with baited breath for a hopefully usable system...
"Bated". Unless you meant to imply that your breath smells like fish :-)
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
You are fine with FORCING other people to implement two paradigms in parallel though? The old ones were "forced" on you just as much, but hey, you are used to them so every major DE should maintain a Windows 95 emulator for the next 60 years?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Personally I like the default Gnome3 theme. It works well.
An ex canonical employee who works in the office showed me the theme, while upset that my desktop setup was lost at first I quickly found that with a desktop background set (my previous black colour background didn't work). With the default Gnome3 theme ie. switching away from what I found a horrible Ubuntu default Gnome3 theme and away from Ubuntu Unity I came to very much like it and have been working with it since.
From the (bottom) comment(s): " Also, this has nothing to do with GNOME Shell – the maximisation behaviour is specified by individual applications." -Allan
This is what truly worries me.
Hoo boy. I can see that working really well with GIMP.
If the GIMP guys are intelligent they'll ditch the gnome GUI and go full ahead with a QT interface (history ba damned).
It pains me deeply to see the best open source application being hamstrung by those idiots that are calling the shots in the GNOME world. GIMP together with GNUbackgammon are the only 2 applications I can't do without.
I have Fedora (Gnome) and openSuse (KDE) at home. At work I use XP and Windows 7. But still I can't understand what is the difference!
After copying the Windows UI badly, and copying the OSX UI badly, now they make a bad copy of WebOS.
I predict this will be the year of linux on the desktop!
What in the world has possessed their formerly useful minds to think that people don't need multiple windows on the screen at a single time?
What possible use case is there for a single window filling the entire monitor, all the time?
If it's for a kiosk, isn't there a Puppy Linux distro for that?
For anyone else, how do you work with only one window? Whether it's drawing, writing, programming, calculating, or whatever.
Even if it's for home use: if you're copying paraphrasing from Wikipedia for a school report, you need both a browser window and an OpenOffice window, right?
Lemme quit before I go nuts.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Gnome has now officially jumped the shark to the extent that it has reached low earth orbit.
Even Microsoft "Bob" was a superior UI to this fetid, unusable, inept, pile of crud.
Please will somebody take an elephant gun and put Gnome out of our misery.
kthxbye.
use AWESOME-WM.
Ubuntu is dropping support for KDE. Why don't you just move to Debian? All the value of a distro is the polish. Scripts, canned configs with sane defaults, packages built with sane compile time options, dependencies if you are into that, etc. You will be getting none of that where KDE is concerned from Ubuntu in the future, actually it will all start to get in the way.
When you distro drops support for a major platform you like your best options are get with the program or go to one of the many many other places. Why fight with it. Especially when moving from Ubuntu to Deb would see few other real changes
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Kubuntu is not a sinking ship, it needs community leadership to take over, I fully expect to be able to do that but of course it'll take a few weeks to sort out, longer than it takes to make a grumpy reference in a Slashdot summary article.
You probably don't know but I have a disability which requires me to me wear an eye patch currently so any sort of pirate reference is in shockingly bad taste :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jriddell/6868957819
I wonder why there's so much drive in Linux to abandon whatever is in the right track.
I used KDE 3 with Konqueror as my main application. There was everything I could want in a computer UI there. Then someone thought Konqueror isn't good because it combines the functions of a browser with a file manager. Well, that's exactly what I want, a system that integrates well with the web!
Then they came up with this idea of getting rid of KDE altogether. The reason I first started using Linux is that KDE is so good to program in, it has, by far, the best documentation system of any GUI I know, Kdevelop is an excellent development environment, and the API is better than any other.
If any company wished to create a new computer environment, the best bet would be to start with KDE and do some small improvements. With the Koffice suite and the other standard applications of the KDE environment you already have 95% of what either Apple or Microsoft have in their systems, all it needs is a bit of polishing.
I hate gnome3 and I hate Unity. Staying on Ubuntu 10.10 for the foreseeable future.
>> GNOME 3 is extensible and there are already extensions that turn it into an experience that resemble GNOME 2
That is true. Gnome 3 has a mode which "looks like" GNOME 2.
The problem is it does not work. It's just nice to take a screenshot and say "look, we even have something, blablabla". The problem is it is non functionnal. You cannot configure the menus, you cannot right click, you cannot switch windows, you cannot add the applets that are available in GNOME2, you cannot even move the bar! etcetcetc. Are you kidding me ?
GNOME 3 may have a nicer internal architecture as claimed, i can't tell, i'm not a PC programmer. But the UI is crap, and it's pissing off a big portion of users who don't want to waste time on a learning curve. As many people, i will revert to useable alternatives, there are some :
- LXDE, XFCE
- KDE
- GNOME 2 forks, or combinations
aaaaaaa
Starting applications in Gnome.
Launching favourite application
Gnome2: 1) click on a favourite icon on the panel
Gnome3: 1) go to top left corner, 2) click on a favourite icon on the launcher
Launching other applications eg. in Internet section
Gnome2: 1) click on Application, 2) Click Internet, 3) launch the application
Gnome3: 1) go to top left corner, 2) click the Application button, 4) wait few seconds (on 3GHz CPU with NVIDIA) so the application icons will show. 4) go from top left corner to far right edge of the screen, 5) Click Internet, 6) wait for icons to show, 7) launch the application
How dare you insult the honor of my wife!
Please, KDE, don't screw yourself up. You are the ONLY usable desktop left! I've been using KDE as an alternative to Gnome, and really love it. So please don't screw it up...
Please?
I tried Gnome 3 when Fedora 15 came out.
When I discovered that Gnome 3 didn't work properly with two separate X servers (one for my laptop's screen and one for my external screen), I junked Fedora and switched to Linux Mint as they were still using Gnome 2.
Now I see that the latest Linux Mint has switched to Gnome 3 and it still does not work properly with separate X servers! WTF?
I honestly fail to believe that a user like me with two Compiz cubes, one on each screen, is an unusual case. The Gnome 3 devs seems to have been completely blinded by their own hubris.
I'll stick with what I have thanks.
I know - yet another proposal to use a different Linux Distro but I am very happy with lubuntu (http://lubuntu.net/) which has a very clean look and just works.
On a side note: what still puzzles me is - for 15 years I've tried to explain the desktop metaphor to non-technical people among friends and family and now that we 24"+ screens and it starts to make sense, we move back to the single application paradigm...
Young kids growing up using bicycle training wheels will think this is the totally natural way to ride a bicycle and you old dads ranting about using only two wheels will sound like some old school commandline crank going on about how mouses ruined human computer interaction.
One button just means it (rather, the massively overpriced circuit board beneath it) will wear out or break far more quickly than multiple buttons would. But rest assured; the board will not fail until one week *after* the warranty does.
Why are you bashing GNOME developers? Just look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ichQOqbewA/ video which demonstrates happy GNOME users enjoying their new intuitive UIs.
Don't you think that Gnome 3 can piss people off all by itself...
Sadly, in my case, yes. I had been a fan of Gnome since the late '90s, and have played with just about every UI available for X11. Gnome's most full-featured "competitor" (as far as the term has any meaning in the OSS world) KDE was for many years kluttered and ugly.
I really did try to learn to like Gnome 3, but I found so many obstacles in the way of getting any work done, I had to put it to one side in favour of a hybrid of KDE and compiz-fusion, which I am quite happy with, now that I have disabled all those mysterious "services" with meaningless and peculiar names.
I'll keep my eye on Gnome, but I suspect the developers are going to have to grow up a bit before I go back.
One word for everyone sick of Gnome: Enlightenment. End of story.
... To rule them all.
Look, you don't have to be a grate designer to appreciate that GNOME 3 is designed for the finger. I for one, gave it one as soon as it got out.
Force just one: it can be moved.
But even "force" isn't right. If Ubuntu keep pulling this crap then they'll be dumped. And, rather than just silently waiting and then dumping, a complaint is made and consequence offered. Just like everywhere else in life. You're warned if you steal, you can go to jail. They DON'T wait until you've stolen then chuck you in jail with no explanation of why, Why? Because it is presupposed that knowing the consequences you will change your actions in the future and if you don't, then it's your choice, but your problem too.
^^^Get a load of this douche.
....alternatives instead.
Linux users need to understand that some developers don't give a fuck about what they want, and instead want to target the larger "dumbass market" and do so badly.
Stop using or supporting or helping new users work with their shit. They don't read Slashdot or care about your opinions, but dry up free "support" and advocate alternatives and you can hit where it hurts.
Say NO to GNOME, no to Unity, and take the fight to the enemy.
They are as much enemies of Linux as MSFT, in effect if not intent!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Sounds like bullshit to the bone
Can enhance cmd.exe on this http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ if really use that shit to much time :-P
What possible use case is there for a single window filling the entire monitor, all the time?
Small screens, like on a smartphone or possibly a tablet. Makes sense on little screens but sucks on a desktop.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Not every computer is a phone, kiosk, or video game console. Stop forcing a phone UI everywhere. General use computers are not meant for single task at a time.
All applications maximize by default? WTF? Yeah, that's 'efficient' use of real estate on my high resolution widescreen.
Yes, Apple uses a desktop interface on the desktop and a phone interface on portable devices. Gnome thinks a poorly done phone interface is good for the desktop too.
I would say that a good desktop interface might scale down to a tablet, and a phone interface can scale UP to a tablet. But the phone interface does not work, and will never work on the desktop. If these people understood what people actually DO with devices of different types, they might understand this.
Most Linux terminals have nonstandard copying and pasting as well. But the lack of resize is really moronic, the second worst thing about the old Windows command line next to the clumsy, awful DOS syntax.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I used GIMP on my phone a few times, 4" screen, on Debian w/ LXDE. It was configured to have a toolbar on the left with little Win7-style icons for each window, not too different from Unity actually.
The only way I could use it was to show one window at a time. I'd just have to switch between the toolbox, image window and the layers/history/whatever it's called window. It was pretty damn slow.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I use GNOME 3 as my main DE on my desktop and netbook using Arch Linux. I've used it since before it was officially released, and while it still has some ways to go, I really like it. I use it for work, I use it for fun, I use it for everything, really. There's nothing about the UI that gets in my way; in fact, it's easier to use than Windows 7 or Mac, IMO. I could honestly go on for pages about why I love it but everybody here on Slashdot with their ultra-conservative views on DE design will simply say I'm in denial and that it's bad no matter what I think. Well too bad for them because I love it and I'm going to keep using it and supporting it.
Please, tell me there's somebody else out there that doesn't mindlessly hate over it and actually enjoys it.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
At first I really didn't like GNOME 3 and even still I miss aspects of GNOME 2. I've become a HUGE fan of Docky and refuse to give it up.
I do think though that GNOME made a huge effort to try and simplify an end users life and allow him/her to focus on the task at hand. If Liinux wants to open up to more people, like it or not, we need the ability for people to login, and open up one application where the user can listen to music or go to facebook/youtube...that's just how much of the modern user base is these days.
At the same time, I think GNOME needs to re-add some power features back in for the power user so that those of us that do need xxx number of windows open can and can do it with ease.
One question popped up in my mind - is GNOME3 now licensed under GPL3? If it is, that's one more reason I can see businesses try and avoid it. Same question for GNUSTEP.
Is it because its "tried-and-true" or is it familiar? There are plenty of things weird and wrong with KDE and Windows work where people just got used to it unstead of understand it. That doesn't mean either system is bad but what is bad is the automatic rejection of one or the other.
The right way to do this is to offer both styles of desktop environments. There is value in being able to layout your desktop in a Windows like manner because they have been using Windows like environments for decades but this has no value for new users or new systems. Especially for Tablets, Phones, and TVs and other emerging platforms going with what Gnome offers makes more sense for usability.
This doesn't directly relate to the article but does relate to essentially every single comment ever on slashdot being a hate on for GNOME 3. There are several different arguments that people generally make so I'll address the ones I can think of.
... are you serious? I mean it may seem childish when I state it that way, but probably about 50% of the arguments against G3 don't consist of anything more than that.
1. GNOME 3 is different than [insert other DE here, usually GNOME 2] so I don't like it.
2. The interface is too simple Well what do you want? Whenever I'm looking for ways to change my own UI, the most easily findable ones are always how to simplify it, I assume that functional simplicity is a popular, and good, thing (especially among the non-linux users who everyone seems to think GNOME 3 will drive away).
3. I can't customize it enough Well, yeah. Because it's new. The vast majority of customizations for GNOME 2 are third party programs and/or themes, which are available because it's been out for so long.
Anyways I could find more, but the point is this, there is nothing inherently wrong with it, one of the beautiful things about the linux world is that it gives you the chance to choose, not just choose the distribution, which widely vary, but your DE, IDE, dock, system monitor, terminal, shell, hell, you can even change things in the kernel if you know what your doing. This may astound people but I REALLY LIKE GNOME 3, and HATE GNOME 2. However I realize that this is a matter of personal preference and that there is nothing really wrong with gnome 2 persay. I like having a launcher in the launchy sytle (which is really efficient by the way, you hit one button and type in what you want), and dislike the menu system in GNOME 2. Does that mean it is bad, NO, it means I have an opinion, but I do think GNOME 2 was executed well.
So go use something else if you don't like it, and stop telling me that I'm the stupidest person on the face of the earth for an OPINION that is different than yours.
But in either gnome-terminal or konsole, if you highlight a section of text with the mouse and right clock, you get a context menu including "copy."
Wow, that looks like it might be pretty damn good. When I still had to use Windows, I liked 4nt.exe, except that it did not address the clunkiness of the text mode window itself.
Having used GNOME 3.2 for a while, it actually does work pretty well, there are some annoying corner cases that either haven't been fixed yet, or where somebody experimentation seemed to win over common sense (like breaking standard alt-tab). But overall It Just Works, and I do believe it's much easier to understand and use for less tech-savvy users, which was the original goal I think.
There was a lot of complaining about the GNOME 1 -> 2 replacement too back in the day, but given some cycles, the rough corners were fixed and most people seemed to be happy. If you don't like being the guinea pig, wait a year or two.
Meanwhile, you can fix most of the issues with the awesome extension system they've got up and running. I think it's going to be interesting to watch that space over the coming years, it looks to me like it could completely change the way new good stuff is introduced to the desktop.
Really, that's when I stopped reading the article.
If the developers don't understand the concept of having multiple windows onscreen at the same time, they clearly don't understand what I want in a UI.
The reason for the rapid acceptance of windowed user interfaces and multiple monitors was basically to have 2 or more things displayed at the same time.
Maximizing everything is a step backwards.
The "useful stuff" is what I'm working on, and I often work in 2 or 3 apps for a given task.
For example I will pay an online bill in my web browser, and enter in my tracking system (gnucash, moneydance, oocalc whatever)
I actually want to see both at the same time.
Heartily agree about a smartphone. I don't think I'd like to have 2 windows showing there.
Strangely, the Gnome devs do not seem to understand different strokes for different artichokes.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Personal opinion: I hated Gnome Shell when I first used it in alpha. Everything about it irritated me. But I did something the vast majority of people on this site didn't do: I used it extensively. I got used to it. I began to learn the ins and outs of it. Then, it happened... My work pace got faster. What? Wait. Really? How is that possible.
Because I gave it an actual chance. Now I can't imagine not using it...
Carry on, trolls.
It's a good thing they devoted all this time and energy into reinventing the Desktop experience. Can you imagine how silly we would feel if all this effort had been wasted on fixing the GIMP's UI as people have been requesting for over a decade? We end-users sure would feel silly now...
b-b-b-b-b-b-baaaaaaaaaad.
I stopped using KDE years ago when they decided to make it unusable. I switched to Gnome instead. Last year I stopped using Gnome for the same reasons. Long live XFCE!
>/dev/null 2>&1
Strawman much? GP didn't ask for a "Windows 95 emulator". He asked for a very simple thing, namely, being able to put Unity dock on the right side of the screen instead of the default left. He also made a very good explanation as to why it is, indeed, required for him to maintain productivity in his particular scenario (which is by no means unique, by the way - I use my right monitor for remote desktop, and I'm really glad that Win7 lets me put its taskbar on the right side of the screen).
GP specifically disclaimed that it's not about one thing.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I'm a new linux user (6 months) and I've tried the modern versions of all the DEs. I must say that I like xfce the best, though.
I first started out with KDE. I liked how it had a familliar interface out of the box, and had tons of tools and games. I really liked crusader, as well. All this was well and good, but I discovered that it was slowly eating up my CPU cycles. The problem with KDE is that it's become bloated to the point of using up all the processing power of a computer, even on a midrange one.
GNOME I tried next. I was bewildered by an unfamilliar interface, and not being able to configure even basic aspects of the UI (Such as panel osition) without another package. Even then, I was put off by it's strange way of organizing stuff in the menu(Alphabetacally, not Fuctionally.) It was also almost as heavy on processing power as KDE.
Finally, I tried xfce. Immediately I noticed the lack of the bloat of KDE, and the intuitiveness of the interface. I like how I could right-click on the panel, and change everything around. It had easy ways to add just what I wanted, unlike in GNOME where I had to wrench it into doing what I wanted, not what the designers thought looked best. It was also lightweight, no sucking up all the cycles. It includes only 20 programs, unlike the hundreds in KDE.
I think this clearly sets xfce above everything else, except maybe lxde. Xfce includes a few features that lxde doesn't have, but lxde is almost twice as light. This makes it better for smaller systems, but xfce has a larger support base. GNOME and the Kool Desktop Environment don't have anything on xfce. Light, fast, and functional; What else could I want?
http://tinyurl.com/42geekcode
So, I wanted to show my results for those with some curiosity how moderation worked out.
A) My karma remains excellent, despite a weekly troll hunt.
B) (0) Flamebait didn't just get there with a couple of moderations. Times were not included, but the order can be determined. In Comma Seperated Values:
Moderation Value, Reason, Result, Rank, Note;
null, null, 1, Normal, This is premoderation;
-1, Overrated, 0, Normal, This was pretty much expected;
-1, Overrated, -1, Normal, Someone really didn't want to see this again;
+1, Funny, 0, Normal, Told ya that could happen;
-1, Flamebait, -1, Flamebait, Technically\, I can't disagree;
+1, Insightful, 0, Flamebait, Some rankings really stick\, but what's up with Insightful?;
I'd recommend going for the gold rather than worrying about the karma. The net community value of your actions determines your karma; hiding it for fear of flamebait or trolling does nothing to benefit you. If you like to go on a troll fishing binge, own it. I do. My net effect still remains positive due to my on topic contributions to other discussions. If all you do is lurk and post as an AnonCow, why have an account? Many trolls possess, embrace and show off their gloriously poor karma. I know. I know them by name. You don't get banned by slashdot for being a total d-bag. That's how it was designed since, I don't know, version 3, let's call it. Maybe...98?
It doesn't matter if you have a history loaded with praises for or condemnations against a particular party or philosophy, as most of the positive contributors to slashdot focus on the discussion, not history of the people in the discussion, unless they really like that person's point, in which case, maybe they may look at a journal or previous posts. People that go on an ad hominem tirade look trollish and influence those who don't understand how to recognize a legitimate point in the first place.
I've posted anonymously a total of four times in a decade. Once was due to an absence of being logged in. Two were for entertainment purposes and once was to show someone what they should have done (similar to the entertainment purposes, really, pretty much 3 entertainments and a lazy, though, maybe two lazies due to an overlap).
Point is, go for it.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Gnome developers are clueless idiots who are ripping off OS X in an attempt to look hip. Maybe they should team up with Comical if they're so obsessed with copyring everything Apple is doing. Thank god for the CLI and Xfce!
It won't be available for Debian, at least not from the GNOME team. And probably not from anyone else, as it simply duplicates a lot of code, and nobody wants duplicated code.
What are you talking about?
It doesn't have to be available from the GNOME team to be available from debian repositories, and even if it doesn't end up there then another one can be set up.
And why would it duplicate code when it can just reuse? It's a fork of the shell, not the whole GNOME system.
Besides which, duplicate code or no, a sensible desktop is what people want. For some that looks like cinnamon.
Your post seems pointlessly negative. Why is that?
Hoo boy. I can see that working really well with GIMP.
Now that's a scary thought!
the hue and cry from the masses to change gnome? or is this change for the sake of change?
Heard all the "gnome3 gets in the way", "doesn't do what I want it to do", "pretty for prettys sake/copying Apple" comments.
I personally like gnome3, a lot, but I still appreciate that every one has their own opinion. But I had an eye-opener the other day...
My 6 yr old son has never really used computers, and when he does, it's playing flash games on the childrens tv website. It's very apparent that he doesn't yet _intuitively_ understand window management, double-clicking, mouse precision and other basic stuff. I haven't taught him, I think he can just as well wait a few years, and postpone the inevitable RSI that his daddy has developed after decades of IT jobs.
But now at the school my wife works at, as well as many other schools throughout Sweden, there is a massive drive to start using iPads as learning tools. Lets' for one second put aside my ire at taxpayer money being spent on ultra expensive high technology to "teach" 2yr olds and up...
One thing that is blindingly obvious, is that the interface of the iPad is _instictively intuitive_ even for very young toddlers. My son can use apps with the touch screen very very well, even after _minimal_ instruction from his teachers, he comes home and uses childrens maths applications for crying out loud!
This more than anything should indicate to naysayers that if a young child can use a UI with minimal instruction, then that UI has done it's job more or less correctly.
I'm not saying that Gnome3 is at that point, but I think it really is a step in the right direction, and I think that more people should give it more of a chance, and try to help the Gnome devs make it better. I really get the impression that the negativity comes from people who are a bit stuck in their ways. Quite normal, but you just need a bit of a shove to give it a chance.
IMHO
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
The reason hatred for the cashew is so visible is because it was the issue over which Aaron Siego made his biggest stand that amounted to, "fuck you, users, I hate you and don't care what you want." As long as it persists, we know that Aaron Siego still hates us and doesn't care what we want, and his response to our requests remains, "fuck you."
As you've pointed out yourself, it's a very worthless thing to take that stand over. You hide it yourself; it should be trivial to just make it go away. Yet, that won't be incorporated into the default user interface design, because doing so would force Aaron to admit he was wrong and abandon his "fuck you users" philosophy.
So, we hate the cashew because Aaron hates us. Fuck you too, Aaron.
When I made my Grand Entrance into the world of Linux a little over a year ago, by installing Ubuntu 10.10, I remember the feeling of intense joy at having discovered that I could free myself from the world of Microsoft, Apple, and proprietary software. I spent most of that night exploring my new computorial home, posting on the Ubuntu Forums and trying to erase all trace of my prior involvement in the world of the Software Giants (Deleting my Google account being the part that was the hardest to get myself to do!)... I felt like I had attained technological Nirvana. The Gnome 2 interface was simple enough that I could understand it, yet was not dumbed down so that Bob The Brick could successfully create flashy-looking documents. When 11.04 came out, I tried Unity. It didn't work for me - in fact, I hated it! It was, and still is, counter-intuitive, slow and very, very buggy. It wasn't an issue, though, while Ubuntu still allowed one to pick the "Classic" mode at login. But when 11.10 rolled around and they removed that option, I deserted. I can't live with Unity, as many others can't and the gnome-session-fallback has moved to Gnome 3, which is almost as bad, so I switched to a system called elementary - which is still running Gnome 2 - but it isn't nearly as good as Ubuntu 10.10 was (The elementary team's idea of everything being nice and ready-to-use out of the box doesn't appeal to me: I like to tweak my OS!), and now it is asking me to upgrade to a new version which is essentially 11.04 all over again. So now, I suppose, I will join the many disillusioned Ubuntu users making the migration to Debian. The ironic part of all this? Ubuntu was, apparently, originally created as a somewhat lighter, easier-to-use version of Debian. Now Debian is regarded as an easier-to-use sort of Ubuntu lifeboat. Oh, well - what goes around comes around. I only hope Debian stays with good old classic Gnome 2.
No one that seriously uses their computer likes all these new linux interfaces. I've heard this story about a million times, starting back when KDE 4.0 came out and everyone jumped on the hatemobile. I don't like them either. I am a programmer and often have lots of windows open... blah blah stupid icons are stupid blah blah. And you know what? I just don't use interfaces that I don't like. I don't need to post that the latest desktops are Saturday morning cartoons, and I shouldn't because I've barely touched them. There are dozens of other interfaces out there, LXDE, XFCE, IceWm, Awesome, and dwm just to name a few that I enjoy. If you would save up all the time you spend bashing these interfaces on the internet you would probably have plenty of time to find something that you actually liked.
Quit whining and start the fuck coding if nothing else. If you took the collective tears shed over the state of the linux desktop on slashdot, you could provide clean drinking water to multiple third world countries.