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GNOME: Staring Into the Abyss

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-bet-the-abyss-whines-about-application-menus dept.

New submitter zixxt writes "GTK+ Developer Benjamin Otte talks about the stagnation and decline of the Gnome Project. He describes how core developers are leaving GNOME development, how GNOME is understaffed, why GNOME is a Red Hat project and why GNOME is losing market and mind share. Is the Gnome project on its deathbed? Quoting: 'I first noticed this in 2005 when Jeff Waugh gave his 10×10 talk. Back then, the GNOME project had essentially achieved what it set out to do: a working Free desktop environment. Since then, nobody has managed to set new goals for the project. In fact, these days GNOME describes itself as a “community that makes great software”, which is as nondescript as you can get for software development. The biggest problem with having no goals is that you can’t measure yourself. Nobody can say if GNOME 3 is better or worse than GNOME 2. There is no recognized metric anywhere. This also leads to frustration in lots of places.'"

1 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. To go against the crowd... by gQuigs · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Gnome 3 rocks...

    Try the latest with:
      * Extensions for the stuff that really should be changed and also for some really cool enhancements https://extensions.gnome.org/
      * The Activities menu. I love that the launcher is full screen. I am attempting to launch a new program. I don't care what I currently have open and certainly don't want transparency to fuzzily show it.
      * Accessibility as close to a first class citizen as I've seen. I always want to increase font size, they make it easy. Button in top right.

    There are negatives of course.. (pressing alt to shutdown, that's just stupid) but I really miss the launcher when I use LXDE.