GNOME 3 To Support a "Classic" Mode, of Sorts

An anonymous reader writes "LWN.net is reporting that GNOME developer Matthias Clasen has announced that, with the upcoming demise of 'fallback mode,' the project will support a set of official GNOME Shell extensions to provide a more "classic" experience. 'And while we certainly hope that many users will find the new ways comfortable and refreshing after a short learning phase, we should not fault people who prefer the old way. After all, these features were a selling point of GNOME 2 for ten years!'"

Comments

Closing the barn door after the horse is gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Too little, too late. The project has already run off too many power users and influential people within the FOSS community. The top-down, change for the sake of change dictate has led many to question the project's leadership.

News Flash: They were faulting people who preferred the traditional way. Those who wanted a minimal and unobtrusive workspace were told to stop being stodgy luddites and get with the Metro/OSX times.

Re:Closing the barn door after the horse is gone

[digitalchinky]

Gimp and a bunch of other projects seem to be headed the same way - what is it with ripping out a decade of refined workflow for massive amounts of white space and fewer exposed configuration options? This trend for dumbed down interfaces has become disturbing.

Re:Closing the barn door after the horse is gone

[erroneus]

The industry has "matured." "New isn't better" any longer. Now we just want to use what we have, not "experience" it.

Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

"we should not fault people who prefer the old way"

Oooh, how generously big-hearted and inclusive of them!

Re:This isn't devs listening

[TuringTest]

Keeping tight control is a *good* think in user interface design strategy; it provides a more focused structure and simpler environment, which were their goals.

The mistake the Gnome developers made was calling the new desktop "Gnome 3". Had they presented it as an experimental new environment and named it "Project Harmony" or "Desktop Zen", or something like that, they would have stepped on less toes and met less resistance to the radical changes, and people would have seen it in better light.

Of course they would have had less audience, as distros wouldn't have adopted it so quickly. That trade-off was their choice, but I think "Linux is awesome! There are three good major desktops now!" was a better selling point than "They've updated Gnome, and it sucks".

Not Thankful

[Culture20]

I am not thankful for Matthias' condescension. A little more humility on his part in admitting Gnome 3 is bad design would be appropriate.

Re:Good decission

[squiggleslash]

I'm sure the MATE people can update their code to use the version 3 libraries with or without GNOME's "official" help. That's pretty much how FOSS works.

I think this is a good move by GNOME. I have to say I've been bothered by the reports that the fallback mode is going to be removed, I'm not a fan of Unity or GNOME Shell, but at the same time I'd like my desktop to be modern, supported, and able to run modern software without it appearing to be be a hack.

This sounds like the start of the right approach to get a proper desktop back for GNOME users who want one.

More-over, it also provides the GNOME project with a way out. They've kind of painted themselves in to a corner with GNOME Shell. I'm finding it very hard to believe that there's a significant contingent of people out there who prefer it, or Unity, to a desktop. An officially supported set of "extensions" can, over time, turn into an official GNOME next generation desktop project, without having to admit that maybe GNOME Shell was not quite what was needed right now.