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Fedora 19 Alpha Released
hypnosec writes "Following delays due to UEFI, the alpha version of Fedora 19 'Schrödinger's Cat' has been released. The alpha version brings with it all the features of Fedora 19, including the updated desktop options – GNOME 3.8, KDE Plasma 4.10 and MATE 1.6. Other new features include Developer's Assistant – a tool that would allow developers to code easily with ready templates, samples and more; OpenShift Origin – through which users will be able to deploy their own Platform-as-a-Service infrastructure; Ruby 2.0.0; Scratch; Syslinux – provides for simplified booting of Fedora; systemd Resource Control – which allows for modification of service settings without requiring a reboot; and Checkpoint & Restore. Downloads and release notes available at the Fedora Project site."
Ok, I'll keep this brief.
Anything that makes you move your cursor back and forth for miles during a day is just plain fail. It's not just bloody annoying, it's an ergonomic problem, and it shows that you actually didn't think things through.
I specifically dismissed plugins and keyboard shortcuts because they are A) far from intuitively discoverable, B) indistinguishable from magic to any non-hard core user, and C) it's the absolute favorite excuse for gnome-apologists when you point out a flaw in the UI. I'd be a wealthy man if I had a penny every time I've heard "there's a shortcut for that!", or "there's a plugin for that!".
You see, the point is that these things are meant to be things you can learn if you're a serious user willing to invest some time to increase your productivity. That's why VI/VIM is absolutely fine. It's an expert tool. I thought the entire idea with Gnome was not to fall into that category. Or is it constantly losing those "confusing" features (see the new Natuilus for a fresh example) because it's used by easily confused experts? Shortcuts are indeed not meant to be used as escape routes for anyone who wants to keep their sanity. In fact, just the fact that people keep referring to them as "the way to do it" in a GUI, should ring a metric ton of alarm-bells. Or does Gnome claim to have reinvented DOS?
I don't get this harping about "Windows 95", btw. Attempt at "guilt by association"? An obvious fallacy, which doesn't do anything positive for your position. (As a side note, I'd like to point out that Microsoft has produced a lot of turds over the years, but the "Windows 95" UI is (also used in W2k until they ruined it in XP but I guess it doesn't sound as bad to accuse people of wanting their w2k back, right?), despite its warts a very clean and useable UI.)
Stuff that relies on magic, stuff that does things just because you happen to park your mouse cursor somewhere arbitrarily decided to be "special", stuff which forces you to run the desktop marathon daily for the most basic usage or learn magic codes, or just in general totally gets in your way (one display, one window, one Führer, MAXIMIZE EVERYTHING! FULLSCREEN IS NORMAL!!ONEONEELVENTY!!!) because you're supposed to do things "the gnome" way are just failures in comparison. Fancy graphics and a later date of packaging is completely irrelevant, what matters is if you can do your job without tearing your hair out.
TL;DR, it needs to be effective, reasonably intuitive and above all discoverable, unless you're talking about expert systems. Gnome3 is none of that.
Thank you for your attempt at being condescending, epic fail there too. And no, I don't take HCI classes, but I know people who have. Amusingly, they tell me explicitly Gnome is frequently held up in class as an example of how not to do. And they are not freshmen, btw.
Now, if you want to keep flinging insults around, fine. I've told you were you can find plenty of valid criticism of Gnome3, but I somehow get the feeling you're not really interested in it.
And that's kind of the core of it afaic, I guess. What grates me about Gnome3, isn't so much it's pretty obvious problems, but the absolute arrogant, narrow minded, condescending and childish attitude of it's developers and their remaining sycophants. Their reaction to criticism has from day one been to accuse people who speak up of being "haters", "trolls", or "ignorant", "we know better than you", or, when everything else fails, just act like ostriches.
Anyway, it's water under the bridge. They've flat out refused to listening to the users they had, and now they barely have any ones left, to their great surprise. Well, the rest of us aren't, we've moved on.
And with that, I'm out. Peace.