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Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-gnome-or-go-home dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Debian will switch back to using GNOME as the default desktop environment for the upcoming Debian 8.0 Jessie release, due out in 2015. The decision is based on accessibility and systemd integration, along with a host of other reasons. Debian switched away from GNOME back in 2012 .

17 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. Why not KDE by Shaman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe Gnome is friendlier for noobs or something. Are there noobs left in the world?

    --
    ...Steve
    1. Re:Why not KDE by kelemvor4 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why KDE? KDE sucks for noobs and oldfags alike. Gnome is still better, and a simple text console is the best.

      Then man up and run slack.

    2. Re:Why not KDE by s.petry · · Score: 4, Insightful

      KDE has features that Gnome has refused to implement. Gnome 3 promised Kiosk features similar to what KDE has had since version 2.0, never happened. They refuse to allow root access to the Window manager, and sometimes it's needed (CAD/CAE applications). To top all that off, it's far less flexible than KDE.

      Desktop control is required in some environments, which rules out all of the Linux desktops except for KDE. So maybe for you KDE sucks, but from a enterprise and compliance perspective it's both exceptional and essential.

      Further, I have had better experiences with KDE all the way around. I don't have issues controlling menus, location of "start" items, window tiling, multiple displays and desktops, sounds, or any of the other areas where Gnome and Unity are both problematic and inferior in my experience. KDE's speed has always been better than Gnome as well. I'm sure my hardware selection plays a role in that, so again your experiences may differ from mine.

      You can claim that emacs is better than vi just like you can claim that Gnome is better than KDE. Different people have different experiences, and will claim the opposite. Neither side is wrong necessarily.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    3. Re:Why not KDE by MBGMorden · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I've been using Linux since 1997 (pretty much exclusively since 2009). I still prefer MInt over anything else. Eye candy is good, package management is good - and it is the primary platform for Cinnamon which removes all the retarded aspects of Gnome 3 to make it back into a decent desktop UI.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    4. Re: Why not KDE by loufoque · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't understand what you mean by desktop control and root access.
      Care elaborating?

    5. Re:Why not KDE by kamapuaa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've used OS X for 4-5 years and have used Unity since it came out, and I find them very similar. There's differences, but they're much more like each other than they're like Windows. My wife, who isn't a computer person and has always used Macs, occasionally uses Unity on my laptop, and finds it almost the same as Mac except the colors are different.

      Jeff

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  2. How many of you are still using Gnome? by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have stopped using Gnome ever since the developers decided to stop listening to the users and fucked up the whole thing

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:How many of you are still using Gnome? by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      KDE 4.0 was bad, so lots of people switched to Gnome 2.

      KDE 4.3 was decent, and Gnome 3 was awful, so lots of people switched to KDE.

      Gnome 3.10 and KDE 4.13 are both fine. If they both keep working on polish and extension support for a while rather than trying to reinvent themselves again then everything will be peachy.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    2. Re: How many of you are still using Gnome? by CaptnZilog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I use XFCE as well.

      XFCE 4.10 came out in April/2012. I'm honestly worried maybe things have stalled. I use Funtoo(/Gentoo) Linux, so I see from time to time things get updated in the various applications that make up XFCE, but I'm still worried about its future.

      Just a simple question - if it works for you, unless there are some major security bugs or something, why does it matter if it gets 'updated'?

    3. Re:How many of you are still using Gnome? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Why that was rated as "5 insightful" ? Most of the common users actually have loved Gnome from the first use. It is only the Slashdot demographic (noisy hardcore nerds) that have not liked it, and that's a very small minority.

      Gnome actually enables you to focus using the computer, without having to tend to irrelevant details. It's also aesthetically pleasing, unlike especially KDE. Speaking of KDE, they have never understood any of the golden rules of UI design. Exploded search depth, no ability whatsoever to follow the 80-20 rule are the worst practice examples that almost every KDE application commit....

      If you want horrible UI design without listening to the user, please go away and slap everything full of buttons and sliding panels. Make the UI so complex only certain very small specialist user demographic will use it, just like you have done. But don't start whining about other environments that the major use base wants.

    4. Re:How many of you are still using Gnome? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with GNOME was that they also didn't listen to usability experts.

      The problem is that usability experts are actually few and far between. Usability experts have been replaced with User eXperience experts and they kind of kicked off this nightmare of crap design. I like the Microsoft story of how the "Start" button came to exist. Without a requirement for usability experts to weigh in they actually beta tested many versions of windows with various designs, and each time wondered how to get users to click on the thing. Put the word "Start" on the button and suddenly everyone instinctively knew what to do.

      Now we are in a world of UX design where people don't seem to care anymore what the users think but only seem to care about how their product looks like. I'm going to buck the trend and actually say I like the theme of Windows 8. Flat and trendy works for me, but the UX design is a nightmare without any of the queues that a user needs to identify how something should happen.

      I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe the UX guys are right and we're not optimally using the desktop. But if a user can't figure out how to use your desktop (see and endless stream of youtube how-to videos on Windows 8 showing people such advanced things like .... turning their computer off) then you have failed. The users absolutely need to be part of the equation.

  3. Re: Funny, I Left GNOME 3 Mainly Because of System by jd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Software that is designed correctly separates out what it does, how it does it, and how it interacts with the outside world.

    Ergo, software that is correctly designed is user-agnostic. If the user thinks in a particular way, whatever that way happens to be, it is the job of the software to accommodate that. If it does not, it is not software for users, it is software that has users. Possession is everything.

    Software that is correctly designed is configuration-agnostic. If the configuration file states something is enabled, then that is enabled. It is not the job of the software to say the file really means something else. If the configuration is broken, state how and why. Clearly. If the configuration is old, import and update. But don't tell me, or anyone else, what Joe Bloggs thinks would look better. I don't care. And the more other people's preferences get shoved in my face, the less I will care.

    Theo clearly has the right idea - the only way to get past the morons is with an attitude of utter contempt. Bugger all else matters, apparently.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  4. Re:Systemd integration counted as a positive thing by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Go back in time 5 years and tell everyone Linux would be using binary log files, watch the fireworks. Systemd is from the same people who brought you the sometimes working Pulseaudio system. If init scripts did suck so badly then why were they in use for decades? Why was a replacement this long in the making?

    Next you guys are going to be talking about this great binary system for config files like the guys in Redmond use.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  5. Re:Debian GNOME needs some attention by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    omg, there's a bug in an unstable release?

  6. Re:What happened to Debian? by pepa65 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think you got that backwards. Canonical started using systemd because Debian picked it. Also, Canonical doesn't do Gnome3 shell on their main offering, so how do you see any strongarming in this decision?

  7. Re:Horses for courses by rubycodez · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is why a certain navel gazing tard with no engineering sense or real world experience, with a long and tragic history of failures and of fucking up GNU/Linux, decided the headless server realm needed a good fucking up too, and so he wrote systemd

  8. Re: Funny, I Left GNOME 3 Mainly Because of System by epyT-R · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's impossible to design something that is 'agnostic' to everyone as everyone thinks differently and makes different assumptions. Therefore, designers have to make certain assumptions of their own and expect users to stretch out a bit and learn them. Good designers will write reasonable documentation or build intuitive hints into their designs to facilitate this, but going too far makes it difficult to be efficient with the tool. Unfortunately, designs like gnome 3.x, metro, osx, unity, and mobile interfaces clearly show this has become a trend.

    While tools that are difficult to use for no good reason aren't great, especially when the task is relatively simple, tools that make too many assumptions about complex tasks under the guise of simplicity often prevent user skill growth and understanding. The inflexibility that comes with this just pisses the experienced users off. It shouldn't take 6 clicks to do something that should take 1, nor does it make sense to remove all the functionality except that which only takes 1 click just to make it less 'confusing' to do easy things. Who is the target user for interfaces like these? bonobos?