Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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 .

12 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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.

  2. 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.

  3. Re:Debian GNOME needs some attention by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  4. 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?

  5. 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.

  6. 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

  7. Re: Why not KDE by loufoque · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  8. 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.
  9. 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?