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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 .

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 TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Listening to users isn't necessarily a good thing. Henry Ford said that if he'd asked his customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse. This is especially true of UI design, because most people (even power users) really don't measure what they're spending time doing and get into unproductive patterns. The problem with GNOME was that they also didn't listen to usability experts. Or even vaguely competent people who had read an HCI book. They went down a path of doing things that an uninformed user and a usability expert could both agree were stupid. Apparently they've improved recently, but it cost them a lot of users.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    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 mattventura · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Same, so I switched to XFCE. I'd much rather just have a nice minimal DE that doesn't get in the way. I'm not using a DE for the sake of using a DE, I'm using it to facilitate using actual applications.

    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.

  2. Re:Why not KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Gnome is drastically different than any other environment out there. I can't imagine it being a good choice for noobs. MATE is a better choice because it is more familiar to Windows users. Unity is a good choice for Mac OS X users because of some similarities. GNOME is like neither. A noob would be lost.

  3. Re:Help me Slackware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Much fear I sense in you...
    Help you we can. Install FreeBSD we must.

  4. Funny, I Left GNOME 3 Mainly Because of Systemd by SlashdotOgre · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used GNOME as my primary desktop environment for almost a decade starting with 2.4 on Fedora Core 1. I watched as many features I cared for were either hidden or removed for simplicity's sake, but I kept with it because for the most part I could restore the features with minimal hassle and I liked the overall look & feel. I even put up with early GNOME 3 as I felt 3.4 & 3.6 were progressively improving. However by 3.8 I was getting fed up of having to constantly figure out how to restore features I want, and I had absolutely no interest in running systemd just to run a damn GUI. I had enough, jumped to XFCE4 and have it customized to a very similar setup to GNOME 2 and have been very satisfied.

    It takes a lot to alienate someone who has used the same software for a decade, but they've managed to it. I felt like each released "dumbed" the product down more and more and I kept thinking to myself that old saying, "If you make something idiot proof, someone will just make a better idiot". I don't know what kind of consumer they want to attract, but apparently I'm no longer it.

    At least with Debian, the default desktop doesn't necessarily mean much as it's quite simple to install an alternative.

    --
    Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
  5. Re: Enlightenment by jd · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's definitely one of the cleanest. It needs a rewrite, though.

    --
    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)
  6. Re:Why not KDE by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unity is a good choice for Mac OS X users because of some similarities.

    Clearly you've never used OS X for any amount of time to make such a ridiculous claim. Unity is almost nothing like OS X beyond a couple of superficial similarities that, outside of the left hand buttons, don't even functionally act the same as the OS X counterpart it is trying to mimic. Long-time OS X users tend to despise Unity for its superficial cargo cult look.

  7. 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.

  8. Re:What happened to Debian? by styrotech · · Score: 5, Informative

    Getting bullied by Canonical makes loads of sense, but I don't like it one bit.

    You need to look into it deeper. It didn't happen that way at all.

    Canonical wanted Debian to pick upstart (naturally as it was their software). Once Debian chose systemd though and with RHEL already switching away from upstart to systemd, Canonical felt that being left as the only distro still using upstart wasn't tenable any more. Staying aligned with Debian was more important than getting what they wanted.