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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 .

6 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 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.

  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: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.