Slashdot Mirror
GNOME 3 Winning Back Users
Mcusanelli writes: GNOME 3, the open source desktop environment for Linux systems that once earned a lot of ire, is receiving newfound praise for the maturity of GNOME Shell and other improvements. The recent release of version 3.14 capped off a series of updates that have gone a long way toward resolving users' problems and addressing complaints. One of the big pieces was the addition of "Classic mode" in 3.8, which got it into RHEL 7, and Debian is switching back as well.
Personally I still like KDE's way of thinking about things, that you are far better off creating multiple workspaces all based on a common desktop environment that suit different types of hardware (Desktop, Netbook and future touch interfaces) rather than creating a monolithic interface that tries to bridge across all types of hardware it might be used on.
In any case anything is better than Unity and they both beat the rubbish Windows 8 interface.
While many Debian users dislike GNOME, Debian developers have always had a strange attraction to GNOME, and that goes beyond the little cabal that was hellbent on making systemd the only option. Maybe it is just intertia from the days when GNOME had a more palpable connection to GNU. Had the larger community of developers not been really keen on having GNOME as the desktop, that small group would not have been able to push systemd through so easily.
But if it still tries to force someone else's idea of how a desktop should behave I doubt that I will move back. Really, why do Gnome developers find it so hard to allow users to change things to their likings anyway?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
No matter what Gnome does, systemd is still driving people away from Linux and toward other unices. Debian will eventually be a fringe distro.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
There really is no need to use Gnome (or KDE) on Debian. I have used it with fvwm for more than a decade now, no problems. This is not Windows, you know, where you are tied to whatever broken Window-Manager the manufacturer forces you to use.
As to Debian, itself, I fear this might just be more bad strategic technical decisions that follow from the systemd disaster.The current Debian technical committee has its head up its backside. No, I do not think they have been bought, but I do think they have been successfully manipulated from the outside. Fortunately, my Linux desktop will look&feel just the same on Gentoo, when systemd-free Debian eventually will run out of support.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've discovered LXDE, and I think the lighter desktop options and alternatives in general got a lot of love when Gnome dropped the ball. And (at least for me) that has turned out to be a great thing... I've rediscovered "snap".
Look slashdot: If you don't like something stop being whiny luddite bitches and fix it. That's what open source is about.
And while you're at it stop trashing good work that's going on in other projects - even if you don't agree with the direction it's going in.
There is change for the better and change for the sake of degree.. What seems to be happening across the board (closed and open source software alike) is the latter. Change because I have a CS degree and what I think is better _IS_ better and you'all have to put up with it! To list but a few I've had trouble with lately:
systemd
Nvidia Optimus
Touch pads with no buttons
Cars infested with unwarranted tech
This is where all tech is heading. I'm all for change but to change things because someone _thinks_ it's better but never really steps back to see if it is... That's not for me!
Nice to see the primary article admit that the launch was immature I guess.
Once again, the media around Gnome seems to display tone-deafness. The third article gave not a single specific other than Linus uses it though he still has problems. The first article lists all the "improvements" that are supposed to lure me back into the fold. Let's see how they stack up.
FTFA:
1) Classic mode offers "enough familiarity" -- at this point XFCE does what I need it to do. I don't need to use Gnome's idea of how the "old folks" used to work. I heard enough times that "classic" was going to die anyway -- too much risk in switching to something with no clear future.
2) "Weather app" -- okay. Yeah that increases my productivity!
3) Evince has less interface -- great. You guys do realize it was the LACK OF CONTROLS on your apps that drove me away, right?
4) Multitouch support -- worthless to me, no touch interfaces, don't want them.
5) Photo app gained support for Google accounts -- so it reached feature parity with my smartphone. Yay!
6) "Captive portal handling" -- this was an actual problem? I don't recall every failing in that task.
Are you kidding me? That adds up to a lot of shined poo.
Neither article answered a single question I actually would have:
Can I configure it simply without third party plugins?
Can I kill the hot corners? In fact, the whole "Fisher Price Activities" screen?
Can I set unchangable defaults on the launcher instead of it deciding incorrectly what I think is important.
Can I change the terminal and screen layout so my 30" monitor is not trying to make one huge xterm all the time?
Can I get a "heads up display" of my multiple desktops that I don't have to cycle through buttons or move the mouse to see?
Does the terminal launcher continue to assume I need just one terminal and unhelpfully bring up the last instance when I actually wanted a new one?
Does the file browser do something sane finally?
Do I still have to have a global menu?
Can I have focus follows the fricking mouse please? I have a huge legacy program that won't work if this doesn't and I am not rewriting it.
Nope. I don't see a lot of evidence from the articles that it is worth my time to come back. Gnome's new design was for intro users who wanted lots of pizzaz. They were VERY clear about how my problems were because I knew nothing about how I should use the computer. The problem is, I know what jobs I am trying to do, and Gnome just didn't work.
Stop sucking. I'm sitting on a bucket load of mod points and I have ads disabled.
The problems:
Standard Gnome 3 is desktop/power user hostile.
Mate and Cinnamon don't do touch screens.
Cinnamon depends on Gnome 3
Because of it's Gnome 2 underpinnings, Mate does not scale well, but I am sure they can add to the final product.
Reform the Gnome organization, giving the Cinnamon and Mate devs a good voice in the final product.
BTW, I am using Cinnamon right now.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Gnome 3 may be getting better... and I do think that many of the their engineering decissions were addressing real needs even if I personally would have preferred addressing them differently. But I still don't care for the UI and I can NEVER forgive Gnome for the way they pulled the rug out under my workflow. I had something that worked, that was well tuned to my needs, and these self-righteous ASSHOLES just plain simply and utterly BROKE it. For a year and a half after Gnome 3 went into Fedora I stayed with Gnome 2 by not upgrading my system, but I needed up-to-date apps, security fixes, etc. I did give Gnome 3 a chance... but aside from hating the UI it was missing features I needed and worse, at the time it was unstable on the graphics in my laptop! For a while I ended up using Xfce, which is ok but getting rather stale, then I switched to MATE which I'm still using now.
But the real point of this message is this... by breaking my desktop the Gnome people cost me hundreds of hours of lost productivity, and the same was probably true for tens of thousands of other Linux desktop users, so we're talking about millions of lost hour of productivity, amounting to probably several billion dollars. The sheer arrogance of this is staggering to me. Linus never did anything like this, it was always a principle of Linux development not to break userland exactly for this reason. Yeah, Gnome is "only UI", but it isn't as easy as just switching some habits... people have developed workflows around their UIs, so it amounts to the same thing... breakage.
So I'll never forgive Gnome, I'll never trust my productivity to them again. And I'm that many other Linux desktop uses feel the same way... although most of us are techies, we want to work, not wrestle with our desktop UI. I suspect this debacle has been a massive setback for Linux on the desktop. I'm as hardcore an open source you'll find, I haven't run a closed-source OS in over 20 years, but I was almost ready to throw in the towel and install Windows during the height of this!
Indeed. One issue may be that all those that know there are alternatives have long ago moved to them and just do not care about the latest desktop insanity from the wannabe-like-Windows crowd.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Get Noscript (or ScriptSafe for Chrome) and Adblock Plus with Easylist, Easyprivacy, Malware Domains and Fanboy's Annoyance List.
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Eat the rich.
Slashdot has ads? I never noticed.
Once I got used to Gnome 3, I had no real issue with it.
This is an attitude that I see a lot and no doubt will come up multiple in times in this thread, and I've got to say - I just don't get it.
When Gnome 3 came out I hated it as well so I switched to Xfce and I've been happy with that. I didn't rant and rave about the Gnome guys though because the way I see it, they're volunteers. The attitude above is tinged with a real sense of entitlement like they owe you something, but they absolutely don't.
I'm sorry that you don't like their changes, I didn't either. However, it's not their responsibility to do things the way you want. These guys have an offering and they're competing with a number of others. It's up to you to either pick the one that most suits you (which will never provide with you with a perfect fit) or make your own solution that does things exactly as you like it. You can then make it available to the public and who knows other people might use it as well!
How will you feel when they tell you that they want you to change it do something else though but you don't want to go that way? You'd be well within your rights to say "I'm a volunteer, this is the way I want to go, if you don't like it then I'm sorry but take a look at one of our competitors".
You are perfectly entitled to ask them to do things differently and try to influence the future direction but if they don't agree with you, sorry but they're the guys writing the code so they'll do it the way they think is right. If they get that wrong too many times then nobody will use their product and people will flock to the better alternatives. That's the beauty of open source.
How can you genuinely consider switching to Microsoft in response to this - how much choice do they give you exactly?
In this age of widescreen LCDs, the vertical space is limited. Yet, Gnome seems to be wasting it with not just one, but two horizontal panels. Wouldn't it make more sense to make them vertical?
Linux sheeple only like familiar things. Want security blanket! Made of penguin wool! Gimmee me precioussss!!
GNOME 3, bad.
Slashdot Beta, bad.
systemd, bad.
Windows 8, bad.
Unity, bad.
PulseAudio, bad.
Wayland, bad...
You know, AC has a point there. It seems that every slightly larger framework coming to Linux gets opposed. To me the funniest part is that many of the opponents do not even seem to precisely know why they are opposing the thing, they just quickly learn to robotically chant the same thing than everyone else. I mean, there are still people who are against Unity because "it is a mobile UI". That just shows that they have never used it, at all.
I use adblock, but explicitly block by site and by ad provider.
Slashdot made it on the blacklist when they started experimenting with those annoying ads that slide in from the bottom.
no
Please login to access my lawn
The interesting trend is that it seems to take losing users/slow adoption in droves and mass rioting to get the ball rolling.
Both gnome 3 and windows 8 have seen their user bases outright revolt over their UI changes, and both largely ignored it as "people hate change but they'll learn to love it" until numbers started actually dropping significantly and people started leaving.
You could say the same with slashdot beta. It took mass protests and the creation of an alternate site for dice to accept that people didn't like what they were doing and wern't going to learn to like it.
This all seems to reflect a growing mentality of "this is what the users want, we just have to wait until they realize it" and a kind of egotistical "we did everything right, so they must be wrong" attitude.
I am happy with Gnome 3 (via CentOS 7) on my home laptop and work desktop machine. It looks great and I was able to configure it to my taste. CentOS 7 also comes with systemd. Never had to give it a second thought. For my needs this is a great desktop OS for home use and the development work I do in the office.
yes
It'll be fun to go back to Fedora.
The Gnome Project's true value is as a cautionary tale about knowing your user base. The Gnome foundation badly misjudged who would use their stuff and were so sure that they'd tap into millions of normal users that they didn't mind being really insulting to the users they lost in the process.
Today's articles seem to admit they are not reaching "normal users doing things normal users do" and since they need some sort of user base back, they must appeal to the ones they drove away. Really, it's right there in the titles: "How GNOME 3.14 is winning back disillusioned Linux users" and "Open Source GNOME 3 Desktop Environment Wins Back Fans."
I decided to post just to point out that the "features" that are supposed to win their users back are superficial at best and they do even get close to the core of their problems.
Reading tip 101: Typically the last thing in a list occupies that position because it is generally not as important to the main argument as what came before.
You know, AC has a point there. It seems that every slightly larger framework coming to Linux gets opposed.
I couldn't tell you quite when it happened, but at some point in my life, I slowly came to realize that the tools I use on a daily basis exist to perform a specific set of tasks. The tool has value for what it does for me, not for its own inherent newness or shininess.
Whether I use systemd or init really makes no difference; whether I use Gnome or KDE, completely irrelevant to whether or not I can open a browser, a music player, and my IDE of choice. BUT! for the same reason, I have a strong motivation not to make huge changes just for the sake of "new", until those changes will allow me to perform my set of tasks better or faster or easier.
Yes, I can appreciate the need to have a functional level of knowledge about the alternatives to what I use on a day-to-day basis - How else can I evaluate when "new" will make me faster/better/etc? I also, however, believe in mastering the tools I use most often. And that takes time. If I'll eventually save five minutes a day by using Gnome instead of KDE, but it takes me a year of fifteen wasted minutes a day mastering the environment, then unless I stick with Gnome for four years, I don't even break even. Obviously, an overly-simplified example, but I see this problem all too often in fresh-out-of-college coworkers: They'll switch to something "better" every month or two, without any consideration of the payback period on their time invested, giving a net negative ROI.
And due to this myopia, I will never subject myself to Gnome's abuse again. "But I love you, baby! I'd never hurt you!" says the Gnome dev team. They'll never learn.
As a fellow gentoo user who is also trying to avoid systemd, we've got a hell of a fight before us.
Systemd wants to be it's own platform and it's snaking it's way into everything. Running a non-systemd system on gentoo, even where openrc is the default and systemd is just an alternative, is becoming a pain. I've had to rejuggle packages and use the blacklist for the first time in many years because (McBain voice) THE USE FLAGS, THEY DO NOTHING!
As more and more stuff adds dependencies on the systemd virus, it's just gonna get worse.
Our only hope is that systemd implodes and everything just goes back to the way it was.
If you have to go though all this mess just to get rid of Systemd then why don't you just move to Systemd? Com on, at the end of the day it's just an init system; it's not like it's the end of the world. It's not really that important, yes really.
Privacy Badger. I just let it manage my blocking automatically and I don't see ads here.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Just as an outside observer, I think there are two major reasons why Debian likes Gnome so much.
I would say that accessibility is one of the most important reasons from the bits and pieces I've read on the Debian mailing lists that discussed the matter. There's of course many other reasons as well, but that's a big one.
You can go out of your way to not use a particular init system but you can't spend five minutes learning grammar?
Priorities.
The problem imo is specifically that it's not just an init system. It's morphing into it's own thing that wants to take over all routine system behaviour, and the attitude of the devs is not encouraging (too lazy to find the link, but an oft quoted comment regarding log file corruption illustrates this quite well).
Linux (at least in my opinion) is all about choice. Don't like the way something works, use something else or write your own. Systemd is becoming a huge chunk that can't easily be swapped out for something else. I'm really against that.
And importance is relative. If you just want a functioning system, I agree that none of this is really that important and I'd probably just use ubuntu or mint or hell just windows or mac. I use gentoo specifically because I like my system "just so". Most people probably fall somewhere in between these points, with some past where they care about systemd and some not. I think this is perfectly healthy. If no one cared about init systems or boot loaders, no one would be developing them!
*cough* Slashdot Beta *cough*
Redundancy is good And also good.
Install APK's Host Files Engine v. 37.0.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
s/linux/open source/g
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It's not text editor. Clearly it does not want to be everything. It's an init system, which in a modern system involves parts which used to be developed as separate projects, but since everyone uses them it's better to collect everything under one roof where it's easier to make things work well together.
Yeah, who wants to be one of those losers that communicate properly. Rules are for morons, right?
Your original comment didn't make you an idiot. Your last one definitely did.
The problem imo is specifically that it's not just an init system. It's morphing into it's own thing that wants to take over all routine system behaviour, and the attitude of the devs is not encouraging (too lazy to find the link, but an oft quoted comment regarding log file corruption illustrates this quite well).
You say that as if it's a bad thing that stuff can be made to work well together if it's developed together.
Linux (at least in my opinion) is all about choice. Don't like the way something works, use something else or write your own. Systemd is becoming a huge chunk that can't easily be swapped out for something else. I'm really against that.
I have not tested but it looks like you can swap it out for something else on at least Debian:
https://packages.debian.org/je...
And importance is relative. If you just want a functioning system, I agree that none of this is really that important and I'd probably just use ubuntu or mint or hell just windows or mac. I use gentoo specifically because I like my system "just so". Most people probably fall somewhere in between these points, with some past where they care about systemd and some not. I think this is perfectly healthy. If no one cared about init systems or boot loaders, no one would be developing them!
Indeed.
You are illiterate and lazy, providing nonsense excuses which back up my assertion.
From everything I've read, Gnome is horribly slow while KDE is quite fast, even on older machines as long as they have sufficient memory (it's not "lightweight" though like some of the truly lightweight desktops). C++ just doesn't carry the performance penalty you think it does. In addition, Qt is very popular on embedded devices; why would that be the case if it were slow? Finally, at least one project (LXDE) has actually switched from GTK to Qt. Considering that LXDE is a low-resource desktop, they wouldn't do that if Qt were a hog. Obviously it's not.
Properly-written C++ is just as fast as C code, and writing code in C is no guarantee of high performance.
Why Debian likes Gnome so much, I really have no idea. The old Qt/GPL thing is just dumb; that was over a decade ago, and Qt *is* GPL now, so it's no different than GTK. Yes, you can purchase a commercial license if you want, which gives you more flexibility; with a GPL-only project, you don't have that luxury, so you have to keep your project GPL to use other GPL code. Qt gives you the option, which obviously many embedded commercial users prefer, and which keeps the project afloat financially.
The interesting trend is that it seems to take losing users/slow adoption in droves and mass rioting to get the ball rolling.
Both gnome 3 and windows 8 have seen their user bases outright revolt over their UI changes, and both largely ignored it as "people hate change but they'll learn to love it" until numbers started actually dropping significantly and people started leaving.
It seems to be really good PR actually... Everyone says "Windows 10 is really good", and quietly ignoring the "...because they ripped out all the crap Windows 8 introduced, leaving it identical to Windows 7" bit. :)
To be honest, I don't really buy the "people hate change" thing - sure, some people hate change, but a lot of the time changes are good. Change for the sake of change is often bad, but a lot of change doesn't fit into that category and actually improves things. From my perspective, I think Gnome 3's UI is pretty good - I really like the fundamental design. What I dislike about Gnome 3 isn't the basic design, its that they seem to think that making everyone use dconf is more "user friendly" than providing a proper configuration UI that actually lets you.. uhm.. configure it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
And with any luck, someday you'll have a bootloader and a single binary named linux?
I'm sure they'll add a text editor sooner or later. The systemd operating system will rise if we don't slay it now!
HP-UX is a hell of a better, superior operating system to the damn GNU/Linux vomit, that is for damn sure! It does what it is designed to do, and it does it extremely well.
Idiotic policies regarding HP-UX not being free and hardware being overpriced are another matter, but damn it all to hell, do not masturbate on GNU/Linux implying HP-UX is inferior, when it is superior. Ignorance is not an excuse.
And with any luck, someday you'll have a bootloader and a single binary named linux?
Not likely anytime soon, but I can see some use for that in embedded systems.
You say that as if it's a bad thing that stuff can be made to work well together if it's developed together.
It's a trade-off. Mac, and to some degree Windows, benefit greatly from tight integration, but it comes at the cost of flexibility. The preference of flexibility over user friendliness and even functionality was what drew me to Linux and specifically Gentoo in the first place.
Systemd is probably not a terrible idea by itself, it just goes against the traditional linux mindset, which is probably why it's hitting so much resistance from people like me who bought into that mindset more so than the functioning system.
Windows 8, bad.
PulseAudio, bad.
Wayland, bad...
You know, AC has a point there. It seems that every slightly larger framework coming to Linux gets opposed. To me the funniest part is that many of the opponents do not even seem to precisely know why they are opposing the thing, they just quickly learn to robotically chant the same thing than everyone else.
I think Pulse Audio got a bad reputation because it was pushed on people way too early. I can certainly remember upgrading a few systems and finding my audio completely broken in a practically unfixable way (short of wiping and downgrading again) because distros had rolled out PulseAudio and it was so well integrated into stuff that you couldn't just rip it out again. These days it seems to work well and more or less sets out to do what it was designed to do (although I don't think I get a huge amount of benefit from PulseAudio over plain ALSA in day to day use).
I've only used Windows 8 once, but for me it fell down on the "discoverability" criteria - in a GUI, things need to be easily discoverable without googling or consulting the manual - at least, the simple stuff does. First time I used Windows 8 I got presented with the start screen, clicked on the IE logo and up popped the Metro version of IE.... Now what? There's no "Start" menu or anything especially obvious to get you back to the start screen. I pressed ctrl+alt+del and was pleasantly surprised to find that after I killed off IE I was left at a familiar classic Windows desktop. GUIs shouldn't ever leave you in a situation where it isn't obvious how to get back to wherever you came from, and IMHO Metro failed on that count - sure I would've figured it out and got used to it through constant use, but the initial impression is bad, and first impressions count.
Stuff like systemd and udev probably get some backlash because they are quite complex, and are replacements for very simple systems so there is a really steep learning curve that practically never existed before. You get a lot of "I just need to do $trivial_thing, it would've been easy under $old_system but now I'm having to spend forever reading the manual for $new_system!" I wouldn't stand by the "people hate change" argument, more "people hate change when things don't work". Nothing worse than wasting 2 hours trying to fix a problem with the new system that would've been sorted in 5 minutes if you were using something more familiar.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I had no idea, mostly because I don't care about ads, but I run requestpolicy because, I consider the whole mode of operation on the web these days a bit like if every time you ran into a person you knew with a group of their random friends who you may or may not have met before, you went and immediately gave oral sex to each person in the group every time.
If they want me to see ads, they should host them on the same site I wanted to load, otherwise I am not going to see it. Sorry I don't trust that every affiliate site that every site I go to decides to allow to accept money to link is "clean enough to raw dog"
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
A bunch of young women got paid for some make-work projects, what's not to like about that? Doesn't that make you want to open your wallet and send in a nice, fat donation so you can sponsor more make-work projects?
However, to be fair, I thought that a good portion of that spending was actually given to them specifically for that purpose, and was not allowed to be redirected to other tasks.
The way in which systemd components "work together" is through a series of interfaces that inherit little of the Unix tradition, and a lot of people would prefer to keep that Unix tradition. Systemd's command-line arguments are weirdly phrased, documentation is not a priority for systemd developers at this time so many manuals and HOWTOs are already out of date, logging is drastically different from how it used to be, and perfectly reasonable technologies that people have long trained in such as cron are being removed from the systemd because Lennart Poettering wants his init system to cover all that functionality to. It's a mess.
While Debian ostensibly offers other init systems, it is really only suitable for certain types of installations like headless servers. Installing graphical applications under Debian is now likely to require systemd. Even the GIMP now pulls in systemd because it depends on dbus, and the Debian maintainers have made systemd a dbus dependency.
Sorry, that should have read "are being removed from the system".
Yes, but only for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and any other vertical writing language.
I have not tested but it looks like you can swap it out for something else on at least Debian: https://packages.debian.org/je... [debian.org]
The problem is likely the same as on gentoo. Sure you don't have to install systemd, but a shit tonne of stuff will depend on it, or have dependencies that depend on it. I imagine the situation will be far worse on binary based distros as they tend to pull in a shit tonne of libraries and sometimes actual programs because of some minor but tightly coupled feature that didn't warrant a patch or a -non-<whatever> version. As I said in a prior post, on gentoo I had to straight up blacklist the systemd package and rely on portage failing because telling everything not to compile with systemd support isn't enough!
Slackware ditched gnome because it became too big of a pain to include it without including systemd.
The whole thing is just very anti-linux imo.
maybe
I don't know it make me think that maybe systemd is trying to be it's all the time when sometimes people just want its because it makes more sense.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
There's just no way it could be true. Default gentoo profile uses openrc(thus systemd profile would get less testing), and it takes some effort to convert default openrc install into systemd one. As someone who is using systemd with gentoo I can attest to that. The only way to implode systemd now would be to make another competing better init system(sysvinit with some bash clusterfuck bolted on doesn't qualify as init system anymore).
I wonder, how far back the "Classic" goes... Does it offer the look-and-feel of Motif X-sessions of the early 1990ies — or the skimpy twm? Or the fvwm of the slightly later years? What exactly is "classic" today?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm pretty happy with the XFCE on Ubuntu Studio. There is a lot of Gnome and KDE under the hood, as dependencies of specific apps that I favor, but that doesn't seem to be increasing my render times or anything (rendering CG in Blender is my most demanding work).
That said, I'm toying with the idea of trying the newest Gnome GUI. I liked Gnome. I hope they have it working again.
Will
Have they fixed it yet?
Gnome 3 may be great, but if they make an update to it and that breaks all the apps or components whose support groups can't keep up with releases, who cares?
Have gnu, will travel.
You set yourself up for this dammit, so for once I don't feel even a trifle bad about playing the grammar nazi: You painted the big red bullseye on yourself.
That should be "Here though, the only person who looks stupid if I use poor grammar is me, ..."
Thanks for making my whole morning.
Who is John Cabal?
Well, if nothing else helps, I will move to one of the xBSDs. I use Linux to have something very much Unix-like, not to have a bad copy of Windows.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Don't worry. These morons routinely have nothing else to contribute, but do not have what it takes to shut up. Quite a few will also be sadists that thrive on putting others down. Not people that words should be wasted on, they are not part of polite society.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If it were just an init system, it would be easy to use just another init system instead. It is not. It is a cancerous, malicious growth that tries to encompass and suffocate anything it can get its hands on. You see, if systemd were actually good, then it would be easy to avoid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
SysV Init is actually a pretty good init system, as its long history and high flexibility shows. But there are always those that scream for more features and more complexity, despite that being the road to hell.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Our only hope is that systemd implodes and everything just goes back to the way it was.
in short; we're fucked.
I think Gnome 3 is the New Coke of the DE world. It wasn't so much that it was a horrible idea... taste tests seemed promising, and change is good, right? It just seems to be what happens when makers 'mess' with a product. Now that they've reintroduced Gnome 'Classic', (see where I went with the Coke thing?), people are simmering down a bit and reluctantly muttering, "Oh, well.... that's okay then, I guess. Watch it - we've got our eyes on you!"
Where it's nothing like New Coke is that the Gnome developers get to mess with the formula while they try to, (often unsuccessfully), balance needs and vision, (whose vision?). In this case, I think the vision preceded the needs department for a lot of people. I actually like the standard Gnome 3 interface, but I also see how it pissed a lot of people off... especially with earlier versions.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
I don't really buy the "people hate change" thing - sure, some people hate change, but a lot of the time changes are good.
While the "people hate change" argument is misused and overstated, there is truth to it. Changing your work habits and routines is always painful to some degree, and people hate pain. Regardless of that, people will willingly change their habits when they see a value to doing so that is greater than the pain of the change.
Where both Windows 8 and Gnome 3 (and a few other Linux DEs) went wrong is a combination of two things: for most users the changes they presented did not offer benefits that exceeded the amount of pain they caused, and those changes were forced on the users regardless of their wants and needs.
Nah, I hate Unity / Gnome 3 because they were quite clearly Apple desktop and tablet clones. Not that there's anything wrong with those UI's, they just don't fit my workflow. Instead of adding options to support *shocked* many application styles, they said fuck you, this is the way, or you can go jump off a roof. Having a project so hostile to their community is probably the fastest way of losing them.
Bye!
it's just an init system
If that were true, then I wouldn't get upset about it. If that were true, then there wouldn't be package or build dependencies on systemd. If that were true, the systemd wouldn't be causing so much fallout with the rest of the system. The fact is that systemd is so monolithic and broad that you can't call it "just an init system".
1. The vertical space on my start bar is very small, like 1/3 of an inch on one of my 27" diagonal monitors. For that price, I can actually read contextual words on my task list which is why I don't have to click an icon then click again to find the 'right' window to jump back to. Many people do it differently, but its the way I work.
2. My 'reading' screen is vertically oriented, my 'work' screen is horizontal, but my IDE's have lots of important side-bar crap that fills in. With my current 2x27" setup, I've never thought, damn, I need more screen real-estate. All in all, I have maybe 2% of my total screen real-estate constantly occupied with static OS items. If I was using XFCE (I like the top/bottom bars for Linux), it would be double that, but still very acceptible for my use cases.
Bye!
since everyone uses them it's better to collect everything under one roof where it's easier to make things work well together.
This is where we differ. I don't think that's better at all. We should not be sacrificing functionality and flexibility just because it makes system developer's lives easier.
Agree*1000. I just run OpenBox with tint2, and a few misc. I'm a believer in technological evolution and try to keep up with the latest stuff. But when the most critical features of something - like a desktop/UI - are it's simplicity, predictability, and unobtrusiveness, you just can't find ways to keep improving it without destroying it in the process. It's like trying to come out with a better hammer every year.
Interestingly enough I don't think I'd use the word at all, but if I did, maybe.
I'd be more likely to say "The steam shovel belonged to her" vice "The steam shovel was hers" or "It's her steam shovel".
Bah!
To make things worse, I think I originally typed it as "myself", which I felt was wrong so I changed it to I. :(
That list is meaningless, since you could easily put together an even longer list of things that have changed without anyone complaining about it.
In all fairness, the reason I have a problem with everything on that list (except Gnome 3, which I've never used) is because none of them meet my needs, desires, or solve problems I have. At the same time all of them presented additional problems that I didn't have before.
It's not a general "resistance to change" problem. It's a resistance to cost without benefit that's the "problem."
So, might as well use "her's" and "he's". Otherwise, you're being inconsistent and "unnatural". And remember to perfectly switch back to the consensus-grammar when not communicating in a casual context.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
So, given time, systemd will become emacs?
A committe of developers that didn't have the authority intentionally miscalssified a decision and then rammed it through. Perhaps Debian will reverse their decision, but I suspect that it may now have enough momentum behind it that they won't. So I'm switching back to stable while I consider my options. (Gentto, Slackware, some BSD...) Fortunately, Debian normally maintains stable distributions for quite awhile, so I don't think there's a real push for a fast decision, and perhaps they'll change their minds before testing become stable.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The problem isn't the windows manager, it's systemd. I already run KDE, and sometimes xfce. I don't use Gnome3. But I also don't like to fight city hall. If the distro is seriously pushing systemd, then I'll use something else. But I also don't like deciding important things quickly. Right now that means avoiding anything that puts in a systemd dependency. And *that* means avoiding Gnome3...and everything that has it as a dependency.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
One of the benefits with Systemd is that it adds functionality.
Doesn't it have option to have vertical or horizontal? User should be able to pick which orientation to use.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
So choose BSD
The problem was it was a forced change. Gnome should have forked their own product and renamed everything so that Gnome 3 and Gnome 2 could be installed side by side. But no, it was Gnome 3 or fuck off.
They did exactly what you state. Previously Gnome version 2 was called Gnome, not Gnome 2. The new version is called Gnome 3. The source code for the previous version (v2) wasn't deleted. Distros could still package it and distribute it, but they chose not to do so.
Pointing out Debian and RHEL are now at parity is probably unhelpful at this point. Only makes readers wonder how much of Gnome's new found success is really "winning back users" how much is "making the right deals".
One could also ponder whether the decline in popularity was from the users or from Ubuntu's decision to drop it and go their own way?
..."people hate change but they'll learn to love it"
It's mostly true. The early Gnome 3 annoyed me so much ("I want my clock on the bottom of the screen, dammit!") that I changed to KDE4 and XFCE (on low memory systems). KDE was infuriating, but once I'd figured out how to disable, e.g., Akonadai and Konqueror, I learned to like it. (Dolphin is good! Window title bars on the left edge is a godsend for widescreen use.) XFCE was similar enough to Gnome 2 for me not to notice it much.
PA-RISC? If those chips were dinosaur bones, one could be drilling for oil in Ft Collins, CO by now. It's been that long. Only choice for today's HP/UX users is the Itanic, until the OS gets ported to the x64.
But if one has an x64 based PC/server and wants to go w/ a POSIX based OS, why select that? Even if one wants to shun Linux, there are still the BSDs - FreeBSD in particular, OpenIndiana (which ironically doesn't support the SPARC), and even Xinios UNIXWARE. So why would anyone go out of their way for HP/UX, except for people who already are tied to it?
You are either dumb or not thinking.
Did GNOME 1 have haters when it was introduced? How about GNOME 2? What about KDE 1? KDE 2? KDE 3? ALSA?
No. These were all improvements of what came before.
KDE 4? GNOME 3? SystemD? Windows 8? Slashdot BETA?
These were not improvements. These things were/are either grossly unstable, removed functionality, or in the case of SystemD, both. Sure, some things were gained, but compared to what was lost, these were terrible choices.
What was lost when ALSA was introduced? Nothing. Was it perfect at first? No. Was it better than Open Sound System? You bet.
What was lost when GNOME was introduced? Nothing. Was it perfect at first? No. Was it better than TWM? Definitely.
What was lost when SystemD was introduced? Oh my god, I can give you a HUGE list. Parsable log files and flexible failure modes being the ones that irritate me the most but others have compiled more useful lists of what was lost. Was it better than init? In some ways, yes. In other ways, no.
What was lost when Windows 8 was introduced. Well, again, the list is huge but I will just list the obvious for brevity: The start menu. Was it better than Windows 7? Arguably no.
So, you, yes you, are either dumb or playing dumb by claiming that people just hate change. Change is good when it leads to better things. Everyone wants better. The noises you are hearing are about things NOT being better.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
KDE accessibility project is much much less advanced than Gnome's. Companies like to have default software usable by disabled people - for both ethical and legal reasons. Distributions like to have their default configurations usable by more companies.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Gnome should have forked their own product and renamed everything so that Gnome 3 and Gnome 2 could be installed side by side.
That's pretty much what DID happen. You can even run MATE from within Gnome 3.
http://mate-desktop.org/
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Did GNOME 1 have haters when it was introduced? How about GNOME 2? What about KDE 1? KDE 2? KDE 3? ALSA?
No. These were all improvements of what came before.
All those things you listed had the same strong hate casted upon them, especially GNOME 2 and ALSA.
It adds some, yes. But it also takes away other. BTW, by "functionality," I don't mean "features". I mean it more in terms of "fitness of purpose".
The interesting trend is that it seems to take losing users/slow adoption in droves and mass rioting to get the ball rolling.
Both gnome 3 and windows 8 have seen their user bases outright revolt over their UI changes, and both largely ignored it as "people hate change but they'll learn to love it" until numbers started actually dropping significantly and people started leaving.
There is an old saying "If we just ignore the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You can go out of your way to not use a particular init system but you can't spend five minutes learning grammar?
Priorities.
It's his own choice it's.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It is lovely isn't it?
What I want to know, and hitherto have not bothered to look up, is who in the chain of responsibility decided that we should have been forced to go from something that worked to something that required you to learn how to use stupid new-age UI paradigms that don't sodding work. I don't want to swipe things in I don't want to search when I know where things are I don't want things hiding from me TBH, I'm still sticking with MATE. Coz this shit's annoying.
I have to agree. I switched my work computer to linux to suit what I had been doing for years as a lone wolf, but the office is MS. I do appreciate that, for what we do, Windows works OK. I still can work faster than most of my colleagues, but that is just me, not the systems.
BUT, I am still completely acclimated to gnome3 and linux and it would be a real waste of time and effort to switch to Windows. It is one of my few worries at work, that Win10 will be so tightly controled that in a WinOffice there will be no way to not use windows, or at least dual boot.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
Just like Brainfuck is a pretty good programming language..