Thank you for at trying GNOME 3. I appreciate that. Again, I'm sorry that it didn't fit your use cases. It does seem that you were able to adapt to your desktop, so glad there was a good ending. I would have preferred if it was GNOME 3, but we can't have everything.
Problem is that nobody learns a "foreign" language in a day. The same happens with Desktop paradigms.
I think I would like to use Gnome 3 on a tablet, but on my desktop I could not (and I did tried). It simply broke all my day to day workflow practices.
And that sad decision to use the same library names prevented me to have Gnome 2 and 3 at the same time on my machine, what would keep me working productively at the same time I'm probing the "foreign" paradigms without compromising my deadlines.
I remember cursing aloud because the theme I chose had a flaw (the clock's font color became illegible when the clock's window loses the focus - the designer choose a too dark font color), and I took hours to figure out where to find the customization tool (changing font colors on "Advanced Options"?). I didn't get pissed with the color mistake (it happens!). I got totally mad because there wasn't a way to fix that the proper way - and I'm talking about a fscking clock on my desktop!
Another problem is that I don't consume content. I produce it. I don't want and don't need my windows grouped by application, but by context! I need multiple multiheaded desktops so I can switch tasks easily.
In the Desktop 1 with eclipse with my java project, a browser with the issue tracking, a OpenOffice with the Requirements and a PDF or two with specifications. On the Desktop 2, another eclipse for a python project that has a bug I need to fix, with another browser window logged into another issue tracker, and so goes on. Some little urgent task arises? Do it in the Desktop3, and then go back to where you was. And this I could not accomplish (easily) with Gnome 3 when it replaced Gnome 2.
Long story made short, too much hassle and no tangible return.
Gnome 3 could be a good thing, but the way it arrives on my desktop prevented me to discover that. I have bills to pay, deadlines to meet. I don't need and don't want a tool that prevents me to do my work the way I'm used to abruptly, without respecting that little human factor called "learning curve".
When did you last try it? You could try it again and then go to http://extensions.gnome.org/ and also add "gnome-tweak-tool" and you should be able to get a reasonable facisimile of GNOME 2 plus some other features. alt-tab behavior can be overridden. I"m not sure what you mean by multi-headed?
I'm sorry that we destroyed your workflow. The two desktops couldn't be installed together because GNOME 3 was still using the underlying architecture. I agree it would have been nice if we could have created a different namespace for GNOME 2 and GNOME 3. It comes down to manpower I'm afraid and after 2-3 years of development on GNOME 3, it wanted out.:-)
The only thing they should be spending their funds on is the development of gnome software. That does not include funding political viruses like 'affirmative action'. Targeting money at programmers of specific sexes, races, or 'lifestyles', is discriminatory unless the case can be made why the targeted group writes superior code.
Seriously, your foundation needs to reevaluate its priorities.
There is nothing wrong with our priorities. There is nothing discriminatory about reaching out to women (and hopefully others who are under represented) in our community. Diversity always makes us stronger. This is true in nature as well. A virus since you want to use that term can go to town in a monolithic population, but diverse genetic population will actually help us survive. Our diversity is what will make our community stronger. Since I am also a mentor I have seen it in my own eyes the positive changes in the GNOME. We are always the sum of our experiences.
That said, I personally feel that no program like this should go on forever, and there should be some parameters were we consider our mission complete. Whether that is 15% or 20%, then GNOME can withdraw from the program. Other changes is making sure that our interns are encouraged to come back, that means that we should have high retention rates.
You make some good points. But it is undeniable that there are users who do not like it because it is different. There are also others who completely love GNOME 3 and how it works as well as its aesthetics. It is like shoes, you try them out until you find the one that fits correctly.
You can use extensions to change the alt-tab behavior so it is the same as windows or other Linux based desktops. Just go to http://extensions.gnome.org/.
I do thank you for trying out GNOME 3 and sticking with it! You have every right to complain if it isn't working for you.
Yeah, I used to be part of this crowd. I started reading slashdot when it was stil Malda's personal web page.:)
But these days it is mostly older folks who have a static computing environment they've been using for the past 18 years or so and want to continue using it and don't appreciate change. Sadly, in order to be relevant you have to change. This has been bleeding into systemd, and even the Linux kernel. I suspect some of these fine folk will move to FreeBSD if they feel that the Unix philosophy is threatened enough.
The financial issue will be resolved soon enough. It's a temporary problem, and it will be handled.
Well like most software, it evolves. Most of the work we've been doing is polishing up the design. You aren't likely going to see anything like GNOME 2 by default. However you can go to http://extensions.gnome.org/ and you can find ways to mimic GNOME 2. Some are quite interesting, and I know that someone is working on a wobbly windows again. GNOME 2 also evolved in the same way. You'll find that all the software around you is going to evolve in the same way as GNOME and GNOME won't look so foreign to you as time goes by.:-)
I do talk to Linus from time to time and he stlll uses it. Heck, he tried otu 3.12 because I asked him to. He had some complaints of course in the usual Linus style but it still works for him.
Yes. Before people loved XP, they hated it Sometimes people don't know what they want until they see it. Until then they cling on to the familiar. There is always a trigger that will make someone jump from one to the other. People also hated GNOME 2 when it came out. In fact, there are people in this thread that hated GNOME 2 they loved GNOME 1.4 and will not let you forget it.
But then GNOME 2 became really popular, when GNOME 3 came out, people said the same thing. What drives change is that technology doesn't stop. New hardware creates new ways to interact with it. You change, or you die. KDE, GNOME and others are all doing that because they have to. Every design has an end life. If you kept designing for XP, then all those people who grew up with tablets and touch interfaces are going to completely skip your desktop and move on to something else. If you want the mission to survive, Free Software then let at least one project continue to evolve with the times and build and design a user interface on par with direct competition with the big boys. We might do it slower and with more turbulence, but we are doing it. I know Apple is watching as is Microsoft.
So you moved to OSX where they don't let you tweak your fonts either or let you diddle with other things. Who have in fact copied some of the features from GNOME 3 (mission control).
The foundation does not have any say in the technical direction of GNOME. We just fund our employees and manage finances, and work with our advisory board. The maintainers of the GNOME modules are the ones that lead the technical direction. That said, the people who are on the board are almost all technical people in their own right.
This isn't about identity, it's about creating a desktop that works for most of the people on the planet with good accessibilty features so that those who aren't physically able as you are can still use the desktop. Good privacy features so that you are protected. That is exactly what is doing.
GNOME can't be bloated and slow while at the same time has no features. That makes no sense. Performance is always funny thing. Everybody has wildly different experiences based on hardware configurations and setups. My laptop is really fast, but my desktop the shell starts up a little slower.
Except there is nothing to be all schadenfreude about. Sure you could revel in all the flames, but the foundation is still solvent and the OPW program is very successful and will continue to be.
See, that's the thing. You got used to changing your fonts around because in the old days fonts sucked. We didn't really have a good font system. All the other non-free desktops had a great font rendering system. Now we have something decent, you shouldn't have to screw around with fonts. It should just work. That's why GNOME doesn't have that many options for fonts. Neither does OSX nor Windows. You can still do the same kind of font fiddling before, you just have to use gsettings or tweak tool to do it. But they exist, but we need to build something greater. What we're doing is much harder, making things work for the general case.
Does it always work? No, some of them are "features in flight" and are not quite finished because the underlying work is not done. Sometimes we introduce things too early and should have waited. Hey, we make mistakes. But our intentions is to have a desktop that shouldn't have to do a ton of tweaking.
GNOME offends people who use computers as a creative extension of themselves. It definitely comes from an older era where you can spend hours tweaking conf files. I used to be one of those people, but life is too short, I prefer to take what I am given and work on the things that really matter to me.
It was a scaling issue more than anything else. We're pretty much were solvent. But a lot of organizations joined very quickly and sometimes it isn't always easy to suddenly manage a program that grew by 40%. It's a great problem to have, and once we go otu and get the money from the people who owe OPW money, things will be back on track.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for at trying GNOME 3. I appreciate that. Again, I'm sorry that it didn't fit your use cases. It does seem that you were able to adapt to your desktop, so glad there was a good ending. I would have preferred if it was GNOME 3, but we can't have everything.
Problem is that nobody learns a "foreign" language in a day. The same happens with Desktop paradigms.
I think I would like to use Gnome 3 on a tablet, but on my desktop I could not (and I did tried). It simply broke all my day to day workflow practices.
And that sad decision to use the same library names prevented me to have Gnome 2 and 3 at the same time on my machine, what would keep me working productively at the same time I'm probing the "foreign" paradigms without compromising my deadlines.
I remember cursing aloud because the theme I chose had a flaw (the clock's font color became illegible when the clock's window loses the focus - the designer choose a too dark font color), and I took hours to figure out where to find the customization tool (changing font colors on "Advanced Options"?). I didn't get pissed with the color mistake (it happens!). I got totally mad because there wasn't a way to fix that the proper way - and I'm talking about a fscking clock on my desktop!
Another problem is that I don't consume content. I produce it. I don't want and don't need my windows grouped by application, but by context! I need multiple multiheaded desktops so I can switch tasks easily.
In the Desktop 1 with eclipse with my java project, a browser with the issue tracking, a OpenOffice with the Requirements and a PDF or two with specifications. On the Desktop 2, another eclipse for a python project that has a bug I need to fix, with another browser window logged into another issue tracker, and so goes on. Some little urgent task arises? Do it in the Desktop3, and then go back to where you was. And this I could not accomplish (easily) with Gnome 3 when it replaced Gnome 2.
Long story made short, too much hassle and no tangible return.
Gnome 3 could be a good thing, but the way it arrives on my desktop prevented me to discover that. I have bills to pay, deadlines to meet. I don't need and don't want a tool that prevents me to do my work the way I'm used to abruptly, without respecting that little human factor called "learning curve".
When did you last try it? You could try it again and then go to http://extensions.gnome.org/ and also add "gnome-tweak-tool" and you should be able to get a reasonable facisimile of GNOME 2 plus some other features. alt-tab behavior can be overridden. I"m not sure what you mean by multi-headed? I'm sorry that we destroyed your workflow. The two desktops couldn't be installed together because GNOME 3 was still using the underlying architecture. I agree it would have been nice if we could have created a different namespace for GNOME 2 and GNOME 3. It comes down to manpower I'm afraid and after 2-3 years of development on GNOME 3, it wanted out. :-)
The only thing they should be spending their funds on is the development of gnome software. That does not include funding political viruses like 'affirmative action'. Targeting money at programmers of specific sexes, races, or 'lifestyles', is discriminatory unless the case can be made why the targeted group writes superior code.
Seriously, your foundation needs to reevaluate its priorities.
There is nothing wrong with our priorities. There is nothing discriminatory about reaching out to women (and hopefully others who are under represented) in our community. Diversity always makes us stronger. This is true in nature as well. A virus since you want to use that term can go to town in a monolithic population, but diverse genetic population will actually help us survive. Our diversity is what will make our community stronger. Since I am also a mentor I have seen it in my own eyes the positive changes in the GNOME. We are always the sum of our experiences.
That said, I personally feel that no program like this should go on forever, and there should be some parameters were we consider our mission complete. Whether that is 15% or 20%, then GNOME can withdraw from the program. Other changes is making sure that our interns are encouraged to come back, that means that we should have high retention rates.
What damage are you talking about?
You can use extensions to change the alt-tab behavior so it is the same as windows or other Linux based desktops. Just go to http://extensions.gnome.org/.
I do thank you for trying out GNOME 3 and sticking with it! You have every right to complain if it isn't working for you.
You are free to peruse the FAQ. Read it first and I can tehn answer any questions after that. https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundat...
But these days it is mostly older folks who have a static computing environment they've been using for the past 18 years or so and want to continue using it and don't appreciate change. Sadly, in order to be relevant you have to change. This has been bleeding into systemd, and even the Linux kernel. I suspect some of these fine folk will move to FreeBSD if they feel that the Unix philosophy is threatened enough.
The financial issue will be resolved soon enough. It's a temporary problem, and it will be handled.
Well like most software, it evolves. Most of the work we've been doing is polishing up the design. You aren't likely going to see anything like GNOME 2 by default. However you can go to http://extensions.gnome.org/ and you can find ways to mimic GNOME 2. Some are quite interesting, and I know that someone is working on a wobbly windows again. GNOME 2 also evolved in the same way. You'll find that all the software around you is going to evolve in the same way as GNOME and GNOME won't look so foreign to you as time goes by. :-)
I do talk to Linus from time to time and he stlll uses it. Heck, he tried otu 3.12 because I asked him to. He had some complaints of course in the usual Linus style but it still works for him.
We're not dying. This isn't some existential crises. All will be fine in about two months. But thanks for your concern! :-)
The OPW program is self funded, but sometimes not everyone get invoiced. We are doing just fine. It's just a temporary problem.
Thank you!
KDE's problem is that distros just packaged it just because it was 4.0 even though it was advertised that it was a preview release.
But then GNOME 2 became really popular, when GNOME 3 came out, people said the same thing. What drives change is that technology doesn't stop. New hardware creates new ways to interact with it. You change, or you die. KDE, GNOME and others are all doing that because they have to. Every design has an end life. If you kept designing for XP, then all those people who grew up with tablets and touch interfaces are going to completely skip your desktop and move on to something else. If you want the mission to survive, Free Software then let at least one project continue to evolve with the times and build and design a user interface on par with direct competition with the big boys. We might do it slower and with more turbulence, but we are doing it. I know Apple is watching as is Microsoft.
We do manage their money since they asked us to.
We had thought about it. But we get a certain amount of prestige running a very successful program. Of course, not with this crowd of course.
So you moved to OSX where they don't let you tweak your fonts either or let you diddle with other things. Who have in fact copied some of the features from GNOME 3 (mission control). The foundation does not have any say in the technical direction of GNOME. We just fund our employees and manage finances, and work with our advisory board. The maintainers of the GNOME modules are the ones that lead the technical direction. That said, the people who are on the board are almost all technical people in their own right.
the ethernet is back in GNOME 3.12. I don't know what F3 on nautilus is.
There is nothing wrong with the foundation. We're doing fine.
This isn't about identity, it's about creating a desktop that works for most of the people on the planet with good accessibilty features so that those who aren't physically able as you are can still use the desktop. Good privacy features so that you are protected. That is exactly what is doing. GNOME can't be bloated and slow while at the same time has no features. That makes no sense. Performance is always funny thing. Everybody has wildly different experiences based on hardware configurations and setups. My laptop is really fast, but my desktop the shell starts up a little slower.
Except there is nothing to be all schadenfreude about. Sure you could revel in all the flames, but the foundation is still solvent and the OPW program is very successful and will continue to be.
See, that's the thing. You got used to changing your fonts around because in the old days fonts sucked. We didn't really have a good font system. All the other non-free desktops had a great font rendering system. Now we have something decent, you shouldn't have to screw around with fonts. It should just work. That's why GNOME doesn't have that many options for fonts. Neither does OSX nor Windows. You can still do the same kind of font fiddling before, you just have to use gsettings or tweak tool to do it. But they exist, but we need to build something greater. What we're doing is much harder, making things work for the general case. Does it always work? No, some of them are "features in flight" and are not quite finished because the underlying work is not done. Sometimes we introduce things too early and should have waited. Hey, we make mistakes. But our intentions is to have a desktop that shouldn't have to do a ton of tweaking. GNOME offends people who use computers as a creative extension of themselves. It definitely comes from an older era where you can spend hours tweaking conf files. I used to be one of those people, but life is too short, I prefer to take what I am given and work on the things that really matter to me.
Thanks for this. It's great to see a positive comment in a sea of disingenious comments.
It was a scaling issue more than anything else. We're pretty much were solvent. But a lot of organizations joined very quickly and sometimes it isn't always easy to suddenly manage a program that grew by 40%. It's a great problem to have, and once we go otu and get the money from the people who owe OPW money, things will be back on track.
We are doing just fine, thanks.