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Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

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Re: Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

#11

Post by aiilns »

a_chris wrote: post #6

I know this will be an unpopular idea but I like the direction gnome is following. I think it is becoming a solid and reliable OS, it has much fewer bugs than KDE, it's getting faster update after update and I like libadwaita to have consistent windows styles. It was frustrating to have ten different windows style, in particular on a 4k monitor. Gnome has a solid core system and we can download or develop extensions…

I like most of GNOME as well.

I love how they spread out the UI and using whitespace, makes things a lot clearer and it's easier to focus your attention on the right thing.

I love not having minimize, there really is no need for it.

However I do feel that some apps should have more features (tree style navigation & double/multiple panes in files/nautilus, evince actually should have proper annotating tools). Stuff that KDE manages much better, albeit in a sea of completely flat and borderless buttons with cramped intefaces in a quest of maximizing information shown.

edit: I think that really the thing to manage in an interface is how & how much info should be shown & how to make it (kind of) intuitive/discoverable. I honestly don't think that the second part has been well addressed by any UI (not MacOS, not Windows, not Linux DEs), for the first part I think GNOME is a lot closer to how it should be, than say KDE or Windows (I don't really use MacOS, don't know).

Re: Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

#12

Post by crubier »

peakaboo wrote: post #8

Such a weird article. Gnome is an awesome desktop, and I can only assume the article author is used to Windows. No desktop icons? Yeah we don't use that anymore, it's not 1990. We type one or two chars in the program name and press enter. If you want icons, you can have it through extensions, but it's a very old paradigm and you really should stop clicking icons to start programs. There is no need. Gnome has a single…

> you really should stop clicking icons to start programs

Yeah… That’s the whole problem with Linux UX… Answering users’ legitimate feedback with « you should stop doing this way because it’s bad » lol.

And then Linux champions get surprised that everyone uses MacOS or even Windows… That thing has been going on for 20years now, nothing changed.

Re: Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

#14

Post by fulalas »

peakaboo wrote: post #8

Such a weird article. Gnome is an awesome desktop, and I can only assume the article author is used to Windows. No desktop icons? Yeah we don't use that anymore, it's not 1990. We type one or two chars in the program name and press enter. If you want icons, you can have it through extensions, but it's a very old paradigm and you really should stop clicking icons to start programs. There is no need. Gnome has a single…

I assume you didn't read whole the article. By the end it says the author (who happens to be me) is a Linux developer who work in Porteus distro. It doesn't matter anyway. What matters is that basically all desktop environments and also Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS have native support to desktop icons. And it's not a surprise that many major distros ship GNOME with desktop icons extension installed/enabled by default.

I tried to be clear about this 'paradigm' thing but it seems I failed. There's nothing wrong with changing the paradigm. The problem is that GNOME did that in a less efficient way, although claiming the contrary.

Re: Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

#15

Post by fulalas »

dylan-m wrote: post #7

Sorry, but this article is bad. What exactly are they comparing GNOME to ? It sounds like they want GNOME to be like Windows, such that "lack of desktop icons" and "there are no minimize and maximize buttons" is an automatic con and not, say, a simple reality of how it works; it is a desktop environment that doesn't do desktop icons. Instead, your equivalent to the "desktop" is the dash, your files are in the Files a…

> What exactly are they comparing GNOME to? To everything else that is not GNOME. I gave many examples along the article.

It's not a matter of being 'frozen in time'. Changing just for the sake of change doesn't add much. As I said, new UI paradigm is welcome but it has to be at least more efficient, which is not the case.

> Name one complete desktop application platform from the last ten years that doesn't come with an equivalent to WebKitWebView.

This 'last ten years' may be misleading. GNOME was created more than 20 years ago. Does it count? If you mean, desktop environments that are still being developed, which includes GNOME, then I have some examples that don't depend on any browser engine: LXDE, LXQt and Xfce.

> you can always right click on a blank space, or click the current folder in the breadcrumbs bar, and choose "Open in Terminal".

It works, sure. But it is less efficient for no good reason, and that's my point.

> And I'm sure XFCE can be built in five minutes if you just grab a prebuilt libgtk, but you should probably be asking, where did that library come from?

GNOME also depends on GTK. Actually, it's worse than that: it depends on both GTK3 and GTK4. But anyway, GTK3 compiles in less than 15 minutes on my machine. :)

> You're welcome?

Thanks, but you didn't get my point.

> Anyway, choose a less inflammatory title next time.

Thanks again. You have a point here, indeed.

Re: Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

#16

Post by vimacs2 »

I generally like Gnome but I do find the lack of consideration for extensions when making updates more than a little frustrating.

For context, I use Arch so whenever I do a system upgrade which includes a gnome package, it often results in me having an unpleasant experience the next time I have to reboot and suddenly all my customizations are missing till the extensions get updated to have compatibility with the new gnome version.

I generally like the UI paradigm that Gnome has (including the lack of desktop icons) but certain things are a nuisance such as the lack of system trays without extensions. I fail to see exactly what I'm gaining from their absence especially in the context of apps not built specifically for Gnome - such as steam and many torrent clients.

Re: Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

peakaboo wrote: post #8

Such a weird article. Gnome is an awesome desktop, and I can only assume the article author is used to Windows. No desktop icons? Yeah we don't use that anymore, it's not 1990. We type one or two chars in the program name and press enter. If you want icons, you can have it through extensions, but it's a very old paradigm and you really should stop clicking icons to start programs. There is no need. Gnome has a single…

[deleted]

Re: Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

#18

Post by phendrenad2 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #2

> “GNOME’s […] excuse for not doing something is not it’s too complicated to do, but it would confuse users. The whole we know best thing is a disease.” — Linus Torvalds Yep. Sadly a more and more pervasive idea among software developers and especially interface designers though. Recently I've been testing the waters of Linux Desktop more than usual because I can foresee a day in the near future where Microsoft has f…

I don't think that Linus is right here, exactly. "We know best" isn't a problem, as long as you (A) focus on a narrow set of users and (B) actually _DO_ know what's best for those users.

GNOME fails on both of those points.

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