I wonder how many other people, after reading this, ran:
sudo apt-get install gnome
Gnome: Staring into the abyss
121–130 of 188 posts
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#122This is really sad if it's true. I'm probably in the minority, but I think GNOME 3 (even without extensions) is the best Linux desktop at the moment. It does seem strange when you look at it at first, but once you use it for a week or so and use anything different (even GNOME 2 which I'd used for years), you feel stifled in a way. It's hard to put into words, it just feels like it's out of your way. Anecdote: I work…
If only it was less "shiny". I just can't stand the visuals. First KDE 4, then GNOME 3. Made me use xfce.
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#1231. As the author says toward the end of the article, I think the biggest problem with Gnome nowadays is that only a small number of people actually use it on a day-to-day basis. Popular distros like Ubuntu and Mint have shifted away from it. No matter what merits Gnome 3 might have, it was such a flop in its first few releases that it has the Windows Vista stigma attached to it. Of course, there's GTK and several Gno…
"Gnome itself is decidedly uncool. No wonder they don't want to contribute to it."
This is the biggest weakness of FOSS in general. It is true that some people work on the stuff that has to get done or isn't "cool" but contrasted to "cool" parts where folks are available in abundance and it means people burn out and there is no one there so replace them. If there isn't someone out there paying someone else to be in that uncool part of the code, chances are bit rot sets in.
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Probably worth adding that Qt being C++ is itself a problem Yep. C++ is what I call a "dead end" language. If you write your code in C++, it will be only usable from C++. If you want to use it from Python, Ruby or whatever, you'll need a C shim in between. If it were written in C, you could use ctypes and other similar means to do FFI quickly. Unfortunately, most languages other than C are more or less a dead end.
Not always. See boost python.
I'm aware of that. But it's essentially a shim layer, albeit one that is semi-automatically generated. The preferred way of doing Python FFI is to use ctypes inside Python, not write (or generate) C or C++ code that works as the shim.
That's the way many languages prefer to do their FFI, write "foreign" declarations in the language itself, not in C++ land. E.g. in Haskell, you can call C with very little effort. When dealing with C++ you have to get along with ABI issues and things get a lot harder.
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#125Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you pay me, I will work selflessly for the masses. I will implement features I don't need, I will fix bugs I don't care about and I will write documentation for features I already know in and out. If you don't pay me, I will still contribute, but then I will work only to scratch my own itch. I will implement features, but only those I want to have myself; I will fix bugs, but only those that annoy me personally; I…
This isn't true for everyone. I like making nice things. That's the "itch" that I'm scratching, not a hole in my life that I'm trying to fill.
Your comment would carry more weight if I knew what projects you recently contributed to.
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#1271. As the author says toward the end of the article, I think the biggest problem with Gnome nowadays is that only a small number of people actually use it on a day-to-day basis. Popular distros like Ubuntu and Mint have shifted away from it. No matter what merits Gnome 3 might have, it was such a flop in its first few releases that it has the Windows Vista stigma attached to it. Of course, there's GTK and several Gno…
I really did want to like Gnome 3 but just nothing about it made me want to use it over Unity. I'm a fairly new Linux user who has used quite a bit of Unity, Gnome 3 and Gnome 2. Gnome 2 is great, I wouldn't hold onto Gnome 3 just because I want to stay away from Unity. Without add-ons of some kind Gnome 3 was completely unusable for anything I wanted to use it for.
Just as a counterpoint: I'm of exactly the opposite opinion. I just couldn't get used to unity. The full-screen assumptions in early versions were baked too far into the metaphor and I just couldn't get it to do what I wanted. Gnome 3, on the other hand, brought new stuff to the table (like the dynamic desktops) which actually improved my workflow. It wasn't a clean transition, but I actually prefer it now.
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#128This is really sad if it's true. I'm probably in the minority, but I think GNOME 3 (even without extensions) is the best Linux desktop at the moment. It does seem strange when you look at it at first, but once you use it for a week or so and use anything different (even GNOME 2 which I'd used for years), you feel stifled in a way. It's hard to put into words, it just feels like it's out of your way. Anecdote: I work…
exactly. I really like GNOME 3, apart from a few things I can fix with extensions. It's sad to see it losing momentum.
That said, Cinnamon is a really nice fork of it, that has the features most users are missing, and while it does bring back some of the win98-ess, it's good to see it evolve and become more stable, I'm still undecided between the two and switching back and forth every once in a while.
If you ask me, I think GNOME should drop most of its peripheral software, and stick with just making a really really stable and sleek desktop. Most people don't need email and calendar clients anymore. I just want a simple yet configurable desktop, a great file manager, a good text editor, and a console. The rest should be external IMHO, and the desktop should provide easy integration points.
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#129I like Gnome 3 in that it made me explore other WM/DE options and think more about what I wanted.
I found Awesome, and though there are some things I don't like about it (or namely, some programs that don't work nicely in a tiling environment), every time I try to use another WM or a DE, I miss the speed and keyboard accessibility of Awesome. It's a blast to use.
I installed KDE for my wife to use. It takes KDE an order of magnitude longer to start than Awesome, for all those services and stuff that it's running--you know, all that stuff I'm probably not even using.
Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taking away those little checkboxes and toolbar buttons is like slamming the door on power users. You might win a billion non-technical users, but none of them will ever submit a single patch. An experienced developer should be mature enough to know that he and his kind should not be the target audience of his product. And putting in all those little checkboxes makes a product a horrible experience for the rest of…
And putting in all those little checkboxes makes a product a horrible experience for the rest of the world. It doesn't have to. The measure of a good product, as far as I'm concerned, is the extent to which it can retain all the power the power-users want, while still keeping things simple enough for the non-power-users. OR, better yet, the extent to which it can help non-power-users become power-users.
Apple has done pretty well here. Their desktop is very opinionated with very few checkboxes anywhere, yet many things can be tweaked at the command line.