Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gnome: Staring into the abyss

blogs.gnome.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 188 posts

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#141

Post by dannyobrien »

abenga wrote: post #25

This 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…

I really like Gnome 3 too -- I moved from OS X Lion to it, ironically I think because Lion's bugs and annoyances provided that same opportunity to switch that many cite in the Gnome 2/3 transition.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#142

Post by ralfn »

keithpeter wrote: post #67
entropy_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is not.

I think Unity depends on a fair amount of gnome 3 libraries, at least in 12.04

Yes and no. They ship with a lot of gnome3 apps, but none of the unity code uses any gnome 3 libs. They do use compiz though, and have compiz use the gconf settings.

The thing is, they could switch to a qt based desktop, without touching any unity code.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#143

Post by wpietri »

Mr_T_ wrote: post #37
ordinary wrote: post #31

Earlier 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…

If this is the attitude of all community developers then free software UI will never become successful.

I think it's partly a structural problem.

I like solving problems for other people. But when I'm using open-source software, the only problems I'm really aware of are the ones I'm having.

In a commercial setting, I'm very motivated by user tests or data that demonstrates problems people are having. I've seen a lot of other developers get excited about that, too. Fixing things is fun when you can see that your actions actually help somebody.

But I've never seen an open-source project that makes it easy to get engaged in that fashion. The closest I've seen is users asking support questions on the mailing lists, which is a pretty small slice of users these days. Plugins also seem to provide a nice feedback loop like that: you make something for yourself, you throw it out there, and you see people installing it and commenting.

But broadly it seems like an unsolved problem in consumer-facing open source.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#145

Post by DanBC »

cinch wrote: post #137
DanBC wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand this. Why is sane defaults and hidden options a lousy user experience?

Sane defaults is fine. Hidden options limits its capabilities which are sometimes essential.

But hidden options is better than removed options, surely?

You need an easy way to get as close to vanilla as possible, to make support and faultfinding not awful. But you need to provide some kind of hidden method for tweaking to keep power users happy.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#146

Post by aaronh »

whinge

meh, other than bus factor this seems overblown to me. I use Gnome3 on Fedora and it is great. It takes advantage of Fitts law and there is just less fuck-around-ability with it. (I thought even the Alt-to-PowerOff controversy was overblown; I suspend far more often then I shut down, this is a welcome simplification) If anything I felt Gnome3 had ushered in a renaissance in Gnome. What "new" goals does Gnome have to have other than creating a great desktop?

Please don't drive more developers away with more gratuitous Hacker News "X-is-dying" bitching.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#147

Post by aaronh »

aaronh wrote: post #146

whinge meh, other than bus factor this seems overblown to me. I use Gnome3 on Fedora and it is great. It takes advantage of Fitts law and there is just less fuck-around-ability with it. (I thought even the Alt-to-PowerOff controversy was overblown; I suspend far more often then I shut down, this is a welcome simplification) If anything I felt Gnome3 had ushered in a renaissance in Gnome. What "new" goals does Gnome h…

by the way, I think if Gnome had "done nothing" by continuing to incrementally develop Gnome2 instead of doing something entirely new with Gnome3 the same argument would be trooped out: "Look, Gnome isn't innovating, it doesn't have vision, it's just a Windows clone, blah blah blah"

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#148

Post by vtry »

mseepgood wrote: post #94
octotoad wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this over the years when reading developer blogs via sites like Planet GNOME. In the first half of the last decade, there seemed to be highly motivated, talented groups of contributors who helped build and maintain momentum in many popular open source projects like Gnome. I'm not saying there aren't top notch developers still working on FOSS, but many of those big-name 'rockstar' contributors seem to hav…

> but many of those big-name 'rockstar' contributors seem to have either been lured to a competing/alternative platform Many have been hired by companies, e.g. Nokia, and now don't want to work for free again.

This, in a Capitalist society where housing and cost of living so high, why would you want to work for free if you can work for money?

Now if we live in a Resource Based Economy, then that is possible, but until then, money is king.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#149

Post by SkyMarshal »

shortlived wrote: post #136
kijin wrote: post #16

1. 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…

Popular distros like Ubuntu and Mint have shifted away from it What do they use instead? Just gnome 2.x?

Ubuntu: Unity

Mint: KDE, Xfce, MATE, or Maya [1]

1. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2031

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#150

Post by UnFleshedOne »

rootbear wrote: post #101
Mr_T_ wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

I completely disagree with the second sentence. There must be a way for power users to get the flexibility they want, while making the product usable by the masses. MacOS does this to an extent, with "Advanced" buttons on some control panels that most users ignore. Why couldn't Gnome do that? Why must it seek to emulate Windows' lack of flexibility?

Funny thing about windows' lack of flexibility is amount of "WTF, I can't do that either?!" exclamations I had when I started working om mac. I still can't find a way to change default text background across the board on mac (from white to pleasing greenish color).
Post reply on HN