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Gnome: Staring into the abyss

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Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#151

Post by [deleted] »

makmanalp wrote: post #139
JoshTriplett wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it wryly amusing to see the entire GNOME 1 -> GNOME 2 debacle repeated so accurately. GNOME 2 eliminated a huge pile of configuration and tweakability that had accreted over the years, and produced an environment designed for user-friendliness even at the expense of some power-user configurations. It took a few releases to sort out (2.0 proved quite painful), but by GNOME 2.4 or so the environment had become f…

Same with KDE3->KDE4. They released 4.0, saying it was a beta. Guess what, if you call it 4.0 and do a release announcement, people will get it no matter what you say. And then they'll judge based on your pre-release status, calling your software crap. It's the lesson no one learns.

[deleted]

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#152

Post by Produce »

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.

This is news to me since my colleague, running Ubuntu 12.04 is using Gnome/Unity. Did I miss a memo?

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#153

Post by wtracy »

Produce wrote: post #152
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. This is news to me since my colleague, running Ubuntu 12.04 is using Gnome/Unity. Did I miss a memo?

Unity completely replaces the Gnome shell.

According the Gnome people, you're no longer using Gnome if you're not using the Gnome shell. Whether that's true is open to interpretation.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#154

Post by Tyr42 »

pkmays wrote: post #56
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #34

I'm afraid everything desktop Linux, and by extension Gnome, just lost a lot of momentum by developers moving to Apple + web development. Nowadays most focus on open source front seem to be on lower level projects (languages, libraries, servers). FOSS focused on final-user applications remains a niche for academia and developer-centric tools, little has changed compared to what used to be available in the 2000's.

Sounds about right. I think a lot of developers buy a MacBook with the intention of dual booting to Linux, but end up just sticking with OSX.

Guilty of that here. There isn't much incentive really, other than perhaps getting Xmonad running, and it'll end up with some stuff breaking. I've got a nice bash shell, steam works and I can play portal, and it's good enough.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#155

Post by bkor »

vtry wrote: post #148
mseepgood wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think you're mixing up things.

I contribute to GNOME, and that is not "working for free". It means having a fun hobby. If I'd get money for it, it would no longer be a hobby, but work. I did hear some people say that their hobby is the same as their work. IMO, work is more restricted (try doing nothing at all for 3 months with your hobby, then repeat for your work).

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#156

Post by shortlived »

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?

God lord people, I was not being snarky. It was an honest question.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#157

Post by ixacto »

slurgfest wrote: post #108
yason wrote: post #86

Gnome 3 shattered the experience and momentum. While Gnome 2 was gradually approaching ultimate goodness with its essential configurability (not too many knobs but an explicit set of gconf properties that you could tune if you wanted to), consistency, ease of use, and ten years of GTK2 providing a platform for applications that look and behave uniformly, it was certainly lacking in the integration side (networking, m…

Gnome 2 was continuing to slavishly emulate Windows 98, right down to the opaque registry. But I guess that's what more users wanted, so Linux is doomed to stay the same forever as everything else innovates and overtakes it.

I want my desktop to look like, but not be Windows 98. I don't like the MS registry, or anything else MS for that matter, Debian With a desktop environment that enforces the desktop metaphor is a sensible alternative...

It would not be that easy to write a long email, let alone an article on a tablet or tablet-like computer interface.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#158

Post by Semaphor »

thingie wrote: post #53
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 have mac user walking around in the office and asking me what kind of a desktop environment is it, being genuinely (positively) surprised that it is actually GNOME desktop on Linux. Well. And I have other Linux desktop users (like Xfce or something even more 'geeky', even TWM) that are genuinely surprise that I can just plug in another display and have it work without touching the command line (not that I can't use…

> that are genuinely surprise that I can just plug in another display and have it work without touching the command line

I use XFCE on my low end/old laptops. I don't need to touch the commandline either nor did I a few (1-3) years ago.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#159

Post by sho_hn »

makmanalp wrote: post #139
JoshTriplett wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it wryly amusing to see the entire GNOME 1 -> GNOME 2 debacle repeated so accurately. GNOME 2 eliminated a huge pile of configuration and tweakability that had accreted over the years, and produced an environment designed for user-friendliness even at the expense of some power-user configurations. It took a few releases to sort out (2.0 proved quite painful), but by GNOME 2.4 or so the environment had become f…

Same with KDE3->KDE4. They released 4.0, saying it was a beta. Guess what, if you call it 4.0 and do a release announcement, people will get it no matter what you say. And then they'll judge based on your pre-release status, calling your software crap. It's the lesson no one learns.

Let's be clear though, it went down quite similarly with Mac OS X: 10.0 was quite troublesome and not exactly well-received. Look what happened later. Ditto Vista and Win 7. The pattern is not limited to FOSS.

I think the lesson here is that the circumstances at times compel platform vendors like KDE and Gnome to make these big next-gen releases, and the market compels them to do them before they're quite ready for end-user primetime, because the alternative is a serious loss of momentum, e.g. in the third-party space that is waiting for that release. And this is likely even more true in the FOSS space, because you're not just bleeding third-party interest by not shipping, but also developer recruitment.

It's a balancing act. Looking back, I don't think we found quite the right balance with KDE 4.0. But realistically, shipping 4.0 only when it had achieved the quality level, of, say KDE 4.5 just wasn't going to happen, either. Because if we hadn't shipped at some point, we'd might not have gotten the influx of contributors and early adopter feedback that we needed to make 4.5 happen.

Really, people are being presumptuous by saying these things happen carelessly. The reality is that there are pressures pulling you into different directions. You sometimes make bad calls under pressure. At other times you make the right call but get to chose between multiple options that each have their own downside attached.

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