Gnome: Staring into the abyss • Hacker News Board

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#161

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 1:41 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #159

makmanalp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

What prevents a "loudly trumpet Beta"? Say "this is our beta, try it, critique it but don't count on it being perfect"

Call it "4.00001" or "3.9999". It seems to me that you could get people's attention and so get test users while still trumpeting the software's "not-completely-finished-ness".

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#162

Post by jebblue » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 1:44 AM UTC

At some point people will realize that smart phones are great for communication but the desktop and mainframes will continue to be how people get real computing work done and games.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#163

Post by bashinator » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 1:44 AM UTC

aerique wrote: post #80

VMG wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also the way I feel. I don't quite like Gnome3 but it seems like the least worst option at the moment for me. Tiling window managers, fluxbox etc: too much configuration, not sexy enough Xfce: also doesn't look as slick, bugs KDE: sluggish I really like the Expose(?)-feature and really would miss it

Just to chip in on the tiling window managers: i3[1] is a really nice one which doesn't need a lot of configuration. Since switching from Window Maker, which I had been using for 10+ years, it has been the only window manager that didn't make me switch back. (I tried out Xmonad, Awesome, Stumpwm and some other window managers over the years. Awesome was pretty close to awesome.) i3 has a couple of issues I like to se…

Try scrotwm[1] - it's an xmonad workalike, but it's written in C instead of Haskell (not so important to me), and it has a config file instead of ... Haskell (quite a bit more important to me).

Also, terrible and hilarious name.

[1] http://www.peereboom.us/scrotwm/html/scrotwm.html

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#164

Post by sho_hn » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 1:52 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #161

sho_hn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

What prevents a "loudly trumpet Beta"? Say "this is our beta, try it, critique it but don't count on it being perfect" Call it "4.00001" or "3.9999". It seems to me that you could get people's attention and so get test users while still trumpeting the software's "not-completely-finished-ness".

Getting people's attention with a beta is unfortunately pretty hard. Two things:

a) It's not all about beta testing. A big thing is developer recruitment. The demographics among FOSS developers ensure a relatively high amount of turnover: Many of them are at an age where their life and/or job situation is likely to change within two-three years, causing them to move on. A steady influx of new talent is needed to keep the show on the road.

At the same time, a project that isn't releasing is less attractive to contributors for a variety of reasons: The time it will take for your handiwork to be delivered into user's hands, the level of information circulating about contribution opportunities (i.e. "what does this even do that I might want to hack on"), et cetera. It's also still true that a lot of FOSS contribution is itch-driven: You start contributing because what you're using isn't doing quite what you need it to. But if you're not using it, if there's no exposure, there's no way for the itch to happen. And usage explodes with a real release vs. a beta.

b) People don't test betas, relatively speaking. The amount of feedback explodes for an actual release. Now you'd think that beta feedback would be of higher quality on average (due to people who actually do test betas being more advanced users), but even expert users often hold back on betas despite knowing better.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#165

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 1:53 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #133

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…

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…

Sure, but the thing with Gnome 3 is that Gnome made the decision that they would piggy-big a "new, modern interface" onto their overall graphic environment (Gnome 1 and Gnome 2 used the paradigm more or less popularized by Windows 95).

Sure, Microsoft and Apple feel like they have to shove a new load of, uh, cr-p onto us on a regular basis and have enough resources to maybe make that work. But Gnome just didn't have the same marketing positioning.

I'm all for modernizing interfaces. But it seems like either Gnome choosing one or Ubuntu choose one and then these being pushed on us isn't really a good way (or an effective way). Because "modern" mean "opinionated" and open source probably won't easily adopt opinionated approach.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#166

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 2:07 AM UTC

spartango wrote: post #115

muyuu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what shapes the areas of success for OSS. It's glaringly obvious looking back, that success perfectly matches the motivation of contributors in different areas. And that said, it doesn't need to be so difficult to include all these pesky checkboxes in a way that they don't confuse or hinder usability for n00bish users. This used to work for Gnome 2. Never met anyone who thought Gnome 2 was too hard or…

Sorry, gnome 2 was hardly 'easy', which is the bar that modern, commercial window managers are setting. 'Not hard' and 'not counter-intuitive' doesn't cut it any more for the bulk of users, who are less savvy than previously. If there's one thing that Apple and even Microsoft are showing with their window manager and widgets, its that simpler is better, and we've been missing that all these years.

I had to walk my 80 year stepfather through an OSX install yesterday. He would definitely have failed if I hadn't been there (he still got stuck for five minutes on the gesture screen (or whatever it was), which neither us really got). He's used Macs for years - without being a power user of course. I don't think Mac are getting easier. They're getting harder to use but more "impressive", more filled with theater. And sure that's the "bar" that modern OSes are "setting". If open source follows in those steps, it certainly will be lost (and it's stumble a few steps down that well already).

Whether you call Gnome 2 hard or easy, it's main problem was that it's configuration apps and menus were confusingly organized. If the incremental improvements Ubuntu was making could have continued a few more years, things might have been great. The decision to create "Gnome shell" probably forced Canonical's hand but Unity also seems terrible to me.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#167

Post by vacri » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 3:23 AM UTC

sciurus wrote: post #132

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…

"Gnome is too big for its own good." Interestingly, the direction some GNOME developers want to take is to make it even bigger. E.G. Juan José Sánchez and Xan López's proposal for "More GNOME 3, GNOME targeting new form factors and GNOME as an OS or final product/UX". http://blogs.gnome.org/otte/2012/07/27/staring-into-the-abys...

I think an indicator of the philosophical problem at gnome is that they pronounce is 'guh-nome'. They take a perfectly serviceable idea, then make it awkward so it can suit some impenetrable ideological concept.

I recently saw a lawyer for gnome speak, and even she had trouble sticking to 'guh-nome'. What hope do those outside the dev community have?

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#168

Post by comex » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 5:03 AM UTC

glhaynes wrote: post #138

rootbear wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Some OS X apps and system services go even a step further — or at least have in the past; I feel like one sees less of it these days — with options in GUI apps that are exposed through the command line (usually via the defaults command) only. That to me feels like a very nice hierarchy: A few basic, common options available in the main UI. A few more-advanced/less-commonly-desired options available in a part of the U…

For the record, OS X actually doesn't have a lot of buttons called "Advanced", though there are some. In fact, in general, as an OS X user and former user of Gnome 2 applications, my unscientific impression has always been that Gnome 2 had significantly fewer (user-visible) preferences. YMMV...

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#169

Post by splicer » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 5:11 AM UTC

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?

i3 or xmonad :p

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#170

Post by rdale » Sat, Jul 28, 2012, 6:03 AM UTC

sparkie wrote: post #55

exDM69 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GTK support for OpenGL, OpenCL was terrible, having to low code everything, while in Qt works as well as with cocoa. OpenGL support sucks in GTK and QT equally. Especially if you want a more recent version of GL. OpenCL does not depend on your widget toolkit in any way. > Let GTK die and improve(or fork) Qt. Qt is not really as great as you seem to suggest. It's a bloated "batteries included" framework that has eve…

Probably worth adding that Qt being C++ is itself a problem - as it makes it inaccessible to the majority of programmers, due to the lack of ABI compatibility with C++ and any other languages. Gtk+ on the other hand, is almost universally accessible, because any language worth using can bind C APIs. Of course, the downside here is that all the Gtk+ bindings to other languages are based on the Gtk+2 API. Gtk+3 hasn't…

If writing language bindings for Qt based C++ apis is harder than writing language bindings for GTK C based apis, how come there are at least as many high quality language bindings for Qt as there are for GTK?

Just because an api is C based doesn't make language bindings 'happen automagically', otherwise Gnome wouldn't need the GObject Introspection project. KDE has a similar project called 'Smoke' and some language bindings based on that.

There are different technical challenges to writing bindings for a C++ based api as opposed to a C based api, but it is just not true to say that one is better than another in my opinion. This is based on my experience doing a lot of work on Qt C++ language bindings, and a project using GObject Introspection.