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Gnome: Staring into the abyss

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Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#181

Post by glhaynes »

comex wrote: post #168
glhaynes wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

OS X apps don't use a lot of "Advanced…" buttons but they certainly have lots of "Advanced" tabs (usually rightmost, having a gear icon) in their Preference panels: iTunes, Finder, Safari, and Calendar all do.

Where you do see lots of "Advanced…" buttons is in System Preferences…

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#182

Post by timc3 »

dvirsky wrote: post #128
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…

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 would love to see this happen aswell

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#183

Post by comex »

glhaynes wrote: post #181
comex wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

OS X apps don't use a lot of "Advanced…" buttons but they certainly have lots of "Advanced" tabs (usually rightmost, having a gear icon) in their Preference panels: iTunes, Finder, Safari, and Calendar all do. Where you do see lots of "Advanced…" buttons is in System Preferences…

Well, I quickly went through all of the default preference panes and here are all the Advanced buttons:

    Security & Privacy
    (Displays - Calibrate has an "expert mode")
    Mail, Contacts & Calendars - for manual mail accounts
    Network - big advanced section
    Bluetooth
    (Zoom in Accessibility has "More Options...")
So there's a few of them, but I wouldn't say lots.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#184

Post by antidoh »

zalew wrote: post #36
madmax108 wrote: post #17

Damn, I knew Gnome was doing badly, but din't know it was this bad! :| I personally am a fan of Gnome, and hope that they become relevent again. Unity is too fancy for my linking, and Unity 2D, which seems an option, is now deprecated! :|

One word: Xfce

Another word: lxde.

On Ubuntu that's lubuntu.

xfce is cool, but it's gotten too visible for me. lxde/lubuntu is just windows and a panel.

Personal preference, personal choice. Glad you like xfce.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#185

Post by tripzilch »

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…

It's odd because after really trying and giving Unity a fair chance, reinstalling some Gnome was truly a breath of fresh air recently ... Also the kids I work with like it better cause apart from the huge strip of icons on the left that always gets in the way, the rest of Unity's features are not very discoverable.

But maybe that's just a problem with Unity, instead of a good thing about Gnome. I'm curious to try out this Cinnamon thing for Mint, what's it based on/looks like?

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#186

Post by zalew »

antidoh wrote: post #184
zalew wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One word: Xfce

Another word: lxde. On Ubuntu that's lubuntu. xfce is cool, but it's gotten too visible for me. lxde/lubuntu is just windows and a panel. Personal preference, personal choice. Glad you like xfce.

for a more minimal approach, I prefer Openbox (I use it with Crunchbang on my laptop)

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#187

Post by countessa »

tripzilch wrote: post #185
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…

It's odd because after really trying and giving Unity a fair chance, reinstalling some Gnome was truly a breath of fresh air recently ... Also the kids I work with like it better cause apart from the huge strip of icons on the left that always gets in the way, the rest of Unity's features are not very discoverable. But maybe that's just a problem with Unity, instead of a good thing about Gnome. I'm curious to try out…

Cinnamon is, as far as I know, a fork of Gnome. I have it installed - prefer it to unity so far.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#188

Post by aerique »

bashinator wrote: post #163
aerique wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If it works like xmonad I'm not really interested. I don't like xmonad's approach to tiling wm's (mostly the master / slave window thing).
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