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Gnome: Staring into the abyss

blogs.gnome.org

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Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#41

Post by exDM69 »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #13

GNOME is not necessary anymore. It was in the past, not today. We have Qt that really works, much much better, and with LGPL license. You can run stellarium, VLC or Marble in Mac or Windows without problems. If you try to use gimp or inkscape in mac it opens x11, copy and paste does not work(in inkscape it copies pixmaps instead of vectors!!), what a botched job. In windows you will have a lot of problems too. GTK su…

> 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 everything from it's own string type to wrappers for things like threads and sockets. GTK is a widget library that is a lot leaner and meaner in comparison.

These massive platforms that try to wrap everything in the underlying operating systems to a common API use only the least common denominator of the systems that it runs on. The easy 80% works quite well but things tend to fail miserably when you enter the 20% realm. Things like memory mapped files or asynchronous socket i/o tend to be missing from these wrapper platforms.

And Qt is still using an old non-standard conforming version of C++ to achieve portability to things like Symbian. And their own C++ extensions that require you to use their build system and pre-processing tools. So you can't really use Qt without going all the way to Qt land.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#42

Post by loftsy »

I'm fascinated that all the real innovation going on in desktop environments (gnome3, unity, windows 8) seems to be taking a hammering. This is possibly just a case of the vocal minority and normal resistance to change but it will be interesting to see it all shake out in a year or two.

In my view Gnome should try to emulate the android model. Build the whole stack up to the widget level (they are really good at this) and then publish a couple of apps and an app store.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#43

Post by aw3c2 »

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.

How do you measure the success of it?

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#44

Post by Mr_T_ »

CD1212 wrote: post #32

In my opinion Gnome needs a completely new start, from the ground up. 1. When I last used GTK (about 2 years ago) it felt too big, old and bloated. If GTK were simplified and followed Qt's lead into scripting and easier interfaces (eg. Qt Quick), plus a MIT or LGPL license, this would encourage a new culture of apps. 2. I hated Gnome 3 and Unity for that matter. Gnome 4 needs to take a step back and get out of the wa…

> a MIT or LGPL license

GTK is LGPL licensed.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#45

Post by vidarh »

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'm curious - did you set up "full" Gnome 3 with Gnome Shell, or is it the default Ubuntu install (with Unity)? If the full thing, what made you pick that over Unity?

I "just" did a default install with the expectation that Unity would drive me crazy and that I'd end up replacing everything, but in the end I found it very suitable for how I work (browser + terminal with tons of tabs maximized; leaving one workspace free for the rare other apps I end up using)

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#46

Post by raverbashing »

Mr_T_ wrote: post #18
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…

> 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…

"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 the world."

Too bad Gnome developers are so far removed from UX and the desires of the "common user" it isn't funny

They took "removing stuff" as their mission and follow it blindly.

Or for a car analogy: Gnome removes the clutch but it doesn't give a torque converter and automatic transmission.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#47

Post by obtu »

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 love it, because it feels streamlined and gets out of the way. I don't really care to participate in flames (the sort that Benjamin linked from his blog post), so I'll just voice some support here.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#48

Post by fdr »

csense wrote: post #35
mike-cardwell wrote: post #2

This would have worried me back when Unity was crap a year or so ago. Now Unity is actually good, it doesn't matter if Gnome dies a slow death; we'll still have multiple good alternatives that are still being enhanced.

Unity is still crap. It might be suitable for a tablet or a phone, but it'll never fly on the desktop, for any but a tiny subset of users. In case you haven't noticed, most people hate it, and are delaying upgrades, installing Gnome or switching to Mint in droves. One important function of the Start menu is discoverability of apps. If I want to see what junk I have installed, I can look through the menus to see what…

A number of my coworkers use Unity, and I do too. We're all programmers. Other than it being frustratingly buggy and with a klunky visual design, the general consensus is "meh, went better than I expected".

Granted, programmers have a simple workload: web browser, text editor, terminal, done.

One thing I like about Unity is how keyboard driven it can be: the application search is not too bad, and the "HUD" feature actually seems appealing except that it stole my right-hand-alt, which I use as an emacs's "meta" key. But other than that, I played with it a bit and thought it was a great way to get away from the hierarchical pull-down menu, which I loathe.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#49

Post by muyuu »

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.

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 counter-intuitive, they were just more or less used to it. Windows XP and Windows 7 have a lot more checkboxes if you look for them.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#50

Post by mseepgood »

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

Xfce has more manpower than Gnome? Xfce has achieved the transition to GTK+ 3? (both rhetorical questions)
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