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

Lobotomizing Gnome

eklitzke.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 224 posts

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#51

Post by chriswarbo »

pjmlp wrote: post #5
twblalock wrote: post #2

Open-source desktops are never perfect for anyone, but everyone expects them to be. For everyone who says they are too bloated, someone else says they are too spartan. That's probably why there are so many of them. I would expect working on Gnome (or KDE or Cinnamon or Mate or XFCE or LXDE, the list goes on) to be a thankless task. You try to please everybody and yet please nobody. The imperfections of Linux desktops…

And UI/UX designers work happily and feel welcome on Windows and Mac OS systems, which are what everyone non-technical buys anyway.

> UI/UX designers work happily and feel welcome on Windows and Mac OS systems

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "feel welcome"? AFAIK neither of those systems is open to contributors: if a UI/UX designer wanted to improve some aspect of the design, they're either limited to whatever config/theming the company decided to allow, or they must go and convince the company of their idea (especially sales, marketing, etc.), sign NDAs if they want to see/fix any of the implementation details, and so on.

With FOSS they could just post to a mailing list or something, which I would imagine is more welcoming. Maybe the difficulty is social: FOSS projects certainly suffer from toxicity, but their transparent processes also make it more visible. Companies are better able to hide toxicity using firewalls and private/internal communication channels.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#52

Post by kchr »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #16

I recently came back to running Linux on the desktop after using Mac OS for a decade or so, and while the article is interesting from a technical point of view, it seems like a lot of work with little reward considering that the needed apps are a command prompt, a text editor and a browser. I'll just stick with my standard Debian Gnome desktop. It works well, doesn't get in my way, and i can spare the ~0.5GB RAM for…

I think one of the major points is that this configuration is easily reusable/replayable on another machine, as it also sets up the wanted/unwanted packages.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#53

Post by gcthomas »

flukus wrote: post #32
twblalock wrote: post #2

Open-source desktops are never perfect for anyone, but everyone expects them to be. For everyone who says they are too bloated, someone else says they are too spartan. That's probably why there are so many of them. I would expect working on Gnome (or KDE or Cinnamon or Mate or XFCE or LXDE, the list goes on) to be a thankless task. You try to please everybody and yet please nobody. The imperfections of Linux desktops…

> For everyone who says they are too bloated, someone else says they are too spartan. Sometimes it can even be the same person depending on their needs. On my coding laptop I swear by i3, it's fast, simple and powerful. Everything is just a keystroke away. On my entertainment machine though (TV, music and games) I find gnome much better because friends can use it and these tasks are better handled with a mouse. This…

Yes, spartan and effective I3 for work, and shiny Gnome for the family machine.

There is never only going to be one best solution, as that depends critically on the problem you are trying to solve.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#54

Post by baud147258 »

aerique wrote: post #30
keyle wrote: post #3

I recently switched to Linux (from Windows 10 - forced upgrade took 45' in the middle of an extremely important moment) Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2/3 extension?) I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it's way better than I expected. Super fast, minimal, and no annoyances. Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years,…

I had more or less the same situation with my last remaining Windows machine (mainly for games). I thought Windows reboots were supposed to get less over the years but it has only gotten worse and I've got less autonomy over them with Windows 10. Go away from your computer for a little while and come back to a reboot (a little hyperbole). Now my gaming PC run Void Linux and with native Steam and Wine (PlayOnLinux, Lu…

> I thought Windows reboots were supposed to get less over the years

It's funny, I can't remember last time I had a forced reboot, either at work or at home, both on Windows 10. On the other hand, I'm shutting down my PC regularly

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#55

Post by JepZ »

twblalock wrote: post #2

Open-source desktops are never perfect for anyone, but everyone expects them to be. For everyone who says they are too bloated, someone else says they are too spartan. That's probably why there are so many of them. I would expect working on Gnome (or KDE or Cinnamon or Mate or XFCE or LXDE, the list goes on) to be a thankless task. You try to please everybody and yet please nobody. The imperfections of Linux desktops…

I am pretty happy with my KDE desktop. The strength of KDE/Plasma is it extreme ability to be customized to the users needs.

Nevertheless, KDE itself comes with a set of background services too, which some users might find bloated.

I think nowadays its just a matter using what fits your needs. The only thing that nobody is perfect at is 'settings' as they mostly focus on desktop specific settings and many users don't know where to find more advanced settings (e.g. /etc).

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#56

Post by mseidl »

DocTomoe wrote: post #10
yani wrote: post #8

It is a bit of controversal article. There is need for 2 applications a terminal and a browser. Why do you need gnome for that?

I'm using i3. I still keep Gnome around, because from time to time I need to hold presentations, and randomly appearing and disappearing monitors (=beamers) is not something i3 deals with gracefully.

I use i3, and when I plug in a monitor, I just figured out the command i need with xrandr and save it as an alias or command.

Or I also found out accidentally, I had to install gnome for some stupid test. But, using gdm as the login manager made automatic monitor detection work under i3? I literally changed nothing. But using gdm to login to my i3 and it works flawlessly. Even turning off monitors moved everything to one automatically.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#58

Post by sandebert »

tumdum_ wrote: post #17
keyle wrote: post #3

I recently switched to Linux (from Windows 10 - forced upgrade took 45' in the middle of an extremely important moment) Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2/3 extension?) I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it's way better than I expected. Super fast, minimal, and no annoyances. Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years,…

Wait ~6 months, and you will encounter a case where simple package update will cost you more than that 45 minutes ;)

Really? I've used Linux for ten years or so have never had a problem like this. When I started using it I was really, really worried because I suspected this be standard behaviour really. ”Surely this 'package management' thing will break things all the time?”. But nope, runs like clockwork. (I've always used Debian based distros, if that's a factor.)

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#59

Post by mhd »

First time I heard about the user.js feature. That should save me some time going through umpteen about:config preferences every time I install Firefox (and it seems I do more and more stuff there, whenever they add a new useless feature).
Post reply on HN