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Gnome: Staring into the abyss

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Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#51

Post by parbo »

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…

Bring up the Unity dash, go to the apps section (icon with ruler/pen), click "See X more results" in the Installed section. You can filter these results on category. Not perfect, but workable.

To get a second instance of the terminal, right click the launcher icon and select "New terminal". Or middle click the launcher icon. Or press ctrl+alt+t.

How can you say that Unity is still crap, if you haven't tried it in 12.04?

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#52

Post by progrock »

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…

I don't want to bash Gnome. I have Debian testing (Wheezy), and I did try Gnome 3. It's steadily improving, though I still have issues with it. I try it every now and then - but I'm retreating to XFCE for the time being.

Gnome feels un-unified. I guess this has always been the way under Linux, what with QT, GTK and other toolkits, but when one app is slightly at odds with the rest of the Desktop - it feels, odd.

Example being non GTK3 apps, like LibreOffice (though someone here suggests that that is being rectified.) Even VLC, Opera, Firefox and Chrome feel a little out of place. Each behaves differently. You can't quit VLC with CTRL+W for example. Each are designed on different toolkits. Menus are inconsistant. Tabbing behaves differently in each app (can't we relegate this to the Window Manager or Desktop?) Keyboard shortcut unification doesn't exist. These are the edges I'd like to see addressed across the Linux desktop as a user.

Perhaps unification is a lofty target. And we should just be happy with the fragmented cottage patchwork.

I don't even know the difference between GTK, GTK2 and GTK3 and QT! My desktop is such a pain to theme it's a nightmare, I certainly notice that. What's new in layman's terms in GTK3?

As for some core apps, Evolution looked promising. But even that feels a little rough around the edges (I can crash it quite easily.) Thunderbird doesn't integrate with Gnome brilliantly. One flagship email client would be nice.

Focus on the core, the desktop design guidelines and some intrinisically needed apps. Most desktops on Linux seem to suffer in much the same way. Unity still appears ad-hoc.

I guess a good aspiration would be to make it as simple as possible for people to create applications as well as use them under Gnome.

Could there be some kind of CSSification of an app's controls? Present them as interfaces that could be styled differently according to the platform you are on. Leaving Window Managers to take on the role of innovative desktops. Perhaps apps are designed like this already? At least it would be easier to port an application across different form factors.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#53

Post by thingie »

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 CLI xrandr, but why would I).

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#54

Post by entropy_ »

progrock wrote: post #40
ilja wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you like it or not, power users are probably the only audience left for a linux DE that's no longer the default on the most newbie friendly distro's. The rest of the world is never going to see it. Open source is very much about scratching one's own itch

Isn't Unity currently built on top of Gnome 3?

No, it is not.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#55

Post by sparkie »

exDM69 wrote: post #41
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 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 gained much popular support.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#56

Post by pkmays »

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.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#57

Post by muyuu »

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…

> 2. I hated Gnome 3 and Unity for that matter. Gnome 4 needs to take a step back and get out of the way.

> You don't use the computer just for Gnome, but you use Gnome as a stepping stone.

> All common apps should be one click away and everything should be as customizable and flexible as possible.

This is exactly what they chose not to do.

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg0...

In a reply to Linus Torvalds:

> Sorry to snip mid-sentence, but this is an important point: We're not aiming

> for "powerfully extensible". We're aiming for "Just Works". Some people will

> hate that. Some will love it. Personally, I'd rather have passionate users,

> lovers and haters, than be than average and ignored, and I think you'll find

> most GNOME developers feel the same way.

So they made their choice, ignoring most of their own base were against it. Guess what? they lost users left and right.

They had a sweet spot in Gnome 2 and a strong user base. They thought they could somehow get Windows and Mac users, but that wasn't just happening. At least not at that particular moment in history.

So that was their decision and they didn't backtrack despite all the warnings (plenty during the last 7 years). Stubbornness gets you to obsolescence.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#58

Post by [deleted] »

progrock wrote: post #40
ilja wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you like it or not, power users are probably the only audience left for a linux DE that's no longer the default on the most newbie friendly distro's. The rest of the world is never going to see it. Open source is very much about scratching one's own itch

Isn't Unity currently built on top of Gnome 3?

[deleted]

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#59

Post by progrock »

entropy_ wrote: post #54
progrock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Unity currently built on top of Gnome 3?

No, it is not.

If Unity is described as a Shell for the GNOME desktop environment. Then that sounds about right to me.

Perhaps better questions to ask would be what is Gnome 3? What is Gnome Shell? And what is Gnome? Sorry but it's a bit difficult to comment on Gnome when it's not entirely clear as to what it is.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#60

Post by mseepgood »

progrock wrote: post #52
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…

I don't want to bash Gnome. I have Debian testing (Wheezy), and I did try Gnome 3. It's steadily improving, though I still have issues with it. I try it every now and then - but I'm retreating to XFCE for the time being. Gnome feels un-unified. I guess this has always been the way under Linux, what with QT, GTK and other toolkits, but when one app is slightly at odds with the rest of the Desktop - it feels, odd. Exam…

> "Could there be some kind of CSSification of an app's controls?"

That's exactly a feature that GTK 3 introduced: CSS theming.

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