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Gnome: Staring into the abyss

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Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#91

Post by mebesilly »

Gabler wrote: post #83
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 really did want to like Gnome 3 but just nothing about it made me want to use it over Unity. I'm a fairly new Linux user who has used quite a bit of Unity, Gnome 3 and Gnome 2. Gnome 2 is great, I wouldn't hold onto Gnome 3 just because I want to stay away from Unity. Without add-ons of some kind Gnome 3 was completely unusable for anything I wanted to use it for.

I switched to xmonad when I realised how braindead Gnome had become.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#92

Post by PaulHoule »

to understand the sickness of Gnome you've got to go way way back to the beginning...

I remember when KDE first came out -- I heard the first press releases and thought they were on drugs, but when I downloaded and built, I was like "wow! this is so close to being a commercial desktop"

Now, in 2012, we have KDE and Gnome and a few off-brand desktops and it's still like "this is so close to being a commercial desktop" -- but there isn't any Wow anymore.

Red Hat didn't like the license of the QT toolkit, so they had to go out and build their own desktop, which was probably the most disasterous decision in the history of Linux -- it's like Windows Vista without Windows 7.

For a long term all of the major linux distros have been wasting time and resources trying to make linux something nobody cares about. There's an obsession, for instance, about office suites that are so bad they make Microsoft Office look like a paragon of reliability and ease-of-use.

On the other hand, there's been a complete disregard for the people who ~really~ use Linux such as sysadmins and developers.

I've recently set up two laptops that run Windows as a host and Ubuntu linux inside Virtualbox. I use "putty" as my *term program and Cygwin/X to run the occasional GUI app I need from Linux. It's a sign of what a disgrace the Linux desktop is that putty has the same ease-of-use and reliability that xterm had 15 years ago, whereas the "terminal" program that Ubuntu tries to push on you is a bloated disaster in which cut-and-paste is as miserable as it was in Win 3.1.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#93

Post by exDM69 »

maigret wrote: post #75
exDM69 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably worth adding that Qt being C++ is itself a problem Yep. C++ is what I call a "dead end" language. If you write your code in C++, it will be only usable from C++. If you want to use it from Python, Ruby or whatever, you'll need a C shim in between. If it were written in C, you could use ctypes and other similar means to do FFI quickly. Unfortunately, most languages other than C are more or less a dead end.

> Unfortunately, most languages other than C are more or less a dead end. Except for Java, where you can reuse code directly with JVM-compiling stacks like Clojure.

Well that is arguable. If you stay within JVM, you can use your Java code from other languages like Clojure and Scala. To some extent you can use Scala and Clojure code from Java. But you can't really use Java code from Python or Ruby unless you work with Jython or JRuby.

So, I'd put Java in the "dead end language" bin. You can use C code from Java (via JNI) but it's not practical to do it the other way.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#94

Post by mseepgood »

octotoad wrote: post #78
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.

I've noticed this over the years when reading developer blogs via sites like Planet GNOME. In the first half of the last decade, there seemed to be highly motivated, talented groups of contributors who helped build and maintain momentum in many popular open source projects like Gnome. I'm not saying there aren't top notch developers still working on FOSS, but many of those big-name 'rockstar' contributors seem to hav…

> but many of those big-name 'rockstar' contributors seem to have either been lured to a competing/alternative platform

Many have been hired by companies, e.g. Nokia, and now don't want to work for free again.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#95

Post by loftsy »

trekkin wrote: post #87
loftsy wrote: post #42

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…

> I'm fascinated that all the real innovation going on in desktop environments (gnome3, unity, windows 8) seems to be taking a hammering. Envy-driven development is not a good model. Desktop environments do not need tablet features in the first place... > 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. Or the oppos…

All projects and companies need a vision and clearly for a lot of designers, developers and product managers this vision is more integrated simpler to use, touch enabled devices. Part my comment was to say it is not yet clear that this is the right long term solution but its not like there are any compelling alternatives.

Microsoft is not entering the space because of envy(?!?) they are entering it because that is where they see the future of computing.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#96

Post by ciupicri »

VMG wrote: post #19
Mr_T_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What these articles never mention is a follow-up comment by Torvalds: "And for all the people wasting everybodys time with "Why don't you use Unity/KDE/xfce/xyz" - I've tried them. They are even worse" https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDp...

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

Regarding XFCE, I don't think Linus cares about slick if he would have been happy with a Gnome2 fork. As for bugs, I have encountered only one tiny bug.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#97

Post by sigzero »

PaulHoule wrote: post #92

to understand the sickness of Gnome you've got to go way way back to the beginning... I remember when KDE first came out -- I heard the first press releases and thought they were on drugs, but when I downloaded and built, I was like "wow! this is so close to being a commercial desktop" Now, in 2012, we have KDE and Gnome and a few off-brand desktops and it's still like "this is so close to being a commercial desktop"…

I believe Gnome pre-dates Red Hat and it wasn't Red Hat that made the decision to create GTK. Although I could be wrong.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#98

Post by FlyingSnake »

Since no one mentioned Cinnamon (LinuxMint) let me add that to the discussion.

I've been using it exclusively for months and I feel that it is doing what Gnome3 wanted to achieve. It is simple, intuitive and rock-solid. Never froze or crashed and diagnostic tools are great.

LinuxMint is the old Ubuntu which you used to recommend to your friends and family.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#99

Post by dkhenry »

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 am with you. Moving back to Gnome2 or XFCE just feels a little odd to me. I constantly find myself pressing the super key to get to the activities overview and then I get a little disappointing when it's not there. There are still a few tweaks I would like to see implemented, but I like it better then every other desktop shell I have seen.

Re: Gnome: Staring into the abyss

#100

Post by tytso »

ebassi wrote: post #38

as one of the two people mentioned by name in Benjamin's blog post, I'd like to point out that I didn't "leave GNOME" (to work on other stuff). I am still involved in the community, I am a director of the foundation's board, and I'm still working on Gnome projects in my spare time - which is actually easier these days since I moved from intel to mozilla. I'm typing this from GUADEC 2012, in A Coruña; the conference i…

I'd love to hear how you think you're going to regain the enthusiasts' market. Care to say more? In particular, which enthusiasts? The ones who have already (like me) switched to Xfce? Or some other set of enthusiasts? Defining your market is important; if GNOME is going to continue to have a severe case of Mac-envy, I doubt you'll be able to also get back the enthusiasts --- and I don't think GNOME has enough developers to be able to complete head-to-head with Apple.
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