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Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)
The Register has a
review of XFCE. "Perhaps more important to GNOME 3 refugees,
Xfce isn't planning to try 'revolutionising' the desktop
experience. Development is historically very slow — the recently released
Xfce 4.8 was two years in the making — and the Xfce project tends to pride
itself on the lack of new features in each release. The focus is generally
improving existing features, polishing rough edges and fixing bugs rather
than trying to out whiz-bang the competitors."
(Log in to post comments)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 20:11 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Not just GNOME refugees—as a longtime KDE (ver. 3.x) user, I was so thoroughly unimpressed with KDE 4 that I now use XFCE. :-\
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 21:15 UTC (Wed) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link]
I happily used XFCE 3.99/4.0/4.2 in 2003 to 2005, then I switched to GNOME because XFCE development was a bit too slow and I was already using many GNOME apps (I kept some of the layout however, to this day I still have the workspace switcher on the top left corner).
I'm going back when I'll tire of keeping GNOME 2 working on my Gentoo system or Ubuntu 11.04 (can't compile everything on my netbook) will go out of support.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 23:03 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> to this day I still have the workspace switcher on the top left corner
It makes sense, doesn't it? You go to the top left, pick the workspace you want in the switcher. Then, without going far with the mouse, you pick the app you want on that workspace. Totally get it... and run it. :-)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 7:41 UTC (Thu) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link]
> It makes sense, doesn't it? You go to the top left, pick the workspace you want in the switcher. Then, without going far with the mouse, you pick the app you want on that workspace. Totally get it... and run it. :-)
Oh, no, you're completely wrong: it is much more efficient to move your mouse to the top-left corner, wait for the desktop to rearrange itself, then go to the right border, wait for the desktop icons to appear, and then select one.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 11:54 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I don't move my mouse anywhere.
I just hit the "windows button" and then type what application I want to a appear.
No drop down list, no waiting for icons to re-arrange, and no trying to hit tiny rectangles at the far edges of my screen.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:01 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
A sure sign that _graphical_ UI is done right. :-)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:09 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
UI is a UI.
I prefer one that I can use efficiently rather then one that is something I have to look at and hunt around icons or lists of text.
Anyways...
The 'activities' switcher is actually quick enough that nowadays I rarely actually can select windows faster then having to hunt around on a list of open windows even if I do feel like using my mouse. :)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:47 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> UI is a UI.
Don't want to be difficult here, but kinda isn't. When I'm sitting back in my chair, with my hands _not_ at my keyboard, then the graphical UI + mouse is it.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 14:30 UTC (Thu) by bjsnider (subscriber, #80975) [Link]
You can use Gnome-Shell without using the keyboard. There's a list of all apps in overview, and they are also categorized like the gnome 2 menus if you want. You can add them to the favourites bar on the left side of the overview screen, and you can get to overview without touching the keyboard.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:30 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
You missed the sarcasm from this post: http://lwn.net/Articles/466637/.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 21:24 UTC (Wed) by leif81 (guest, #75132) [Link]
Funny that the second xfce screenshot in the article looks almost identical to gnome shell.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 22:59 UTC (Wed) by zzxtty (subscriber, #45175) [Link]
Looks are not the problem, it's all about functionality. I was happy with gnome when you could right click on the background and select new terminal. Terminals, 8 vitual desktops, the time/date on the title bar and working copy/paste (by working I mean select with left mouse button and paste with middle, not windows key combinations. If I'm using the mouse I don't see why I should be forced to use the keyboard as well). That was all I wanted, unfortunately gnome seems to have broken pretty much all of that. I don't really care, I've moved on, I'm using xfce.
what middle button does Posted Nov 10, 2011 1:29 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
The operation you describe isn't copy/paste
It's select / paste-current-selection
These are distinct, one uses PRIMARY the other uses CLIPBOARD, except when running broken applications [or in the case of early Qt, a whole toolkit] that were designed by people who didn't know how this stuff works and tried to "fix" it to work how they thought it was supposed to, rather than reading the documentation and being enlightened.
(Or in the case of X-chat, they're copying a Windows app, which in turn cloned a Unix app which Windows users thought was "copying" data when it was selected... sigh)
what middle button does Posted Nov 10, 2011 4:42 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
I love the way your tour-de-force display of technical expertise is somehow appearing to cast a shadow on the position of the poster you're replying to. Or maybe I'm seeing ghosts?
In any case, I don't see how you added (refined, clarified) anything to the core thrust of his message.
And yes, I'm absolutely sure, that the details of PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD uses in Gnome 3 are technically impeccable.
what middle button does Posted Nov 22, 2011 0:40 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
It's very common that people are annoyed about something because they thought they understood it, but in fact they didn't, and so now something has happened which they perceive as a disruption to the natural order of things, but in fact they just didn't understand in the first place.
Language Log provides a long stream of examples of people complaining of this or that "mistake" or "modernism" in English when in fact the supposed "error" can be traced back to impeccable English writers from centuries previous.
Most of the time it doesn't help, people go along believing that they're right and the whole world is wrong. But once in a while, just often enough to give hope, someone says "Oh, I see, how embarrassing" and learns a little bit more about the world.
what middle button does Posted Nov 10, 2011 10:34 UTC (Thu) by zzxtty (subscriber, #45175) [Link]
Support (of what I consider to be the vastly superior) the "select / paste-current-selection" method is inconsistent (that's me being polite) on modern desktops. I'm now no longer sure what I'm going to get when I hit paste, sometimes the right thing, sometimes nothing, sometimes something from a week ago.
Ctrl + c was always used to send a SIGINT to a program, I always thought it odd when window managers started copying windows keyboard shortcuts.
I'm now trying to remember how we did handle copy/paste back in the days of twm/fvwm/olvwm, I seem to recall a whole bunch of clipboards that never kept in sync. The History of Copy and Paste - there's a book title for you, granted it probably won't be a best seller.
what middle button does Posted Nov 25, 2011 19:33 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
I dunno what you count under modern desktops, then, for me Plasma at least has always been quite predictable thanks to Klipper... At least with Qt apps. Firefox, Chromium and some other GTK apps seem to screw up the clipboard sometimes (but surely not predictably, I'm not even sure it's them).
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:26 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
I too was annoyed about losing the ability to launch a terminal from the Desktop, until I realised that It's silly to use the mouse to launch the terminal that you're about to type in! A quick trip to system settings allowed me to bind Ctrl+Alt+T to 'launch terminal'. I liked this so much that I changed it on my GNOME 2 desktop too (that I can't upgrade to GNOME 3 because it insists on needing 3d acceleration... I'm yet to be convinced that this is desirable or necessary).
It's also neat how you can launch a terminal by hitting the Windows key (or Alt+F1) and just typing 'term' and hitting enter. Same for launching or switching to any other application.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:15 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
<blockquote>
I can't upgrade to GNOME 3 because it insists on needing 3d acceleration... I'm yet to be convinced that this is desirable or necessary</blockquote>
<p>This is a common misconception that this has something to do with 3d, probably because of all the wacky compiz effects, but this is really only about having GPU acceleration or not. In the next version they are no longer blacklisting Gallium/llvmpipe for accelerated graphics using the main CPU so you should be able to get the same graphics even without a working GPU, although offloading to a GPU is best.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 6:55 UTC (Fri) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]
The activity shortcut + default search gives you a better version of this for every installed application, or even a matched document.
So Meta+ter+enter should launch terminal. I doubt it orders by most used though, so if u install something else you might need one more key, but i can be fixed. It's pretty nice since it works without setting up keyboard shortcuts. Most would never do that.
I had the same binding on gnome2 ;)
Xfce + LXDE = ? Posted Nov 9, 2011 21:31 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] It would be nice to see more coordination between the different desktops for the users who just want to get some work done, such as LXDE and Xfce. Perhaps LXDE and Xfce should merge eventually. They don't have the ambitions of GNOME and KDE, so they are in a much better position to cooperate and reuse code. Both are gtk based. Both appeal to the same users. Both are enjoying the influx of GNOME refugees, many of whom are talented programmers who could spent at least some time on improving their desktop, even if it simply means reporting bugs or testing fixes.As part of the effort, combined Xfce-LXDE spins could be created for popular distros with the Xfce and LXDE components selected based on they maturity and user satisfaction. That would spur competition and compatibility efforts.
Xfce + LXDE = sum - 1 Posted Nov 9, 2011 22:06 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Not a good idea: we lose one desktop and gain nothing. I am a (-n extremely happy) xfce user since about 2007 (also a kde refugee, but it was the frugal environment which got me). If the devs suddenly got tablet-crazy, it is nice to know that there are other options.
Xfce + LXDE = ? Posted Nov 9, 2011 23:28 UTC (Wed) by nzjrs (subscriber, #35911) [Link]
"different desktops for the users who just want to get some work done, such as LXDE and Xfce."
Yeah, that is pretty offensive. I get plenty of work on on G3 and I am certain others do on KDE4, Unity, etc.
Xfce + LXDE = ? Posted Nov 10, 2011 1:18 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]
Agreed.
I have no problems using Gnome 3 and Shell.
Xfce + LXDE = ? Posted Nov 10, 2011 4:49 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
What you don't realise, is that what the top-level poster said is not offensive and should not be offensive. He just mentions the existence of a class of users, who see no benefit in the features Gnome 3 bring, and experience the losses that it incurs. AFAICT, he didn't imply, or mean to imply, to discredit people who see Gnome 3 a beneficial.
So, no, it's the customary-workflow-disrupting GNOME3 that is offensive, the sheerness of its "my way, or the highway" approach.
Xfce + LXDE = ? Posted Nov 10, 2011 8:07 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
First you say that "want to get work done" is not offensive (don't think it is, just trollish) and should not be offensive, then you call GNOME 3 offensive?
That logic does not make sense. Further, you know you're posting in an XFCE article right? Enough choice.
Xfce + LXDE = ? Posted Nov 10, 2011 16:31 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Technically the GP could only be offensive to Gnome 3 if "my way, or the highway" actually describes Gnome 3. :)
Xfce + LXDE = ? Posted Nov 10, 2011 14:52 UTC (Thu) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
Offensive? No, it's not. You needn't take criticism of your chosen desktop environment so personally. It's not personal. It's a desktop. A computer program.
Clemmitt
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 22:01 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
Xfce is a great desktop. I was using it before GNOME 3 came out, so it's not _just_ for "refugees."
Also interesting to see that Linus is using it. I remember the infamous GNOME vs. KDE emails a few years ago in which he talked about how he only used KDE. :)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 23:02 UTC (Wed) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
XFCE? Bah, still too heavy-weight for me. I've been using blackbox for the last few years. Are there any twm users still out there?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 7:36 UTC (Thu) by magfr (guest, #16052) [Link]
But of course.
twm and xfce4-panel.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 8:07 UTC (Thu) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link]
Seconded. Happy Fvwm2 user here (after fleeing from still-Gnome2 to XFCE and realising that XFCE too was going the way of D-Bus, bloat and XML.
And yes, Fvwm2 seems to be the beginning of a very good friendship :-)
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 9:44 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Some computer usage patterns have changed over the last decade. I need constant and easy access to RandR settings, to attach bluetooth devices and to WLANs and WANs. This is an important part of what modern desktops offer. I am curious as to what software you use and recommend for these things when you run only a window manager today?
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 10:22 UTC (Thu) by imitev (subscriber, #60045) [Link]
On my fedora laptop: openbox, tint2 panel, gigolo applet (from XFCE - for mounting disks), nm-applet (GNOME - network manager), and system-config-printer-applet (DBUS notifications, for printing / detecting printers).
These are bits salvaged here and there, and in the end you could ask what's the benefit of running a lightweight wm if you add "heavy" gnome/kde/... applets, but this setup is lower on resources than standard XFCE and way lower than gnome/KDE. I guess that's what the OP had in mind...
(as for xrandr, I tried XFCE's GUI but it lacked some features I needed, so I find it easier to assign key shortcuts in openbox with xrandr command lines I often use).
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 16:15 UTC (Thu) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
> Some computer usage patterns have changed over the last decade.
Mine haven't.
> I need constant and easy access to RandR settings, to attach
I don't.
> This is an important part of what modern desktops offer.
Not to me.
> I am curious as to what software you use and recommend for these
Not applicable.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 17:40 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I need constant and easy access to RandR settings, to attach bluetooth devices and to WLANs and WANs. This is an important part of what modern desktops offer. I am curious as to what software you use and recommend for these things when you run only a window manager today? I use a terminal and xrandr, iwconfig, iwlist and ifconfig. (I don't own any bluetooth devices, so can't speak to that part of your question.) Works for me.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:09 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
wow. You must enjoy suffering.
For years I managed my wireless on linux using command line tools and wpasupplicant... I am sure as hell happy I don't have to do that anymore!
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:15 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] You must enjoy suffering. No, if I enjoyed suffering, I'd use GNOME 3.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 11, 2011 0:10 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
When I used wpa_supplicant[1], it had better behavior than NM. If I disconnected, the network didn't immediately disconnect and force me to do everything again. I could walk from my room, out to the staircase and to the room above or below me in the dorm on my wireless without reconnecting (manual or otherwise) to my router even though the stairwell was well out of range. NM drops at the hint of a disruption (e.g., power cycle the connected switch[2]) and NM would disconnect wired lines while manual ifup just waits and buffers traffic instead of confusing all NM-aware applications.
[1]Unfortunately the machines I have don't have wireless chips that are supported by upstream, so I'm without wireless most times.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 11, 2011 14:35 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I do not think the behavior you describe can be attributed to solely Network-Manager. I suspect it's more of a function of the wireless drivers you are using and/or the hardware.
Unless you were talking about using a very old version of Network-Manager. If so you should probably re-evaluate as it's massively better then it was when it was new. Matured massively in capabilities and stability.
Why do I say this?
Because Network-Manager depends on wpa_supplicant.
On my Fedora 14 box:
rpm -qR $(rpm -qf $(which NetworkManager)) |grep wpa
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 11, 2011 16:22 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Possibly, but I doubt it. That was back around NM 0.8. I moved my work laptop to NM in the past few months for 0.9, but the same "drop as soon as the cable is disconnected" behavior happens with wired which did not happen when I was using just wpa_supplicant.
I agree that it has gotten better, but this behavior is a showstopper for me. I brought it up on f-d-l and I did not get the impression that marking networks as "flaky" (so that NM would take N seconds before dropping DNS, IP, and related information on the interface instead of 0) was not an important feature.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:10 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
That kind of work pattern would be frustrating for me, it's too much like yak shaving, doing a bunch of work in front of doing the actual work you are trying to do. Theres software that does all that, like NetworkManager, so I don't have to worry about those details anymore.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:17 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Theres software that does all that, like NetworkManager, so I don't have to worry about those details anymore. I haven't used Network Manager in a long time. It was really buggy the last time I used it, but may be OK now. I don't often change networks. When I do, it's to use free (or at least unencrypted) WiFi in hotel rooms, conferences, etc. For that, iwlist, iwconfig and dhclient are really quick. I can probably set up my network on the command line as fast as I'd be able to with a GUI. If I had to manage many WAP keys, then yeah... I'd use something else.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 11, 2011 0:19 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> If I had to manage many WAP keys, then yeah... I'd use something else.
I used wpa_supplicant.conf to manage it for me. Worked flawlessly for WPA, 802.1x, and unauthenticated at the least.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:21 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
I'll add wpa_cli (part of wpa_supplicant) to that. I have a small collection of scripts written on top of it that makes wireless trivial.
I'm sure there are probably tools for configuring wireless and screen resolution graphically, but it's easier if you know the command to just issue the command.
Also, e16 forever.
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:06 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I have a small collection of scripts written on top of it that makes wireless trivial. Trivial as in "open the lid and you can start using the Internet" or "I can go to different building without closing the lid and it'll automatically connect to another AP with different SSID" ? This starts looking as script-language reimplementation of Network Manager. May be better to use the real thing? You can drive it from command line using cnetworkmanager... Or perhaps (as drag suspects) you just enjoy suffering. I'm sure there are probably tools for configuring wireless and screen resolution graphically, but it's easier if you know the command to just issue the command. LCD made screen resolution adjustment kinda pointless (there are just one native resolution and X.org servers were able to find and use it for quite long time) and as for wireless... it's not the question of "how to configure it" (you don't configure it all that often), but how to use it. I'm not sure I remember the time when I was last forced to think about the fact that I have different SSIDs at home and at work, etc. I know that I'm supposed to find and plug Ethernet cable when I need decent speed but I can just open the laptop lid and use it when I'm just web surfing - and that's it. Okay, I lie: when I obtain new laptop (or tablet, or anything else) I need to briefly recall that you need to actually enter the names of APs and accompanying passwords (the one at work which requires new certificate stored in TPM is especially painful to setup), but then I just forget all about configs - I just use the internat/Internet and that's it.
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 11, 2011 0:18 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> You can drive it from command line using cnetworkmanager...
You can't manage wireless connections through it (adding, removing, etc.). Only nm-applet supports it. You could hack the XML config files I suppose, but wpa_supplicant.conf is easier in that case (except the root requirement, but to avoid XML and a session dbus for just one app, I'll take it).
> I'm not sure I remember the time when I was last forced to think about the fact that I have different SSIDs at home and at work, etc.
wpa_supplicant.conf allows you to do the same. The priority= setting allows it to choose in the face of choice as well. I don't recall NM having that last I used it.
The only practical difference between NM and wpa_supplicant in my experience is that NM will connect and drop automatically where I need to do "ifup" manually. However, where NM will drop at a network disruption, ifup will stay up until I take it down. That, IMO, is well worth the slight inconvenience of an ifup at boot (which is in the history right alongside exec startx).
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 12, 2011 7:34 UTC (Sat) by tom.prince (subscriber, #70680) [Link]
In fact, the network-manager configuration files are simple ini style config files.
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 13, 2011 14:18 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
That's certainly an improvement.
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 17, 2011 12:51 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] I find that with wpa_supplicant I can ifup wlan0 on boot and then walk between networks without manual ifdown or ifup and stay connected, so long as some kind of configuration for the network exists. Having a generic fallback for open networks is really all you need; I'm surprised that such a fallback isn't supplied by default by wpa_supplicant.
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 17, 2011 23:21 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
True, but I don't add a catch-all open network section simply because I'd like some notification when that happens.
Now if wpa_supplicant could automatically do RADIUS web logins instead of forcing me to realize that things aren't going through and then opening uzbl before firing offlineimap off, that'd be awesome.
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 14, 2011 20:53 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Some of us move between external screens and projectors all the time. That got more common when we started using laptops as our primary computers. That's why we need to change resolution on the fly so often. Ready made profiles don't really cut it. A good command line utility might, but it's very convenient to have it readily accessible at all times.
Well, it looks like start of Network Manager reimplementation... Posted Nov 17, 2011 12:48 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
>Trivial as in "open the lid and you can start using the Internet" or "I can go to different building without closing the lid and it'll automatically connect to another AP with different SSID" ?
I don't need custom scripts for that, just having wpa_supplicant properly configured does the latter (and I don't close my laptop lid unless I'm shutting down, so I just don't know about the former).
>This starts looking as script-language reimplementation of Network Manager. May be better to use the real thing?
>Or perhaps (as drag suspects) you just enjoy suffering.
>LCD made screen resolution adjustment kinda pointless (there are just one native resolution and X.org servers were able to find and use it for quite long time) and as for wireless... it's not the question of "how to configure it" (you don't configure it all that often), but how to use it.
>I'm not sure I remember the time when I was last forced to think about the fact that I have different SSIDs at home and at work, etc.
>Okay, I lie: when I obtain new laptop (or tablet, or anything else) I need to briefly recall that you need to actually enter the names of APs and accompanying passwords (the one at work which requires new certificate stored in TPM is especially painful to setup), but then I just forget all about configs - I just use the internat/Internet and that's it.
wpa_supplicant is great and makes my life easier, whereas NM has never done anything but cause me pain. I can't find a single feature of NM that is useful (other than "We wrote our GUI tools against it instead of just using wpa_supplicant like normal people") and I suspect that it would never have existed if Fedora had had a sane way to configure networks to begin with.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 13, 2011 16:05 UTC (Sun) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]
But NM also uses wpa_supplicant? So what's the technical difference? :)
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:46 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
> I am curious as to what software you use and recommend for these
> things when you run only a window manager today?
For me, wicd is a good replacement for NetworkManager.
If you would like a graphical way to use xrandr, you could try lxrandr.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:08 UTC (Thu) by pataphysician (guest, #73773) [Link]
for RandR I use ARandR for a gui, or just used commands, or use my openbox menu items and hot keys I created, for my most common usage, which is to mostly to rotate the screen. There is also Drandr for use with dmenu, and urandr and xrandr guis.
I use blueman or commands for bluetooth. Also have some openbox menu items I created for some connections.
For networking I use netcfg with profiles for main networks and wifi-select for random wireless connects. There are guis for netcfg also but I don't use them.
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 14, 2011 20:57 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Thanks for all the suggestions (you and everyone else). RandR seems to be the most troublesome part of the package. The GUIs people have suggested here aren't really as polished as the GNOME/KDE ones, but I'm happy to try them as I need to find a new desktop environment (again).
Helper software for twm/fvwm/etc Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:00 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Last time I used randr it was broken. I had a borken screen resolution, tried to use randr to make it work (for a novice computer user) and it was useless.
To the point they ended up ditching their linux system and going Windows instead :-(
Cheers,
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 9, 2011 23:17 UTC (Wed) by compte (guest, #60316) [Link]
The biggest hurdle is that I need to log into LXDE in order to place a desktop icon and then log back into XFCE to use it. LXDE does not show you a proper properties dialog like Gnome 2 and XFCE.
It can be usefull. For MPlayer, you need to change the command in the Properties window from "gmplayer %F" to "gmplayer -ao pulse -vo x11 %F", otherwise it won't work. For some odd reason gedit will only start if you try to open it twice, but only once from the menu.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 7:19 UTC (Thu) by odie (guest, #738) [Link]
Sorry for veering off-topic, but in the MPlayer case, a more universal aproach would be to put default options in ${HOME}/.mplayer/config. In your example:
ao=pulse vo=x11
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 14, 2011 14:18 UTC (Mon) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]
Further off-topic, "-vo=x11" will be a very slow. Use "-vo help" to get an idea of better video output choices.
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT Posted Nov 10, 2011 0:25 UTC (Thu) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT the problem is, I can't get any work done with it.
The Alt-Tab behavior and other things are just to different.
It also seems does not seem to want to be useful for dual-monitor setups.
I do intent to look into more GNOME Shell extensions and options, maybe try what the Linux Mint developers are doing: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851
And I don't think XFCE looks good as GNOME 2, it is also missing some of the useful parts I was used to in GNOME 2.
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT Posted Nov 10, 2011 11:58 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
alt-tab switches applications
alt-~ switches windows between applications.
It's different, but It is actually much more useful, IMO.
The trouble with it is that if you are using Windows a lot and have to switch back and forth.
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:12 UTC (Thu) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]
Actually that is the part I think is useful too.
One of the things about alt-tab I don't like is that it lists applications from other desktops.
There is no other WM that does that and with other WM this is one of the reasons I have different desktops.
Each desktop is for a different task, why would I want to clutter the alt-tab list with the applications which are not related to my current task.
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT Posted Nov 10, 2011 15:12 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
It first switches between applications in the existing workspace before going to others. You notice that in the popup; it has a line between current workspace and others. Took quite some getting used it in the beginning. Still not sure if the behaviour is better or not (sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it).
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT Posted Nov 10, 2011 15:20 UTC (Thu) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]
My problem is I'm about 99% in the hate it camp ;-)
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:25 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] I suppose one can grow accustomed to anything, but I imagine that in scenarios where you have 8+ desktops each with 2-3 windows the list would grow quite burdensome. Always showing one of 2-3 is a lot simpler; it's pretty rare that I want to see a long master list of all windows.
I actually like GNOME Shell looks, BUT Posted Nov 11, 2011 15:07 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I use 8 workspaces usually. More of less the same as in GNOME 2, there I had 12 configured, but mostly used about 8 of them (rest were empty).
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 4:17 UTC (Thu) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]
I've been very impressed with XFCE. It's proven to me that there should be equal weight put into:
1). The overall quality of the software.
The latter turns out to be pretty important, and as with so many things in life it isn't until a forcing function causes you to consider assumptions you had (that project X, Y, or Z would never do A, B, or C) that you realize those assumptions were merely assumptions, never stated intentions, and all of the risks that go along with that.
I enjoy using the Linux kernel because I know at no point is Linus going to turn around and throw it all away, and I enjoy XFCE as an interim solution for all of the same reasons.
Jon.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 8:15 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Intend and goal behind GNOME has always been the same, provide great software available to all. See http://www.gnome.org/. This has been the same goal for a very very long time. That GNOME 3 is not for you, really unfortunate, but fail to see the relation of you disliking GNOME 3 with "stated intent and goals". Think you agree with the goal, just not how it is executed.
It also does not matter if "Linus is going to turn around and throw it all away". What does that matter? It is free software, he can throw away / delete his copy. Pretty sure he does that every so often, if only in a benchmark.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 11:09 UTC (Thu) by tuxmania (guest, #70024) [Link]
The problem is that Gnome 3 is not great software. It alienates its users to the extent that very long time users jump ship in droves. It is a slow quirky resource hog that fails miserably at improving workflows of both new and old users.
Im fine with Gnome 3 becoming a developer only circlejerk project where the devs awe and oohs about it but where users was tumbleweeds now blows past. Just dont fool yourself thinking you are just misunderstood and knows everything better than the users.
Making great software demeands listening to the users. If your only intended users is yourself, fine. Somehow i suspect thats not the goal is it?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:01 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
That is a curious theory you have, but it ignores the fact that Gnome-shell actually kicks ass and is getting better.
It just takes a while for new software to reach the similar level of usability and capabilities as old software. That is why it's stupid to re-write software unless you have too.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:11 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Are there plans to re-instate the static, fixed workspace grid layout?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 10:49 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Not at the moment I think. But extensions can provide that and people are working on ensuring the extension infrastructure is good enough for that. There is some conflict though as the default should be good enough. If 75% of the users install an extension, it shouldn't be an extension but default behaviour.
Did see that the overview mode might be changed a little (design wiki had new mockups), but too early to exactly know what they're changing.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 17:04 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Isn't it weird to be performing these experiments using the production release?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 19:40 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Extensions are a perfectly good place to create experiments on top of a production release.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 21, 2011 17:11 UTC (Mon) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]
I think bronson means the current releases seem more like experiments, if they need so many changes every time (the same goes for Unity, really).
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:00 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
That's definitely not a 'fact' but your personal opinion.
It would be a fact if droves of new users suddenly flocked to GNOME3. But that's not exactly what's happening. Quite the opposite, in fact - users are fleeing GNOME3.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 7:27 UTC (Sun) by russell (subscriber, #10458) [Link]
The only ass GNOME has kicked is it's users. I've put time and effort into GNOME, promoting GNOME, having GNOME adopted as a platform for paid work. Now they have crippled the platform, alienated users, and destroyed any confidence I had in using it as a base for other systems. Would I trust GNOME with another 10 year road map. No way!
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 16:09 UTC (Sun) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]
Your life is ruined! Give up!
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 17:02 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
If you mean, "your desktop is ruined! Switch desktops!" then your comment makes perfect sense.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 14, 2011 8:52 UTC (Mon) by russell (subscriber, #10458) [Link]
perhaps you miss understand. If gnome was just a desktop then no big deal. But it's also a platform on which to develop products that put food on the table. Now that it's taken this direction and loosing users, and become somewhat crippled, it's not a very attractive/reliable platform to build on. There are more people than just me paying attention and giving GNOME a wide berth. This year, the next, and maybe forever, won't be the year of the desktop for GNOME unless they do it all themselves. But that isn't going to happen. They are too busy ripping and rebuilding the foundations.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:17 UTC (Thu) by mordae (subscriber, #54701) [Link]
> The problem is that Gnome 3 is not great software.
Yes, but it seems to be getting better every release.
> It alienates its users to the extent that very long time users jump ship in droves.
I jumped the ship. Then I tried again in F16-alpha and it rocked so much that I've kept it.
> It is a slow quirky resource hog
I don't perceive it as slow. On the contrary, it's approximately same as compiz and definitely feels lighter then KDE4.
> that fails miserably at improving workflows of both new and old users.
Not really. It did improve mine. I've got rid of the compulsive need to have things organized on a few well-known workspaces and instead perform tasks in a stack-like manner. The "there is always one more workspace under the current one" aspect is cool.
Yes, there are hassles. Like notification icons I had to put to the panel using a custom 4-line extension. Theme you need to hack up yourself. But in the end, it's actually a pretty comfy environment that finally found a way to use that weird Windows button.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:36 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] I have to disagree. After getting to know Gnome 3 well enough, I'm using XFCE (some glitch prevents Gnome shell from starting). Using its "Gnome-2-similar" UI gets in my way now, I've noticed some frecuent operations are faster in Gnome 3 than here. Gnome shell sure is very different, but once you get to know it it is natural and plenty fast enough.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 13:49 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Horst, but how do you deal with the multitude of open terminals/emacs frames?
The fixed grid provided a way to organise them spatially, whereas, as we all know, Gnome 3 only gives you a choice of linear, intra-same-app-type switching model.
Were you forced to lower the amount of same-app windows?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 15:59 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> The fixed grid provided a way to organise them spatially, whereas, as we all know, Gnome 3 only gives you a choice of linear, intra-same-app-type switching model.
I am not sure what you mean by that.
Gnome-shell is setup in such a way that you it allows you to do 'switch-by-application' or 'switch-between-application-windows', depending on context and method used.
Like:
Previous desktops only allowed switching between windows. Whether or not those windows were associated with one another was not taken into account.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:37 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
The problem I have with gnome-shell is that it is not convenient to switch from one program to a particular window of another.
e.g., I want to switch from my web browser to the particular terminal window running mutt to write a mail. I used to be able to do this with Alt+Tab, now it's Alt-Tab followed by between 0 and nterminals-1 Alt-` keypresses to do so.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:11 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Only the first time you flip between the terminal and your browser. If you are switching back and forth between apps it should default to the window you last used for that application.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:09 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
I have a diverse working set of same-app windows, what do I do?
Again, many emacs frames, many terminal apps. What is the proposed Gnome 3 workflow?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:51 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
If you can get your terminal emulator to create its windows with a different WM_CLASS depending on their purpose then they will show up as separate top-level applications in gnome-shell, which is pretty cool. This may be one component of a solution.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:03 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
The proposed workflow is to switch to xfce.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:22 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Let me tell you what I mean.
I have a 6x6 grid virtual desktop layout. Most of the desktops are occupied by full screen windows -- either terminals or Emacs frames.
The planar layout allows me to use my spatial intuition, which, in the end, allows me to manage many more windows.
It's simply possible for me to remember the layout of things on a 6x6 grid.
It is beyond possibility for me to remember anything about a fixed 1x36 line, especially when the elements come and go. It is also vastly less practical to move in such a layout.
Feel free to ask any further questions.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 22:28 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> The planar layout allows me to use my spatial intuition, which, in the end, allows me to manage many more windows.
Never you mind the spatial intuition - as is, gnome shell won't even let your _see_ where your stuff is.
It's a bit like this. You have drawers with socks, undies, shirts etc. Normally, each of the drawers has a picture on it of what's in it and generally, drawers are not interchanged, unless you decide to rearrange.
Gnome shell version if this is that you are not allowed to put pictures on your drawers, your drawers get occasionally reshuffled (depending on how you decide to dress in the morning) and obviously, you actually need to look into each one to see what's in it every single time you need something.
The rationale is that this is preventing you from becoming a compulsive clothes changer. :-)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 14:30 UTC (Fri) by mstefani (subscriber, #31644) [Link]
That's exactly why Gnome Shell didn't work for me as it destroys the visual model of the desktop in my head.
I visually know where my window is. I don't have to search for it (ALT-TAB is searching) I just go there: keypress to the desired workspace and mouse move to the desired window (mostly tiled terminals). Add to that focus follows mouse and I've switched windows fast and without any cognitive effort.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 17:15 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Quite. I'm not sure it's even a visual model: I do exactly the same, and I have no visual memory at all to the extent that I have trouble recognising myself in a mirror. I think we're using the same neural system we use to navigate around physical spaces: switching to my work mail Emacs window feels similar mentally to walking to the shops (only it takes much less time, <0.2s rather than five minutes: nonetheless, I know the route from wherever I am and I know the surroundings). This system is evolutionarily ancient (google 'hippocampus place cells') and very efficient, so piggybacking on it seems like a good idea for user-interface metaphors.
Now one of the principal attributes of physical spaces is that they do not rearrange themselves spontaneously as you walk through them. Thus, we should probably try to avoid doing that here, too. I can't think of *anything* in the real world that a spontaneously reordering list could be modelled as. (Windows's alt-tab lists are just as bad. Watching users peck laboriously through them is painful.)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 17, 2011 12:56 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
This thread describes how I manage windows on virtual desktops, too. Funny that now the spatial-memory argument is working against GNOME, hmm....
It's easy to remember where my web browser is (always the same desktop) and where my irc client is (always the same, different desktop) and where I left the GIMP the last time I used it... and since my pager is in the corner of the screen it's always a fast mouse+click to get to any app. I have a hard time imagining an improvement.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 18, 2011 8:02 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
I think it is beyond possibility, that none of the Gnome 2 developers were alienated by Gnome 3 making this model of interaction impossible.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 22, 2011 5:29 UTC (Tue) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
Another +1 here.
Static work space allocations (you always know where your email client is) which is only a click away is a massive win.
I also bind workspace navigation to Ctrl+<Arrow> so I can do it with one hand.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 15:01 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I see various people responding here that love it. I don't recognize them as GNOME developers. That it doesn't meet your way of working, unfortunate. Not perfect for everyone. Hopefully better in future.
But "alienates its users to the extent that very long time users jump ship in droves". There is no reliable data to support or determine this. And to be honest, the goal is to create a really usable desktop. I do see loads of reactions, but that is to be expected with such a big change.
Regarding data gathering: On slightly less technical websites I see GNOME 3 being confused with Unity. Not everyone understands the difference.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 16:15 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> the goal is to create a really usable desktop
Is this true? If so, then why didn't Gnome 3 include less ambitious UI changes? That would have been far more usable for the majority of Gnome 2 users.
There must have been different, and I'm sure perfectly valid, goals that drove Gnome 3.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:45 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
You're assuming that:
1) less ambitious UI changes results in a really usable desktop 2) that GNOME 3 is not usable for the existing users 3) that we should only look at the existing users, instead of everyone
I find GNOME 3 to be a a really good start. I do see some issues with it, but it is improving with each release.
But that is not the reason for GNOME 3. The reason was stagnation and wanting to clean up the platform (all the deprecated crap). There was no concrete idea what GNOME 3 should contain.. we (release team) left that for designers, the various maintainers and developers. Idea was first openly discussed @ UDS in Prague (2008).
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 3:23 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
1) Less ambition would have meant fewer Gnome 3 usability regressions. So, yes, that's probably a good assumption.
2) No, Gnome 3 is not very usable to regular Gnome 2 users. We're talking about regular people, people who tend to dislike relearning how to do simple things. If kernel devs are ranting about how difficult it is to adopt the Gnome 3 way, just imagine how Bob the Middle Manager is fairing. Or Aunt Tillie. :) (and if you think I'm hard on Gnome 3, you should hear my non-techy wife talk about it...)
3) I do see some existing Gnome users howling in pain. I do not see Gnome 3 attracting "everyone else". If you have evidence that there's a silent surge of non-Gnome-users queuing up to use Gnome 3 then please, by all means, do share. I'd love to see it.
I love removing code as much as anyone. It truly is one of the pleasures of programming. But most of the Gnome 3 pain seems to be coming from its UI changes. That has very little to do with deprecation and almost everything to do with design.
I find Gnome 3 to be a really good start too. With some refinement, it could be truly impressive, far better than Gnome 2. Today, though, it's just not ready for the distros to be deploying by default.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 13:56 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
1) I don't see regressions (talking about focus-follows-mouse?); just stuff that could work better. It is a first release, of course it is not going to be as refined as the 16th release of the previous major version. We called it 3.0; we could've called it 2.34.
2) You're making assertations without backing them up regarding "not very usable". But yeah, there are loads of books on change management. I don't think not changing anything ever is the solution to this.
3) Agree in that various users hate it. But no data on how many are leaving and how many are joining.
Pretty cool you see the potential though :-)
I guess we more or less agree except our expectations are different for what qualifies a .0 and so on.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 16:06 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
1) No, I've long since given up on FFM in Gnome. I'm talking about all the workflow that Gnome 3 changed. Every simple task that an end user has to relearn. Whenever a Gnome 2 user is confused by Gnome 3, that's the sign of a UI regression. A few regressions in a release are fine (the panel definitely needed to go), but widespread regressions are pure frustration to people who just want to get their work done.
2) Let me get this straight, you disagree with "people tend to dislike relearning how to do simple things"? I'm happy to go digging for citations but, if I find them, I'd like you to acknowledge that you were wrong.
> I don't think not changing anything ever is the solution to this
When have I ever advocated this? That sounds horrible. There's a huge, very usable gray area between stagnant and change-everything..
It seems like where we differ is how much empathy we have for the end user. I believe people get used to a certain way of doing things and would like to continue using their knowledge, muscle memory, and chosen desktop environment. Habits can be changed, gradually. You seem to think that a brand new, mostly-working tablety UI trumps all that. So be it. I just wish that DEs with this opinion weren't the Fedora default. I think it's giving Linux on the Desktop a bad reputation.
There's no doubt Gnome 3 will mature and become popular again. I just don't acknowledge the need for this painful transition period.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 18:47 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
2) No I was saying I completely agree.
The rest I already understood, no not replying as I think we understand eachother, just differ on opinion.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 22:10 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
> It is a first release...
> We called it 3.0... > what qualifies a .0...
And so on. This is something I have heard previously... Oh, yes. It was when KDE4 was released. It's all just poor excuses, if you ask me.
> I don't see regressions [...]; just stuff that could work better.
Yeah, right. Microsoft said exactly the same about Windows ME and Vista.
> no data on how many are leaving
And, does it matter? Let me ask you something: you really believe that there are more users coming or leaving GNOME?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 10:44 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
It is not the same. With KDE 4.0, a few months before it was renamed to a developers release. From what I heard, it was pretty buggy and not everything was complete. This is not how I see GNOME 3.0.
However, there is a big change and comparing such a big change with the 16th release of the 2.x cycle, and not with 2.0 for me is very logical that it doesn't work out. I see 3.0 as really good and way better quality than I expected.
You're comparing to KDE 4, bringing up ME, and suggesting things. Then stating that data collection doesn't matter. With any big change, there is pain. You have loads of articles written about the effects of change, etc.
We've had pretty much the same feedback during GNOME 2.0.
Without any data, no idea how 3.0 compares to 2.0.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 10:49 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
if you go back and look at the full release notes for KDE 4.0 you will see that they were saying from the beginning that that marked the point where the infrastructure was deemed ready for developers to use.
unfortunately the press release announcements didn't make this prominent enough (the info was there, but buried). Many of the articles that were then published completely dropped this part of it.
it's not a matter of them "renaming it to a development release"
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 13:47 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I'm not talking about the release notes, I am talking about all the blogs and so on (planet kde) that were written before 4.0. Only a few months (max 2) before the release of 4.0, I saw a sudden change that it was a development release. The message switched, and not everyone noticed the change. It never got the impression that 4.0 was considered a development release from the start. Not sure what you mean with press release, those things you write yourself as a project (I guess misunderstood importance to highlight that bit?).
And what I mean with liking GNOME 3.0 is that I consider it really stable and not a development release. But it needs some time before it really shows off the ideas. Meaning with Contacts, Documents, Boxes (3.4), crash app, etc (see http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/gnome-design-up...). At the moment the extra applications are pretty simplistic. The plan is to launch an beta extensions website on Dec 1st. So finally something that (IMO) blows away the tweaking possibilities of GNOME 2.x. I do think 3.0 and everything that followed is the right timeframe though, it is useful to feedback on 3.0, not 3.0 with hundreds of extensions.
Could've also not released 3.0 and 2.32 (2.32 was only released because 3.0 was not good enough at that time), kept developing without releasing anything for a few years (e.g. not everyone agreed to doing a 2.32; it required time that people rather spent on 3.0). I think "release early, release often" dance is good. That is how you can still change things. If you change fundamentals late, it is just very hard and requires loads of time to adjust.
Also saw some notion that distributions switched too early, but most non-rolling release distributions seem to only provide GNOME 3 as of 3.2. Exception is Fedora, but that distribution is well known to give the latest technology asap. I run Mageia myself, and the latest stable (v1) provides GNOME 2.32 (IIRC); v2 will have 3.4 (+systemd:). Mandriva completely got rid of most of their packages and only support KDE. Opensuse only switched with 3.2. Seems like a normal acceptance cycle.
Regarding forcing, we've ported metacity, gnome-panel at 3.0 and gnome-applets as of 3.2. Various big changes occurred during 3.0 (simplification of System Settings and put the rest in a tweak tool), but I saw that maintainers wanted to do that for years. Only by announcing 3.0 maintainers saw it as a go-ahead (so they first simplified System Settings, which triggered the start of gnome-tweak-tool). But the maintainers could've done the same during any 2.x release. During 2.x it was delayed because someone had to write a tweak tool; in 3.0 it was done and as a result someone wrote the tweak tool.
But oh well, I still use "spatial mode" a bit :P
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 20:14 UTC (Sat) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]
I think "release early, release often" is a phrase that is overused, especially in this case. Want my personal opinion? Well, since you asked...
GNOME 3 was released far too soon. That would have been ok, had things like the Shell been optional and the existing 2.x real panel and so on stayed around. But instead, everything was thrown away in one go and replaced with an early release. A few years down the line, those of us who felt forced into switching might not be nearly as annoyed once the features catch up with 2.x. As it is, the mindset to me said "you'll take this and like it" (fine with a brand new project, not ok after ten years of using something).
As I said, GNOME 3 finally made me realize that I should not rely on GNOME to remain a consistent UI in the future. It happened to do so in the past, but is willing to throw caution to the wind and force me to change my entire workflow on a whim. This won't do. And I can't use it again :)
Jon.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 22:04 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the key to "release early, release often" is that your releases are evolutionary. with GNOME that would be _adding_ Shell as an option in addition to the 2.x way of doing things and then later flipping the default.
this doesn't go well with people who thing that a new release should include revolutionary things or it's a 'worthless' release.
it is actually harder to do major changes with evolutionary releases, but the result is usually better.
We see the exact same issue in patches. It's easier to do one 'big bang' patch that changes everything and rips out an old system to put in your new wiz=bang solution.
but if you can go back and create a patch series that is evolutionary instead, it's much easier to get review and feedback.
In some cases you find that the users really didn't want the wiz-bang feature the way you initially envisioned it, but the evolution allows them to benifit from your work even if the end result ends up a bit different.
In other cases the mere act of going back and breaking the change down into logical steps ends up showing the developer places that things can be cleaned up, simplified, generalized, or otherwise improved that were not obvious in the 'big bang' change.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 23:18 UTC (Sat) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]
Perfectly stated. This is the main problem with GNOME 3. There are other issues, but this is primary.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 2:39 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
I totally 100% agree with everything you just said.
Look at how Linus changed Linux 2.6 into Linux 3.0. It was no different than any other release. There was absolutely *no* wiz bang features to merit a 3.0 (except that ftrace function tracing was redesigned and now works with modules :-).
I've been using Linux since 1996, and played around with fvwm at first, and I forgot when I started using gnome. I liked it at the time. IIRC, when gnome 2 came out, it was radically different too, and lots of things broke. I may have switched away from gnome 2 at that time, but things were not as developed back then so radically different wasn't as different as things are today.
When gnome 2 settled down (and brought back a lot of features that it removed), I started using it again and its taken me 10 years to perfect a workflow. I've tried many, and what I ended up with was something that works great for me. Actually, I really only use gnome panel, as I've dumped metacity the first day it came out. I'm a sawfish lover, and when that is hard to install, I've actually liked xfwm4 (I've started using that in the last year).
Last week I did an update to my main box (debian/testing) and it blew away gnome2 and installed gnome3. The gnome-panel has none of the functionality I've come to depend on. My 10 years of perfecting a workflow just went out the window. I bitched like hell, and the only thing that I hear from the damn gnome3 lovers is "oh, its better if you do it this way". BULLSHIT! I've spent 10 years perfecting something to get my work done and I'm not about to change everything just because people like eye candy.
gnome is just a platform to get work done. If I notice it, then it's broken. The same goes with kernels and computers in general. You should not be focusing on the platform that you are working on, you should be focusing on your work. The platform is the tool for your work, not the work itself.
This is the heart of the problem with gnome3 developers. They are focused so much on gnome being the end product, and force users to do it their way.
The reason I started using Linux in the first place is because it let me control the computer, unlike Windows and Apple which make the computer control you. I have a strong feeling that gnome is trying to control me and trying hard to keep me from controlling gnome. This is why I'm so pissed off, and yes, I have started setting up my desktop with Xfce.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 8:06 UTC (Tue) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Humans use their adaptivity in the pursuit of workflow optimum.
Time is spent in this process -- months, years.
Gnome 3 wasted all these efforts, with the promise of something better.
Something was indeed better, but still, the amount lost was far too much to be acceptable.
So, in the end, the most damage inflicted was to the people who invested heavily in workflow adaptation/customisations.
The geeks.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 23:10 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> But "alienates its users to the extent that very long time users jump ship in droves". There is no reliable data to support or determine this.
Found this by accident. Maybe not reliable, but indicative nevertheless:
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:04 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
You have to admit, that is a pretty vague goal.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 13:59 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
jcm said that knowing the goal of a project somehow relates to GNOME 2 and GNOME 3. I think there is no relation. So of course the existing goal is vague; this is why I said the goal has no relation to 2 and 3.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 8:51 UTC (Sun) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]
My point is/was that there was an assumption (that I and others had) built up after ten years that GNOME was catering to us as users and would never do exactly what it did. But the reality is that the assumption was flawed. It was wrong to assume the project would continue along the 2.x road with iterative stable releases based upon tried-and-tested technology. It's fine for the project to do whatever it wants *but* it has been a useful reminder that one should choose things such as a desktop wisely and after considering where the project wants to head. Now that I realize GNOME is willing to do what it has done I would never want to use it again.
At the moment, it seems that Xfce's goals are in line with what I want as a user: a really dull and boring desktop environment that will look roughly the same in 5 years from now and that I can rely on not to be overhauled in some subsequent release to take it in a radical new direction. But it is going to be important for me to review the goals of Xfce before I rely on it in the longer term. For now, it's an interim "quick, I need GNOME 2.x back" solution.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:35 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
I always thought the goal of GNOME was to create a universal desktop. Something for everyone. A swiss army knife that is good in any situation. I'm not sure when that changed to making a desktop that is for only some people who (we think) are the most common. Maybe it didn't, maybe my impression was just always wrong.
This ship sailed sooooo long ago it's not even funny... Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:17 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] This was done with GNOME 2.0 - when GNOME developers understood that combinatorial explosion from way too many options is killing them. Thus the removed most knobs and slowly added them back over the course of GNOME 2.x development in order to satisfy larger and larger number of users. GNOME 3.o started another cycle. It really looks like we are doomed to repeat this cycle again and again. It happens with browsers (Netscape Communicator becomes Netscape 6 which is so slow and unwieldy it dies and Phoenix^WFirebird^WFirefox takes it's place; then Firefox becomes too bloated and unwieldy and Chromium takes it place), it happens with desktops (first GNOME, then KDE, then GNOME again), etc. Somehow it's tolerated when one project dies and another replaces it but when single project reinvents itself - everyone complain... I'm not sure why kernel does not suffer from the same fate, but my explanation is that it happens because there are a lot of kernel developers - and that means their crap-tolerance can be so low that crap is not growing in codebase too fast and can be removed without revolutions. If someone will try to apply the same rules to GUI development then project will just die stillborn.
This ship sailed sooooo long ago it's not even funny... Posted Nov 11, 2011 3:38 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> I'm not sure why kernel does not suffer from the same fate
Because Linus understands how important the kernel is to its users. Regressions are not tolerated, no matter how expedient or unimportant they seem. The kernel suffers long deprecation cycles and lots of code churn merely because of this ideal.
If only Gnome and KDE had the same maturity, maybe Linux on the Desktop would be happening by now.
This ship sailed sooooo long ago it's not even funny... Posted Nov 11, 2011 9:56 UTC (Fri) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link]
Amen!
If only Gnome and KDE weren't so arrogant and lazy to just screw their loyal users just to get new toys to play with.
Maybe evolution will take care of this in the very long run, as Gnome and KDE will die a slow userbase death (will still exist as developer playgrounds) and XFCE and LXDE will take over.
With projects like the raspberrypie ARM computer and major parts of the developing world not in the possession of dev machines this could change.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 1:34 UTC (Fri) by TerryNewton (guest, #81311) [Link]
> I always thought the goal of GNOME was to create a
> universal desktop. Something for everyone. ... > maybe my impression was just always wrong.
I think perception is key here - in particular the perception that the shell is all there is. It is not.. under the hood I've discovered that Gnome 3 is pretty much like Gnome 2 except it's cleaner. After using gnome tweak tool to enable the nautilus-controlled desktop and window buttons, and adding a panel with an app menu (I use LxPanel) it's basically back to the same old stuff I know and love. The shell is optional.. LxPanel, desktop icons etc work fine with the shell running, or make a plain nautilus/panel session without the shell.
The real question is will the nautilus desktop functionality remain intact?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 14, 2011 19:24 UTC (Mon) by bats999 (subscriber, #70285) [Link]
I use Nautilus on the desktop also; it makes things a lot more usable for me. Folder shortcuts and script launchers come to mind. I'm sure there's a Shell way of doing this but RTFM? - TL;DR. This is supposed to be an intuitive interface after all. So yeah, I hope the Shell developers don't bury Nautilus before it's time.
(On a different note, I don't think it's accurate to say XFCE doesn't concern itself with new features. The showstopper for me when I tried it years ago was thunar's inability to browse network resources. From what I've gleaned, that's a core feature now.)
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 8:14 UTC (Fri) by jku (subscriber, #42379) [Link]
"Something for everyone"
Ah, the guaranteed recipe for the perfect end-user product :)
Personally I'm glad GNOME is being developed as a product and not as a swiss army knife project... we have enough of the latter already in the realm of DEs.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 5:30 UTC (Fri) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]
What I'm saying is that there was an unstated "assumption" that I and others had that GNOME was going to continue to cater to us because it had (happened to) in the past. But there was never a stated intent to do that, just happenstance that many of us took as implication. So my point is that it's very important to consider the goals for projects before relying on them. I *should* have looked at where GNOME wanted to go years ago and planned for contingency at that point, but I let myself get comfortable with 2.x because it's what was there and being offered by default on many distros. The correct thing to do in the future (for me) is to find a project like Xfce that promises to remain "boring" forever and to stick with it, not just to find a GNOME 2.x clone. It needs to be both bland and promise to remain so.
Desktop environments versus window managers Posted Nov 10, 2011 11:07 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
In the early days you would pick a window manager: twm, fvwm, icewm or whatever. But while it might make your desktop look superficially pretty, it wouldn't affect any of the applications you ran, which would probably still be an inconsistent mess of different toolkits with different looks and behaviour.
Then when KDE first started it set out to address this: there would be a set of applications and tools, with consistent behaviour, and good support for writing new applications with the same framework. It was no longer correct to refer to KDE or GNOME as a 'window manager' - they were much more.
Now, when KDE 4 or GNOME 3 were released, hardly anyone even mentioned the changes to the libraries and framework for writing applications. All that anyone focuses on is the window management behaviour and a few other user-facing widgets such as the panel. And there may be good reasons for this when you look at the most important applications: Firefox, possibly a mail client, OpenOffice or LibreOffice, and for more technical users a terminal window or text editor such as Emacs. These all use their own GUI libraries which have usually evolved from 20-year-old code or been built from scratch to be cross-platform. Although they will use many of the freedesktop.org libraries they don't wholeheartedly embrace the GNOME or KDE way of writing applications. And third party development will usually make web apps in Javascript and HTML.
Has freedesktop.org taken over the job of library development to such an extent that GNOME and KDE can be considered as mere window managers?
Desktop environments versus window managers Posted Nov 10, 2011 14:28 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Freedesktop.org is the collection of people helping out in the various desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, others). It is not another group of people. Libraries and specs are written by the various desktop environments and we try to ensure we share that work. Doesn't always work perfectly.
Without KDE, GNOME, other desktop environments, freedesktop.org does not exist.
Desktop environments versus window managers Posted Nov 10, 2011 15:40 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I think these are good observations. As you say, the KDE developers not only wanted their applications and accessories to have the same look and feel, but they also wanted to provide a framework for developing applications and the common functionality that one expects from a desktop environment.
In turn, this fed the demand for KDE, as opposed to just running a bunch of applications and a window manager, because one could be sure that dragging something from one application to another, for example, would probably invoke a common operation (like dragging pictures from Digikam to something offering a file management interface invokes a dialogue about moving, copying or linking the pictures as files, which they are even as far as Digikam is concerned) rather than the drag operation not doing anything or doing something weird.
Cross-desktop integration has improved, but there's still the issue that various applications (including some of the mainstays of GNOME back when KDE seemed to offer its own coherent set of applications and GNOME clearly wasn't able to offer something comparable at the same level of integration) don't take proper advantage of core desktop functionality. I did run OpenOffice with KDE dialogues for a while, but it was a flawed experience.
It's easy to make the observation that GNOME in particular has backed even further away from the original KDE vision of a coherent suite of applications and desktop components, but if that is the case then what does that leave for the project's developers to work with? The start menu, some dialogues and whatever happens when the user presses Alt-Tab? The stark choice at that point is to either take a back seat and be like XFCE or to try and make that functionality more prominent somehow, but there has to be a good reason for doing the latter.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 12:53 UTC (Thu) by jrbrtsn (guest, #32739) [Link]
On a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 I tried Unity for a couple of weeks, and then Gnome 3 for a few days. After that I installed xubuntu-desktop (which is XFCE) and am much happier with that.
Unity seems to be aimed at using less screen real estate (especially vertical). However, XFCE can quickly be configured to use one auto-hiding vertical panel which is ideal for a widescreen laptop or netbook.
One of my biggest beefs with Gnome is that I can't find a way to deactivate the raising of a window when I click in that window.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 15:03 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Check gnome-tweak-tool or file a bug. Cannot check atm, but the options used to be in the Windows preferences and should (eventually) appear in that tool. Another solution is dconf-editor.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 16:41 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
It's not currently in gnome-tweak-tool. What component should a bug be filed against?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:55 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 16:51 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
> However, XFCE can quickly be configured to use one auto-hiding vertical panel which is ideal for a widescreen laptop or netbook.
On a netbook I have found that Gnome Shell provides a reasonable setup to run full-screen applications as one press of the Window key brings all the shell GUI. This does not work with auto-hide panels as they do not show up with full-screen.
But so far this is the only thing that I found that Gnome Shell does better then other WM. On a bigger screen XFCE or Gnome-2 are just more productive for me.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:52 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
You can add a button to the Xfce panel that minimizes all open windows. There's no keyboard shortcut associated with this by default, but you could add one. I think there might be a keyboard shortcut to maximize a window, too, but I forgot what it is.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:05 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link]
"Unity seems to be aimed at using less screen real estate (especially vertical). However, XFCE can quickly be configured to use one auto-hiding vertical panel which is ideal for a widescreen laptop or netbook."
Amen to that, use it on widescreens, netbooks, and dual head setups. Been using that configuration since the Afterstep/Wharf days. Easy switch to XFCE. Definitely a superior experience compared to MS Windows/Gnome/KDE, or OSX.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 10, 2011 17:44 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I've been using XFCE since the 3.x days and love it. I've been using computers for a long time (since 1982) and really do not want to learn a whole new workflow every time a bunch of developers scratch their itch. So for me, the XFCE philosophy of providing a high-quality unobtrusive environment that keeps the same workflow from release to release is ideal.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 11, 2011 19:50 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] And a followup: I just upgraded XFCE from 4.6 to 4.8... and... ... it looks and works just exactly the same. Imagine! I don't have to go through a learning curve! What will they think of next?
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 12, 2011 1:31 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
To be fair, Gnome only kicks users in the teeth on major revs: 1.0 -> 2.0, and 2.0 -> 3.0. :) I'm genuinely curious, how was XFCE 3.0 -> 4.0?
(admittedly there was that minor spatial disaster partway through the Gnome 2.0 series but most distros turned it off so it didn't affect many users)
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 12, 2011 2:00 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I'm genuinely curious, how was XFCE 3.0 -> 4.0? I made that transition. It was considerably more disruptive than 4.6 to 4.8, but still not nearly as disruptive as KDE 3 to 4 or GNOME 2 to 3. The look changed quite a bit, but there was still a definite XFCE "feel" to both versions.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 14, 2011 13:30 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>how was XFCE 3.0 -> 4.0?
Functionally it was fine, but that was the transition from Gtk1 to Gtk2, which ballooned the memory requirements to such an extent that I ended up switching back to KDE as lower resource requirements had been a major selling point for XFCE.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 12, 2011 12:52 UTC (Sat) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
Woohooo, no progress! What an AMAZING idea! Why didn't GNOME and KDE think of that?
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 12, 2011 14:32 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Woohooo, no progress There was progress. Bugs were fixed. The system was made more polished and snappier. Minor new convenience features were added. Overall, the system continues to become more enjoyable to use.
To quote you: What an AMAZING idea! Why didn't GNOME and KDE think of that?
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 15, 2011 2:43 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
Hmm, Gnome 2 developers have nearly perfected their system, and there's nothing more to do. Lets redesign everything from scratch, remove all the most useful features and make new ways to do the same thing. This will give us work for another 10 years!
Yeah, progress!
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 15, 2011 7:09 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
Perfected? You must be joking. GNOME2 was constrained by an ancient UI. About time they ditched the greybeard attitude (oh, no! things aren't like the good old days!) and got something proper going.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 15, 2011 12:57 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] GNOME2 was constrained by an ancient UI XFCE, apparently, is not. So it makes incremental progress rather than redesigning the universe with every major release. I know which philosophy I prefer for my desktop environment. About time they ditched the greybeard attitude Funny, that's what MSFT said to try to get UNIX users off UNIX and onto Windows. "UNIX is old; time to move on!"
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 15, 2011 13:54 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
XFCE makes GNOME2 look good...
I don't really care what MSFT says, but they would have been right if no one had made sure that Unix kept progressing. Sort of like how it will be if you get your will about DEs.
Now stop whining about a desktop you don't like, and enjoy your XFCE.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 16, 2011 12:14 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] XFCE makes GNOME2 look good I love reasoned argument. I've talked about how XFCE developers work hard to ensure that their users enjoy a stable workflow and don't suffer from radical changes on each major upgrade, and you take cheap shots at the looks of XFCE. Nice going.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 16, 2011 12:31 UTC (Wed) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
What you wrote was that XFCE was not constrained by the ancient UI that GNOME2 uses.
I simply stated that compared to XFCE, GNOME2 looks good (in that department).
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 16, 2011 16:12 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I simply stated that compared to XFCE, GNOME2 looks good (in that department). That's totally subjective. What is objective is that GNOME (and to some extent KDE) are attempting to make major changes to the desktop and to people's workflow, which many people do not like. Also, GNOME 3 objectively has regressions (for example, focus-follows-mouse is somewhat broken compared to GNOME 2.) I have to say that KDE 4 looks a lot nicer than XFCE. But looks aren't everything; IMO KDE 4's workflow is a lot harder to deal with than XFCE's, and the same applies to GNOME 3. There's something to be said for experimentation, but as I wrote earlier, if the GNOME developers consider GNOME to be a testbed for experimental GUI work, they should state that up front so would-be GNOME users know what they're getting into. See http://lwn.net/Articles/466909/ If you want a stable desktop environment that uses a tried-and-true interface and focuses on stability and incremental improvement, then neither GNOME nor KDE is appropriate. If you want a desktop environment prone to wild experimentation by developers, then sure: GNOME and KDE fit the bill.
Long-time and happy XFCE user Posted Nov 15, 2011 21:47 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> got something proper going.
It used to take one click to switch workspaces. Now it takes several, after you search for the correct one. It used to take one click to bring back a task you hid from your view (minimised). It takes several now, after you search for the correct one. Shortcuts on the desktop (which I never use, but others do) do not exist any more, so opening a favourite file is now more difficult (i.e. requires more GUI actions). And so on and so forth.
These are regressions in the _graphical_ UI. The proper thing may apply to libraries and other under the bonnet improvements, but it certainly doesn't to GUI.
Gnome design documents talk at length about users being distracted by the taskbar, workspace switcher and other things that would tempt them to switch (but not activities button?). These users could always use autohide of the panel. Creating overview, which complicates things, requires unnecessary GUI actions, attacks user with animations and so on, is the root of these problems. Nobody needs an overview on a desktop/laptop computer with decent resolution (I know some will claim they do - see autohide). These are the things that tablets/phones may need, because there is physically no space to put interface elements that enable switching.
These are design problems. Or more specifically, design regressions.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:16 UTC (Thu) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]
Probably because they let users take advantage of proven UI designs, rather than forcing them to give them up and embrace whatever crazy idea the developers last came up with.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:53 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Can you provide any evidence that GNOME forced anyone?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:14 UTC (Thu) by ThinkRob (subscriber, #64513) [Link]
> Can you provide any evidence that GNOME forced anyone?
Well they didn't force them in the "hold a gun to their head" sense.
But they absolutely have forced them in the "drop/deprecate/remove/stop releasing security fixes for any other functionality that does not fit with the (new) One True UI" sense.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:34 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
What they actually did was decide to spend their time working on what they want to work.
Anybody else that wants to spend their personal time on Gnome 2 they are free to do so. And it looks like a few people did, like with the MATE desktop.
You can fault them for a few things they did.. But they didn't for anybody to do anything. It's impossible for them to do that even if they wanted too. Only could do this if they kept their software closed source and depended on the violence of the government to enforce licensing requirements, like some other people are wont to do.
Inflated sense of entitlement seem to distort the perspective of many people. This is not something that is unusual for human beings.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:25 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] What they actually did was decide to spend their time working on what they want to work. And their users saw it, (many) decided it was bad, and therefore switched (or whined :)) If the goal of the GNOME developers is to spend their time working on what they enjoy, they have apparently succeeded admirably. If their goal is to have a happy user base, that success is decidedly mixed. Now I am completely fine with developers having fun with doing whatever they want and not caring about a happy user base. But if that's the goal of GNOME developers, they should at least state that as their policy up front in order to be fair to would-be GNOME users.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 2:35 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> But if that's the goal of GNOME developers, they should at least state that as their policy up front
This. Absolutely this.
I remember talking to an IT manager of a small California town experimenting with deploying Gnome 2 desktops (dunno which distro) to some regular city employees. It seemed to be going OK -- most people just needed to know how to open a browser, email, and PDFs, edit Word files, and print. He was able to get everyone productive again, and most didn't care that it wasn't Windows. They learn something once, then do it for a decade.
I can't imagine what Gnome 3 has done to his life.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:44 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Personally I see a little point in supporting GNOME2 or KDE3. They are pining for the fjords and pushing up the daises.
You are inevitably going to work with more and more crappier code (as workarounds accumulate) while the state of the art moves farther.
So all real sustainable projects must be based on the mainline versions of QT/KDE or GTK/GNOME. I've been tracking GTK and GNOME mailing lists and I saw multiple instances when developers opposing the One True Vision were alienated. So also a good climate for forks/branches should be there.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 13:40 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
We've never provided stable updates for more than a few months. Used to be x.x.0, x.x.1, x.x.2, x.x.3, but since a while we only provide up to x.x.2.
I've seen security updates for GNOME 2.x stuff though, so not only are you wrong in saying that we forced, you're also incorrect in saying that no security updates happened for GNOME 2.x.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 14:55 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
Last time I checked, an intent to end-of-life a software package does force its users to choose another package, that is, if they wish to avoid stagnant, unmaintained software. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
Clemmitt
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 15:03 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
You've replied to my comment, but fail to see the relation. I said that GNOME has not changed its support policy in years. I cannot comment on generics. Care to be a bit more specific?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 20:52 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
So, by saying this, you lend implicit support to the original statement, which I'll quote, for added clarity:
> But they absolutely have forced them in the "drop/deprecate/remove/stop
Good we're clear on this.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 23:00 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I've asked for clarification, but you are also vague.
We give support for stable version for 2 releases after the first one.
Suggest not to put words in my mouth. Policy for stable releases has been the same for years.
Saying "(new) One True UI sense". Well, nothing changed with the number of stable versions we provide with the release of 3.0.
So, no, I don't support your notion.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 16:50 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Putting words in your mouth differs from helping you to understand the implications of things you say yourself.
Yes, the Gnome release policy _effectively_ forces its users to move on to newer versions. You simply cannot argue with that. You even just said it again -- "We give support for stable version for 2 releases after the first one."
Before, while the desktop paradigm was remaining familiar, it was not terribly important.
Today, we're left at the doors of a significant change, without any contingency plan (yes, collectively, many of us expected the fallback mode to be such a contingency plan).
It's really simple. Just try to use a little empathy.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:17 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
It seems normal that Linux users confuse developers writing Free software they can use with those same developers performing acts of physical violence and intimidation.
I have no idea why this is so, but it seems a reoccurring theme.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 16:54 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
I think it's the fault of GNOME marketing.
They make it sound like GNOME is a service to the community, instead of a loosely-knit team of individuals scratching their own itches.
Sounds familiar?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:05 UTC (Thu) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link]
They deliberately made certain that parallel installation of GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 was impossible, so distributions could not ship both the old and the new environment and the users who would've preferred to continue using GNOME 2 on an updated base system were forced to switch to GNOME 3 or to another DE.
GNOME 3 is not API nor ABI compatible with anything but GNOME 3, so they could've easily changed the name of the libraries or used a sane versioning system, like in the 1.4->2 transition, but no, they had to impose the new UI.
And don't tell me that every Fedora (or whatever) user was "free" to maintain what was effectively a different distro with dozens of heavily patched packages if he wanted to use GNOME 2, because that's hypocritical and we all know it.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 22:05 UTC (Thu) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]
Do you have any source to back up the claim that the Gnome developers deliberately made it difficult to do a parallel install of Gnome 2 and 3?
If you (or anyone else) would like to contribute patches to enable this I believe they would be accepted. Previously on LWN Gnome developers have stated that stated that people can work on Gnome 2 in the Gnome development system (git, bugzilla etc.). However, projects like MATE have decided to use github, why I do not really know.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:08 UTC (Thu) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link]
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-Oc...
I'm pretty sure there's something older than that, but I can't find it now.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 8:32 UTC (Fri) by jku (subscriber, #42379) [Link]
So when GNOME developers say they don't see a point in making GNOME 2 and 3 parallel installable and that _they_ will not work on it, your interpretation of that is that they "made certain that parallel installation of GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 was impossible".
If you are interested in a useful discussion, you may want to rethink about how you present things in the future. Twisting words like that only manages to create conflict. If that is not your intent, I would suggest a more neutral presentation of what other people are saying or doing.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 9:13 UTC (Fri) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link]
Choosing to use conflicting names for all the binaries and the same namespaces for the settings means that the only way to have GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 on the same machine is installing one of the two on a non-standard path and doing a lot of clever things with the environment to ensure that what needs GNOME 2 can find it and what needs GNOME 3 can find it, or patching all the GNOME 2 packages to append "2" everywhere (or switch to a different name like MATE did) and altering all the software who depends on GNOME 2 to cope with the unexpected "2" or the new name.
Now it is true that they didn't resort to physical violence or legal threats, but for me what they did is enough to say that they made parallel installation impossible for all practical purposes.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 16:41 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
MATE seems to be doing it.
Also I have never had any issues with running GTK2/Gnome2 software on Gnome 3.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 16:52 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Mate looks like a one-man stand.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 13:43 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
You're reading too much into it. It would be difficult to so for various technical reasons (I forgot which.. the various developers know), so no development time was spent on it. Instead, time was spent porting gnome-panel and ensuring metacity could still work under GNOME 3.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:54 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Removing fallback mode is not going to help.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:54 UTC (Thu) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] The real question is "why so many GNOME/KDE users are not loyal to GNOME/KDE and are prone to jump ship at any provocation". Where they jump is less interesting; though the fact that there is XFCE is obviously good for Linux desktop market share, because else I for one would (this time) just give the hell up and buy a Mac. And the reason why GNOME users are not loyal to GNOME (dunno about KDE users) is because there is only one opportunity to make a good first impression, and GNOME made a point of repeatedly blowing it. So it has a certain reputation. And GNOME 3 and its Shell may be great and all, but the benefits (whatever they are) just aren't apparent at first sight, as opposed to the very apparent loss of screen real estate and panel configurability. And I wasn't inclined to look harder this time, maybe later. Good thing there is XFCE!
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 20:34 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Horsecrap.
People used Gnome 2 and got used to using it for the specific reason that it didn't change much. Over and over again Gnome released update after update and improvement after improvement, but kept the API consistent and did not make any dramatic changes to the UI.
In fact I am willing to bet that the same people crapping all over Gnome now are the same people that crapped all over Gnome for NOT making significant changes in between versions and not keeping up with other desktops.
So it's entirely unsurprising that people that choose to use Gnome 2 for it's stability are not happy with a huge change.
But Gnome devs are still Gnome devs and their attitudes have not changed much since the early Gnome 2 days. So I expect that after the dust settles and Gnome 3 increases in capabilities and saneness that they will be back.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 21:13 UTC (Thu) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] Yeah, well. So GNOME 2 has instilled in its users a false sense of security as of late, but in the end the GNOME team haven't let us down!
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 14, 2011 13:39 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>In fact I am willing to bet that the same people crapping all over Gnome now are the same people that crapped all over Gnome for NOT making significant changes in between versions and not keeping up with other desktops.
That fails even the most basic sanity test:
1. We are currently seeing enormous numbers of people complaining now
[0] Or any people to speak of. Care to cite some examples of people complaining about Gnome *not* making changes? Can you manage, say, three examples?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 22:28 UTC (Thu) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
Just another peanut-gallery observation: When you lose Linus Torvalds, you've lost something. Not your entire franchise, not the be-all and end-all of Linux and its user base, but something. And that counts.
Clemmitt
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 13:47 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Linus switched from GNOME 2 to KDE. Then apparently switched from KDE to GNOME 2 again. Now the switched to XFCE.
He moved away from GNOME 2 for the reason. We didn't do anything about it, he came back.
I don't think it counts.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 14:50 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
Wow, you're like a dog worrying with a bone; you can't let even the tiniest comment go. So, good luck with that "I don't think it counts" mentality. Last time I checked, Linus does count in the world in which you play.
Clemmitt
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 14:59 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Why get personal? You didn't go into anything I said except saying "Linus does count". Suggest to re-read my post.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 15:08 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
Wow, you're like a dog worrying with a bone; you can't let even the tiniest comment go.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 18:43 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:44 UTC (Thu) by mchazaux (guest, #64024) [Link]
Some thoughts on this DE craziness
My next computer may be a portable device - the size of a phone or a tablet, with a tablet or phone UI on its touchscreen. When plugged on a 22" 1920x1080 monitor, and a keyboard and mouse, it will display a classic desktop UI ont this new screen - _designed for efficient use_ with a keyboard, mouse and big screen. I really can't see the point in these weird UIs, Unity and Gnome3. Touchscreens and keyboard/mouse are so different. Why try to unite? Just try to type shell commands on an Android SSH client via a touchscreen interface.
Corners and borders of screen are easy to hit with a mouse. It is impossible with a touchscreen to hit the top left pixel. A touchscreen interface needs big targets - easily hittable, not hidden corner stuff. So strategic things, such as "Close the window", "Minimize" or the main menu should not be designed the same for both types of UIs.
Scrolling? It is always hard to scroll on a touchscreen, you never know if the gesture will be interpreted as a click or a scroll. So how are we supposed to do that? Swiping between the icons? A scroll bar is usable with a touchscreen, not with a mouse. The scroll bar serves as an indicator of position when using a mouse, which has a wheel.
Netbooks should behave this way. Cool to save vertical space and such for this niche hardware. But don't make it the default for 22" screens! Different hardware means different paradigms/expectations and different UIs.
I can use any desktop environment, provided:
This last point is the worst. I started with KDE3, when they got mad I went to XFCE, Fluxbox, then Gnome 2, and now I use LXDE. My 8GB-Corei7 with KDE4 feels slower than KDE3 on my old 512MB-P4 ????? Now software growth has outpaced transistor breeding on silicon.
I am a bit disappointed. "Let's see in two years" am I thinking. But that was exactly what I thought when KDE4 got released, and still, KDE3.10 on P4 is still snappier than 4.6 on a i7.
These heavyweight modern desktops look great. Nice colors, nice ideas. Why can't I use them? Are they more than concept-art?
LXDE is nice.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 4:58 UTC (Fri) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]
I found Gnome 3 annoying at first but it is just another environment and not particularly better or worse than any other. It is just a matter of using it long enough to become accustomed which is true of any desktop including Xfce. Xfce is similar enough to the styles of the past that it takes little effort for mature users to adapt to it. But is it really easier to use for first time users than Gnome 3 or anything else? What about all these people whose first computer is a tablet or smart phone? These environments are closer to Gnome 3 than Xfce. Which environment will these users find more comfortable.
Consider a recent report which addressed the computer market by combining desktop/laptop computers with mobile devices like tablets and smart phones. Conventional desktop devices have shrunk from 95% of the market to 70% of the market and this trend is continuing. An important metric to follow is what percentage of internet traffic is done on mobile platforms as opposed to desktop platforms. This tells you something about where people are spending their time.
Gnome 3 is an attempt to deal which this paradigm shift that we are in the middle of. The traditional mouse-pointer centered desktop is ill-suited to the touch environments where it greatest growth in computer platforms is today. Gnome 3 can be operated with a mouse but it is designed to be operated by touch once that technology is perfected in the Gnome APIs. I see it as encouraging the maturation of the touch technology for Linux by providing an environment ready to exploit it. I am certain it is not the best solution because it is one of the first. The next ones to come along always learn from the front runners. Gnome 3 will become better and easier to use but it will never be optimal for the traditional desktop since it is intended to be a merger of mobile environment motifs and desktop motifs so its goal will be to find the comfort zone where these two different environments meet.
I found a particular advantage to using Gnome 3 as an engineer which is probably useful at some level for system administrators. I am developing an embedded system that combines multiple computers that I monitor at the same time with VNC. With a simple movement of the mouse, I can shrink the screen to the "window selection" mode which lets me watch all of my computers at the same time. I can select a particular window and zoom in to a particular machine in a moment. I can see a case where an IT administrator may need to monitor interconnected system during setup configuration when it would be useful to watch the interactions of systems in a similar manner. It is more useful than shrinking terminal windows until they fit your desktop.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 5:14 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you are missing the point.
nobody is disagreeing with the idea that mobile devices are going to be more important.
what we are disagreeing with is that idea that a mobile interface will work on a desktop screen/mouse environment.
you are looking and saying 'mobile use is 30% of the market, we have to support that', but in the process you are breaking support for the other 70% of the market and telling those people that they aren't important, or are obsolete.
this is an area that it looks like KDE is doing much better in, they are continuing to support the desktop large screen + mouse environment, but at the same time providing a small touchscreen environment that uses the same infrastructure. that is the same approach that GNWOME should have taken
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 14:55 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I don't see GNOME shell as a mobile interface.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 20:55 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
What kind of interface it is then?
Many people are still trying to figure it out..
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 21:36 UTC (Fri) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]
Looks and feel very good on my 27", 2560 × 1440 screen and my 720p netbook. As a user, I would say it is a general desktop gui.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 23:43 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the GNOME developers say that the reason they changed things was for mobile devices, so you may not see it as a mobile interface, but the developers are saying that they do.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 10:28 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Think you misinterpret those statements, GNOME 3 is not for mobile devices. Some things changed to make it easier using bad input devices, like the trackpad on a laptop. Some things are to support tablets (the hiding of mouse cursor in 3.2). Some developers (hadess) really like tablets and ensure that is supported and blog about it. However, just because there is some support for "mobile devices" does not mean GNOME 3 is for mobile devices. IMO 3.2 would be terrible on a phone and wonder if the on screen keyboard from 3.2 is good enough to rely on it on a tablet.
Not sure why you refer to "GNOME developers", but think I am not part of that. I've said elsewhere already that I'm part of the GNOME release team... though don't think that matters much in a discussion and would result in wrong assumptions. Meaning: being part of the release team is not about seeing everything with a glare of sunshine (marketing team).
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 21:46 UTC (Fri) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]
I never said that 70% of the market was obsolete or that mobile devices will become more important. I am saying that the landscape is changing. That the future lies in a fusion of the mobile and desktop environments we see today. Think about this. It is easier to control a touch based environment with a mouse and keyboard than it is to control a traditional desktop environment with touch controls. This suggests that the trend will be for the desktop environments to become more like the touch environments than for the touch environments to become more like the desktop environments. Why should it not?
People are talking like these environments will never meet but if you do the same thing, such as email, on your mobile that you do on your desktop then why would you want to do it in different ways. People want consistency. They want to do things like email the same way no matter what device they are using. Just exactly what do you think that both Apple with ios/osx and Microsoft with Windows 8/Windows Mobile 7 are doing now? There is concern all over the place that old applications are going to be incompatible with the next generations of these mainstream operating systems and for good reason. The old applications do not work well on mobile platforms but the same human tasks still need to be performed. Gnome 3 is one of the open source answers to these changes but it is not the only one. There is also Ubuntu Unity. The efforts to try to apply touch mechanisms as just some other alternative to the mouse and keyboard have not worked well. They are all inferior to the systems that are purpose built for touch operation. Now touch screens are appearing on desks so those comfortable with touch on mobile devices will be more comfortable with their desktop systems.
We need to stop looking at mobile and desktop systems as separate systems and look at them as they truly are. They are all computers. They are all used to perform the same essential tasks. They all can be made to perform any task a computer is suitable for. They are more and more being used in a unified environment where the boundary lines between them gets more difficult to distinguish. The difficulties in applying touch style operation on desktop systems has more to do with the comfort zone of the users which it built from their experience with the desktop than it does from the actual technologies. It is very similar to the difficulty long time users experience when they switch from Apple to Windows or vice versa. One it not truly better than the other at the level of human interaction, it is more a matter of style.
Gnome is going to continue to change in the ways that it sees the mainstream environment change. At times it will be a mover of those changes. It is not going to be stuck in the past but will always move forward. What is going to come next? Will touch be replaced by sensors that detect hands waved in the air? I am not sure how it would work but who knows?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 23:32 UTC (Fri) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
> This suggests that the trend will be for the desktop environments to
> become more like the touch environments than for the touch environments to > become more like the desktop environments. Why should it not?
Touch environments are great for consuming information, but bad for entering information into the computer. It doesn't make sense for the interfaces to be the same.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 11, 2011 23:51 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
as Android is learning, what works on a 4" screen is tolerable on a 7" screen and bad on a 10" screen (and the same thing works the other way), scaling it up further to multiple and very large screens breaks things even further.
and you can't even decide based on screen resolution.
if you have a 4" 1080p screen you need very different sizes of things and it takes significantly less effort to move large numbers of pixels around the screen (and it is significantly harder to specify a location precisely) than if you have a 54" 1080p screen.
for that matter, even at the same screen size you may need different interfaces.
a 30" 1080p screen sitting on your desk needs a vastly different environment than the exact same 30" screen at TV viewing distances.
Android is trying to deal with this issue by suggesting the developers use multiple panels in their apps, and on a 10" screen display multiple panels at once while on a 4" screen switch between panels. this works to some extent, but it doesn't scale indefinitely.
trying to force a UI designed for a 4" screen to a 30" screen is not going to work much better than taking the UI designed for a 30" screen and trying to use it on a 4" screen. It will _work_ but it will not work nearly as well as a UI that can take advantage of the larger screen and more precise pointing.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 15:42 UTC (Sat) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]
I understand the technical difficulties. But the world is changing. Both the mobile environments and the desktop environments are changing. What is driving them is user experience and the perception of usability and familiarity. I don't know that the future will be a single unifying environment but I do think that the standard interfaces for the most common applications will. If you want to send an email you are going to be irritated if you have to figure out all over again how to do the one thing you do everyday. Even if you are familiar with the email programs on both machines, if they do not have a common look and feel then it is going to irritate you. Not just you but everyone who does these same common things. This is the kind of force that drives change. Someone will make a small change that makes it more seamless to move from working in one environment to the other more seamless. It will seam so obvious that everyone takes it for granted that that is the way it should always have been. The two worlds will have moved a little closer.
There is no question that data entry on a big desktop is more efficient than a small mobile screen but data entry will have to be done on the mobile device anyway. Whether you are gathering information in the field or making a last minute change to your spreadsheet. It just has to work. In the long run, the applications have to have the same features in both worlds. Then look at it this way, how many of those mobile devices have HDMI for playing back movies on HD screens? Just how sure are you that mobile devices are unsuitable for data entry when large (bigger than desktop) screens are so readily available?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 12, 2011 11:57 UTC (Sat) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] People are talking like these environments will never meet but if you do the same thing, such as email, on your mobile that you do on your desktop then why would you want to do it in different ways. Because my desktop supports UI models that (a) don't work on mobile phones and (b) work better on desktops than a UI model built around the limitations of mobile phones would.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 17:20 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
> I found a particular advantage to using Gnome 3 as an engineer which is
> probably useful at some level for system administrators. I am developing > an embedded system that combines multiple computers that I monitor at the > same time with VNC. With a simple movement of the mouse, I can shrink the > screen to the "window selection" mode which lets me watch all of my > computers at the same time. I can select a particular window and zoom in > to a particular machine in a moment.
Gnome 2 (actually, Compiz) had a very very similar feature. It was merely disabled by default. It was called "desktop wall". I /think/ it even was enabled by default at one point.
You'd strike a key combination, and you'd be transitioned from a single desktop view to seeing the whole desktop grid, in an animated style.
I found it quite nice at the time, although I didn't use it much.
Where I guess it differs, is that in Gnome 3 you see /just/ the apps you started, instead of all the desktops.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 21, 2011 17:42 UTC (Mon) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]
GNOME 3 with Compiz (either with or without the Unity plugin) still has this feature.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 13, 2011 17:00 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
I find it interesting that noone from the GNOME marketing team stepped in here, to clarify common misconceptions, which are, apparently, aplenty.
I'd think that conquering LWN readership's minds ought to be an important goal for any FOSS project.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 14, 2011 16:50 UTC (Mon) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
the marketing team (and other GNOME developers) are always around on LWN to clear out misconceptions. we get the usual amount of flak as well, because we like it when people call us "insane", "stupid", or plain "crazy". comes with the territory of being in open source, I guess.
we don't have time to follow every single discussion ever, though, because a) we have jobs; b) we have a life; c) we have to actually write GNOME.
personally, I leave conquering the LWN readership to others: LWN readers know how to install or remove GNOME. I'm much more interested in getting other users.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 3:12 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] personally, I leave conquering the LWN readership to others: LWN readers know how to install or remove GNOME. I'm much more interested in getting other users. Wow, I think you just said it all right there. The gnome folks are not concerned about the LWN type user, as they are the power user. They are more concerned about getting new users. The reason I started using Linux, and also how I was able to get my friends to use Linux, was because I was able to show them how different it was from Windows and Apple. You could make your computer just that... your computer. With the "one way" mentality, that also seems to be trying to play catchup with Apple, how do we expect to get new users? The comment I could see is, "that's nice, but I can do the same on my mac". The only way I got users from Mac and Windows to Linux was showing them they had choice. But you are correct. I can still show them their choice. It will just be with Xfce and not gnome.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 11:16 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
It shouldn't be a surprise though. At least some GNOME-shell devs have said this kind of thing before though I think, "we want to design something our family can use" type of stuff.
The big questions really are whether GNOME developers are tinkering with prototyping stuff for their own enjoyment, or whether they want to have a user-base. If the latter (and it does seem from their marketing material they want users), then the question is whether or not they can make any headway into expanding into the large potential non-geeky userbase out there, while alienating a good chunk of their existing userbase. And if they can make headway, the question is whether there'd even be a net increase?
Another question is whether the passionate free OS users should advocate GNOME or Android desktops to their non-technical family & friends? Ok, it's hard to find completely free Android systems, but OTOH Android breaks a lot less, where GNOME seems to delight in rewriting a different core subsystem with every new release, and so inevitably breaking stuff. (Just when suspend & resume starts to work, GNOME 3.0 comes along and often seemed to require a "kill -9 `pidof gnome-shell`" from a console after resume :().
To be clear, I've used GNOME for a long time, as have some of my family. I really appreciate what's been given to me. Thanks.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 11:45 UTC (Tue) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] the gnome folks are not concerned about the LWN type user, as they are the power user. I'm not a gnome folk. I'm a GNOME developer and maintainer, and though in some venues I can speak for the Foundation, I usually don't speak for the entire community. whenever I will, I'll be very careful to point that out. so don't extrapolate what GNOME developers think from what I say. whoever self-identifies as "a power user" is usually an ass**** in my book. there are only users, with different areas of expertise. most are equally important, and the different areas of expertise can be served in different ways. furthermore, I don't believe that LWN readers are power users — you might think you are just because you use twenty different terminals, but guess what? I do too, and I've been using GNOME in all of its incarnations. so get off my lawn. finally, I think the LWN users can (and will) change their environment to suit their workflow, and will be able to fix issues they find no matter what GNOME provides them. ergo, you're not an interesting use case for me to work on. They are more concerned about getting new users. yes. I'm more concerned about getting more users. this means adding users. which means adding users that haven't been exposed to GNOME yet. these users are interesting to me, because it means solving problems for them — which is what I do for a living and for a passion. and guess what: usually, when something gets better for new users, it also gets better for everyone, unlike the other way around.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 11:47 UTC (Tue) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Ah, at last, someone using many different terminals in Gnome 3.
How do you manage all these terminal windows?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 15:45 UTC (Tue) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] How do you manage all these terminal windows? the same way I've managed them in the past ~10 years: with alt+tab. if I want to move around between them, alt+key_above_tab is also available, but I generally use multiple windows with N tabs into each, so switching using the keyboard is pretty much an exercise in alt+[tab number] more than alt+tab.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 14:23 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] whoever self-identifies as "a power user" is usually an ass**** in my book I'm sorry but considering users of your tool ass**** is not something I consider to be good user development. I work on lots of products that have users. Even when a user comes to me that is not in my focus group and asks for a feature that I'm not going to implement, I never consider them an ass****. Maybe a luser, but not a ass****. I actually do not hate Gnome3 more than I hate KDE or any other desktop environment that I don't use. What I hate is that Gnome3 took away the desktop environment that I do use. This is the keep problem that the Gnome3 developers don't seem to understand. The problem is that the Gnome developers decided to make this transition in a serial step instead of a parallel one. Instead of incrementing into gnome3, call it a new product entirely, because that is exactly what gnome3 is. Call it something like "Gnome-elite". Here's what could have been done that would have kept everyone happy. When I look at Gnome3, it does not have any of the look and feel of Gnome2. Basically, it is a completely different product. If the Gnome developers came out and instead said, "we are placing gnome2 into maintenance mode, and will only do minor bug fixes here and there, but are not going to add any more features. We are focusing on a new desktop environment called Gnome-elite, and there is no guarantee that gnome2 will be compatible with Gonme-elite." and then allow Gnome-elite to be installed along side of gnome2 just like I can have Xfce, KDE and Gnome all installed, things would have worked out much better. You wouldn't have the hate statements that you are receiving today. Again, most of us don't hate you because you came out with Gnome3. We hate you because you took away gnome2 from us. You made it practically impossible to install gnome2 and gnome3 on the same box. I didn't hate gnome3 until I upgraded my Debian box, and it removed gnome2. You just took away 10 years of my tweaking to get something I feel is my best workflow. And all you can tell me is that I'm an ass**** in your book. On my other boxes I've tried to set the "hold" state on the gnome2 packages, but upgrading seems to override it too. There seems to be no possible way I can have gnome2 on my box. Yes, I currently switched to Xfce, but as Linus stated, it is a step backwards from gnome2. I'm not happy about this switch, and I blame the Gnome developers for making me do it. Really, would it have been such a problem to have come out with a new product and stop working on gnome2, but still let gnome2 exist? If you had done this, I guarantee everyone here that is calling you names, wouldn't be.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 14:25 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] This is the keep problem that the Gnome3 developers s/keep/key/. Wow, I proof read this twice, and didn't catch that until after I posted. I need another cup of coffee.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 15:59 UTC (Tue) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] I'm sorry but considering users of your tool ass**** is not something I consider to be good user development again with the reading comprehension skills. I said that I consider whoever self-identifies as a power user — i.e. says it in all seriousness about him or herself — an ass****. I have almost two decades of experience in people doing exactly that and revealing themselves as ass*****. hell, I used to do that when I was an angsty teenager, and I was that ass****. I moved on, though; not something that happens to everyone, apparently. Maybe a luser, but not a ass**** aaand the instant you say something like this, it makes it so hard for me to take you seriously. What I hate is that Gnome3 took away the desktop environment that I do use yes, we came around to your house and office at night and removed everything from your machines. not only that, we removed the packages from every distribution, the tarballs from every server, and the source code from the various repositories. we are mean ones, us Grinch^H^H^H^H^HNOME developers. "we are placing gnome2 into maintenance mode, and will only do minor bug fixes here and there, but are not going to add any more features. We are focusing on a new desktop environment called Gnome-elite, and there is no guarantee that gnome2 will be compatible with Gonme-elite." s/-elite/3/g. there, I Fixed That For You. it's exactly what we said. for two years. if you weren't listening, sorry: short of coming around the house of every Linux user personally and handing you a note, I'm not sure of what should have been done. Yes, I currently switched to Xfce good for you. seriously: you're a user that can move across distro boundaries, or across environment boundaries, without much of a problem. you're a niche user, inside a niche market. personally, I don't find you so interesting that I have to design and write the software in my own spare time to please you (or the ones like you). now, since this is my own time, are you really feeling so entitled that you also need to vent to me about the fact that I don't consider you a target user?
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 16:41 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
I still consider users that consider themselves "power users" users, and not ass****. My experience with this must be different than yours. For me, I've learned the most from my power users, and was able to make my tools much better by accommodating them.
Yes, my "lusers" comment was actually stated tongue in cheek. It was not suppose to be taken seriously. Please don't assume the rest of my reply had the same attitude as this comment.
No, you didn't come physically into my house and take away gnome2 from me. But you came very close. The point is that you made it hard for the distros to support both gnome2 and gnome3. If I don't want to stay in a old version of a distro, I'm forced to either go with gnome3 or use another DE. I really liked gnome2 (well at least the gnome2 panel), and it is now basically impossible for me to have an up-to-date system and gnome2.
s/-elite/3/ is not the same, because I can not have both gnome2 *and* gnome3 installed at the same time. This is the biggest flaw that the gnome developers don't seem to give a shit about. You no longer support gnome, you support some new entirely different DE and renamed it to gnome. gnome is DEAD. And is forever dead in my eyes. Maybe Mate will bring it back to life. If I had more time I would be spending it helping them (him) out. Unfortunately I'm in charge of too many projects to work on this.
I'm not totally happy with Xfce. It just seems to be the closest to gnome that I can come across. But as of now, gnome no longer exists.
Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) Posted Nov 15, 2011 18:14 UTC (Tue) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
Tell you what.
I'm hesitating to say it, but I heavily suspect that they wanted it this way -- Gnome 2 firmly in its grave.
All in all, decisions like this (whether or not to spend effort on parallel installability) are a sum of many factors, but in this case, one factor, I suspect, dominated them all.
"Diluting momentum" on a controversial change, in the high-stakes, high-competitition game of DEs.
Accessibility considerations Posted Nov 15, 2011 20:41 UTC (Tue) by jlokier (guest, #52227) [Link]
I have a friend who, due to a stroke, cannot read fast or skim over lots of text. It turns into visual noise. The same is true to a lesser extent with lists of symbols. So if the only way to select something is to search through every time (because the order keeps changing), that's a bigger overhead for her than for most people.
Keyboard search is also not that helpful: The stroke means they have to type with one hand, and can only manage a little typing, and it's difficult both with movement and with finding the keys. If they have to watch the screen at the same time as typing just to know when the search has narrowed to the right thing, that's double overhead with an extra helping for multitasking.
For that reason I've told them to avoid upgrading their laptop for now, until we see how Gnome 3 or Unity pan out for accessibility, and the comments on articles like this one don't have so many reasons to avoid for the moment - or until we've tested and are sure KDE/XFCE/LXDE are suitable for their physical needs.
For perspective, they cannot use a touch tablet or touch-screen smartphone either - those things require several types of fine motor skills and coordination that most of us take for granted Whereas the Nokia E63, with it's BlackBerry-style keyboard and tactile key caps, is surprisingly well suited to my friend.
I'm getting the impression, from various articles and comments, that Gnome 3 is not really designed for people who have difficulties like those described above, and does not (yet) have settings to make it more suited, which surprised me because older Gnomes seem to have put some effort into accessibility for different user needs.
Accessibility considerations Posted Nov 15, 2011 20:49 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Gnome shell still includes the hierarchical application list that Gnome 2 did. The ordering of applications within any grouping is alphabetical, so I wouldn't have thought it made things more difficult than previously.
The problem with accessibility is that there's not any kind of "One size fits all" solution at all. It's a situation where two users may *require* diametrically opposed solutions. Accessibility is a fairly core part of the shell environment, and certain common accessibility features are now far easier to access and use than they were in previous releases. Right now there may well be some cases where earlier releases could be configured in ways that suit a given user's requirements while shell can't, and I'd hope that when people run into those cases we do end up with serious work going into fixing them.
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