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Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)Posted Nov 10, 2011 18:16 UTC (Thu) by slashdot (guest, #22014)Parent article: Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)
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.
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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.
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