Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register) [LWN.net]

Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)

Posted Nov 10, 2011 19:54 UTC (Thu) by cmm (guest, #81305)
Parent article: Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)

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!

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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
2. We didn't see enormous numbers of people complaining before[0]
=> They can't possibly be the same set of people.

[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?