Long-time and happy XFCE user [LWN.net]

Long-time and happy XFCE user

Posted Nov 15, 2011 12:57 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Long-time and happy XFCE user by Los__D
Parent article: Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)

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!"

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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.