The GNOME project at 15 [LWN.net]

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 17, 2012 1:55 UTC (Fri) by hp (subscriber, #5220)
In reply to: The GNOME project at 15 by jmorris42
Parent article: The GNOME project at 15

What I'm thinking of when I say "something like Android" is that if you wanted to get millions of new people to become users (something the original article here talks about), you'd have to do something that was more green field. Few people are really interested in changing their desktop OS - what's the benefit? Nothing sufficient to offset the hassle. But lots of people were interested in trying smartphones and kindles and tablets.

Look at how much more effective iOS was as a strategy for Apple than OS X.

I agree with you that if you're setting up a computer lab for occasional walk-in use it's nice to just be more or less like Windows. Or just install Windows. GNOME 3 doesn't seem like the ideal design for that. But I don't know how the current developers think about this use-case.

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The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 18, 2012 15:43 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

But aren't those library users exactly the sort of "everyone" that Gnome 3 is targeting? That's what I thought based on previous lwn comments (could certainly be mistaken).

If Gnome 3 isn't for the old-timers like me, and it isn't for current osx/windows users, and it isn't for school computer labs or corporate desktops, and it isn't for library walk-ins, then who is it for? Honest question. I'd love to know who the gnome project has in mind when evaluating upcoming changes.

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 18, 2012 16:03 UTC (Sat) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link]

I wouldn't feel comfortable answering on their behalf, but I think it's the key question for any software project. I'd say this is the place to start when discussing UI decisions.

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Sep 1, 2012 17:04 UTC (Sat) by rich0 (guest, #55509) [Link]

It would seem to me that it is mostly targeted to things like netbooks or other small laptops, or tablets. The netbook platform actually makes sense, and from what I've heard people running those love Unity or Gnome 3.

Tablets just don't make sense, since almost nobody replaces the OS on them with something different. About the closest I've seen is maybe running something else in a chroot, without X11. Getting Gnome on one of those is a real pain anyway with all the proprietary drivers and great variation in hardware. They aren't like your typical PC motherboard where no matter what you can at least get the thing into VGA mode using the same IO ports you'd have used on a 386.