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Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users
Longtime GNOME hacker Federico Mena-Quintero reflects on the kinds of complaints that occur frequently in and around free software communities. In a sharply worded blog post, complete with animated cat GIFs, he looks at some history, and adds a bit of ranting about complainers, bloggers, journalists, and so on. "We think, "good riddance" when someone threatens to stop using Gnome. (And our next thought is probably, poor people in the next project, who are going to suffer this person soon.)
[...]
All of those poisonous people are relatively easy to brush away. The crazies. The slashdot hordes, the peanut gallery. We make names for them — we encapsulate them, give them a name, go up one level of abstraction, take a gulp of Pepto, and move that named entity into a mental /dev/null. But they leave some residue."
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Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 17:21 UTC (Sat) by richo123 (guest, #24309) [Link]
Disregarding legitimate criticism isn't smart. Is he saying that Linus Torvalds, an early critic of gnome 3, will be a curse to the kernel community who " are going to suffer this person soon."?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:12 UTC (Sat) by nmav (subscriber, #34036) [Link]
Well it depends. Criticism of the form "make everything look as I'm used to" is not very interesting. The people behind Gnome 3 decided to innovate, adopt a new interface and go on. That's a difficult decision for an established desktop but nevertheless they did. Irrespective of whether I like the new desktop or not, it is nice for free software to innovate and include new designs.
Btw. I think most of the gnome 3 criticism comes from the fact that the new interface requires some introduction (10min one) on how to use. Maybe they should ask the age of the should have included a video played on the first installation. I'm really old-school person but liked the interface only by the time I watched a video in youtube on how to use it.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:25 UTC (Sat) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
There have been plenty of decent criticism of GNOME 3.
Along the long the lines of, "Things that I used to be able to do in a click now take several", "I can't change my font size", etc.
But all that gets swept away as "Haters gonna hate".
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:29 UTC (Sat) by rleigh (subscriber, #14622) [Link]
We used to try to make user interfaces "discoverable" and the essentials of their use self-evidently obvious. Now, it appears to all be about "user experience", and actually making the software usable for all, for actually doing things, appears to have taken a back seat to superficial appearance above all else. GNOME is not alone in this respect, but it's the worst offender. Unity and Windows 8 are also bad in this respect. Outright hiding functionality unless you know the secret on-screen location or magic keypress to activate it is not discoverable or helpful, even if it looks "pretty" or "reduces clutter". (Unity hiding application menus is another massive failure.) If you need a 10 minute introduction to explain how to use it at the most basic level, like how to start an application (or even find out what/where they are) and how to switch off your computer, then it's quite clearly fundamentally broken.
And it's not like the problems are just skin deep. There's a lot more to a desktop environment than the surface appearance alone. It needs quality, well-maintained libraries underneath that. And the GNOME libraries are a poorly-maintained, buggy pile, which were always changing too fast for comfort, but at least didn't used to have core functionality ripped out on a whim. Any developer who values their time and the quality of their code would avoid them.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:48 UTC (Sat) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
"Well it depends. Criticism of the form "make everything look as I'm used to" is not very interesting."
It may be not very interesting, but that's a valid criticism nonetheless: 'This worked for me and you changed it in such a way that it doesn't work as well anymore, why is that?' So far no answer to this question.
"The people behind Gnome 3 decided to innovate, adopt a new interface and go on. That's a difficult decision for an established desktop but nevertheless they did. Irrespective of whether I like the new desktop or not, it is nice for free software to innovate and include new designs."
The problem is, the end result of their attempt to innovate has proved to be less effective than what already existed for quite a number of users. Worse, so far we still don't know how what we had was broken and why it needed to be fixed. Seems that we should learn to love the "brand", yay! :)
"Btw. I think most of the gnome 3 criticism comes from the fact that the new interface requires some introduction (10min one) on how to use. Maybe they should ask the age of the should have included a video played on the first installation. I'm really old-school person but liked the interface only by the time I watched a video in youtube on how to use it."
That's actually a good point, but you shouldn't assume that most if not all of the criticism comes from people who tried GNOME 3 for less than 10 minutes: I was an enthusiast, I followed discussions about Gnome 3, and I tried to like it. The fact that they failed to impress people who were loyal users and supporters should speak volumes to anybody.
Rehdon
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 22:58 UTC (Sat) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
Traditionally innovation goes like this: Make something new, convince people of its merits, gain converts.
GNOME did this: Make something new, confiscate the old, ignore people who ask for their things back.
I'd probably hate Linux, too, if in 1997 someone had wiped my hard disk and installed it without consulting me and then hid the install discs for my previous OS. You can't *make* people want to change just by changing things.
Want to stay relevant for a long time? Don't make a DE, make a platform. Build the base tools other developers use to make awesome things for users... and then *maintain API and ABI compatibility for as long as possible*. Note that I didn't say "Until you want to do something new and the old cruft gets in the way." Add whatever you like, but maintain it forever. UX fads will come and go; which fad to follow should be the user's choice.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 0:04 UTC (Sun) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
Um, firstly that's a pretty pointless analogy since GNOME 3 certainly doesn't bring massive enforced loss of irreplaceable data. And secondly, if you started in 1997, then you'll remember the GNOME 1.4 → 2.0 transition. That was nothing if not jarring, and yes, at the time we heard all the same complaints: it's not really GNOME anymore, they hate power users, they're trying to make a UI for idiots who will never use Linux, why aren't they developing both in parallel, these fascist 'designers' have really gone too far this time (interesting how no-one ever scare-quotes 'coders', by the by), etc, etc.
And yet, here we are ten years later, hearing the exact same arguments for keeping that unusable, idiot-focussed, 'designed' desktop.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 0:12 UTC (Sun) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
You and I remember it differently. I remember that most of the stuff that was removed was put back later, because it wasn't a good idea to remove it in the first place. Cycling 'round again, here we go.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:25 UTC (Sun) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
It is not pointless, as distributions are forced to use GNOME 3
instead of GNOME 2 as GNOME 2 is no longer supported. Yes, you can maintain it yourself - as a folk ... done as MATE, but was GNOME 2 really that good and stable? In 1997 there was no large share for GNOME - ridiculous to make analogies to the path to GNOME 2. Which distros were common that day - what was the standard? When industry (Sun, HP, IBM, ...) got behind GNOME (as CDE successor; long ago - and even forgotten now - well, I liked CDE more anyway, NOT kidding) even experts I know ask - GNOME? Maybe I should have a look at it ... With Linux kernel 2.0 Linux distros were full capable as Desktop systems for scientists - predominantly using fvwm and later fvwm2. They were accustomed to CDE/MOTIF - and that was a nice fit back then. Concerning sorpigal's statement: well said. (+1 :)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 15:42 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Criticism of the form "make everything look as I'm used to" is not very interesting. Yes, it is. If you hear a lot of that criticism, it means that you've been introducing changes to your software, but not improvements. And it should give you pause.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 8:37 UTC (Tue) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]
Most of the gnome3 criticism comes of from the fact that it's an unusable mess. It's the most hated environment compared to KDE and Unity and this is the fact. 10min is the time that average user comes to the conclusion: wtf is this?! Gnome people have no clue about usability or their just messing everything up intentionally. There's no even way to configure fonts, so it's not a sane DE.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 11:28 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
> 10min is the time that average user comes to the conclusion: wtf is this?!
That's patently false. Gnome Shell has problems, but not of that kind. In my opinion, they basically boil down to:
1. It requieres OpenGL 1.4 or later. That rules out half of my machines and all of my virtual machines.
Of course, there are also good ideas in there. Having everything about the desktop in a single view (the overview or "meta-desktop" as I like to call it) is a good idea. It means I just have to memorize a single keystroke to do many things. Very convenient. Feels like command mode in vi, but with the input line on top. I find it ironic that not much long ago, modal interfaces were greatly frowned upon.
I guess I will have to wait until 3.12 or 3.14 to feel it usable again.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 17:55 UTC (Wed) by jedidiah (guest, #20319) [Link]
How about "don't trash what was there before". Something like MATE shouldn't be necessary because anyone interested in the legacy interface could just continue to use it. Would it really have been that hard to create GNOME 3 in a way that didn't actively sabotage what was already there?
This kind of "Microsoft" approach is what really riles people.
Upgrading to the latest version of shiny distro should not trash an already functional setup.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 23, 2012 7:50 UTC (Fri) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]
> Upgrading to the latest version of shiny distro should not trash an already functional setup.
So if you include a DE in a distro, you then have to support it forever?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 23, 2012 12:07 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
If you're a desktop oriented distro, and it's the default one, then my answer is: yes, you have to.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 26, 2012 15:25 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
Forever is a very strong word. I would put it this way: "if you include a DE in a distro, a desktop oriented distro, and it's the default one, an upgrade the user does each six months should not trash said environment's functionality without recourse."
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:34 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Disregarding legitimate criticism isn't smart. Is he saying that Linus Torvalds, an early critic of gnome 3, will be a curse to the kernel community who " are going to suffer this person soon."?
If you read to the end of the blog article you will find that Mena-Quintero agrees with you 100%.
He is not advocating disregarding criticism.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 17:32 UTC (Sat) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
Yeah, users/journalists suck and GNOME developers are super awesome and never do anything wrong, we get it.
How dare people not absolutely love the code that handed down from high.
That is not a surprise to hear from a GNOME developer.
The thing that kills me is the deliberate breaking of GNOME 2 by the GNOME 3 release. They are not parallel installable - distros pickup the latest, so users who don't want to be forced to use the .0 software (or different workflow of GNOME 3) are SOL. Deliberately.
The MATE project had to rename every binary. I haven't even relearned half the new names yet.
I really like GNOME 2. Why not let me keep using your code? Why force me to a buggy 3.0 with a completely different workflow that you knew technical users would hate?
The GNOME project could have avoided so much vitriol if they had allowed the distros to keep shipping 2.xx while their 3.xx series matured.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 17:51 UTC (Sat) by zander76 (guest, #6889) [Link]
This gnome stuff has gone way to far. They are developing software for free and if you like it great and if you don't then fuck off and use something else. That's the joy of open source software. Why do people think that it's there *right* to have gnome 3 remain gnome 2. If that is what you want then join the mate, or whatever it's called, community and put your code where your mouth is. You don't deserve anything from them, nobody does!
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 17:59 UTC (Sat) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] If you don't like to read people complaining then "fuck off" and keep reading only the
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 23:41 UTC (Sat) by zander76 (guest, #6889) [Link]
Are you joking?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 18:09 UTC (Sat) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
Well I think your tone and language is below that of LWN.
Sure I was being dramatic for effect, just like the parent article, and maybe over did it and invited such a response.
But my point was, if I like GNOME 2 and am able to keep using it without it being forked and everything being renamed, then surely that is good for the GNOME brand and the GNOME project.
My impression is the GNOME project has lost a lot of developers since 3.0
I'm not asking for anyone to maintain anything or do any work other than not having the latest immediately obsolete the old working code. Is that unreasonable?
Any additional work caused by this would surely be worth the effect of keeping the users who GNOME 3 isn't ready for yet (if it ever gets to that point).
The MATE project should not have been necessary. It should be under the GNOME project. But the GNOME devs decided they wanted to poison that well.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:44 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Gnome devs made a big mistake by not making Gnome 3 and Gnome 2 installable in parallel. If they took that approach then the change it would of gone over a lot smoother for users. A big thing that gets repeated is the feeling of loss of control over the desktop and allowing people to switch back and forth easily would of avoided that perception.
Major problems with that approach is that, however, Gnome devs were not willing to spend their time supporting two different desktops. Even if they were willing to support it trying to maintain two systems would have a deteriorous effect on both. Advanced users would not of taken kindly to bug reports being closed with the equivalent of "Switch to Gnome 3, get somebody else to fix it, or fork it yourself".
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 18:11 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Don't continue with Gnome 2 is a mistake only if they have plenty of developer bandwidth dedicated to continue Gnome 2 with Gnome 3. As things stand, they have barely enough to move one environment forward. And no, "just keep Gnome 2 forever" would have meant losing the little they have, so that was never an option. Just look at the communities trying to keep Gnome 2 going...
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 18:07 UTC (Wed) by jedidiah (guest, #20319) [Link]
All they had to do was not break it.
They could have made it clear that it was an orphan never to be touched again. I have used applications like that for YEARS after the developer abandoned it. That's the nice thing about software. It doesn't wear out. I can still use some crufty old Athena app 20 years later.
The fact that MATE is a bother is not a terribly convincing argument that the GNOME devs did the right thing.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 23:36 UTC (Sat) by zander76 (guest, #6889) [Link]
You are absolutely right. That was way below the standards of LWN. I apologies for the tone and language. I would like to see this whole conversation leave LWN for that very reason.
optional discussion Posted Nov 11, 2012 19:49 UTC (Sun) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
We do get that you would like to see the discussion go away. Violence to the even tone of LWN discussion was obviously not the reason. Avoiding the discussion is much easier than avoiding Gnome 3 usability regressions, for reasons discussed.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 0:47 UTC (Sun) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]
Well, it is up to the distribution to manage to have gnome 2 and 3 to be installable at the same time. Experience with kde3 showed this was a nightmare.
For the rest, tarballs are still there, git is still there. Since you ask to no one to do any work, that's exactly what they did.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 8:42 UTC (Tue) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]
Users have rights to complain and criticize. It doesn't matter if something is for free. The only thing that matters is if something sucks or not. Gnome sucks the most. And... gnome devs don't deserve anything from us who hate this mess. Maybe except criticism, because they're throwing a bad light on Linux with this joke DE. I hope this mess will die soon and everything shows it's going to end this way.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 18:03 UTC (Wed) by jedidiah (guest, #20319) [Link]
That's all fine so long as you ignore the part about sabotaging the old version.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 23, 2012 7:57 UTC (Fri) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]
What I still don't get is why you think it's unacceptable that MATE had to do such much work to be installable next to GNOME 3, yet feel free to demand that the Gnome devs should have made exactly that effort when it's clear that they had no interest in keeping Gnome 2 alive (not because they are evil and out to hurt you, but because it's important for a software project to have a clear, shared idea where you are going, or else everyone will split up along the way).
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 17:52 UTC (Sat) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] The GNOME project could have avoided so much vitriol if they had allowed the distros to keep shipping 2.xx while their 3.xx series matured.But then maybe people would have chosen to keep using Gnome 2 and wouldn't have been exposed to the awesomeness of Gnome 3 and to "the brand"! Will someone please think of the brand?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 17:58 UTC (Sat) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
Man, was just going to write that! +1 and going to share, let's think of the brand! XD
Adopt a GNOME developer today, but keep her/him/it away from poisonous criticism, or he/she/it will wither away ;)
Rehdon
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 18:31 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Personally I always thought that being branded was meant to be a *punishment*. I can't understand why anyone might think that jamming YES IT'S US YOU ARE USING US NEVER FORGET WE CHOSE THE LOOK SO YOU COULD NOT FORGET in people's faces is going to make them like the resulting system.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:53 UTC (Sat) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
And in any case gSheep is less appealing than iSheep ;)
Rehdon
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 19:14 UTC (Sat) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
Basically what you want is gnome stuck to legacy 2.x and why not the old gnome 1.x. You want gnome to freeze for a long time.
You forgot that Gnome Shell was installable in parallel as a preview until major change of library. You have been informed about disruptive change before but choose to disregard it for the sake of selfiness. Let alone you seem too cheap to download a live media for your optical disk or usb drive.
You can go that "users/journalists suck and GNOME developers are super awesome and never do anything wrong" attitude while you perfectly describe what you do in the same post "I'm right, you are wrong". Some journalists are supposed to be objective but, in Gnome case, displayed the level of fanaticism and extreme bias.
" I really like GNOME 2. Why not let me keep using your code? Why force me to a buggy 3.0 with a completely different workflow that you knew technical users would hate?"
You liked Gnome because it matured in time, did you like it on its first release? Every desktop environment on early release has their own quirks. You knew the development of Gnome 3 for long time back to 2008, were warned about incompatibility yet scream.
My comments might be below LWN standard, so are so called Gnome critics without anything constructive.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:22 UTC (Sat) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
> Basically what you want is gnome stuck to legacy 2.x and why not the old gnome 1.x. You want gnome to freeze for a long time.
Nice strawman.
I said no such thing. I just want a distro that comes with both GNOME 2 and GNOME 3. I can then choose at login time which I want.
GNOME 3 can then be developed in any direction, I don't care.
> You have been informed about disruptive change before but choose to disregard it for the sake of selfiness.
Being informed of a disruptive change doesn't stop it from being disruptive.
The fact is there is no distro that comes with GNOME 2 and GNOME 3.
> Some journalists are supposed to be objective but, in Gnome case, displayed the level of fanaticism and extreme bias.
I didn't actually make any argument about that. But I will now. It's dangerous to label anyone who criticisms GNOME 3 as non-objective and not worth listening to. Irrelevance lies in that direction.
> You liked Gnome because it matured in time, did you like it on its first release? Every desktop environment on early release has their own quirks
People keep making that argument about GNOME 3. But I don't think it's down to bugs. It's a deliberate paradigm change.
I don't think the GNOME developers intend on bringing back the taskbar or having static workspaces, or a configurable top panel.
And that is their choice and I'm ok with that. But why deny me from using GNOME 2 which does have those things?
And even if that were not the case, why should I not be able to use the mature GNOME 2 until GNOME 3 matures?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 22:08 UTC (Sat) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
> The fact is there is no distro that comes with GNOME 2 and GNOME 3.
There were in a past prior to Gnome Shell preview aside of Gnome 2.28 from 2009 to 2010 before the launch of Gnome 3.
> I didn't actually make any argument about that. But I will now. It's dangerous to label anyone who criticisms GNOME 3 as non-objective and not worth listening to. Irrelevance lies in that direction.
Careful. With that quote: "Yeah, users/journalists suck and GNOME developers are super awesome and never do anything wrong, we get it."
> People keep making that argument about GNOME 3. But I don't think it's down to bugs. It's a deliberate paradigm change.
Based on research and attempt to break the old paradigm.
> I don't think the GNOME developers intend on bringing back the taskbar or having static workspaces, or a configurable top panel.
Why should they with the advent of extensions that provide that taskbar (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/368/taskbar-with-d...), static workspace that can be enable via gnome-tweak-tool or recently setting center(https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/341/settingscenter/), top panel that can be moved via panel setting extension(https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/208/panel-settings/)?
> And that is their choice and I'm ok with that. But why deny me from using GNOME 2 which does have those things?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 22:58 UTC (Sat) by rleigh (subscriber, #14622) [Link]
> > People keep making that argument about GNOME 3. But I don't think it's down to bugs. It's a deliberate paradigm change.
> Based on research and attempt to break the old paradigm.
The old GNOME2 HIG was mostly based upon quality work by the Sun Microsystems usability engineers. While it might not have been "exciting", it was mostly good stuff, and played an important role in GNOME2 becoming the refined, usable desktop environment that it was, including all its applications. I'm unconvinced that there were any "paradigms" that needed "breaking" here. All that happened was that GNOME got broken.
I hate to think what those (ex-) Sun engineers' opinion is of how their hard work has been ruined in favour of "branding" and "experience" above actual real usability and functionality.
> You can easily configure your Gnome Shell all you want thank to the extensions
No, you can't. Having a "broken by default" setup, which can be made "slightly more usable" by downloading untrusted code from a random website (rather than being an integrated part of your distribution) is just insane.
This stupidity is all because the "designers" of GNOME are so full of themselves they don't want their "vision" or "branding" changed by mere end users unless they jump through difficult extra hoops. Deliberately sabotaging theming in GTK+ is part of that, and it's absolutely disgraceful.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 3:40 UTC (Sun) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
> The old GNOME2 HIG was mostly based upon quality work by the Sun Microsystems usability engineers. While it might not have been "exciting", it was mostly good stuff, and played an important role in GNOME2 becoming the refined, usable desktop environment that it was, including all its applications. I'm unconvinced that there were any "paradigms" that needed "breaking" here. All that happened was that GNOME got broken.
Can those ex-Sun usability engineers give their views so posters can hear them? What are those broken functionalities? Gnome Shell is designed to be minimal as possible so users can add extra functionality themselves similar to Mozilla Firefox as an example. While several posters wasted their time complaining how their holy functionalities are missing, other decided to work on extensions. I kept insisting on that point.
> No, you can't. Having a "broken by default" setup, which can be made "slightly more usable" by downloading untrusted code from a random website (rather than being an integrated part of your distribution) is just insane.
Hence the creation of extensions.gnome.org where quality of codes can be improved based on feedback unless Extensions from gnome.org based is random website by itself.
Having myself let regular users (who don't visit technical website and such) play with Gnome Shell running laptop, neither of them complaining about usability, majority of them already familiar with cellphone interface and few of them never touched a computer in their lifetime. Reading some posts, it appears the complains are from those who heavily optimized their desktop environments.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 7:48 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Having myself let regular users (who don't visit technical website and such) play with Gnome Shell running laptop, neither of them complaining about usability, majority of them already familiar with cellphone interface and few of them never touched a computer in their lifetime. Reading some posts, it appears the complains are from those who heavily optimized their desktop environments.
Of course these users are not complaining about usability - they have no reference for comparison. All of us technical users do: many other systems, including Gnome 2 (against which all those usability problems are actually regressions). Duh!
How can someone that just touched Gnome know more about it than someone that used that stuff for over a decade, north of eight hours every day and to make a living? On which planet is that? Ridiculous.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 23:54 UTC (Sun) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
> Of course these users are not complaining about usability - they have no reference for comparison. All of us technical users do: many other systems, including Gnome 2 (against which all those usability problems are actually regressions). Duh!
Then can we address the regressions instead of wasting time arguing that x DE don't care and actually talk to these DE designers and software developers?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 0:59 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
There are Gnome designers and developers reading LWN. The issues have been raised, repeatedly. I almost annoy myself these days by constantly trying to point out real usability regressions, many of which one can actually measure.
Maybe you did not read the blog post that this LWN article is about in great detail. It is clear from it that people that point out such technical issues (i.e. the technical people, to which the blog post sarcastically refers to as "regular people") are being systematically ignored.
That actually is the real problem - not the software itself. It almost like a "cultural revolution", where everyone that does something even remotely different with the system than what the designers had in mind needs to be re-educated.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 1:37 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
BTW, I have also raised many of these points on gnome-shell-list, as far back as Feb 2011.
It started by my watching of Gnome Shell screencasts on YouTube, which looked rather nice. Unfortunately, watching a film about something and actually doing that something are two completely different things. So, when I attempted to _use_ the system, I noticed usability regressions.
Here is almost the end of that thread (i.e. one of my last e-mails to gnome-shell-list):
- I liked what I saw on YouTube
It triggered this whole thread.
In the meantime, I went to read as to why Gnome Shell introduced overview.
In order for me not to be distracted when I want to do one of the
- start an app
I get the busiest interface known to man, which contains at least 2/3 of
Seriously, who writes that stuff?
I'm wondering how are all the users of Windows and OS X surviving at all.
So, yes. It's an attitude problem, really.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 1:39 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Feb 2011
Sorry, Apr 2011.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 4:31 UTC (Mon) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
Let see:
> Something about users having their focus taken away and having more space > available (I have just about the same space available in my Gnome 2 and > have taskbar and workplace switcher).
What are those users really focused into? Overview is virtually your task bar including a dynamic workspace switcher(gnome-tweak-took allows setting a fixed amount), notification and dock.
> In order for me not to be distracted when I want to do one of the
> - start an app
- Meta key to go to Overview mode -> Type application of choice or click Application (on gnome 3.6, Application is located at the dock)
> - find a hidden window
- switch workspace
> I get the busiest interface known to man, which contains at least 2/3 of
Care to list those distracting stuff? See how the complains are not fully detailed yet wondering why there is no response? By using your own comment, visible taskbar on Gnome 2 is a distraction. Does that mean a technical user is that challenged unable to figure out way or seeking help about the use?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 6:20 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
I won't respond to your keyboard shortcut suggestions as solutions to GUI problems. Completely orthogonal.
> Care to list those distracting stuff?
Sure. When I want to start an app, all other elements contained in overview are just distractions. I never asked for expose. I never asked for dash. Never asked for (placed too far to be useful) workspace switcher.
In summary, please see RFC 1925 (6a) for what overview really is.
> Does that mean a technical user is that challenged unable to figure out way or seeking help about the use?
If you cannot parse what I wrote properly, please do not comment. I was not asking for help.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 7:05 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> When I want to start an app, all other elements contained in overview are just distractions.
And just to be clear, that would be on Gnome design documentation criteria, not my own. If people can focus on just one thing at one time, how could they possibly handle the kitchen sink of the overview?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 15:02 UTC (Mon) by davidescott (guest, #58580) [Link]
> Sure. When I want to start an app, all other elements contained in overview are just distractions. I never asked for expose. I never asked for dash. Never asked for (placed too far to be useful) workspace switcher.
Those are perfectly reasonable things for you to think for yourself, but those features are things that many others have come to expect from modern operating systems. To say that Gnome should not have expose on Alt-Tab makes it harder for everyone else who likes and expects expose, and doesn't want to have to hunt around for a menu option to enable it and set a hot-corner keystroke. Gnome3 "just works" for users like myself. Sure I was happy with gnome2 once I got the correct combination of gnome2+compiz+ccsm+awn+X+Y+Z but it took months to find the correct combination and hours to replicate on new systems. With Gnome3 I can sit down in front of a brand new install and just start working.
It seems to be me the compromise they made with a fixed set of commonly desired features + the ability to customize further with javascript is a good one. The biggest mistake they made was to start shipping 3.0 prior to getting a good stable infrastructure (extensions.gnome.org) in place. Had they been able to have both perhaps the frustration with the gui might have been directed at plugins to change the behavior instead of forking. That said its understandably hard to get a .0 release out the door and enable customization.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 15:15 UTC (Mon) by Otus (guest, #67685) [Link]
> Those are perfectly reasonable things for you to think for yourself, but
> those features are things that many others have come to expect from modern > operating systems.
I think you are missing the point. bojan didn't complain about Gnome3 having
I.e. if you want to start a new app, why should most of the screen first
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 17:26 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> if you want to start a new app, why should most of the screen first be taken over by your currently open apps and workspaces?
Wow, I never noticed. That's a really good question.
Especially on my Thinkpad X120e where it takes two seconds to show all that stuff that I don't need.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:42 UTC (Tue) by davidescott (guest, #58580) [Link]
> if you want to start a new app, why should most of the screen first
be taken over by your currently open apps and workspaces?
I understood his point. I'm saying its easier (and makes more sense) to put the expose in the start applications functionality over forcing the user to setup the hot corners.
I also think you are using some (unintentional) rhetorical devices to make your point. When I go to "start a new app" that doesn't literally mean "I want to start a new app" it means "I want to start an application AND SWITCH TO IT." You almost never seen anyone start a gui application and want it to be immediately backgrounded (exceptions being things like chat or file-sharing).
So its perfectly natural to show the application switching at the point of starting an application, because it IS application switching to start an application. I might have started the application I needed already; I might want to start the application on a new workspace, and having the switcher appear at that point means it appears at the exact moment I need it.
The moment you start typing in the name of an application, the overlay of other windows is replaced with the full screen display of relevant applications, because that indicates to the shell that you know you need to start a new application and not switch to a running one.
Compared to the GNOME2 model where:
GNOME3 has all that functionality in a single hot-corner/hot-key, and there is no configuration step. It just works... so I'm extremely pleased with GNOME3 it finally makes sense.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 17:01 UTC (Tue) by Otus (guest, #67685) [Link]
> I'm saying its easier (and makes more sense) to put the expose in the
> start applications functionality over forcing the user to setup the hot > corners.
What does "setup the hot corners" mean? In Unity I have one button for
I don't disagree that having better defaults than in Gnome 2 is a good
> So its perfectly natural to show the application switching at the point
Sure, you can consider "opening the app" a common action regardless of
However, the expose shown seems IMHO counter to that point: You scan the
> Compared to the GNOME2 model where:
Again, I don't think the Gnome 2 defaults were very good. However, I find
* There isn't a button (only keyboard shortcut) for expose on all apps, but
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 21:36 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Compared to the GNOME2 model where:
> 1. You start applications in the (not a hot-corner) upper left (unless you move it)
Just because the corner is not hot is no justification for overview. In fact, compiz could do hot corners just fine.
> 2. Expose is not enabled until you configure it (and you cannot put it in the same place as starting application without risking overlaying a hot/non-hot corner)
Nobody asked for expose.
> 3. If you start searching for an application and then remember its already running (or vice-versa) you have to start over from the beginning
You don't have to remember anything. You can see the darn things in the workspace switcher or the taskbar. Or you can use expose directly, if you so desire (it used to be upper right hot corner in compiz).
> 4. If you want to start a new application on a different workspace you have to wait until it is running and then move it.
Rubbish. First, you can actually _see_ which workspaces are available and without lifting a finger. Then you can switch to one with just one click and without your screen being repainted and your mouse travelling all the way to the left, followed by all the way to the right. And you can start the app there. So, it takes _less_ actions to do this in Gnome 2 or Gnome3 fallback than it does in Gnome 3. In fact, I do this a hundred times a day.
Nobody is saying that improvements to the way applications are started in Gnome 2 or Gnome 3 fallback are not welcome. Of course they are. Search is very useful, menu could signal that the application is already started somewhere etc. But overview is unnecessary and really just another indirection.
Overview also causes the desktop to be managed half here and half there. Why can windows be moved in normal view? Isn't that a distraction and "difficult" (according to Gnome developers/designers)? Shouldn't that be done in overview? Etc.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 21:07 UTC (Sun) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
Hmmm........
Yet the Gnome designers say:
>Facilitating the unrestricted use of extensions and themes by end users seems contrary to the central tenets of the GNOME 3 design
and
>I agree with Allan. I am really concerned about this effort to encourage and sanction themes and extensions.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 23:45 UTC (Sun) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
>Facilitating the unrestricted use of extensions and themes by end users seems contrary to the central tenets of the GNOME 3 design.
>I agree with Allan. I am really concerned about this effort to encourage and sanction themes and extensions.
Who is that designer and when was that quoted coming? Has anyone here gone reading and consulting what those group mean? It is very easy to take what was written on mail list out of context.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 1:41 UTC (Mon) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
Allan Day and William Jon McCann in a discussion on whether or not to set up extensions.gnome.org.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:39 UTC (Mon) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
If you did a research about Allan Day (https://live.gnome.org/AllanDay), you would realize he is a designer, not GTK+ developer/maintainer (Ben Otte is)specializing in theme. Now that extensions.gnome.org is reality, his quote and McCann's you posted are irrelevant.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 4:52 UTC (Mon) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link] If you could read You would see that I called him a designer. I'll leave this be as you are obviously incapable of discussing any of the issues with Gnome 3 whether it be regressions or the attitudes of the design and development team.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 18:50 UTC (Mon) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
A designer still has to convince a maintainer. They don't have free reign. They didn't like the whole extension idea from the start. They didn't like that the extensions module existed, they didn't like the creation of extensions.gnome.org, etc.
Btw: Please leave out personal insults from this site.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 8:01 UTC (Mon) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
> Having myself let regular users (who don't visit technical website and such) play with Gnome Shell running laptop, neither of them complaining about usability, majority of them already familiar with cellphone interface and few of them never touched a computer in their lifetime. Reading some posts, it appears the complains are from those who heavily optimized their desktop environments.
And indeed I've read many times how the desktop UI people are trying to make something that works for the users they *don't have yet* rather than the ones they *do*.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 21:04 UTC (Mon) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
Personally I've managed to restore order to gnome-shell itself by use of extensions (basically just by using an extension that provides a 2-dimensional desktop), but there are plenty of other GNOME-components that have gotten completely butchered. I cannot think of any simple way to restore the functionality that was removed from Nautilus, for instance, nor for that matter finding much used for the crippled remains of the once awesome browser Epiphany.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 2:23 UTC (Tue) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
A possibility could be extras functionality could not be rewritten on time due to either broken codes and incompatibilities. Somebody will need to step up and wrote one with assistance of the very gtk+ maintainer if needed.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 8:53 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
> Having myself let regular users (who don't visit technical website and such) play with Gnome Shell running laptop, neither of them complaining about usability, majority of them already familiar with cellphone interface and few of them never touched a computer in their lifetime. Reading some posts, it appears the complains are from those who heavily optimized their desktop environments.
IMHO It seems like you are fooling yourself. Honestly.
You should try:
Seriously.
1. Just the fact that a "knowledgeable user" is sitting next already improves the experience as it calms people down. Anything goes wrong, the life-guard is right next to you.
2. I assume that once a user doubts about something, it will look at you. Say, if the mouse is going to the right direction, you'll confirm it before you know it. If its the wrong direction, you will guide them (perhaps by just glancing into the right direction, or frowning to indicate that the user should stop and reevaluate).
[...]
My experience is that teaching older family members 'new tricks' (how to deal with new interfaces, or solve new problems) while sitting next to them is trivial. I could almost say, "they figure it out by themselves". Remove me from the room and place me on the phone trying to guide them, and we have nothing but frustration.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:54 UTC (Tue) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
In my experience, "ordinary users" have either poor eyesight or poor literacy, because they read impossibly slow and are unable to process an entire screen full of data. If they have a dialog open and you ask them to click a specific checkbox, they will be unable to find it, taking a minute or two of moving the mouse in random directions while I tell them whether they are hot or cold.
I've never met a user who (a) would need help discovering a new interface, and (b) could read the entire screen, while (c) simultaneously reading my facial cues for hints.
For this reason, I'd expect Gnome 3 to be more discoverable, since it clears away everything except the stuff relevant to what you're trying to do.
This is certainly how I feel about it -- I have used a tiling WM for years, so most all user interfaces feel foreign and confusing to me. But when I use others' computers, I find Gnome 3 to be very "intuitive". It's comparable to Win7 and beats the pants off of XP, OSX or Unity.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 16:03 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Indeed. GNOME 2 was successful because the changes it brought were informed by methodical, empirical UI studies such as those done by Sun. Those who disliked the GNOME 2 UI changes¹ were thus at odds with clear evidence that the changes were overall better.
GNOME 3 appears to have been informed by the subjective "vision" of a small set of people. Unlike the 1→2 transition, this time there is objective evidence to say transition is an improvement. There is, apparently, no way to tell if the voices of discontent are an unreasonable minority or if they have point.
It's this lack of empirical evidence that is dangerous for GNOME 3, IMHO.
1. Rather than disliking just the initial instability of GNOME 2, though IME GNOME 1 also had its share of stability problems, and GNOME 2 matured stability wise reasonably quickly.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 15, 2012 11:10 UTC (Thu) by nzjrs (subscriber, #35911) [Link]
> No, you can't. Having a "broken by default" setup, which can be made
> "slightly more usable" by downloading untrusted code from a random website > (rather than being an integrated part of your distribution) is just insane.
It is not untrusted, nor random, - all extensions on e.g.o are reviewed.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 15, 2012 11:25 UTC (Thu) by rleigh (subscriber, #14622) [Link]
> It is not untrusted, nor random, - all extensions on e.g.o are reviewed.
Have they been reviewed and QAed by my Linux distribution? No.
Downloading and running random stuff is a recipe for disaster. Did we learn nothing from ActiveX? It's not that I directly mistrust the original authors or reviewers. It's that it's circumventing the distributor, and is a prime choice for subverting to expose users to malware. So I treat the entire concept with great suspicion. From my POV I place as much trust in this website as I would in any other untrusted random website: None.
extensions.gnome.org is not a solution, it's a problem. These extensions should be properly packaged and released so that they can go through the proper release and distribution process. The entire concept is just a half-assed workaround to cope with the fact that the GNOME shell is a crippled disaster. These should be packaged and provided with/alongside the shell, rather than treated like orphaned stepchildren.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 12:28 UTC (Fri) by nzjrs (subscriber, #35911) [Link]
If you saw the volume of extensions we review you might disagree.
You keep using that word random. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:10 UTC (Sun) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
Maybe some day extensions.gnome.org would do something other than tell me that my GNOME version is out of date.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:58 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> Maybe some day extensions.gnome.org would do something other than tell me that my GNOME version is out of date.
This error message can be a bit confusing. "out of date" can also just mean "you don't have the browser plugin installed".
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 17:02 UTC (Mon) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]
In which case it should hand out a simple download link. Instead the web site it just broken because someone didn't take 10 minutes to make a fallback case.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 7:55 UTC (Mon) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
Have you actually tried extensions? They break on every single update. Unless your distribution is packaging extensions and ensuring that the extensions package is updated lock-step with gnome-shell and vice versa, you cannot rely on a consistent, usable UI if you are using them.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 4:32 UTC (Mon) by prometheanfire (subscriber, #65683) [Link]
Gentoo has both gnome 2 and gnome 3 :P
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:29 UTC (Sat) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
> You forgot that Gnome Shell was installable in parallel as a preview until major change of library. You have been informed about disruptive change before but choose to disregard it for the sake of selfiness
And the plans have been on display at your local panning department for the last nine months! But somehow that is not a comfort when you wake up with a headache and some yahoos equipped with large, yellow bulldozers are trying to knock your house down.
If you complain early it's "Don't complain now, it's still in development!"
If you complain at release time it's "This is an early release, please hold judgement."
If you complain late it's "You should have filed a complaint before the decision was made."
The actual process that apparently should have been followed by concerned parties when they found GNOME 3.0 to be a problem is this:
1) Travel back in time 2 years
People who are not willing to perform the above steps obviously do not have sufficient interest in the outcome and have no right to a say in the direction of the GNOME project.
For those people who *did do* all of the above (okay, maybe not time travel) it probably seems *really unreasonable* for people who did not to be complaining all the way at the end (or at all).
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 17:56 UTC (Sat) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] So, you see nominally Regular People complain and bitch and moan about the software you write. You know, the regular, everyday people with blogs and personal domain names and accounts in bug reporting systems, and knowledge of different window managers, and knowledge of the difference between zsh and bash. Regular people. Nice application of sarcasm there, but sadly completely wasted. As long as we are talking about Linux desktop users — yes. These are the regular people. Everyone else has given up on the Linux desktop long ago, given any choice. (Or that's what I see when I look around me, anyway. I'm sure there'll be someone quick to correct me with a heartwarming story about how their spouse/children/elderly parents are Linux desktop users — well, that is on your conscience and yours alone. I'm sure you are postponing your supportees' Gnome 3 transition as far as you can, folks, right? Right?)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 18:19 UTC (Sat) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
Nice application of rational thinking, but sadly that's completely wasted as well. The GNOME devs are never wrong, you feel bad after you criticize them and not only they've got to suffer "haters" and "whiners" ($DEITY forbid you call some of those people "users" and "non-GNOME developers" who disagree with them), but also "the yellow journalists"! That wraps it up nicely, I hope that in a future turnaround FMQ will feel embarassed about this little paranoid rant too, but I'm not holding my breath.
And BTW I fully agree with you, desktop Linux had a chance but they blew it away (not that long ago IMHO), the fact that now Seigo and FMQ and others are lashing out at Linus Torvalds, users, journalists, in short everybody and their dog EXCEPT THEMSELVES is just ludicrous.
Rehdon
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 2:20 UTC (Sun) by imitev (subscriber, #60045) [Link]
"that is on your conscience"
LOL
FWIW, all the people for whom I've set up a computer with gnome3 are happy with it. Some were used to windows, some to gnome2 or XFCE. They don't have a personal domain and they don't blog that they like gnome3. And they don't want to come back to their previous environment. And I'm sure they don't even know the name of the DE they're using.
Regular People.
Gnome-related posts on LWN are disheartening, Corbet should declare an embargo. See systemd ? after all those complaints,flamewars,rantwars, you name it, most people are just happy with it now - except the few usual super vocal users.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 23:12 UTC (Sun) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> Gnome-related posts on LWN are disheartening, Corbet should declare an embargo.
Freedom of speech is under siege in enough quarters already; we don't need to add free software the list of topics where dissenting opinions are not tolerated.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 2:41 UTC (Mon) by imitev (subscriber, #60045) [Link]
This has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
I've been reading LWN for years not only because articles are top-notch, but also because comments used to be insightful and I learned quite a few things from them. I hate slashdot, and I hate seeing LWN increasingly look like it as soon as gnome|systemd|ubuntu|younameit is mentioned.
Whether they deserve it or not, gnome people had their fair share of complaints/rants/flames. If the only effect of a LWN daily news article is to get more of it, they will just ignore any discussion here, and LWN will loose in quality.
So, better to ignore gnome in daily news for a while until things settle and devs have time to implement broken/missing features. Whether they do it or not, I'm sure we will have a balanced and fair weekly article from Corbet in a few weeks/months. How's that for "not tolerating dissenting opinion" ?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:13 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
It seems a lot easier for you to just not read comments on Gnome articles...?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:15 UTC (Mon) by imitev (subscriber, #60045) [Link] Yup you're right, that's exactly what I'll do now. Time will definitely be better spent drinking my own
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:54 UTC (Mon) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> This has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
You want an embargo on certain articles, and that has nothing to do with freedom of speech? You've been drinking your own Kool-Aid.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 23, 2012 8:26 UTC (Fri) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]
Freedom of speech is a right you have, and it limits your government, not a private web site. You are perfectly able to vent somewhere else.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 9:39 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
> Nice application of sarcasm there, but sadly completely wasted. As long as we are talking about Linux desktop users — yes. These are the regular people. Everyone else has given up on the Linux desktop long ago, given any choice.
+1.
All 'linux desktop users' I know of are either:
> (Or that's what I see when I look around me, anyway. I'm sure there'll be someone quick to correct me with a heartwarming story about how their spouse/children/elderly parents are Linux desktop users — well, that is on your conscience and yours alone. I'm sure you are postponing your supportees' Gnome 3 transition as far as you can, folks, right? Right?)
1. my parents are Linux desktop users. (I do the system support)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 18:14 UTC (Sat) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link]
gnome has sucked balls for a few years (at least the simian days, with the sad filemanager days and the sad evolution days) so I quit using that crap.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 19:05 UTC (Sat) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]
Whenever there's an article about GNOME on LWN, the comments make me sad.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 19:53 UTC (Sat) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link]
If it weren't for the GNOME articles on LWN, I might not know it exists. Slackware dropped it years ago.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 20:51 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Dropline did a better job packaging Gnome then Patrick Volkerding could of done. So dropping it benefited Gnome+Slackware users. (and I guess GSB is the more modern version, but I stopped using Slackware years ago)
A similar approach is something I advocate all Linux distributions to do. Linux distributions should NOT be packaging anything except a common base system. They should be redistribution packages made by the upstream authors.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 18:25 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] That is just insanity. What $RANDOM_DISTRIBUTION provides is packaging lots of stuff and make it compatible and work well together (and get it installed in one uniform way from a fixed, dependable location). If you want your minimalistic distribution, go start it (or just use Linux from Scratch). (Back in my Slackware and early Red Hat days, I just installed lots of random stuff from source myself. I learned the hard way that such has to be kept to a minimum if you treasure your sanity at all. Today I install non-standard stuff into $HOME, if it really helps in scratching an irritating itch or I'm actively following some development.)
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 10, 2012 19:47 UTC (Sat) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
Hey Michael Larabel, just in case you're reading this: it's you he's talking about!
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 11, 2012 15:09 UTC (Sun) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
Michael is doing a fantastic job for the promotion of free software. He makes a positive impact beyond most. Your post is poisonous, and if you have it in you I really hope you reconsider your appearance on the net.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 11, 2012 15:42 UTC (Sun) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] Michael is doing a fantastic job for the promotion of free software. He makes a positive impact beyond most.Sorry, but he doesn't. He does exactly what Federico criticizes in his blog: he picks up the latest flamewar, however minor, and makes a big deal out of it. He keeps publishing idiotic benchmarks, such as compiler benchmarks without optimization enabled, operating system benchmarks where the FreeBSD kernel is compiled with debugging information compiled in, and he writes "articles" based on hearsay. Not to mention his alcohol problem, which he seems to be so proud of that he writes about beer on every occasion.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 11, 2012 17:12 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Flamewar? It could just be a report of filesystem corruption on one person's machine and an in-progress debugging/characterization session, presented as if it was the be-all and end-all and the solution is in sight -- more than half a week before it actually was. :/
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 11, 2012 21:02 UTC (Sun) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
You are aware that he single handedly chased down the power regression on intel setups, right? This little detail that by itself is enough to halt the linux desktop like forever, while not a single developer seemed to care for months.
He reports regression as he finds them, and makes a living out of it. What did you contribute lately?
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 11, 2012 22:12 UTC (Sun) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470) [Link]
> He reports regression as he finds them
Hahaha! Are you sure he *reports* regressions?
"I think I may have tracked down and will announce then in a couple of days. So, yes, I'll just put out the findings when it's to my maximum ad-revenue advantage".
Disgusting.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 11, 2012 22:27 UTC (Sun) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
Yes, I am sure he reports regressions. Chasing it down must have been a time consuming task, and he is arguably the most contributing journalist for GNU/Linux on earth. I have no idea how he found time to chase it down while still churning out continuous updates on what is now the established goto place for anybody who cares about graphics on linux, and the goto place for anybody who knows shit about benchmarking. You should learn to show appreciation when people work 24/7 for years to improve your life, and does it more effectively than most.
I am sick and tired of this type of bashing against the few that really contribute big-time.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 11, 2012 22:49 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
I found out that this was related to my patch after someone pointed me at the story. He never reported the issue to me.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 7:18 UTC (Mon) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
He makes a living from the clicks, not from writing e-mails. You did get the message didn't you? So what exactly do you complain about, that he should have shown courtesy? That he should have been more polite? Do you find your post here in this heated sub-thread any more polite? Pointing fingers is a risky sport, at least three of them tend to point back to one self.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 7:29 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
He didn't report the issue. I'm not complaining, merely pointing out a fact.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 8:41 UTC (Mon) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
Hm, I see, there is a play of words with respect to reports. With reports, I obviously meant reporting on the web-site, which is where he makes a living. I think we all should be glad he doesn't spend substantial amounts of time on bug trackers. I do on the other hand, but then again I have an employer paying me, and it is part of my core activity as well as my hobby. Big difference.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 11:28 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Ah. So, he finds problems and makes click-money out of them, but doesn't report them to the actual maintainers to be fixed (or even upstream distro bugtrackers) the way everyone else does? He is *special* and all maintainers of everything must check *his* site in case he's started yelling about a bug in their code? (Or about something that isn't a bug -- and having seen the quality of his compiler benchmarks I'd wager that that applies to most of them).
Thanks, but no thanks.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 13:54 UTC (Mon) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
Well, not just on topic, but an interesting aspect.
Both arguments are valid. As experienced admin I know how to write bug reports or deal with big laboratories to get patches/fixes. Being paid for it is not only nice because you are not annoyed you have to spend hours looking for familiar problems and than some to put data together which may give a hint to the problem - but also for the contracts. Your bug report _will_ be seen and worked on as money was paid - and saying a site of x00 or even x000 servers has a problem, you get feedback in hours - and are obliged to respond in that time. This is nice. Well, going to other development cicles is another game - you are a begger - asking politely - and may get answers like "works as designed" or "I introduced the regression, but the bug is in the package of another maintainer, so blame him" - and writing rants is more efficient than bug reporting then. :( These are two different worlds - and human beings are involved - many things can be understood if viewed from a little distance. I am just angry if people and/or their opinions are neglected. So yes, I understand people reporting bugs in public while not writing a bug report - and as the non technical people grow in numbers distributions should think about a way to collect problems via E-Mail and may deal more efficiently/automatically with upstream. Otherwise feedback is too expensive for users. I have 2 things myself to report ... and still haven't done it (both will not be changed fast if at all as I assume form my experience). Such work is harder than a hundred comments on LWN. ;-)
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 11:25 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] he is arguably the most contributing journalist for GNU/Linux on earth.No, I'm sorry, Jon Corbet of this parish wins that hands down (for his assistance in the BKL removal even if he'd done nothing else). Assuming you define Jon as a journalist rather than as a hacker who writes a trade press publication, that is.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 12:48 UTC (Mon) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
I was specifically thinking about the journalistic part, and there Jon is nowhere close. That said, I really love Jon's journalistic work, it is top notch.
Concerning the BKL contribution, you should not underestimate the value of Michael's contributions in form of PTS and regression testing. It may be hard to measure, but I am pretty sure it is absolutely necessary to get a competitive desktop. Vendors do pay attention.
Now I suggest you get a grip on yourself. You are wasting my time and your time. Time that otherwise could be used to bring free software forward. Infighting is destructive, and this subthread is starting to look like the prime example of the peanut gallery. I am ashamed to see how popular it is among us to do mockery against a young man who has given us so much. He deserves our encouragement, he certainly does not deserve the peanut gallery this subthread has degraded to.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 20:11 UTC (Mon) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] I was specifically thinking about the journalistic part, and there Jon is nowhere close.You obviously don't have the faintest idea what good journalism looks like.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 22:33 UTC (Mon) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
You could try to count referrals from linux.com if you like numbers. I believe I have a very good idea of what good journalism is, and Michael produces tons of it. With the amount of material he covers there is bound to be variable quality, so there will always be something for petty souls to pick on.
Now please spread your poison somewhere else, my stomach hurts from seeing your posts.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 12, 2012 23:27 UTC (Mon) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] You could try to count referrals from linux.com if you like numbers. Since when is the number of referrals from linux.com an indicator for quality journalism? I believe I have a very good idea of what good journalism is So what are your criteria for good journalism? Meaningless and/or misleading benchmarks (compiler benchmarks without optimization enabled, OS benchmarks with a FreeBSD kernel with debug info compiled in, utterly meaningless compositor comparisons (see the kwin developer's blog entry about that))? Continuous alcohol propaganda? Articles with barely any content at all (like this one, who's content boils down to "Iain Buclaw sent an email to the gcc-patches list")? Dubious language (yes, calling things "crap" and "mess" is extremely dubious for a journalist)? Dozens of articles where the only news is that there is no news? I'm sorry to bring this to you, but no, that's not good journalism.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 13, 2012 0:12 UTC (Tue) by michaellarabel (guest, #87807) [Link]
"compiler benchmarks without optimization enabled"
Compiler flags are shown on the benchmark results themselves. Generally, the compiler flags used during testing are whatever the default flags that are set by the upstream program under test. The Phoronix benchmark philosophy is all about real-world, reproducible tests -- such as if most users obtaining the package manually are just doing ./configure; make; make install. The real-world tests are also targeted at end-users; I think this is where some of the disconnect comes in over testing methodology as it tries to be representative for a majority of the Linux end-users. This is also why Ubuntu is mostly used with Phoronix tests... There are, of course, also Phoronix benchmarks that look specifically at compiler tuning with different optimization levels, CPU targets, etc.
"a FreeBSD kernel with debug info compiled in"
This was one or two articles -- out of 2,000+ articles and 6,000+ news posts I've written -- quite a while ago when the FreeBSD camp didn't make clear all of the debugging options they had enabled within their kernel.
What Martin didn't know at the time of his blog posting that it was one of several articles being written on the subject... You can find many other window manager / DE benchmarks on Phoronix with a variety of GPUs/drivers/systems testing the "out of the box" performance.
I'm not saying that mistakes don't happen, as they obviously do when covering many different areas and single-handedly writing thousands of articles while also engaging in other full-time projects that consume 100+ hours total per week. And for those who get all bent out of shape over the occasional beer photo or "alcohol propaganda", it's completely silly, especially when those photos are used to subtly hint ('leak') at future details about a given product/topic if you read enough into the beer selected, photo details, etc.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 15, 2012 17:02 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Well, at least Michael's registered an account on LWN now. (First post ever, very high-numbered, thus almost certainly a new registration.)
Hey world Posted Nov 13, 2012 16:55 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
Hm, I was planning to ignore you as a troll since I have like a dozen open projects I need to attend to. But your flame-bait makes it much more interesting to spend hours here. Too bad the forum function here is crap compared to, e.g., phoronix, it makes long threads a nightmare to follow. But who am I to complain, after all, you are here, and that makes it all worth it. Let us take it from the top.
>Since when is the number of referrals from linux.com an indicator for quality journalism?
You are really hilarious, did you know that? Linux.com picks up the best stories around the net, and you dismiss that evidence because you believe they are not able to spot good journalism when they see it. But you on the other hand, you really know how to judge, right? Do you even believe yourself?
>compiler benchmarks without optimization enabled
Hm, phoronix is the only site on earth that benches compiler optimizations. It is an established reference for comparing clang and gcc (and any other compiler for that matter), e.g., check out the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang (ooops, sorry, forgot that you do not recognize any such reference as evidence of anything). The only time anybody got close was about five years ago following some heated discussion on aceshardware, where some windows oriented sites followed up by comparing different compilers on Intel and AMD hardware. Maybe you find the SPEC submissions more informative, is that it? I am grasping for straws here you see. Really twisting my brain to see if there is anything in yours, so please help me out.
>meaningless compositor comparisons (see the kwin developer's blog entry about that))?
Hm, you didn't catch that those "meaningless benchmarks" was necessary to uncover performance issues in Unity, which again is rather critical for the forthcoming Steam on linux? Maybe Martin didn't get that either, and thought there was free hunting season on journalists (as if there is a plethora of journalists covering free software). KDE has had it's performance issues, and I am pretty sure I can dig out cases where the compositor is an important part of the picture. Just days ago I had to show a colleague of mine how to turn off desktop effects in KDE on Red Hat 6 to get decent 3D performance, yes we are talking about the people paying for all that beautiful work produced at Red Hat (and where do you think your beloved OS would be without it?). Martin should be grateful somebody want to benchmark his software. You really enjoy digging out flames in the community trying to pitch us up against each other, don't you? Do you find it entertaining? Have you ever considered the quality of the content you publish here?
>Continuous alcohol propaganda?
Are you telling me that you don't enjoy an occasional beer? Maybe you got provoked by Michael offering free beer to linux-supporters? Or maybe you simply feel left out because you haven't had the opportunity to share a couple of beers with fellow members of the community? In any case you have my deepest sympathy. If you like I can give you advice on how to handle your situation. I believe there are a number of effective solutions depending on your condition. Hang on a minute, I have had a hard day at work and I could really use a stiff drink now... Ah back again. There are few things like an Islay single malt. My absolute favourite is Lagavulin, distillers edition. Sure you don't want one? OK, your choice.
>Dubious language (yes, calling things "crap" and "mess" is extremely dubious for a journalist)?
Indeed it is, I love it. It really is refreshing, don't you agree? (the smell of Lagavulin is really unique, just a tiny drop of water in it is perfect, ah)
>Dozens of articles where the only news is that there is no news?
Eh, I only had one glass of whisky, but my eye sight must be failing. The links you gave had interesting updates on the state of various open projects, none of which I was aware of until I read the articles at phoronix. Are you really sure you haven't been drinking? Ah, I get it, you have been smoking some heavy shit. Let me give you a piece of friendly advice, stay off the pot, stick to the alcohol. Lemmy and Jim Morrison cannot both be wrong. Alcohol is the king of drugs.
Hey world Posted Nov 13, 2012 17:25 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] You're not going to convince me with personal attacks. Here's a quote from Torvalds:Anyway, it's clearly not worth discussing this with you. I've tried. I give up. Happily, I don't _need_ to convince you.
Hey world Posted Nov 13, 2012 17:38 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] ...and since nobody seems likely to convince anybody else, perhaps this is a good place to conclude this particular subthread?Thanks.
Hey Phoronix! Posted Nov 15, 2012 16:59 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Now I suggest you get a grip on yourself. You are wasting my time and your time. Time that otherwise could be used to bring free software forward. Infighting is destructive, and this subthread is starting to look like the prime example of the peanut gallery.Where the heck did this come from? "I disagree with you, so you should shut up"? Great argumentative technique. That'll convince me.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 21:02 UTC (Sat) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
I think Federico Mena-Quintero has something in his post.
But surely not in the way he intended (I guess :): a cat running around a toilet to get the end of its leash which it never can reach - a fat cat trying to jump and failes miserably. Well, those cats perfectly stands for the GNOME developers aiming at GNOME 3.0 as something users in huge amount love and happily use on a daily basis (I assume this was their goal - and not to annoy them).
One problem lies in the philosophy of many free and open source software
What's wrong with the GNOME project - is it a one company show
When Dirk Hondel and Linus Torvalds criticised, it was well to late
If a user wants a feature like focus-follow-mouse and it can be
I am not a GNOME user - I never was (only as a professional Unix admin,
Glorifying a brand makes no sense for anyone (there are well known
As long as GNOME people don't react constructive (i.e. by changes
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 12:36 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
If you have such problems with GNOME you write such long mails - well, you might still be under the impression anyone cares, but I thin it's time you got over it and moved on. Either pick a mature alternative or just suffer through. Your choice.
/me gets tired of such long rants. If people want GNOME to go in another direction, they either do the work, or move to a project which does fit their philosophy better (XFCE, KDE, Mate)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:38 UTC (Sun) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
Yes, too long - sorry for your buffer overrun.
I am no GNOME user - I never was (as I made clear) - but try all DEs just for fun (and as a professional). And your last statement is just mine ... at the end of my long "rant". :)) My main point is the social change - we no longer have shareware we say thanks and pay for - free software (as in GNU :) changed it. Users do have rights - even without participating - but most will at some point, helping other, explaining, writiting bug report - and rants. :)) Not everyone should feel obliged to code. I hope this is short enough for you. (Don't take it personally - just a joke!) ;-)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 1:28 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Sorry, but FSF/GPL are most definitely not about "user freedom," the users are not even mentioned once. All it cares about is developer freedom. Also, Red Hat said that there is no money to be made on distributing desktop Linux, not that it is irrelevant. If you look around, every company into Linux is focused on servers, on embedded systems, or it is called Google and targets smartphones. Canonical's Ubuntu is trying to break even by targeting the same space. It is not some hipocrisy to target servers and be active in moving the desktop forward. Without a polished graphical desktop you won't be able to interest anybody in your operating system offering nowadays. Yes, Linus Torvalds complained, and everybody took that as a sure sign that Gnome 3 was done in. Reading later posts by Linus shows he is using Gnome 3 day-to-day. But that is no news... It is the rare feature that can be implemented without any impact whatsoever on the rest of the system. And the (limited!) developer time and interest available have to be spent on high priority items, not on the favorite rant of a tiny minority. If focus follows mouse truly is so easy to do and so low impact, you surely can do it yourself.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 1:51 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
> FSF/GPL are most definitely not about "user freedom," the users are not even mentioned once. All it cares about is developer freedom.
"The FSF advocates for free software ideals as outlined in the Free Software Definition, works for adoption of free software and free media formats, and organizes activist campaigns against threats to user freedom like Windows 7, Apple's iPhone and OS X, DRM on music, ebooks and movies, and software patents."
"'Free software' means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them."
"The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too."
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:43 UTC (Mon) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
Well, I would not agree with you at all.
GPL is a licence picked to enforce that code can not be taken away from free usage by any user (today with even broder scope - nicely given by the citations of Trelane). If you take that code, change it and give it to anyone, that person (per definition a user) has the right to ask for the source code. It is all about the users. RMS worked in AI research - and as a scientist he helped (as many more) to improve proprietary code - some things were taken, others dropped. But suddenly scientists lost the right to use their own changes on _their_ systems - that was the starting point for GNU. (If I am wrong, please say so.) The additional burden in GPL which is cited from rivals calling for more `permissive licenses' (and so being open for misuse; well BSD was chosen for a well known system ... ithing:) is added to ensure the users right - and take the right away from the developers. And thus called copyleft. So users' freedom and developers' obligation! It's all a social/ethical thing!
Concerning RH I know of a CEO citation which is harder than that
Well, Linus Torvalds comments showed the world that what GNOME3
The last passage is absolutely untrue - it may be correct in a
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 22:06 UTC (Sat) by bug1 (subscriber, #7097) [Link]
Prima donna: vain, undisciplined, egotistical, obnoxious or temperamental person who finds it difficult to work under direction or as part of a team but whose contributions are essential to the success of a team.
GNOME has PR problems, its everyone elses fault.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 23:32 UTC (Sat) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]
That would be unkind. I am a guest right now because I can't cough up the payment at the moment, but I'd rather be a subscriber, and will be when I can afford it again.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 14:18 UTC (Sun) by bug1 (subscriber, #7097) [Link]
Just to clarify, i meant to say GNOME the project fits the description of Prima Donna, not any specific individuals.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 22:58 UTC (Sat) by AndreE (subscriber, #60148) [Link]
GNOME posts on lwn often violate the "would show my boss" feel of this site. It's a shame. Maybe guest commenting should be disabled on these articles.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 23:34 UTC (Sat) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]
I posted this under the wrong thread. Sorry. If possible, can the Editor remove the one under "Prima Donna?"
That would be unkind. I am a guest right now because I can't cough up the payment at the moment, but I'd rather be a subscriber, and will be when I can afford it again.
LWN censorship Posted Nov 11, 2012 12:39 UTC (Sun) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
Nice post - maybe GNOME developers were doing the same thing - just
disabling bug reports from non-developers - or was it the filtering thing advised in the end of the main article? Do you really see a difference in knowledge from all posts so you can say "quality (subscribers) >> quality (guests)"? Do you want to live in a world were only allowed people can speak up? And rising questions - just a personal one after 10 years in IT business: Do you really have a boss deeply interested in technical details? ;-)
LWN censorship Posted Nov 11, 2012 22:46 UTC (Sun) by AndreE (subscriber, #60148) [Link]
There are plenty of places to spew flame worthy rants. This isn't the GNOME mailing list, I am not a GNOME use, and this isn't a free speech issue. Your conflation of free speech with the standards of a self selecting community is precisely the sort of histrionics I'm talking about.
This site generally has the most informed and interesting comments of any Linux site on the net. Except when it comes to GNOME articles
As a paying subscriber, I want to see this level of quality maintained, not dragged down by people who mistake this for Slashdot or phoronix.
LWN censorship Posted Nov 12, 2012 15:05 UTC (Mon) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
I don't get your point.
It was not my intention to claim you personally may be or really are against free speach. I do hope you did not get that impression. But asking to shut someone down is always problematic - and this was your point IMHO, wasn't it. From my point of view the discussion here is interesting - even though (this is a point for your argument) the facts are not the majority - which is different in other LWN comments. From my perspective we currently have a social problem, how to deal with people, help others etc. Many things tend to be changed in ways many of those starting Linux in the 90-ies are not happy to see. I am sure that if former colleagues of mine would read this they will absolutely state that histrionics is not my part - but standing on the feet of others deliberatly kicking others is. GNOME has a good share of Linux DEs - so if things get problematic for a good deal of their users, they may have a problem - even if they chose a different DE for their private computer. And having to leave something you got familiar with is not nice. Putting it the other way around - if no one would care about GNOME, at least on LWN you would not see such a discussion. So GNOME is important and it might be good for GNOME developers to look at the details - and to bring together people who fell apart (Unity anyone). This would be best for the entire community - and will end discussions like this one on LWN.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 10, 2012 23:29 UTC (Sat) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]
In Gnome 3, I cannot tell the file manager I want to open .mmp and .mmpz files with lmms (Linux Muitimedia Studio.) So far, I haven't found a single person who is enthusiastic about Gnome 3 that can tell me how to fix this.
I think later versions of Windows are prone to the same stupid limitations on user manipulation of filetype choices, but that doesn't impress me either.
That's just one example. If Gnome 3 developers don't fix this particular thing, and won't pay attention to other legitimate complaints, I won't use Gnome 3. Period.
How is this supposed to make me suffer, when I can just as easily use Mate, which doesn't have these issues?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:13 UTC (Sun) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
If you look at the Properties of one of the files, do you see the 'Open With' tab? It should let you pick from a list of programs that have declared that they can open the files (via stating so in their .desktop files). There is also an Add button that lets you pick any other program that does not ship a .desktop file.
(Running nautilus 3.4 here)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 6:00 UTC (Mon) by jirka (guest, #83100) [Link] I know I want to open all files of type "blah"" with application "foo". OK, I have to find all possible types of files for application foo and make sure. And some types of files have multiple file types, for example images. Have you tried using this technique to change image viewer? Especially when you want to do it for someone else quickly (like a very impatient wife who will get mad that some images still get open in the wrong viewer)?This is I am sorry, but one of the most moronic design decisions ever made. And I was one of the original GNOME developers (I'm not anymore due to time and lack of interest not due to to some hatered of GNOME), so I don't feel bad about complaining about GNOME. The problem with current UI design (and this includes GNOME and many other UIs) is that it is inflexible and unimaginative. The very fact of the above question being out there, and even being asked by very knowledgable people, is evidence that something is wrong. The solution is not to point the person to the "correct" way to do things, but ask yourself, why is it that this person is having trouble? Setting file associations is one of the very very frustrating things about gnome. It is in fact one of the reasons I don't use GNOME nowdays, among other things. But I remember being very frustrated for about 30 minutes or so trying to figure this out. And even then, using the given interface is very very frustrating even if you know how to do it. UI should not be frustrating.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 13:36 UTC (Mon) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
> I know I want to open all files of type "blah"" with application "foo". OK, I have to find all possible types of files for application foo and make sure. And some types of files have multiple file types, for example images. Have you tried using this technique to change image viewer? Especially when you want to do it for someone else quickly (like a very impatient wife who will get mad that some images still get open in the wrong viewer)?
I agree the current design is crap for this use case. However this is not what ccchips was complaining about.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:22 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Yes, but not all image types can be opened in, say, eog (no SVG, no PDF, no PS). And so on. Not to mention that some *.pdf are documents, others images. This looks conceptually simple, in practice it is anything but. And depends on lots of other packages. Could it be better? Absolutely. But ranting on LWN about it won't get it fixed (and breaks LWN).
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:27 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]
Doesn't break LWN! LWN is about Linux; Gnome 3 is a big part of Linux; I won't use Gnome 3 until I can do what I want; I have asked and asked around more about how to do this particular thing, and now, after I took off all my Gnome 3 testing environments out of frustration, almost 5 months after I started putting out feelers about this problem, I find a possible solution in an obscure corner of an LWN thread.
Maybe someone can answer me this: If there is a "feature" in Gnome 3 that is making my life miserable, and I would like to report that to someone who will listen and act, what's the easiest way to do it?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 19:32 UTC (Tue) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
The answer is right in front of own very eyes yet choose to look elsewhere.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 0:08 UTC (Wed) by jirka (guest, #83100) [Link]
Lazy answer: Don't use GNOME 3. Actually that worked wonders for me. I am far less (though still somewhat) frustrated with XFCE.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 19:15 UTC (Tue) by jirka (guest, #83100) [Link]
But this was done correctly previously if I remember right (but was removed long time ago). Anyway, firefox handles it well (and netscape has handled it correctly as far back as I remember), and even xfce which is very thin on features does this correctly though only in the newest version. How to do it correctly? Make it possible to see a list of known types where you can pick what opens what. This is not a matter of coding, it is a matter of design. It's not that nobody did this feature, it is not there on purpose.
Of course I know ranting on LWN makes no difference. But I don't feel bad. I have spent several years working on GNOME. In that study in 2010 I was still in the top 20 contributors to GNOME by commits or something like that, even though I stopped contributing around 2004 or so. Some of early UI design decisions in GNOME were mine. Some of these decisions were bad, some good. Anyway, I don't feel like I haven't put in my time to fix issues. So I've earned the right to be grumpy and tell people what they've done is crap, and rant wherever I please. People can rant (and they have) about my software before.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 13:40 UTC (Mon) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
Thinking about this further... what if you could look at the properties of an application in the Overview, which would present a list of all the file types that the application could open. Each list entry would have a checkbox indicating that the application is the currently chosen default for that file type; and there would be a button saying 'use this application for all the above file types' which would click all the check boxes.
Obviously this needs more work (the Overview has no way to indicate that an application might have such a properties window, nor does it give the user any opportunity to interact with an application except to launch it) but I think it might go some way towards satisfying your use case.
Out of interest, what DE do you use? How do you set a program to be the default handler for one or more file types under it?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 0:06 UTC (Wed) by jirka (guest, #83100) [Link]
Right now I use XFCE as it is the least painful to use. Terminal starts quickly (yeah I need my terminal when I hit the key combo I set up, not several seconds later, I am an impatient person, and computers are fast enough nowdays aren't they?), it has a simple app menu for launching apps where I can always easily find what I am looking for, and I can set certain apps onto a panel for a quick launch.
In XFCE there is "MIME Type Editor" which lets you set default apps. It's a bit too simple, and could use some improvements, but it's far easier to use than the GNOME way. That's the correct way to do it. That's the correct metaphor. It's not right to do it in the application. That's backwards. Though it wouldn't hurt if you could set it from the application as well.
Don't overthink it. Overthinking is exactly what got current GNOME UI designers into trouble. Don't make too many abstractions. Abstractions are bad unless they work perfectly. Then you precisely get into trouble when users are not working in the way that you envisioned they should. They get frustrated and complain loudly.
There is a lovely book "The Design of Everyday Things" that is an excellent critique of interface of ... well "everyday things". I got the book from some usability people when working on GNOME. UI designers are still not taking the advice there to heart, and they should.
Now ... get off my lawn!
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 10:21 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
> it has a simple app menu for launching apps where I can always easily find what I am looking for, and I can set certain apps onto a panel for a quick launch.
AND a tool to look up applications by name or description, not unlikely the search bar in GNOME's overview. It's summoned by pressing Alt+F2. If XFCE allowed one to bind this application (that by the way is named xfce4-appfinder) to the windows (AKA "super") key _release_ so that it didn't interfere with other shortcuts, I would be just happy.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 20:18 UTC (Sun) by gpoo (subscriber, #56055) [Link]
In Nautilus, press 'F1' for help. Look for the title 'Open files with other applications'. Follow the link and you are done.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:16 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]
I will try that and let you know. My guess is that I'm going to wind up like the other reply, and go back to using Mate again.
I hope I'm wrong.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 8:05 UTC (Mon) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
Have you tried right-clicking on one of those files, go to "Properties", click the "Open With" tab, and if your chosen app is in the list, select it and click "Set as default"
IF it isn't in the list, click "Show other applications", look through the slightly larger list, repeat as above.
If it isn't in the slightly larger list, I'm stuck, sorry!
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 3:33 UTC (Sun) by hnasarat (guest, #86530) [Link]
I made an account here just to say that I'm deeply disappointed by this LWN post!
Really, this is some shitty sensationalist reporting. Jake, have you bothered to read and digest Frederico's article you would have not just copied the quote out of context.
If you had read and understood Frederico's post you might have thought to include the conclusion that Frederico made at the END of the post:
"It's not that you should completely ignore complainers. It's just that you should run a very, very low pass filter over what they say, and try to pick up the real root cause of their gripes. Maybe there is something that you can fix technically. Maybe they have identified a systemic problem intuitively but they don't have enough knowledge to really be able to verbalize it.
Haters gonna hate and spew shit, but remember that poop can be excellent fertilizer."
Also, the irony of this is just too perfect. Frederico takes time to comment against the latest "yellow journalism": he writes:
"And then there's yellow journalism for tech. The hater bloggers with a job. Some of the things they do:
They pick up the latest flamewar, however minor, and make a big deal out of it.
They summarize blog posts and quote things with not enough context. "$last_name said, 'blah blah blah'" is the only content in their columns."
I can't fathom how much of an idiot you are Jake. So not only did you take the quote out of context, you completely missed the point of Frederico's article. I'll summarize for you in a few sentences, because you're obviously too much of an idiot to read and understand a simple blog post yourself:
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 3:49 UTC (Sun) by hnasarat (guest, #86530) [Link]
Also, the specific vitriol in question is the rotting in threes article.
ignorantGuru (the author of that article) ended up talking to Benjamin Otte, the lead developer behind GTK+ currently, about ignorantGuru, about the issue of themes breaking.
Otte explained the reasons behind this, and acknowledged not ideal communication and developers and encouraged more to get involved to steer the project in a way that they find desirable.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687752#c9
As they say, put up, or hack up.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 12:43 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Not unreasonable imho. GTK does have very few resources, they're not exactly like Qt with hundreds of full-time developers. So yeah, if you don't like how things go, help out.
I don't think you can blame Ottens and others for wanting to fundamentally improve GTK and bring it to the level that it can finally do proper CSS theming - it's long overdue. That creates breakage for a while but the alternative is standstill, which is not a real option imho.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:41 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
You should reread the quotes by lead GNOME developers, really. For them it's not about improving GTK themeability via CSS, it's about politics geared to _reduce_ GTK themeability!
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 14:16 UTC (Sun) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Otte is a GTK+ developer. The rest are either designers, or involved in design and more importantly, not involved in GTK+.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 2:14 UTC (Mon) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
The designers are very much involved in GTK+ development. Their designs guide what features (widgets, themability, performance) we include, improve and drop in GTK. Their opinions on themability also influence what we think about it.
Of course, they don't have the final say and when we disagree, we try to find a solution that works for all of us.
In the context of themes, the GNOME project considers themes a bad thing, because you cannot advocate a unified design if you don't know how things are going to look in the end. This is not an uncommon view for desktop projects - neither OS X, iOS, Windows nor Android come with multiple designs.
But I'm saying it all the time, and am repeating it here: the GTK toolkit is defined by the people that take an interest and participate in developing it. And those people are currently almost 100% coming from the GNOME side. And as long as that is the case, expect GTK to be more and more the GNOME toolkit and less and less something else.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 12:46 UTC (Mon) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
"neither OS X, iOS, Windows nor Android come with multiple designs"
Android comes with loads of designs; most handset manufacturers use their own to 'differentiate' their products, widgets can be themed, and entire components like the launcher and the home screen can be replaced. To say nothing of entirely different UXes like the ones embedded in TVs, e-readers etc.
I'm pretty sure quite a lot of the look of (desktop) Windows can be changed around too - I've just had a look in Control Panel on a machine I have access to and there's a whole 'Appearance and Personalization' section with sub-entries including 'Change the theme'.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:26 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] "Handset manufacturer replaces most of the GUI" != "end user tweaks theme" Ubuntu also replaced most of the UI of Gnome 3 with Unity, Microsoft changes the UI regularly to make their latest stuff look new.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:42 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Microsoft havn't changed the general template for their UI since windows '95. Even with the latest Windows 8, that basic template is still there apparently.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 16:40 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
"General template" is vague enough to mean nothing. The point discussed in this thread is GTK+ themeability, and Microsoft indeed changes the UI theme with each and every release of Windows.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 15:28 UTC (Mon) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
Maybe so, but as an end user I can replace these components too, straight from the Android Market/Play Store. And my default HTC setup has a 'personalize' button right on the main interface which allows me to tweak all sorts of stuff and install new skins.
Specifics aside, the general idea that it's impossible to design something useful if you don't know exactly how it's going to look is a nonsense.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 5:00 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
If only it were that simple. Unfortunately, the only dedicated Linux DE users is us, technical people. For statistical purposes, Linux DEs have no other users (bar Android), because these users come and go as they purchase new hardware, get sick of not being able to play games, run Windows apps etc. The blog entry clearly explains how we are systematically ignored - right from one Gnome developer's mouth - final words notwithstanding.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:08 UTC (Sun) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
Sorry, but one of the things Ubuntu started was that many people
I know start installing Linux without having large knowledge about Unix/Linux and without seeking technical people in their surroundings. A community has grown which outnumbered soon all combined comunities existing to that date. And now all distos get merits from that. Unfortunately, pre-installed systems are not really available. You must dig deep, mostly pay more and end up with a badly installed system which you just freshly install to be able to do work. The point is valid, as additionally the technical experts are those who really care - they answer questions of friends who have problems, they do work 100% on Linux systems (like me) without Windows/Max OS X installed alongside.
And also the game argument is valid - for power gamers.
Which desktop? No big deal - a friend likes Unity - no problem -
But this attitude is much more harmful to the community than
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 4:18 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
> Which desktop? No big deal - a friend likes Unity - no problem -
> KDE - nice - XFCE - fast - so what. The days of the best one is over.
For some people, like myself, it was a big deal. For us Gnome was about stability. GNOME3 changed that, a put a lot of us to search for an alternative, something I personally _HATED_ doing. It's our problem, I suppose, because we expected from the GNOME devs more that what they were willing to give out. For that, I'm sorry.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 5:27 UTC (Sun) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
So you're calling other people idiots but aren't even capable of spelling the guy's name correctly? Pathetic.
on yellow journalism Posted Nov 11, 2012 7:21 UTC (Sun) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link]
If you'd ended this comment just before "I can't fathom how much of an idiot you are", then it would have been a welcome comment here, and (I expect) much more likely to be heeded.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 16:47 UTC (Sun) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
>I can't fathom how much of an idiot you are Jake
.... >...you're obviously too much of an idiot to read....
Ad hominem attack right out of the gate. And some people wonder why others have issues with the attitudes of Gnome developers and fanbois.
Real mature there hnasarat.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 17:08 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Technically that's not an ad hominem attack -- it's an attack with insults. The two are distinct and I am too pedantic for words. :)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 17:59 UTC (Sun) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
Pedanticism's good. :D
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 11:36 UTC (Tue) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]
You obviously mean pedantry? ;-)
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 11, 2012 4:22 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Wow! What a spay - full of bile. By all means, haters gonna hate. If nothing else, his blog post proves that.
In the meantime, the rest of us are trying to point out real usability regressions in Gnome 3.
Like complete loss of desktop visibility. Like the fact that it takes significantly more mouse/GUI actions to change a workspace or start and app. Like the fact that any real remote work is no longer possible with shell/llvmpipe. Like the fact that minimised windows going into oblivion is nonsense on a system where everything must be a GUI metaphor for something. And so on and so forth.
In the meantime many Gnome developers are pulling an Eddie on us: http://www.hark.com/clips/pylsqchkrl-la-la-la
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 11, 2012 7:50 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> What a spay
Spray, not spay, of course.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 11, 2012 11:43 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
> In the meantime, the rest of us are trying to point out real usability regressions in Gnome 3.
One man's regression is another man's feature.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 11, 2012 16:26 UTC (Sun) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
I'm pretty sure that was a popular ad for Microsoft Bob.
Rehdon
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 11, 2012 22:01 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Yes, I'm sure. When people write nonsense like this:
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design#Activities_Overview
What can one really expect? Gnome 3 is continually trying to solve problems that nobody had, like the one described above.
For instance, Gnome 3 also boasts about being the best single tasking environment (i.e. for running every app full screen, one at a time). The window manager (mutter) even decides for you when you don't want to have any margins around your windows (arbitrarily, of course), because who would want to right click on the empty space? After all, there is no right click on a tablet, now is there?
And so on and so forth. I mean, if I wanted make all this stuff up, I would not be able to.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 2:14 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
>https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design#Activities_Overview
>What can one really expect? Gnome 3 is continually trying to solve problems that nobody had, like the one described above.
Funny, I use that on an hourly daily basis. It works a hell of a lot better than the old taskbar approach.
*shrug*
But let's not let facts get in the way of your complaints.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:10 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> It works a hell of a lot better than the old taskbar approach.
What does?
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:29 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
Since you seem to have trouble remembering your own words, and have trouble reading the part I directly quoted in my reply, let me paste it again here for your benefit:
>>https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design#Activities_Overview
The Activities Overview solved a very real problem I had; namely keeping track of what I was doing in a manner that scaled to half a dozen desktops across multiple displays.
Which is a far cry from "solving problems that nobody had, like the one described above"
In other words, I disproved your completely unfounded assertion with a single anectdote.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:54 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
I have half a dozen desktops (workspaces) in my fallback session right now and I'm managing just fine. In fact, I can actually see all of them immediately, which you cannot. I also have a half a dozen more embedded in a remote session in one of those workspaces as well. And when I switch there, I can see all of them too. None of them disappear when the last app crashes in one of them - they remain part of my desktop.
In one of my previous jobs I also had multiple monitors, which worked just fine under Gnome 2, across multiple workspaces too.
Activities overview, in the obligatory automotive parallel, is like not having a brake pedal and an accelerator pedal accessible at all times.
Instead, there is an "activities button", which when pressed, brings out both pedals, from which one then chooses what to press. Along with those two, it also brings out the indicator lever, the radio controls, the windscreen wipers and a cigarette lighter, so you need to figure out there and then which one to press, instead of being aware of them at all times. When the pedals are brought out, the windscreen is temporarily dimmed (ergo you lose sight of the road), so that you focus can be on the "activities".
So, your anecdote (which you failed to even mention before I asked you) doesn't prove much at all. Maybe only that (subjectively) you like Gnome 3 better.
It certainly doesn't prove anything related to the link I posted, which is about some supposed Gnome 3 innovation in relation to:
- focus switching (available in pretty much all Linux DEs via workspaces)
In other words, Gnome 3 activities overview is an implementation of RFC 1925, 6a.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 4:40 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
>So, your anecdote (which you failed to even mention before I asked you) doesn't prove much at all. Maybe only that (subjectively) you like Gnome 3 better.
Ultimately, isn't my saying "I like gnome3 better" the whole point here, just as (please correct me if I'm wrong) you're saying "I like gnome2 better"?
You've described why the Gnome3Way(tm) doesn't work for you, and that's fine and dandy; nobody's forcing you to use Gnome3. However, just because Gnome3 doesn't solve problems *you* have doesn't mean it doesn't solve problems that other people (including the gnome 3 developers and myself) have.
The first time I tried out Gnome 3.0,0, it was a little frustrating simply because it was different than I was used to. After (literally) minutes of using it, that frustration was rapidly replaced with something more akin to "holy ****, this is awesome! It's like they wrote this stuff just for *me*" I proceeded to upgrade every system I used, and never looked back.
Anyway.
Software development in the F/OSS world is participatorily meritocratic; those who participate (which usually equates to writing code) determine what direction it takes.
Anyone who expects the Gnome3 developers to work on something other what they (1) want, and (2) builds towards/upon their goals/vision, is pretty deluded. It's Free Software; if you don't like where it's going, fork it and build towards your vision instead. Talk is talk, but code walks.
That developer/user empowerment is how we have an actively-maintained fork of the Gnome2 environment. But expecting the Gnome3 folks to expend extra effort to make that easier... well, see my previous paragraph. Why create more work for themselves that will only delay their goals?
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 5:43 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Ultimately, isn't my saying "I like gnome3 better" the whole point here, just as (please correct me if I'm wrong) you're saying "I like gnome2 better"?
Sorry to disagree again, but no. I am not basing my argument on any particular "like".
As I mentioned, activities overview is more or less an implementation of RFC 1925 (6a). I will quote the whole (6) here, just so that you you know what I'm taking about. This is a somewhat humorous RFC called "The Twelve Networking Truths" (you can find it here: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1925). So, the (6) is:
> (6) It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving the problem to a different part of the overall network architecture) than it is to solve it.
> (6a) (corollary). It is always possible to add another level of indirection.
Now think about activities overview. Which elements does it contain?
1. The dash (which is really like a dock).
It's a desktop in itself. Ergo, the desktop layer has been moved one level deeper. That would be the meaning of RFC 1925 (6a), in a nutshell.
None of the activities overview elements are new or innovative in themselves and all exist in previous DEs. And can be accessed directly there.
As an aside, the use of dash as a task switcher is entirely hypocritical. If taskbar is not good for task switching, why is dock in activities overview OK for this purpose? But I digress...
Moving this functionality one level deeper introduced new problems. For example:
- repainting of the entire screen on entry/exist (terrible for VNC work)
And so on and so forth. These are not "likes". These are facts that you can verify for yourself.
The Gnome Shell design document I pointed to talks about solving problems through the introduction of overview, such as:
- effective focus switching
None of these are factually true. Focus switching was already solved through the existence of workspaces. Within workspaces, it was also done using either taskbar or expose directly. Distraction reduction (if there is such a thing, given that Gnome 3 panel still has buttons which distract) is better achieved through autohide of panels. A single panel holding everything is possible and sufficient in Gnome 2 (or Gnome 3 fallback).
So, on facts, activities overview just pretends to solve something, but really just moves everything one level away from where one can use all those directly.
As an aside here, it is the activities overview that actually made Gnome 3 have fallback mode. Were it not for it, there would be no need for two modes (or at least they'd look indistinguishable enough from each other). But, I digress again...
If Gnome developers want to just tell all of us to bugger off (means: go away), that's fine. However, pretending that design documentation holds some deeper truths is not on. As a long term user, I think I'm entitled to point that out.
> It's Free Software; if you don't like where it's going, fork it and build towards your vision instead. Talk is talk, but code walks.
Yes, absolutely agree with you here. In fact, in one of my somewhat sarcastic and cynical posts on gnome-shell list I said as much. Short of me building a non-overview shell, it won't happen (well, it did happen - it's called Cinnamon). Shit has well and truly hit the fan with the fallback removal in 3.8, so who knows - maybe I'll even have a crack (don't hold your breath).
However, ignoring long term users that are trying to point out genuine usability problems does not look good for the Gnome project, IMNSHO.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 20:24 UTC (Mon) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
Very interesting post. It's made clearer to me why I've never been able to like Gnome Shell!
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:32 UTC (Mon) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
"Ultimately, isn't my saying "I like gnome3 better" the whole point here, just as (please correct me if I'm wrong) you're saying "I like gnome2 better"?"
While the field of HCI studies is not exactly comparable to exact sciences, a UI regression is something that can be measured by somewhat precise metrics (a feature was there and has been automagically removed because incompatible with the GNOME "brand", an action that required n mouse clicks now requires 2x n, an action that was perfectly visibile to the user is now hidden behind a modal screen, and so on).
So no, it's not that you can say "but I like it" and wave all problems away: your opinion is your opinion and can be shared or not, an UI regression is a UI regression and it's there to stay if nobody does something.
Hope this helps.
Rehdon
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:20 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Did you name any facts?
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 3:49 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
Yup, I mentioned the fact that *I* use the Activities overview to solve very real problems I had with the old paradigm. It simply didn't scale.
I use the best tools I can find to get my work done in the most expedient and efficient manner; tools that still respect my freedom as a user and a developer (which are the same in the FSF's eyes!) As I type this, the best option that meets my needs is Gnome3.
I don't care one bit what anyone else uses to get their work done. That's for them to decide for themselves. Nobody's forcing anyone to change or stop using their existing software/desktop environment; it's one of the core principles of the Free Software Movement -- the empowerment of its users.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 4:47 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
If you consider that a fact then the post you're disagreeing with is full of facts!
Most people would consider that an anecdote.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 12:02 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
Sorry, if you're going to split hairs, then at least split the correct hairs.
The *fact* is that *I* find Gnome3's new paradigm better than the old one.
The precise reasons why are a matter of opinion, but that doesn't change the fact that there is provably one person out there who is better off. This disproves bojan's assertion that "nobody" is better off with gnome3, and that it solves problems that don't exist.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 12, 2012 22:24 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> This disproves bojan's assertion that "nobody" is better off with gnome3,
Never asserted any such thing.
> and that it solves problems that don't exist.
That I disagree with, on facts. None of the things that are present in activities overview are new or innovative. Hiding access to all those things was already done as well (and mostly without repainting the whole screen). So, no, activities overview does not solve any problems that have not already been solved in a desktop environment.
PS. As I stated many times, on some devices this kind of indirection is absolutely required. Tablets and especially phones have smaller screens, fingers as pointing devices which cannot hover or right click, so trying to squeeze "desktop control elements" on the screen there is not useful.
Haters gonna hate, for sure Posted Nov 23, 2012 8:31 UTC (Fri) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]
You said Gnome3 is solving a problem no one is having, he said, "Wait, I had that problem, and it solved it". This whole discussion is just painful to read, it's more about fighting and venting than actually reading what the other party said.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 11:24 UTC (Sun) by cyanit (guest, #86671) [Link]
The problem is simply that they are bad at doing their job as UX designers.
Furthermore, since they do it all by themselves and ignore any outside input, that results in the final product also being bad.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 13:58 UTC (Sun) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]
Of course, there are those of us who don't just whine about GNOME 3, but simply stop using it when things break beyond acceptable limits (200%+ CPU usage, anyone?), and there were no response on bug reports.
I must say I'm surprised to end up in this camp. I've been running the GNOME Shell previews since the first day they came out, and even stomached Fedora on my netbook being obviously more sluggish than a colleague's netbook (running Ubuntu, at the time presumably with Unity2D)... my eyes got opened when switching to XFCE dramatically improved performance and battery life.
(using Intel HD on-board graphics, in case you're wondering. I bought the rationale of making full use of graphical acceleration etc., but after years, surely it's not unreasonable to expect an *Intel* card to work just fine).
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 14:03 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> Of course, there are those of us who don't just whine about GNOME 3, but simply stop using it when things break beyond acceptable limits (200%+ CPU usage, anyone?), and there were no response on bug reports.
Where is the 200% cpu usage bug report? I can't recall seeing such a report? Do you have link / bug number?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 10:56 UTC (Mon) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] Where is the 200% cpu usage bug report? I can't recall seeing such a report? Do you have link / bug number?Yup, here: RH bz #812624
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:41 UTC (Mon) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]
No, the one where no one responded. What I see here is a answer from a gnome shell developer after a few days. That he didn't found the cause is different ( unless you mean "I want all bug I report to be solved in a finite amount of time", which is different )
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 7:33 UTC (Wed) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]
The bug is still not assigned to anyone (it has a default assignee, who last responded to the bug many replies ago), and at the time of my post, there has been no response for over a week since my post, and over 5 months since a developer responded, despite activity on the thread.
Xfce fanboi here Posted Nov 11, 2012 17:38 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Xfce never disappoints. It eats up less memory, it spares your processors for useful work, changes very slowly and improves all the time. I have all effects turned on ("display compositing") with an onboard Intel graphics card and it seldom reaches 5%.
Not Posted Nov 11, 2012 20:38 UTC (Sun) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
I'm afraid XFCE did disappoint me. I tried it for a couple of months, then gratefully installed MATE. I may yet try Cinnamon, but the urgency has waned.
I installed Gnome 3.4 on a few machines for relatives/acquaintances. After adding a half-dozen extensions and fair bit of "tweak"ing, they are more or less satisfied. Their browser environment is the lion's share of their user experience. The greatest difficulty, there, is when they try to open a new attachment type, and must know to root around in /usr/bin to find something to run on it.
Xfce Posted Nov 11, 2012 23:28 UTC (Sun) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> I'm afraid XFCE did disappoint me.
What was it about Xfce that you found disappointing?
I used it for a while, before switching to Cinnamon, and I found it to be a reasonable replacement for Gnome 2. I thought the panel configuration was awkward, but otherwise it was OK.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 17:13 UTC (Sun) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 19:11 UTC (Sun) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
To be honest, I feel like LWN should have run the igurublog post instead of Federico Mena-Quintero and Aaron Seigo's responses. The latter just don't contain very much information. I mean, animated cat GIFs? Really? The whole content of these posts could be summed up in a sentence as "haters gonna hate" with no loss of information.
The igurublog post, on the other hand, really points out some disturbing trends in KDE, Unity, and GNOME3. Basically, the Linux desktop has somewhat lost its identity. A lot of bad ideas have slithered over from the proprietary systems, like an obsession with "branding," an unwillingness to cooperate with other free software projects, the addition of corporate advertisements, and a progressive dumbing down. These projects are supposed to be community projects, but they don't feel like it any more. Input from folks outside the project, no matter how well-argued it is or who makes it, is just sent to "a mental /dev/null" as Federico so eloquently puts it. Some of us came over to Linux to avoid this stuff; to see it start cropping up here is disturbing.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 7:43 UTC (Mon) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
Yes, the iguru posting was deeply insightful, and many of the comments too.
Maybe forking Gnome 3 would have a better outcome than MATE, because it wouldn't seem to have a mandate to stay exactly the same. (Of course lots of things could be improved in Gnome 2.) I hoped Cinnamon was that fork, but it appears meant to surf on top of Gnome 3. Maybe they can still rescue useful components as the Gnome crew retires them.
The GTK3 problem makes it hard to keep a stable theming platform.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 15:27 UTC (Mon) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
If you could chose between a stable theming platform that nobody understands, doesn't provide alpha transparency, uses an arcane syntax and is crash-prone and a powerful machinery built on standards that is working to give you the ability to tune everything, which one would you chose?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 17:30 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Are you suggesting the latter actually exists?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 19:35 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] It's in the works. You can chip in, if you like.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 17:14 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>It's in the works. You can chip in, if you like.
In other words, 'no'.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 19:48 UTC (Mon) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
AFAIK Cinnamon is a real fork, not a dressed up Gnome 2 look-alike (that was LM MGSE, where they used extensions to mimick a Gnome 2 environment based on Gnome Shell). As you can read in the iguru post, they suffer from the current GTK3 instability, true, but otoh the Linux Mint RC is just now out and Cinnamon 1.6 looks sweet:
http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_nadia_whatsnew.php
Really looking forward to this release :)
Rehdon
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 16:44 UTC (Mon) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
It's not actually true for KDE. We do not dismiss features or break stuff based on branding ideas, for example.
If we find that an option in the default setup is not warranted for a certain feature, we propose to use a replacement component. Everything in Plasma is a replacable component, so it was built with the option to change things fundamentally.
KDE's mention in iguru's blog seems more like a cover-your-ass notice, to prevent his comment section from filling up with people, rightfully, suggesting to have a look at KDE Plasma. Not everything is perfect there, but the behavior he complains about (putting branding before users, advocating "The One True Way" is *not* common in Plasma, and rarely seen overall in KDE.
I think it's unfair to draw parallels between these complaints to the GNOME camp. KDE did have a rough patch to go through, but that wasn't so much by design, it was a result of a necessary architectural change. We've gotten over it, we have a design that allows you to change pretty much everything to your liking, but it took as some time to get there. This transition has been painful to users, but it's not an attitude thing.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 22:23 UTC (Sun) by jondkent (guest, #19595) [Link]
Hmm, from reading this thread seems to have dug up the usual, nothing new.
I'd agree that ultimately if the Gnome guys want to do something that's cool by me. I seem to be one of a few who hated Gnome 2 but really like Gnome 3. It could do with how I use a desktop, lots of shell windows (using terminator) and few applications.
There are just so many desktop options that to continually moan about Gnome 3 just seems pointless, move somewhere else.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 11, 2012 23:19 UTC (Sun) by linuxjacques (subscriber, #45768) [Link]
It's interesting to me how many people seem to want this discussion to just go away.
Banning the topic? Really?
"If you don't like it, just shut up about it" ?
I've seen many highly charged discussions / flame wars over the years, but lately there has been a very disturbing trend toward censorship.
I would be shocked and extremely disappointed to see LWN bow to those demands.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 13:57 UTC (Mon) by sahko (guest, #54088) [Link]
I wonder if Mena-Quintero read this part of the ranting blog:
"For example, Gnome Shell doesn’t support status icons, so GNOME dev ‘mccann’ filed a bug report to a Transmission (BitTorrent client) dev to say that this option should be removed. Why should it be removed? Because Gnome Shell doesn’t support it anymore! Apparently in GNOMEland there are no other desktop environments (remind anyone of Microsoft?) From Don’t use a notification area icon in GNOME 3:
mccann writes:
In the upcoming GNOME 3 we won’t be supporting notification area icons (status icons)…
Transmission has an option in the Desktop tab of the preferences to “Show Transmission icon in the notification area”. This should probably be removed.
charles (developer of Transmission) writes:
So now we can have three builds of Transmission that decide at compile time whether to use AppIndicator, GtkStatusIcon, or nothing at all, over such a stupid feature?
Removing it altogether, as you suggest, will hurt XFCE users.
I wish GNOME, Canonical, and everyone else involved would settle on one consistent API for this and stop fucking the app developers over.
In order for this ticket to move forward, I’d like you to tell me what change should be made to Transmission that will make it work properly, out of the box, on GNOME Shell, Unity, and XFCE.
mccann replies:
I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. I’m sorry that this is the case but it wasn’t GNOME’s fault that Ubuntu has started this fork. And I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry.
It is my hope that you are a GNOME app…
We must choose our side. Is this a war? And can we really and seriously believe that one of the main GNOME devs doesn’t know what XFCE is?"
from https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685
And how LWN readers feel about this.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 17:36 UTC (Mon) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
Nice reminder.
Before GNOME 3 was released, problems were known that developers would not try to combine different flavours. Mark Shuttleworth/Canonical got problems, developed Unity (as they were told to after some citations) and were locked out. It doesn't matter whose fault that was - the result is talking: Ubuntu lost popularity - which was harmful for GNOME and other distros. Mint gained popularity (with GNOME 2 / MATE). If this would be a war, generals should talk and end it. There is no need for a special DE in a fixed and sealed design. We need choices. Not (only) in being able to use another DE, but changing the appearance (should be up to the distro and user) and functionality (default being on the distro side, real settings should be easily done by users - and important and common ones like "focus follow mouse" should be present from day 1 after released the first time as a stable release). GNOME3 and Unity are quite buggy - till that very date (my impression was Unity is better - but this may change), options important for many users are lacking - on purpose or due to lack of manpower ... The user base gets smaller. All have lost till now. Developers should open their mind for interoperability - and put the branding and `quality' smalltalk aside. And start to listen what options their users need to efficiently work under their DE - both have lessons to learn. The time is running - not in favour of them as shown by the discussion here.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 22:56 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. I’m sorry that this is the case but it wasn’t GNOME’s fault that Ubuntu has started this fork. And I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry.
And we all thought one could be a freedesktop app...
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 12:10 UTC (Tue) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
What, and dilute the "brand"? and let other people enjoy free software? No way! better, you got to choose between the GNOME way or the highway. Is it insulting someone say that this smacks of rotten arrogance?
The "I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry" quip is also particularly ludicrous.
Rehdon
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:05 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]
When I read stuff like this, it seems things have gone horribly wrong in desktop land.
Do any of the people responsible for Gnome/Unity development bother to take note of the fact that people would rather use Mate than lose features that are important to them? Anyone at any of these organizations bother to ask *why* there are notification icons in the first place?
I'm almost entirely blind. Will Gnome 3 notify me about what's happening on my desktop by voice? At least with Mate, I know *where* I can find notifications!
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 14:42 UTC (Mon) by Aliasundercover (subscriber, #69009) [Link]
The enduring flames are a sign people care. If Gnome never was anything few would bother to get bent over it being broken.
They will fade with time.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 17:06 UTC (Mon) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]
I'm confused. Can someone show us numbers on user adoption before/after Gnome 3.x? Is anyone measuring *something*, anything?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 18:10 UTC (Mon) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
I don't know of any reliable measurement.
Disto Watch has a counter (giving at least a hint), some distros (e.g. Debian) has popularity counters (as Debian developers statistics - but its reliability is also in doubt), Download Counters for distros (also under debate) ... Some polls like: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1717430 (would be nice for LWN - just an idea:). But getting real numbers ... may be too hard.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 12, 2012 18:13 UTC (Mon) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]
:( At this stage it's clear not much is going to sway anyone on either side. Without solid numbers, I'm afraid we're in for much of the same.
Rant, continued Posted Nov 13, 2012 4:51 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
For the continuation of the rant, see here:
http://people.gnome.org/~federico/news-2012-11.html#a-mon...
It seems that it is no longer just us technical users and you bad journalists screwing with developers. Oh, no! It also the "collectors" now. Or maybe it's you and us that are the "collectors"?
Still a bit confused on that one... :-)
Rant, continued Posted Nov 13, 2012 13:12 UTC (Tue) by JMB (guest, #74439) [Link]
I would guess we are all "collectors" - as we are all users.
We try things out, advise others what may fit if their workflow is similar to ours {in case we are nice and have time discuss - if something got broken write bug reports and even start rants if those are neglected} - but if something doesn't fit for our use case we delete/format and try out something new. ;-) Maybe we should only use what we programmed ourselves so we really have the right to write bug reports and comment on missing features ... and thus no longer are "collectors" or "distro hoppers" (every real administrator is one - he has to know all {major} distros and get along with them - and should give negative feedback befor problematic things enter the enterprise versions - ups, too late ;-).
If I would be a lead programmer in a project having many users I may
By the way, are there any user polls by GNOME/Unity/KDE/XFCE/LXDE ...
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 13, 2012 23:29 UTC (Tue) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
My take:
These numbers of debating posts means majority of users here care about Gnome 3. The real issue is communication. Just because the current user interface is different and disrupt some habit does not mean it is bad. The core issue is us, users, conditioned to work on the same old paradigm implemented on both Microsoft Windows 95, OS/2 or Apple Macintosh. For the first time in FOSS history, Gnome 3 represents a fresh start yet somehow, some group of users and journalist find a way to dismiss, and claimed themselves expert.
Gnome mail list is open, developers could do better in communication side but users need to assume responsibility with their own conducts. The cause is selfishness. Some users think Gnome developers don't listen to them yet cannot notice they actually do. Some developers to similar as well.
What I would like to mention is each of users has own share of blame. We pretend to be expert, but in reality, we are amateur on whatever field who keep learn for the rest of lifetime. Once we take a time to sit and deeply think about the tool we have like Gnome Shell, we should reevaluate ourselves. For me, that analyze is what the blog is all about. I realized them as a designer with some technical skill.
I embraced Gnome Shell as a new tool because I chose to use for what is really is, a new desktop environment. I do not care what other people think with their different desktop environment, I learned to stay open as possible. When a particular functionality is missing, it means the old code is incompatible and needs rework. I may repeat myself, extensions are our creative field.
On my perspective, Gnome Shell is the future. A new generation of developers, users already know how use it, they live somewhere in the world. Some of them never touched computer in their lifetime, they will assist to improve the interface. It is time to man up, analyze, think and ask question.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 1:49 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Not so sure about that... Remember when the Gnome team said Spatial was the future?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 14, 2012 2:46 UTC (Wed) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
That legacy cascading window behaviour that previously set by default on Nautilus? It is still live on as tabs. =)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 15, 2012 2:31 UTC (Thu) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
Defenses of Gnome 3 rooted in explanations of its alleged technical excellence are irrelevant to users, who can make the only judgement about it that matters. Users never see technical quality unless it is so bad that it breaks something. They see capabilities and ease of use. I am stymied to understand how Gnome 3 adds capabilities and increases ease of use.
Gnome 3 has a panel I cannot use. Whatever happens in that panel happens outside my control. It is little more than a narrow band of black paint across the top of my screen.
At the bottom of the screen is a large "Notification Area". That is a misnomer because its primary use is to house icons representing the kind of things Gnome 2 called applets. In fact, the Notification Area remains unseen when Notifications pop up. On the other hand, the presence of the mouse cursor will un-hide the entire Notification Area, even if contains only a single icon. The effect is remarkably like a Gnome 2 panel set to autohide.
The thing that passes for a dock in Gnome 3 is merely an over-large stack of unalterable icons. It is as if the Gnome 2 code that handled favorites in a panel was edited into a vertical stack fixed to the left edge of the screen. with the size of the icons increased to a size comfortable for finger stabbing. I do not stab at my monitor, so their unalterable size is very much a negative.
While most users find Gnome 3 supremely resistant to configuration, there are a few who assert it is highly configurable thanks to its dependence on HTML, CSS and Javascript. That's a specious claim. First, because anyone who knows HTMl, CSS and/or Javascript is a developer, not a user. Ease of configurability by developers doesn't count. Second, even if you do have those skills, nothing is included in Gnome 3 to help you identify which CSS selectors, for example, control which portions of the interface. Even for a skilled HTML/CSS/Javascript developer, tweaking the interface is a trial and error crapshoot.
Some have derided Gnome for allegedly copying portions of OS X's interface. That is not justified because the OS X interface is much more usable than the Gnome 3 interface. For example, the Launch Pad in OS X can be entirely ignored by a user with no decrease in capabilities. The Gnome 3 version of that Apple mistake, called the Application Overview, provides the *sole* access to applications offered by Gnome. It cannot be ignored.
Gnome 3 has, in fact, been subject to much criticism that amounts to little more than Gnome 2 nostalgia. However, it has also received a very large amount of justifiable criticism from people who, like me, find it a disappointingly annoying interface in actual daily use that provides no positive counterweights to the increased amount of work a user must do to accomplish basic desktop tasks.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 15, 2012 13:23 UTC (Thu) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link] The thing that passes for a dock in Gnome 3 is merely an over-large stack of unalterable iconsThey can be altered using the icons' context menus. You can also drag an application window over the dock (if it has an icon to use), or drag an icon out of the dock. (Fedora 17, Gnome 3.4)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 12:23 UTC (Fri) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
>>"They can be altered using the icons' context menus. You can also drag an application window over the dock (if it has an icon to use), or drag an icon out of the dock."
Can I change the size of the icons? Can I rearrange them? Can I relocate the dock to the bottom or the right? Can I add an icon for an arbitrary folder and expose its contents with a right click? Does the dock tell me if an applications is currently open? Can I add an icon to trigger the App Overview so I only see it when I choose to see it?
Re: Corner mouse slamming -- I want to see the dock by moving my mouse cursor to *any* spot along the length the dock occupies. When I do that, I do not want the rest of my desktop to be hidden by a useless display of the App Overview and the Workspace sidebar. I.e., I want to see the Dock only when I want to see it, the App Overview only when I want to see it, and the Workspaces only when I want to see them, and I want separate actions to trigger the display of each. In addition, i want them to be mouse actions. (If I wanted to be a keyboard type, I'd just run something like Awesome.)
I'd also really like a way to locate and launch an app that bypasses the App Overview. That display is a blatant ripoff of Launchpad in OS X, but, at least there a user can get along quite happily without ever using it.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 18:29 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link] Can I change the size of the icons?Depending the number of icons, they will dynamically reduce their size.| Can I rearrange them?Yes throught Drag-n-drop Can I relocate the dock to the bottom or the right?Yes, via dock extension provided by your distribution, you can even modify through /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions Can I add an icon for an arbitrary folder and expose its contents with a right click?Yes you can. Does the dock tell me if an applications is currently open?Yes, with highlighted icon for that application. Overview mode also display that current open application depending the workspace. Can I add an icon to trigger the App Overview so I only see it when I choose to see it? Yes. You can also disable the left corner if you desire via noripple extension denpending of your distribution. The rest of tools available via https://extensions.gnome.org, explore and custom your working environment as you please.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 19:18 UTC (Fri) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
Dynamic resizing is out of my control. I only put a few icons in the dock. I want to decide how big the icons are, not go along with an anonymous developer's opinion. I know this can be done by editing CSS and/or javascript. (I've done it.) But, as far as I can determine, no user documentation for this exists (the edits are hit and miss, because there's no way to determine, for example, what CSS selectors control which portions of the interface other than via hit or miss.). Nor is there any guarantee that the edits will be preserved through upgrades. What I really want is a preferences panel that allows me to manipulate the dock. I'm a user. It's bogus to expect me to accomplish my objectives by editing Gnome source files.
I'm running Gnome 3.6.2 on a updated Fedora 18 nightly. I don't see any extensions at extensions.gnome.org to relocate the launcher.
I'm also wary of relying on the availability of extensions from one upgrade to the next, and do not know if Gnome stands behind them or if users are at the mercy of the extension writers.
How does one get a folder into the launcher? I can get an icon for Nautilus in there, but not a folder.I can't drag a folder from Nautilus into the dock. The dock is visible only during overview mode, while an app like Nautilus is active only away from Overview mode.
I had not noticed the little glow in the dock signaling an active application. It is subtle.
I don't want to kill the single hot-corner. I just want to have the dock behave as a normal dock. I.e., either autohide and be made visible by pushing the mouse cursor against that edge of the screen. Or, remain displayed permanently. In other words, I want to be able to access the dock without overlaying my desktop with the App Overview and the Workspace sidebar. The reason a user accesses the dock is to launch something, so forcing a display of the App Overview at the same time is unnecessary. I only need the overview if the app is not already in the dock.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 22:01 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
> What I really want is a preferences panel that allows me to manipulate the dock. I'm a user. It's bogus to expect me to accomplish my objectives by editing Gnome source files.
Dash to dock extension which I tried allow to resize the icons. Make sure to install SettingCenter where you can select Extensions preference under your usename on top-right.
> I'm running Gnome 3.6.2 on a updated Fedora 18 nightly. I don't see any extensions at extensions.gnome.org to relocate the launcher.
Excellent, I am also running updated Fedora 18 on my laptop. Some extensions like dock or weather are not available to extensions.gnome.org but are present in Fedora repository.
> I'm also wary of relying on the availability of extensions from one upgrade to the next, and do not know if Gnome stands behind them or if users are at the mercy of the extension writers.
> How does one get a folder into the launcher? I can get an icon for Nautilus in there, but not a folder.I can't drag a folder from Nautilus into the dock. The dock is visible only during overview mode, while an app like Nautilus is active only away from Overview mode.
As mentioned above, "Dash to Dock" allows your dock to be visible regardless the mode. You are right that Folder drag doesn't work for the dock. The reason of its non-available is probably due to broken API. However, you can enable the file manager behaviour background through Gnome-teak-tool -> Files which will display all files and folders. Prob
> I don't want to kill the single hot-corner. I just want to have the dock behave as a normal dock. I.e., either autohide and be made visible by pushing the mouse cursor against that edge of the screen. Or, remain displayed permanently. In other words, I want to be able to access the dock without overlaying my desktop with the App Overview and the Workspace sidebar.
See above.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 17, 2012 2:25 UTC (Sat) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
After doing all that, and assuming it works, what advantage have I gained over Gnome 2? For that matter, what does stock Gnome 3 give me that Gnome 2 does not? GTK3 apps? Yes, but they aren't a Gnome 3 exclusive.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 23, 2012 9:11 UTC (Fri) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]
If you want nothing the new Gnome offers you, why do you keep talking about it? Apart from being the official successor of Gnome 2 and not being installable in parallel (a problem now solved with MATE), what exactly drives you to go to a comment thread and complain? I'm honestly asking because I don't get it.
Usually people complain about stuff they actually want or have to use. How you could end up in the position of having to use Gnome 3 is beyond me.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 23, 2012 12:31 UTC (Fri) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
1. It's an interesting topic. Interface design is an unsolved problem. No one does it very well. Gnome 3 is actually the only really innovative approach out there at present. Everyone else remains with some version of the panel/dock and desktop icons approach. Those approaches -- MATE, Cinnamon, etc., -- are dead ends.
2. I actually like Gnome 3 and I'm not particularly infatuated with Gnome 2. My frustration with Gnome 3 comes from the rigidity of some of the underlying design decisions. It could be so much better if it allowed itself just a bit more flexibility. For example, I don't agree that preventing resizing of the dock is a positive feature. The App Overview is an attempt to solve the problem of providing access to potentially hundreds of apps. I think its faulty in concept because it is used to locate and launch apps users use infrequently. That infrequent use means they won't find the app by recognizing the icon, but will simply look for the name. So, the icons really serve little purpose there. (The hierarchical menu approaches of Gnome 2 and KDE break down when they contain a large number of entries.)
3. It's "official successor" status is irrelevant.
4. The Gnome team exaggerates the notion that hostility to Gnome 3 is all down to simple Gnome 2 fanboyism. Likewise, users who insist that Gnome "listen" to detractors and let them guide their designs are naive and very wrong. They would have us simply stay with Gnome 2 forever, and that's untenable.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 0:39 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
I had a look at a couple of Windows 8 interface movies on YouTube a few days ago. It is remarkable how many of the ideas are similar to Gnome Shell.
For instance, there is this notion of slamming the mouse in the corner. All well and good, unless you have a few windows open, each of which has a full VM screen in it. How on earth is one supposed to slam the mouse in the corners there? At least Windows 8 offers traditional desktop in one of the tiles...
Ditto keyboard shortcuts, which may not transfer properly over whatever connection method one uses to see the remote side. Confusion ensues - will the workspace locally or remotely be changed? Will we enter tiles here or there? Having GUI that works easily with a mouse is not an option - it's essential.
Then there is the notion of either working full screen or working with two windows side by side. That's it. As if nobody ever needs more than that on the screen. I mean, haven't people seen the screens of stock brokers on the news?
Nobody seems to think about real use cases any more.
And then there are technology choices. Sure, writing Javascript and not compiling is easier than writing compiled C or whatever other language. But, you end up with a desktop that feels like it's a script (which it is) - flimsy instead of snappy. It shows. In a way, it reminds of days when in Red Hat Linux 5.0 lots of little tools were written in TK. Sure, it worked, but it wasn't the best.
So, yeah, I agree with you. It's baffling...
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 3:03 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link] I had a look at a couple of Windows 8 interface movies on YouTube a few days ago. It is remarkable how many of the ideas are similar to Gnome Shell.Having run Windows 8 through Gnome-Box, Virtual Box or even testing through retail, I agree. Desktop environments borrow each other ideas. Difference is Windows 8 interface is a pig in term of storage. For instance, there is this notion of slamming the mouse in the corner. All well and good, unless you have a few windows open, each of which has a full VM screen in it. How on earth is one supposed to slam the mouse in the corners there? At least Windows 8 offers traditional desktop in one of the tiles...Slamming the mouse to the corner is one of methods, pressing Super Key (usually Microsoft Logo icon) is another access the menu. You have different options to access the menu (or Start/Apple depending the system). You do the same motion to access to the very corner expect clicking on that button on the traditional desktop. What about Clicking start button then meticulously try to select one of applications or items inside the menu? What you describe is how you were hard trained to use that paradigm without giving much flexibility to yourself. Traditional desktop layout can still be made on Gnome Shell displaying its flexibility. Ditto keyboard shortcuts, which may not transfer properly over whatever connection method one uses to see the remote side. Confusion ensues - will the workspace locally or remotely be changed? Will we enter tiles here or there? Having GUI that works easily with a mouse is not an option - it's essential.Keyboard shortcuts work fine though SPICE, VNC. Customization of keyboard shortcut is also available. I think that fear is unfounded without giving a try, list what could be improved. Extensions are a good source to experiment different solution before implementing one of them to the core. Then there is the notion of either working full screen or working with two windows side by side. That's it. As if nobody ever needs more than that on the screen. I mean, haven't people seen the screens of stock brokers on the news?Gnome Shell has extensions that allow you to work with more than tiles at once on the same screen: shellshape (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/294/shellshape/). Fullscreen? Reserve one for a workspace and multiple windows to another. Nobody seems to think about real use cases any more.Each users have different needs, you have one, I have another. Think Gnome Shell nothing more as a base/core, with plethora of option to choose to suit our different tastes. Your example of tiles above is one of them. ...In a way, it reminds of days when in Red Hat Linux 5.0 lots of little tools were written in TK. Sure, it worked, but it wasn't the best.That example shows the possibility and an attempt to think outside the box. I leave to that.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 5:13 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Think Gnome Shell nothing more as a base/core, with plethora of option to choose to suit our different tastes.
I think the parent poster explained it best:
> While most users find Gnome 3 supremely resistant to configuration, there are a few who assert it is highly configurable thanks to its dependence on HTML, CSS and Javascript. That's a specious claim. First, because anyone who knows HTMl, CSS and/or Javascript is a developer, not a user. Ease of configurability by developers doesn't count. Second, even if you do have those skills, nothing is included in Gnome 3 to help you identify which CSS selectors, for example, control which portions of the interface. Even for a skilled HTML/CSS/Javascript developer, tweaking the interface is a trial and error crapshoot.
Just to give you an example of how extensions are not a replacement for user configuration, check out all the extensions that, for instance, want to be the left most element in the panel. Which one will actually be the left most? The one that starts last. If it wasn't tragic, it would be rather funny.
> That example shows the possibility and an attempt to think outside the box. I leave to that.
Have you ever even used Red Hat Linux 5.0 (not RHEL5)?
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 19:14 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
> While most users find Gnome 3 supremely resistant to configuration, there are a few who assert it is highly configurable thanks to its dependence on HTML, CSS and Javascript. That's a specious claim. First, because anyone who knows HTMl, CSS and/or Javascript is a developer, not a user.
By time, that quote is becoming less relevant. Developers are nothing more than specialized users themselves, the reverse is not necessarily true.
> Ease of configurability by developers doesn't count.
> Second, even if you do have those skills, nothing is included in Gnome 3 to help you identify which CSS selectors, for example, control which portions of the interface. Even for a skilled HTML/CSS/Javascript developer, tweaking the interface is a trial and error crapshoot.
Looking at the gnome-shell.css, each class lists different components are self-explained. Same with javascript. What could be improved is the documentation which is still incomplete.
> Just to give you an example of how extensions are not a replacement for user configuration, check out all the extensions that, for instance, want to be the left most element in the panel. Which one will actually be the left most? The one that starts last.
I am not sure what you mean about the left. It is not very clear.
As for the use of RHEL5, no I haven't. I mostly work with Fedora which suits my need as a primarily desktop for design stuff.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 16, 2012 21:05 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
> Developers are nothing more than specialized users themselves, the reverse is not necessarily true.
Beyond that. Firefox and GNOME both have a set of things that are exposed to the user in a control panel. Both have an advanced settings method for advanced users (about:config and gsettings). And both are arbitrarily extensible via HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
It is this last point which is the pivotal one here because that's the level at which you're arguing. The argument of the OP is that
> because anyone who knows HTMl, CSS and/or Javascript is a developer, not a user.
Their argument would then be, in the Firefox case, that you cannot claim that Firefox is configurable since in order to configure it via HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you have to be a programmer.
In this light the argument seems ridiculous. Non-programmer users install GNOME extensions (from the website https://extensions.gnome.org/ or through their distro), the same as they do in Firefox (addons.mozilla.org)
(The second part that was not quoted is a fair (assuming completely true) argument that the tooling sucks but not that it's not configurable via the aforementioned methods.)
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 17, 2012 3:45 UTC (Sat) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
Extensions are irrelevant because they are not part of Gnome and are not supported by Gnome. If they were, releases would be accompanied by collections of tested, working, extensions. Their relationship to Gnome is much like that of Wordpress plugins to Wordpress. I.e., use at your own risk.
There is nothing in Gnome3 like about:config. Dconf/gconf are available, but without user documentation. ("Want to add an app to the panel? Here's how..... Want to eliminate the icons from the App Overview and see a list of names? Here's how....")
Besides, almost all extensions attempt to revive Gnome2-like capabilities that were stripped out of Gnome3. The irony of that is apparent.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 17, 2012 6:55 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Their argument would then be, in the Firefox case, that you cannot claim that Firefox is configurable since in order to configure it via HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you have to be a programmer.
Except, of course, FF can be and is configured without writing HTML, CSS or Javascript.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 17, 2012 3:28 UTC (Sat) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
CSS classes do not translate well to on-screen elements. When I want to see the CSS that affects an element in a web page, I use the browser's "Inspect Element" tool to display all the CSS related to that element. Gnome3 lacks that capability. More to the point, I come to Gnome3 as a user. I do not want to be forced to resort to manual coding, even if I have the skills. That's a mark of Gnome's shortcoming.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 17, 2012 6:53 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> I am not sure what you mean about the left. It is not very clear.
I mean, install workspacebar and axe menu extensions. See which one turns out to be the leftmost in the panel. There is no such confusion in Gnome 2.
> As for the use of RHEL5, no I haven't. I mostly work with Fedora which suits my need as a primarily desktop for design stuff.
I was not talking about RHEL5. I was talking about Red Hat Linux 5.0.
As for the rest of the stuff, are you seriously saying that users should edit CSS? Ridiculous.
Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users Posted Nov 17, 2012 2:51 UTC (Sat) by wagerrard (subscriber, #87558) [Link]
I haven't used Windows in more than 10 years, so I'm not hardwired to use any Start button. Pressing the Apple key at the OS X desktop does nothing.
Keyboard shortcuts are of no use when my fingers are off the keyboard, which is most of the time. And to reiterate, i do not need to see workspaces and a huge stack of oversized icons hiding my desktop when I only want to make the dock visible.
The reasons Gnome3 is widely criticized are legitimate and are rooted in its purposeful and deliberate reductions in capability. (Pointing to extensions is inappropriate because they are unsupported by Gnome and often break with upgrades. I.e., they are undependable.)
Much of the defense of Gnome3 amounts to an attack on the character and working preferences of those who do not like it. Obviously, that is also inappropriate. The burden is on Gnome3 enthusiasts to explain what new non-style capabilities it delivers compared to its predecessor or its contempoaries.
To be specific, I like the look of Gnome3, but it wants me to change more than a decade's worth of Linux habits for no perceptible increase in capability, speed, or ease of use. Why, then, should I bother?
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