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Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power usersMena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power usersPosted Nov 10, 2012 22:58 UTC (Sat) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106)In reply to: Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users by nmav Parent article: Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users
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.
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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 :)
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