| |||||||||||||
Mobile plans?Mobile plans?Posted Mar 29, 2013 15:56 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)In reply to: Mobile plans? by rsidd Parent article: GNOME 3.8 released
In most organizations that deploy Linux that I am aware of (which isn't the majority of Linux usage at all), if you are willing to manage your systems on your own, you get to chose what you install (unless you are a sales person or customer facing role) and besides, most distros have different choices for default already and RHEL customers can and do install KDE by default on their systems roughly 1/2 of the time. So yeah, no need to fuss.
(Log in to post comments)
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 4, 2013 3:58 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Unless you were happy with Gnome 2 of course. People who grew accustomed to Gnome 2 have good reason to complain.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 4, 2013 4:26 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Not really. GNOME 2 UI is preserved reasonably well in classic mode or the MATE project.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 4, 2013 11:38 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] People don't want "reasonably well". They want "perfectly" - and they're not being unreasonable by wanting that.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 4, 2013 15:21 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
MATE reflects GNOME 2 UI perfectly because it *is* GNOME 2. You are grasping at straws so badly.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 6, 2013 1:11 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
MATE is *not* GNOME 2. The code is forked from GNOME 2, but the user experience is quite different, because:
a) You have to recreate all your settings (they had to rename the gconf keys)
b) You have to relearn what application names correspond to what applications, because they had to change all of them.
It is definitely not a smooth replacement. Particularly not with those users less capable of helping themselves.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 4, 2013 16:53 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
I am so utterly uninterested in "preservation".
I am also uninterested in learning all new everything every five years.
A middle ground seems like the ideal target to shoot for, no?
Gotta say, if I were on the Gnome team, I'd be rather embarrassed that the MATE project even exists.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 4, 2013 17:48 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"Middle ground" sounds good for some people but I think the newer UI in GNOME Shell and Unity etc are definitely worth exploring. I don't see MATE as a problem for GNOME anymore than the existence of GNOME represents a failure for KDE. On the contrary, I think the existence of MATE leaves GNOME 3 out to try something different. If MATE becomes more popular over time, GNOME as a project can and should reevaluate their decisions.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 6, 2013 14:19 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
As long as Gnome is an experimental plaything, it will make a miserable production desktop. If exploration is your goal then that's fine, I just wish the Gnome project would be clear about that. Then I wouldn't have deployed it on my neighbors' computers (way to confirm some of the bad things they've heard about Linux, argh).
MATE is already shockingly popular. If it's not a clear indication that Gnome as a project should reevaluate their decisions, what more will it take?
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 6, 2013 14:37 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I don't know how productive you are but it works fine for many of us as I have already noted and I would refrain from blanket statements like that if I were you. Exploring a different path doesn't make it an experimental desktop. As far as MATE being "shockingly popular", that lacks any real references. We will have to see the impact of classic mode in 3.8 as well.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 6, 2013 18:09 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
I stand behind my statement that exploratory playthings make miserable production desktops. User retraining is not time well spent. If you disagree, I'd love to hear the rationale.
As you know, nobody can quote meaningful Linux desktop install numbers. But check out the # of commits to MATE and the vitality of the forum: http://forums.mate-desktop.org/ . It's motivated quite a number of people. That's got to mean something to you, no?
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 6, 2013 23:14 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"Exploratory playthings" has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Also # of commits is not indicative of popularity of the desktop environment itself and one cannot claim MATE is shockingly popular without any meaningful way to quantify it.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 8, 2013 16:30 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
You know very well there's no way to meaningfully quantify desktop numbers so I'm not quite sure why you're asking for them.
Since you seem to want me to be pedantic, this is what I meant by "shockingly popular": I thought MATE would stall out after a year or two but I'm shocked that its releases are still coming steadily and rapidly, meaningful commits are landing, the forums are lively, and they've made some real architectural fixes." Overall, qutie impressive. Does that make sense?
So, allow me to ask again... What more will it take for you to notice that MATE is "becoming more popular over time"?
I guess we must agree to disagree on whether Gnome 3 was a pretty experimental release. Was there much user testing that I'm not aware of? If so, I'd love to see the reports.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 8, 2013 17:16 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I ask for some way to quantify it (not just numbers) to make a point. You cannot claim something is "shockingly popular" based on the fact that you assumed it will die quietly. I see the desktop environments as popular when more distribution ship it by default.
Yes, we clearly disagree and if the only way for you to accept a desktop environment as non experimental is user studies, all modern desktop environments in Linux are experimental.
Mobile plans? Posted Apr 9, 2013 2:06 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Did you miss this? "its releases are still coming steadily and rapidly, meaningful commits are landing, the forums are lively, and they've made some real architectural fixes. Overall, qutie impressive." I'm not quite sure why you only responded to my throwaway lead-in statement.
Guess I'll ask another time: what more would you like to see?
Obviously I'll accept a desktop environment if it continues to work the way it always has (hopefully with good, evolutionary changes). But throwing away existing muscle memory and going a completely new direction? Yes, that sounds pretty experimental, doesn't it?
Unless you did user testing / prereleases+feedback / etc first. Then it would be far less bold of an experiment. Was this the case?
|
|||||||||||||