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Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 11, 2004 2:10 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
In reply to: Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) by rfunk
Parent article: Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)

> Criticisms of the spatial file manager tend to come exclusively from
people unaccustomed to it, and are akin to a Windows user rejecting Linux
because Linux is just too different.

I take issue with the above claim. I have been running fedora rawhide for months and I can say without any reservation that spatial is virtually unusable. I tried to like it. I *really* tried to like it. But there is just nothing about it to like.

I have always heartily approved of the way that Gnome 2.x has been simplified and streamlined. But spatial nautilus ties the users hands behind his back, blindfolds him, and spins him around. It's just insane.

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Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 11, 2004 3:11 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

Do note that Fedora only very recently got the completed Nautilus with completed spatial mode. If you are basing your opinion on code that was in there months ago, you are basing your opinion on half-finished work.

I've found spatial nautilus to be a complete pleasure. Faster, simpler, cleaner, and easier. And that's coming from someone who lives in a shell prompt most of the time and develops a lot of web (navigational) software. Advanced user if ever there was one, and yet I do indeed prefer spatial. Same as the GNOME developers that implemented spatial mode.

So far as Windows/OS X, neither are good indicators of user preference of spatial vs navigational. Most OS X users I've spoken too prefer the old spatial finder over the OS X navigational finder. And Windows was _never_ spatial at all; spatial means a hell of a lot more than just "opens folder in new window," which is the only similarity spatial nautilus has to old Windows file manager.

If you don't like spatial, use browser mode. If you don't like Nautilus, use Velocity. If you don't like GNOME, quit wasting your time bitching and just use something else. I find GNOME to be the best desktop around, and so do quite a few other users. If it's not to your taste, fine. Nobody is forcing you to use it.

Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 11, 2004 15:56 UTC (Tue) by Prototerm (guest, #20227) [Link]

If you don't like GNOME, quit wasting your time bitching and just use something else.

It's so nice when two people have a polite conversation, listening to what the other has to say, without resorting to name-calling and the like. After all, to do otherwise would be so...Slashdot...wouldn't it?

And while the above quote makes a good point, let's remember that distros like Red Hat are designed to work best with Gnome, and that tools like Ximian's desktop require it. The user may feel they don't have a choice in using Gnome for their particular situation. Second, they may actually love Gnome, except for that one feature that drives them crazy.

Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)

Posted May 11, 2004 12:56 UTC (Tue) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

> I have been running fedora rawhide for months and I can say without any reservation that spatial is virtually unusable. I tried to like it. I *really* tried to like it. But there is just nothing about it to like.

Fair, enough, but as I've pointed out before there are people who prefer the spatial browsing. All my users here complained when given the gnome 2.4 browser because 'everything keeps appearing in the same window - I can't find anything', and were very happy when I switched it to spatial browsing. For them the 2.6 default is 'correct'.

And petreley is wrong when he says no mature OS uses it - RISC OS does - that's a 20-year old OS these days and it has always worked this way and still does. It's not very popular these days, especially outside the UK and Germany, due to not being available for x86 hardware, but it's users are very happy with the UI, and always have been.

Personally I use MC for file navigation, even on the gnome desktop.