GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Posted Dec 13, 2005 19:23 UTC (Tue) by cventers (guest, #31465)In reply to: GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition by jdub
Parent article: GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Mine too. Now in the process, can you guys make your GNOME desktop a
little more functional and powerful so that it doesn't feel like I'm
using an airport kiosk?
Posted Dec 13, 2005 19:37 UTC (Tue)
by jdub (guest, #27)
[Link] (15 responses)
Posted Dec 13, 2005 20:05 UTC (Tue)
by cventers (guest, #31465)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Dec 13, 2005 20:42 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Dec 14, 2005 5:17 UTC (Wed)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Dec 14, 2005 11:45 UTC (Wed)
by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624)
[Link]
Posted Dec 14, 2005 13:58 UTC (Wed)
by mauvaisours (guest, #6130)
[Link]
Posted Dec 15, 2005 22:25 UTC (Thu)
by emj (guest, #14307)
[Link]
On bigger multiuser system it's even worse, have you ever tried to find the account of your friend John in the local /afs.. "Now was is /afs/fnord.se/homes/h/dk/sf/u2313n23? I can't really remmeber... "
Posted Dec 27, 2005 23:05 UTC (Tue)
by quintesse (guest, #14569)
[Link]
OMG!!! Do you know how many times I screamed at that stupid dialog because I thought I couldn't enter a location?
I positively hate hidden functionality and think all GUIs should be "discoverable" which means that you should be able to learn at least 99% of its functionality just by "looking around".
I find that most of the time for me Gnome either does not have the functionality I want or they have hidden it so well that even I as a very experienced user can't find it.
But it's not only Gnome, I love Firefox for example but I still miss some of the settings that you could find in the Mozilla preferences. I want a button "Trust me, I know what I'm doing" that show me all those option pages they removed! (And please, do NOT tell me about about:config!!)
Posted Dec 13, 2005 23:16 UTC (Tue)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link] (1 responses)
Well I am just wanting to open up a document that I filed away in the way that I wanted, but I when I have finished opening up
I now have 4 windows I dont want to stay open and 2 that I do.. so I end up spending a lot of time closing stuff.
[And switching to 'classic' mode makes everything look like it is GNOME-0.8 and not as featured as the KDE desktop.]
I currently use GNOME, but I am coming this close to switching over to KDE even if it means being a third class citizen on Fedora.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 6:55 UTC (Wed)
by Mithrandir (guest, #3031)
[Link]
Posted Dec 14, 2005 8:25 UTC (Wed)
by heini (guest, #33614)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Dec 14, 2005 20:12 UTC (Wed)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Dec 15, 2005 7:15 UTC (Thu)
by heini (guest, #33614)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Dec 15, 2005 9:48 UTC (Thu)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Dec 15, 2005 10:33 UTC (Thu)
by dvdeug (guest, #10998)
[Link]
Posted Dec 16, 2005 17:47 UTC (Fri)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link]
I do agree that there should be some kind of regional settings option in the preferences menu that would allow one to change the value of LANG. LANGUAGE and the various LC_* variables that will be used the next time one logs in.
Posted Dec 14, 2005 20:26 UTC (Wed)
by aigarius (subscriber, #7329)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Dec 15, 2005 7:41 UTC (Thu)
by pascal.martin (guest, #2995)
[Link]
As logon time kept increasing, the frustration of not being able to restore my config convinced me to switch to Xfce:
Posted Dec 15, 2005 15:23 UTC (Thu)
by mightyduck (guest, #23760)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Dec 23, 2005 4:54 UTC (Fri)
by obi (guest, #5784)
[Link]
I'm a programmer too, and I do appreciate Gnome's "not-in-your-face"-ness. Yes, there is some functionality missing, but I'm willing to bet it's not by design, but simply because they didn't get round to it yet, or in the worst case that it's not really a high priority.
Every time I try KDE, I appreciate the polish and some great technology, but I just can't cope with the UI feel for a very long time. Considering how many pro-KDE comments there were, I can see not everyone feels the same way as me. It just goes to show that it's good there are choices, and I'd encourage all the desktop projects out there to continue finding their unique identity.
Perhaps some constructive feedback may actually get you where you want to go.GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Well, my apologies for stepping over the line a bit with that last post. GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
The airport kiosk remark is just the best describing remark I've come up
with after tinkering with GNOME a few times in between spans on KDE over
the years. (IIRC, my earliest time spent running around on an actual
Linux *desktop* was Red Hat 5 or 6).
My biggest criticism (is this constructive?) of GNOME is that every app
and dialog feels like it was deliberately reduced from what it could have
been. In some cases, this is genius and the dialog is simple / elegant /
pretty. But way too often does it simply get in the way (Your file picker
is a *big* example - why won't it let me sort by file type and why isn't
it immediately evident that I can type a location?)
If GNOME stood alone on the desktop market, I think it would be a great
desktop. The fact is that it stands next to KDE, and even though I admire
your looks and in *some* places the simplicity, any time I spend any
length of time at all in GNOME I come away frustrated after X number of
important things appear to have been intentionally excluded. (X is
porportional to the amount of time I spend on GNOME)
I only learned about the `Ctrl-L to type' thing by following that mailing list thread. Affordances in GNOME are frequently absolutely *awful*, even in very widely-used common dialogs.GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
In my opinion, Gnome shouldn't even have a file picker. Saving a document should just ask for a name and drop it in a default location. After that you can put it somewhere different with Nautilus. Opening a document shouldn't even get a dialog: open it from Nautilus or drag and drop it.GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Gah, do that and I'll give up helping the folks I know who use GNOME get GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
themselves out of trouble!
Have you learned about this useful little thing called "Folders" that helps you organize what you do ?GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Well you are right in one sense, what should a user do in the root? You really should have everything in your home directory, perhaps in the "my Documents" folder. Or even better let people "tag" their files, and make it a database.GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
"why isn't it immediately evident that I can type a location?"GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
One of the big things I have to do for customers is to turn off the spatial perspective in nautilus. People hate having to close 15 windows as they went searching for something in their directory tree structure.. but every time I and others mention it.. its that we arent understanding what we should do.. Here is a sample of what multiple customers have complained about:GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Desktop
Work Documents
Project XYZ
2005
Work Orders
Agreed. At least my default desktop distro (Ubuntu) has made that change for me. :)GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
One simple thing: You mentioned this doctor w/o computer knowledge. GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Imagine it was a german doctor, who simply would like to see his desktop
in german language. I am a KDE user and when I start KDE the first time, a
configuration wizard pops up where the very first thing I can choose is
the language.
Now on to Gnome (or XFCE). Whenever a new version is released, I try it
out. I am not asked to choose my language. I spend 15 to 30 minutes to
find out how to change it to german (other than setting some ENV vars, I
know how to do that). I finally give up and stay with KDE, and so will the
german doctor, he doesn't know how to set ENV vars.
GDM, choose the language before you log in... Now that was hard, huh?GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
You really think this is a good idea, don't you? GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
No other display manager out there let's you choose the language,
because it's simply stupid to put it there.
1) This locks Gnome users to using GDM, but what if they have no
control over what display manager is used (because it's not their
machine)?
2) You have to re-login to change the language.
3) What if you don't use any display manager at all?
So this makes the situation even more worse, sorry.
1) I expected you wanted the whole package.GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
2) New user = new login... Or are we schizo here?
3) If you don't use a display manager, you'd mostly be a shell user (Or one of those strange people who login with the text console and do a startx as the only command there), and used to LC_LANG if you want another language.
Changing the display manager is simply not possible for anyone using a multiuser system where the admin doesn't use Gnome. And it gets real tiring when every program expects that you're running the whole system; is it that unreasonable to try and choose the better program instead of the one from GNOME?GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
Surely you always have to re-login to change the language: a process may only alter its own environment, and anyway translated strings are usually loaded by an application at startup, and never altered.GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
I am a programmer, but I still want my desktop to "just work". I do not want to configure things - I have work to do. Maybe sometimes there is an option missing, but the time I spend configuring my desktop is tiny compared to time I spend working. If there are more options - I will spend more time on useless configuration just because I *have to* look through all the options.GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
I am all on Gnome about this one - if you want to work, just work and forget about configuring.
I am in a similar situation, except for a few things:GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
- Gnome removed some of the options I did setup. I felt cheated.
- Despite its "keep it simple" mantra, Gnome has become really heavy.
- Gnome has had a tendency to forget my config on upgrade (debian specific?)
- Xfce is simple and has not much more options than Gnome,
- but it starts much faster and takes up less memory.
- It tends to loose the user's config less often (your mileage may vary).
- It still use GTK (I don't like C++, the language made complicated so to maximize memory leaks :-)
Oh, come on, this is just BS. Nobody forces you to look through all GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition
available config options, you don't *have to*. I use KDE and I never scan
the whole control center and go through all the options. I have maybe a
handful of things I change on a new system (like "focus follows mouse"
for instance) and then I'm able to work. But if for some reason I decide
to tweak some option because my habit changed or I discovered a more
practical way of doing things I know the option is there and I can easily
find and change it.
Maybe it's BS for you, but you seem to think that everyone thinks like you. I agree with the parent - seeing boatloads of options just irk me. And this visual annoyance happens every time I have to search for an option. And I always feel something is set up "wrong", but I don't know what (maybe I'm paranoid). GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition