Questions for deployments of GNOME [LWN.net]

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 9:43 UTC (Sat) by philips (guest, #937) [Link] (39 responses)

Having observed on numerous occasions how GNOME /employees/ are using such studies, I'm already terrified about next "enhancements" made to the desktop.

I wish the gnome 1.4 times back.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 11:34 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (7 responses)

Other than the totally brain dead act of making spatial the default for Nautilus, I have rather come to like the new simplified Gnome. I support a lot of desktop users, with new users being added regularly. The new users take to Gnome fairly readily and I attribute that to the UI improvements made over recent years.

I use it myself for 2 reasons:

1. I believe in eating my own dogfood. If my users use it, so will I.
2. I like it.

However, I understand that some people want every little detail customized to their liking. And to that end, Gnome is but one choice. KDE has a different philosophy. And then there is E.

Personally, I have to move around from desktop to desktop a lot, so I've found that it really pays to get myself used to using default settings. Otherwise, I'd spend all my time configuring and have no time for actual work!

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 20:30 UTC (Sat) by philips (guest, #937) [Link] (6 responses)

> Otherwise, I'd spend all my time configuring and
> have no time for actual work!

I'd rather once spend one week configuring my desktop, rather then have it constantly eating five minutes out of every my working hour. Former is the case for KDE. Later is the case for GNOME.

PS At last, I hope by now GNOME got shortcut to minimize window and window minimizition animation finally got fixed.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 17:07 UTC (Sun) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link] (2 responses)

What is it in Gnome that eats away 5 minutes every hour ? I am curious, as I use both KDE and Gnome and don't find them that different.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 14:41 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

It's amazing, the silence you get when you ask for specifics, isn't it?

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:11 UTC (Mon) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

What is it in Gnome that eats away 5 minutes every hour ?

See http://lwn.net/Articles/187257/ below for an example.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:33 UTC (Sun) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link]

There has always been a minimize shortcut.
Or maybe i spend 20 minutes to set it up.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 14:52 UTC (Mon) by jeld (guest, #22397) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, that works if you have the same system every time. If I have to spend a week to customize to my liking every client desktop I happen to work with, I will be out of a job :)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:23 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Keep your config somewhere network-accessible and suck it down when neeeded. :)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 13:23 UTC (Sat) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (30 responses)

Ewwww, 1.4....

GNOME is 10000 times better today, nice, clean, simple and beautiful instead of that horrendous torrent of useless features in the 1.4 days (And KDE).

The only thing I ever missed were the always on top feature of all windows (Not only special windows like in that crappy MS system that I'm forced to use much more than I'd like to), and with Compiz/XGL it's there, so everything is perfect now! :D

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 1:57 UTC (Sun) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree. Personally Gnome 1.x series was utter shit. I couldn't stand using it.

Now, especially after gnome 2.4 or 2.6 it is very very good.

Spatial browsing was a good idea too.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 18:23 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

> Spatial browsing was a good idea too.

Drag, could you elaborate on this? I've already seen all the Ivory Tower arguments. And I don't buy into them. But a good, real world, "I love spatial bacause it let's me..," or I love spatial because it frees me from..." or "My user's love spatial because..." would really be of interest.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 8:11 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (27 responses)

Eh, no.

Gnome 1.4 was rough, but could be made to work.

The new versions have become absolutely unusable from my point of view, and I know a lot of folks agree with me. There's a whole mountain of reasons for that, from the decision to make windows shortcut keys default and unix ones impossible to restore, to the decision to choose the absolute worst window manager available and remove the functionality that used to allow the user to change the default choice.

GNOME obviously aims to clone ms-windows. I suppose that's fine for folks that really want that system but don't want to pay for it. For people that don't want that system, though, it's a plague.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 8:26 UTC (Mon) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] (26 responses)

One really funny thing is that both GNOME and KDE are often blamed of becoming a windows clone :)

I have that opinion about KDE, probably because my experience in Windows was a lot of cluttered applications, taskbar icons etc.. and with KDE the "cluttered" is the first thing that comes to one's mind when Konqueror, Start menu or Control Center is opened and explored.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 9:35 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (25 responses)

Sadly, both of them aim to provide something of a windows clone.

Difference is, if you don't want that, KDE will listen to you. You can get unix shortcut keys, you can get somewhat sensible window controls, you can get separate focus and raise/lower behaviour, and so on. It even comes up the first time you run it and ASKS what sort of behaviour you prefer. GNOME (these days) won't let you change anything. It doesn't care at all what sort of behaviour you prefer, it knows best and you silly 'end-users' are supposed to smile and eat your spam. You do it the way the GNOME developers tell you to do it, or you can fsck right off. Real friendly system.

I used to be a GNOME booster, btw. And hated KDE.

I'm still no KDE fan. But GNOME, today, has become far worse from my point of view. And the sad fact is that these two projects have managed to gain so much developer mindshare that if you want to have the full set of modern apps available you really have to put up with at least one of them. So I've learned to tolerate KDE as the lesser evil.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 10:45 UTC (Mon) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (24 responses)

> You can get unix shortcut keys

You can with GNOME too.

> you can get somewhat sensible window controls

You can with GNOME too.

> you can get separate focus and raise/lower behaviour

You can with GNOME too.

> It even comes up the first time you run it and ASKS what sort of
> behaviour you prefer.

Now there you get to the heart of the matter. GNOME wants to avoid confusing newbies, while still retaining all the flexibility for the experts. I, personally, think that's an excellent approach to take, even if GNOME hasn't quite mastered it yet. Unfortunately, some people seem to have been brainwashed by Microsoft and KDE into thinking that if an option isn't out there in plain sight at all times, it must not exist.

I actually used to prefer KDE; now I prefer GNOME. Neither one has yet become a system I would want to use myself, but GNOME at least looks like it's headed in the right direction (more or less), while KDE seems to simply be getting more cluttered and annoying.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 12:00 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (22 responses)

> You can get unix shortcut keys
You can with GNOME too.

Umm no, actually, you really can't. Not unless they've totally reversed direction recently at least, which seems extraordinarily unlikely.

What you *could* do, after the transition to GTK 2, if you could find and follow some complicated, arcane, and difficult to find instructions, was set a so-called 'emacs keymap' - but it's full of bugs and unusable. Go ahead, try it out sometime, it's utterly worthless. The editing keys don't even work properly in text fields in many cases, and most apps have ctrl-w HARDCODED to close window, ignoring any user-set keymaps anyway. And this is called 'improvement.'

One can only conclude this is *deliberate* as those of us that raised the issues have been consistently told things like 'no one sane wants that' (nice way to talk to your users) and the bug reports filed consistently ignored or marked 'not a bug.' We who up to that point had been their only audience were suddenly defined as 'not our target audience' and our needs and desires not just ignored but actively belittled and disparaged.

If you want to know why so many *nix users hate gnome, that little episode has a lot to do with it. It's just anecdotal evidence, but EVERYONE that I knew that used to use GNOME and promote it have shunned it since shortly after that.

> you can get somewhat sensible window controls
You can with GNOME too.

How? Certainly not in any easily discoverable way. And again, when the decision to require Metacity and forbid alternatives was made, this was presented as a 'feature.'

GNOME wants to avoid confusing newbies, while still retaining all the flexibility for the experts.

This is nothing but patronising elitism. As if only people that somehow magically know what occult file in what place takes what magical invocation to change things deserve to have that capability. This is EXACTLY the kind of nonsense that building a friendly GUI environment for *nix was _supposed_ to get us away from.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 13:00 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (21 responses)

"This is EXACTLY the kind of nonsense that building a friendly GUI environment for *nix was _supposed_ to get us away from."
Friendly GUI's has nothing to do with bombing people with useless features, quite the opposite.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 13:03 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (20 responses)

And there it is again.

Just because YOU don't understand it doesn't make it useless.

If the users find it useful, it's not useless, and no amount of arrogant bombast will change that.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 14:43 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (19 responses)

There's always a few percent that finds even the most stupid feature useful... This is definately no good reason to add it.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 15:02 UTC (Mon) by wilck (guest, #29844) [Link] (18 responses)

Unless I am missing some subtle irony, this comment is the most beautiful example for the blatant arrogance of many in the GNOME camp that I've ever seen.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 15:04 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (1 responses)

Arrogance is demanding that everyone put up with the feature that YOU like, and whining when the devs says no.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 14:52 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

Arrogance can also be found in trying to turn a legitimate difference of preference into a right/wrong issue...

Subtle Irony Indeed

Posted Jun 12, 2006 15:38 UTC (Mon) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (15 responses)

Try participating in software development sometime. Since you're presumably not "arrogant" you'll be sure to add every feature anybody ever asks for, right? Good luck with that.

Subtle Irony Indeed

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:28 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (14 responses)

Providing proper support for Emacs keybindings would be a good idea; thanks to readline and Emacs, a *lot* of people are used to them. It's only 'not sane' if you consider the entire set of Emacs, XEmacs, uEmacs et al users to be irrelevant. (I know I regularly vape documents in Windows thanks to its evaporatingly stupid binding for ctrl-A...)

Customizable keybindings are *not* a really high-tech mega-techies-only feature, yet they can't even get that right.

Emacs Key Bindings

Posted Jun 12, 2006 18:28 UTC (Mon) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (13 responses)

GNOME does provide proper support for Emacs key bindings. I know because I use them. What Arker and wilck want is support for what they call "unix" key bindings (no actual Unix related standard enumerates these but they originated in early X Window System toolkits). I'm sure they'll be happy to articulate the arcane details along with a rant about a vague and obnoxiously worded bug report that was rejected by the GNOME developers.

More to the point though, you drastically overestimate the number of users who care about this. Noisy is not the same as numerous.

Emacs Key Bindings

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:47 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (11 responses)

Oh how horribly unreasonable to expect ones Unix system to behave like a Unix system.

I suppose the many Mac users that asked for a native port (NeoOffice) instead of struggling with an X based OpenOffice that didn't behave anything like a Mac program should be derided as whiners too?

Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:52 UTC (Mon) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (10 responses)

Again you pretend those key bindings are somehow part of Unix. Show me the Unix standard which supports this claim or pipe down.

Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:36 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (9 responses)

Your reasoning is fallacious.

No Unix standard documents the existence of mount(8) or fsck(8) (look in POSIX, they're not there, nor have they ever been). Yet they are unquestionably standard, present in all but the most baroque Unixes. Nor are /etc/passwd nor even the root user documented there. Again, they are ubiquitous.

There are a *lot* of de-facto standards in Unix systems. POSIX has better coverage than ever these days, yet it is not remotely complete.

Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 13, 2006 13:56 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (5 responses)

Of course you're right. Just because our standards generally evolved rather than being dictated from on high hardly means they don't exist. But the GNOME core appears to have decided not only that 'unix sucks' but that the best path for them is to pretend that Unix standards don't exist, so they can dictate a new set of standards they like better, from on high.

I think the case of NeoOffice is analogous (and I use Mac as well as Linux) but really, it's minor compared to what's happened with GNOME. OpenOffice was a *nix/X11 application from day one. Someone noticed that OS 10 can support X11 and X11 apps with very little work required, so boom, OpenOffice runs on OS 10. Very suboptimally, since it's avoiding the native display and UI system entirely, but hey, that's better than nothing, right?

Then a lot of Mac users got together and let it be known that they'd *really* love to have a version of this that actually looks and acts like it belongs on their system. And I don't remember anyone calling them names or putting them down for it.

GNOME, on the other hand, is a *nix/X11 project from day one. It doesn't, in fact, run on any other kind of system. It's not like their primary focus is somewhere else, and they just don't want to be bothered putting in a lot of extra effort to support X. That's ALL they support. Nonetheless, after awhile, they suddenly decide that 'unix sucks' and they're going to deliberately make their system at least as alien to the ONLY system they run under, as the Mac/X11 version of OpenOffice was to the Mac, without any of the excuses that existed for that. Furthermore, rather than make excuses, they determined to brazen it out, telling all of us *nix users that we didn't exist or that we're 'insane' if we aren't overjoyed and grateful for them making a steaming pile of crap out of the software we were relying on and calling it an improvement.

The arrogance is unbelievably offensive.

Moan Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 13, 2006 17:19 UTC (Tue) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (4 responses)

Are you claiming to be part of some Unix priesthood that decides which defacto standards are important and which aren't? Or do you mean that every habit anyone has ever developed on Unix is standard and should be implemented in all related applications? There are no standard Unix key bindings. The X Window System was designed to be platform independent from the start. And even X doesn't specifiy what various keys should do in text fields. Get over it.

By the way, your analogy with NeoOffice and GNOME key bindings doesn't work. In the former case, people put forth actual effort to achieve what they wanted. That's the key to the mystery of why no one puts them down for that. I don't see you or your fellow travelers doing anything constructive about your problem -- whining about the choices of developers you don't actually pay doesn't count as constructive, sorry.

The only arrogance here is yours.

Moan Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 13, 2006 19:34 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (3 responses)

So if we take you seriously for a moment, and say these standards never existed, just how is it that GNOME managed to support something that never existed, and support it fairly well, for so long? Eh?

Anyone that's worked on a *nix workstation has become accustomed to the common keybindings we're talking about. They're the same keybindings I learned in '93 on an HP box, the same ones that I've been using on Linux and SCO unix machines since about '94. They weren't set down on high, they evolved on their own, over years of experience, which has advantages and disadvantages. GNOME started out codifying and rationalising them, which was needed, and they were doing a good job of it. Then one day they decided to go a totally different route instead. Well ok, that's their prerogative. But *lying* about it and insulting their users is above and beyond.

And, btw, just because I can't code doesn't mean I made no contributions. Another arrogant, insulting assumption, but par for the course out of you, it seems.

Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 14, 2006 9:25 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (2 responses)

Try reading what you respond to. I never claimed your precious key bindings don't exist but that they are not a standard part of Unix in any meaningful sense. That some early desktop environments supported them is that's no reason to consider them sacred since the set of features Unix workstations once offered includes a monumental pile of useless bloat.

By the way, cut the "set down on high" crap. Documenting a technology works even when it's not the product of divine intervention. Most of what the Single Unix Specification covers has evolved over time, for example.

I don't assume you've made no contributions because you can't code. I didn't know you can't code (though it's not surprising since you seem to have difficulty comprehending ordinary text). I assume that because you haven't mentioned anything you've contributed to GNOME. Feel free to disabuse me of that notion if you can but otherwise it looks like my arrogant, insulting assumption is also true.

Finally, your claim that GNOME developers lied is unsubstantiated and probably false. More likely you're casting a simple misunderstanding on their side in a sinister light. This is precisely why GNOME doesn't support your precious key bindings: rather than politely and patiently explaining how they work and why the Emacs key bindings are not a substitute you assume bad faith and attempt to defame the developers for changes other users appreciate. Everyone who disagrees with you is unbelievably arrogant and the irony there is lost on you. In their place I wouldn't bother helping you either.

Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 14, 2006 13:03 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (1 responses)

If you're really as ignorant as you're portraying yourself as being here, taking a few hours to read through the various GNOME lists of the time period should enlighten you. This issue (and many other related ones) were subjects of debate and discussion for an extended period of time. The vast majority of it completely civil. And there was a strong conservative consensus on a lot of it, among developers and users.

The decision to completely break with all that had been built before and impose a fisher-price imitation UI from on high instead wasn't made in such a public manner. It doesn't appear to have taken notice of those discussions at all, or to have placed any value at all on the consensus that had developed. It appears to have been made by a handful of people in a closed room. It was presented to the GNOME community - users and developers - as a fait accompli. And users that, at first very calmly and politely, questioned the wisdom of it were simply insulted, called crazy, and told to shut up. Something like you've been doing to me here.

Open your eyes. This isn't about mythical 'KDE trolling.' The KDE users are happily using KDE and don't care. The people that taste bile whenever GNOME is mentioned are the people that loved and supported GNOME until one day GNOME decided to sell out and tell them to go to hell.

Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan

Posted Jun 14, 2006 16:42 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

KDE trolling? When have I accused you of that? You are confusing this with another thread.

Anyone inclined to call other people ignorant because they don't follow every discussion about key bindings on GNOME mailing lists has no business accusing anyone of arrogance. Since you can't be bothered to post a link I can't be bothered to hunt down what you're talking about, but I'll take your word for it that such things were discussed. So what? This sort of thing happens all the time in most projects. A group informally agrees to do something, then someone comes along and says "nevermind all that, this thing over here is more important" and off everybody goes. When everybody includes most or all of the people actually contributing, that's a change in direction and not a lie. I suspect the insults you mention are directed at the hysterical response from your side, rather than your desire for the original feature. That's certainly the case here.

Contrary to your assertion, I have never called you crazy for wanting your key bindings. I'm not impressed that you elevate them to some kind of holy Unix standard, but I can respect the fact that the GNOME community has moved in a direction you don't like and you would be justified in seeking an alternative desktop environment for that reason. That doesn't mean the whole project is garbage because it doesn't serve your needs. GNOME has a large user community for whom it works well and if you can't restrain the urge to insult such people then get used to being insulted yourself.

Your reasoning is worse.

Posted Jun 13, 2006 16:36 UTC (Tue) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (2 responses)

Are you seriously claiming anything most Unix derived systems ship is part of Unix? That might please SCO but it won't pass for reasoning. Utilities like mount and fsck were designed to be part of Unix back when Unix was a product shipped by AT&T, so you would be justified in claiming they are part of Unix. These days there is no such reference platform, so if Unix means anything it means what the various standards specify. That's still true if the standards aren't complete.

When the standards are complete they certainly will not include any key bindings for text fields because the X Window System itself is most definitely not part of Unix. While most Unix derived systems use it, X was designed from the start to be a platform independent display system and runs on things like OpenVMS and WindowsXP too.

I don't object if you prefer key bindings GNOME doesn't support and I have no problem if for that reason you choose another desktop environment, such as KDE or even fvwm. But let's not pretend your preferences are part of some sacred Unix Way, okay?

Your reasoning is worse.

Posted Jun 14, 2006 21:08 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm afraid I don't understand *what* you're talking about anymore: it appears to bear little relation to the text it follows.

Of course the GNOME devs aren't *required* to support the same keybindings that the Unix terminal library has supported since V6, or the Emacs/readline keybindings, or any others. But failing to support *any* of them, when they were supported reasonably well in earlier releases, and insulting those who ask for them... well. Is it any wonder I avoid GNOME nowadays?

(As for your `if it's not standardized nobody should pay it any attention' nonsense, or the `there is no reference platform therefore no existing systems' behaviour should be noted' nonsense, I'll give it the consideration it deserves, i.e., none.)

Good Grief

Posted Jun 14, 2006 21:33 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

Standards came up in the context of wanting "a Unix system to behave like a Unix system." I was arguing against a specific justification for demanding specific key bindings, not claiming that no one should implement anything that isn't a standard. Take the trouble to understand what you're replying to or don't bother.

(As for your cheer leading for unsubstantiated allegations against people who aren't present and lame chest thumping about avoiding GNOME, I'll give these the consideration they deserve, i.e., none.)

Emacs Key Bindings

Posted Jun 14, 2006 12:05 UTC (Wed) by dannyyee (guest, #10147) [Link]

I've been using Unix/Linux since 1988 and I've never heard of these "Unix key bindings". Mind you, I'm still using 9wm (a minimalist 1991 vintage window manager) on my main desktops...

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 14:55 UTC (Mon) by wilck (guest, #29844) [Link]

> You can with GNOME too.

Would you care to explain how, or point a resource that explains it? Please, no gconf hand-editing.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 13:54 UTC (Sat) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (33 responses)

One of these days we will get rid of this darn gnome thing what a pile of trousers .

One of these days i will look into switching Gspeakers to KDE/Qt and will then be able to be rid of gnome completely.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 21:18 UTC (Sat) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (32 responses)

Man, the trolls are out in force today! I consider Qt & KDE to be among the most maldesigned things I've ever seen, and I've long since purged every trace of them from my systems. But I don't go posting that opinion every time a KDE article appears. In fact, I ignore KDE articles, because I have no interest in the topic. Too bad KDE users aren't mature enough to do the same! (One more reason I'm glad I have no association with KDE.)

(Actually, I do spot-check KDE articles once in a while, just to see if there are GNOME trolls as annoying as the KDE trolls, and the answer seems to be, generally, no. If there were, I would browbeat them just as firmly as I'm browbeating this particular annoying troll, even though I could be considered to be more-or-less on their side.)

Anyway, the original article seems to be mostly interested in large(ish) scale deployments of GNOME, and that's good, because it seems to me that the Network Object Model (the "NOM" in "GNOME") has been a bit neglected of late. Unfortunately, I don't have a large-scale deployment of GNOME to report on, but I know some people who do, so I'll forward the link.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 21:35 UTC (Sat) by philips (guest, #937) [Link] (24 responses)

> I do spot-check KDE articles once in a while, just to see if
> there are GNOME trolls as annoying as the KDE trolls,
> and the answer seems to be, generally, no.

There are no "KDE trolls". There are just ex-GNOME-users, proclaimed as "nobodies" by Havoc.

Insecurity about the plusplus

Posted Jun 11, 2006 7:44 UTC (Sun) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link]

It seems Fedora is going to backburner KDE by pushing it into Extras for FC6. This is being sold as a chance for KDE to flourish under non-Redhat control in Extras, but the fact is Gnome will be in Fedora "Core" and KDE won't.

I repeatedly try Gnome at intervals because I am sensitive to the signals coming out of RHAT that Gnome is the future for them. But every time it turns into a Gnome desktop full of KDE apps (kate, even konqueror for the split views) and I just shrug and go back to KDE.

Anyway I wanted to propose a possible reason why there is such a divide other than the history over QT. How many Gnome devs know C++ I wonder? C++ in the kernel keeps coming back and each time it seems the problem is the bulk of devs there don't know C++, are leery of being newbified by it and so reject it. I wonder if this is part of keeping the two sides so polarized.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 9:20 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (22 responses)

I don't know how many of us there are, but anecdotal evidence suggests to me at least that switching from GNOME to KDE is common (generally because you don't work in the One Way GNOME is set up to let you work; you can't change it because most of the customizability has been torn out), while switching from KDE to GNOME, well, it may happen (possibly if you're offended by the idea of `moc' or something, or hate the idea of C++), but I've never met anyone it's happened to. Why go from something flexible to something inflexible, unless you're trying to install it for a lot of random clueless users?

(There's nothing *wrong* with clueless users or users who dislike flexibility, but I doubt it describes your average LWN subscriber well.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 13:21 UTC (Sun) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (7 responses)

The reason you go from something 'flexible' to something simple is you go from something that 'doesn't work' to something that does.

It happenned to me with Gnome 1.x series continiously, which is why I refused to use it. You have a hundred different things, you don't know what they do, and if you select this or that shit would randomly break.

Same thing happens to me every time I try out KDE. It would start out ok, but then I try to set it up how I like it and it would all turn into crap. Fonts get messed up, themes get messed up. I don't have time or desire to figure all that mess out.

I think people got WAY to much time on their hands to troll on about KDE vs Gnome. The only thing I see is a bunch of resentment from KDE users that Gnome gets more attention or that they've 'lost' Suse or something like that.

What sort of customisbility is lost in Gnome? I hear people go on and on about that and when you ask them about it they usually cry about Metacity or whatnot.

That's very easy to fix; install openbox, type openbox --replace, log out while having 'save session' selected, log back in and you have all the keybindings and program by program window manipulation you could ever want. It has a very nice and well documented xml configuration file also.

If you don't like 'spatial' mode then a simple fix is to install gtweakui tools, run gtweakui-nautilus and check mark 'always use browser mode', OR use the file browser icon to browse files, OR go into the gconf stuff and edit it yourself.

Seriously Gnome is a very solid desktop environment, I can understand somebody wanting to use something else, but I can't understand people wanting to see it aborted.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 8:23 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

People want to see it aborted because it's a high profile FOSS project (they even got the GNU imprimatur, back when QT was unfree) that explicitly, violently, and vociferously rejects the notion of letting the user control their own computer. For a start.

Also ironically enough for a project that started only because of QT licensing problems, they abuse the LGPL for benefit of slave-ware makers and tout that as an advantage.

I really wish someone would force RMS to use GNOME. I bet you within an hour he'd go postal.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 15:09 UTC (Mon) by wilck (guest, #29844) [Link] (5 responses)

That's very easy to fix; install openbox, type openbox --replace, log out while having 'save session' selected, log back in ... a simple fix is to install gtweakui tools, run gtweakui-nautilus and check mark 'always use browser mode', OR use the file browser icon to browse files, OR go into the gconf stuff and edit it yourself.

Is that GNOME's notion of simplicity? If I'm a (GNOME, not Linux) Newbie, how am I supposed to figure this out?

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 15:12 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (4 responses)

If you're a newbie, why would you care?

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:29 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

Because a Linux user who was not used to GNOME might want to... retain some of the system behaviour they were used to?

(This should be obvious.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 19:55 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (2 responses)

Good, a Linux poweruser should be able to read the doc, or search...

If you want to have poweruser features, you should be willing to learn the system. Why should those that just want the base featureset have to face a zillion things, that are useless to them?

You set stuff like that up ONE TIME, gconf is perfect for that. (Ok, I'm getting tired of gconf myself, but that's because I'm constantly playing with Compiz/XGL, and checking new stuff out constantly, which isn't really what gconf is meant for).

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:38 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

gconf is not meant for situations in which you might want to configure the system?!

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:51 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]

Yes, but not repeatedly like I'm doing.

The things you need to change often is, of course, in a dialog.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 0:19 UTC (Mon) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (1 responses)

I tried KDE first, and still prefer GNOME (though I don't use either one as my main desktop). I know several people who have tried both and chosen GNOME for its cleaner, less cluttered interface. I also know several who have chosen KDE for its simpler, more up-front tweakability. But most people I know have simply stuck with whichever one they encountered first (or whichever one happens to be the default on whichever system they're using now).

Inflexible? You obviously have not looked at GNOME very closely. I find the number of options--the amount of flexibility--to be truly mindboggling! Of course, they made a deliberate decision to not clutter the basic interface with a million options, but that does not mean that they removed the options--far from it. Granted, you may have to read a little more documentation to take advantage of some of GNOME's more advanced options, but I wouldn't think your average LWN subscriber was scared of documentation.

The system I normally use instead of either GNOME or KDE has no visible options whatsoever. All configuration is done with a text editor. And my own setup is HIGHLY tweaked and configured. Would you describe this as inflexible? And if not, then how can you possibly say that GNOME is inflexible?

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:12 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, how should I put it. Many GNOME options are available only from something which appears to have been designed by looking at the Windows registry editor and removing what vestiges of usability remained in it. We have all the joys of limited documentation, no way to associate options with each other, no way to add comments, no sensible way to synchronize options between machines without messing around with gconf-backend stuff...

... as I see it, we have all the disadvantages of non-GUIs, and all the disadvantages of GUIs, and damn few advantages.

gconf is a nice idea, but the way it's been *used*, *shudder*. No, a centralized configuration system is *not* an excuse to push all the user-interface part of that configuration into a single app that does no part of its job very well (an app that is, note, *not accessible* from the user interfaces of the programs it configures).

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 8:11 UTC (Mon) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] (3 responses)

I think the only truth here is that there are huge amounts of trolls and "IMHO the truth is like this":s around.

I used KDE for 6 years, then changed to GNOME. I've now stayed with it happily for 2,5 years. For me the reason is that with GNOME I actually worked more with the applications, not the desktop environment itself. Like is often said.

KDE is nice, too, and if KDE4 is cleaner / less cluttered, I could try it too...

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:16 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

OK, I think I've had enough disproof: some people really don't like customizability.

(I'll bet you're all *vi* users too. ;} )

This is probably symptomatic of a fundamental division between big-ball-of-muddists and theoretical-cleanliness-and-damn-the-torpedoesists. (Both like clean underpinnings; they differ in the amount of stuff they're willing to tolerate piled atop those underpinnings.)

As the continued existence of Emacs/vi wars testifies, this division is unlikely ever to close, and I suppose it shouldn't be considered surprising that it's manifested in the GUI world as well.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:32 UTC (Mon) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (1 responses)

> (I'll bet you're all *vi* users too. ;} )

Actually i think vi stinks reminds me too much of "edlin" piece of dross

give me "joe any day ..

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:40 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

How surprising that you're not aware of the ancestry of vi, despite its wide documentation in hard-to-find places like the vim documentation (hint, it's a new face on ex, derived from ed, of which edlin is a crude and braindamaged clone).

It is not even slightly surprising that vi is reminiscent of edlin. The difference is that vi is actually useful (even though I can't remember how to use it from moment to moment, demonstrably millions *can*.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 16:32 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (7 responses)

I don't know how many of us there are, but anecdotal evidence suggests to me at least that switching from KDE to GNOME is common (generally because you don't work in the total UI chaos KDE is set up to let you work; you can't change it because you can't find where in the forest of of options, like "Open In Cervisia" the thing you want is.), while switching from GNOME to KDE, well, it may happen (possibly if you're offended by the idea of `Glade' or something, or hate the idea of C), but I've never met anyone it's happened to. Why go from something intutive and usable to something with a totally chaotic UI, unless you're trying to install it for a lot of random clueless users and are looking for job security?

(There's nothing *wrong* with looking for job security, but I doubt it describes your average LWN subscriber well.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:30 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

Well, that was funny, but... not useful. Most of your attempted inversions, well, weren't.

Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Posted Jun 12, 2006 19:58 UTC (Mon) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (4 responses)

The inverted post was at least as useful as yours. That you choose KDE over GNOME is fine, but please spare us the condescending speculation about why someone might have a different preference. Offended by C++? Get a grip.

Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:42 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, I originally picked GNOME over KDE because I found moc to be aesthetically ugly; it's provably unnecessary, as libstdc++ makes clear. Later, the simple usability gap forced me to switch back, unwillingly at first.

So it wasn't a `condescending speculation'; it's actually based on reality.

Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Posted Jun 13, 2006 16:53 UTC (Tue) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (2 responses)

Regardless of whether C++ offends you the tone of your comment was condescending and you deserved the sarcasm you complained about. I've tried KDE and each time I find it an unusable mess, but unlike you I attribute that to my own preferences rather than some deep desktop principle that only the clueless could fail to appreciate. I'm glad you're happy with KDE but you're going to have to accept that not everyone wants the same things from a desktop environment.

Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Posted Jun 14, 2006 21:15 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

You really are completely incapable of comprehending what you read, aren't you?

I was quite clear from the start that I don't think that `everyone wants the same things', and that the existence of GNOME is a good thing. I'm just interested in finding out what it is that GNOME users think they can't get from KDE (I don't need to know what KDE users think they're not getting from GNOME: I know that already).

This is not so that KDE can 'conquer' GNOME or some childish idiocy like that. It's so that *both environments can get better*. (Where your `only the clueless could fail to appreciate' stuff came from, I have no idea. I *do* think that GNOME is probably well-targetted *at* the clueless, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily targetted *only* at the clueless, the protestations of some of its developers notwithstanding.)

Of course, if you prefer to believe that everyone who prefers one environment to the other does so for entirely unrelated reasons, and no general principles can be drawn from any of them, well, why are you even *having* this discussion? If you're right, you're not doing anything but wasting your time arguing with me; and if you're wrong, you're *still* wasting your time. If I'm right, I might be able to help the desktop environments improve, in some small way...

Nonsense from Start to Stop

Posted Jun 14, 2006 21:56 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

Wherever did I get the idea that you think only the clueless would not appreciate KDE? Here: "Why go from something flexible to something inflexible, unless you're trying to install it for a lot of random clueless users?" That is not some high minded query aimed at understanding what GNOME users think they can't get from KDE. Take a break from patting yourself on the back for armchair desktop improvement and you'll discover what you've actually posted is inflammatory bigotry.

Where is your evidence that I believe "everyone who prefers one environment to the other does so for entirely unrelated reasons"? What I actually said was that not everyone wants the same things. That doesn't rule out groups of people who do want the same things. I'm amused that you accuse me of not comprehending what I read (mostly because you don't comprehend what you wrote) and then immediately demonstrate your own reading abilities... or lack thereof.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 15:13 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

Every time I try GNOME I'm left with an impression that it's a disparate bunch of applications with a window manager over the top. KDE seems more coherent as a whole, to me.

Every time I try KDE, it isn't long before something stops working, or fails to start. That doesn't seem to happen with GNOME; GNOME seems more stable, to me.

But then, those are just initial impressions... because every time I try either of them, it isn't long before I end up scurrying back to a blend of fluxbox and screen. 20 years of developing GUI programs and they're not actually getting any better, just bigger; everyone is convinced that they know The One True Way to present everything, and nobody can agree on what it is, whilst in the meantime everyone's so busy tacking "features" on the side that nothing ever gets smaller or works better. (No, I'm not going to go out and buy a brand new computer just because you can't be bothered to consider efficiency.) And then the most useful programs to me - bash, mplayer, vi, emacs, mutt, elm, xpdf, firefox, OpenOffice, seq24, dillo, links, LyX, Ted, TeXmacs... I could go on - don't even integrate with either system anyway!

If I have to live with a bunch of disparate interfaces and philosophies anyway, why on earth should I give up the relative simplicity, stability, speed and compactness of the command line? Honestly, until you can be vaguely useful to me without being annoyingly slow and/or crashing every 5 minutes on a box with half a gig of memory, a CPU which doubles as a storage heater, a plague on both your houses!

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 21:59 UTC (Sat) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

"(Actually, I do spot-check KDE articles once in a while, just to see if there are GNOME trolls as annoying as the KDE trolls, and the answer seems to be, generally, no. If there were, I would browbeat them just as firmly as I'm browbeating this particular annoying troll, even though I could be considered to be more-or-less on their side.)"

Nevertheless it escaped your attention, that a GNOME troll postet 31 minutes
earlier on this page.

So after telling you this, I'm looking forward to see the actions following your words.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 10, 2006 22:30 UTC (Sat) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

I don't object to GNOME users posting on GNOME articles nor KDE users posting on KDE articles. What I object to is GNOME users trolling KDE articles and vice versa. If you're looking for someone to act as a self-appointed policeman for all articles, you're looking in the wrong place.

Just to clarify things a bit: I don't actually use GNOME or KDE myself (though I have helped out with small-scale GNOME deployments, which is why I was checking out this article). I'm not a GNOME advocate; I simply dislike it less than I dislike KDE. I actually support both projects, but hope I'm never forced to use either one. But if forced, I would probably choose GNOME, as I think it's _slightly_ less maldesigned.

So why were _you_ checking out this article?

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 9:12 UTC (Sun) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (1 responses)

ohhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ark at errrr .

Well if gnome (needs renaming to GONE) was not such a heap of troll droppings it would not get the stick it gets woulkd it now Errrrrrrrrr hello is there a brain in there somewhere ..knock knock lights on but no one in ..
#

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 9:28 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Hang on, so you're saying that because you are posting unpleasant and worthless trolls on a subject, it *must* be bad, *because* you are posting unpleasant and worthless trolls?

Talk about circular logic.

Sheesh.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 9:26 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I consider the Network Object Model to have died with the near-death of Bonobo and its support libraries.

KDE might use a not-very-network-friendly IPC mechanism, but KParts is nonetheless a hell of a lot closer to the way to do componented software than is GNOME. (It's odd, really: the GNOME devs laud MS's software design principles, but it seems to me that they applaud and emulate mostly the parts which are bad: e.g. the interview I read last year which applauded the idea of moving everything into non-command-line-accessible APIs for this and that, with never a consideration that command-line access might be useful (disclaimer: weak memory and hay fever drugs may have totally distorted this; if it is nonsense, my apologies). Yet MS are heavy users of components... and GNOME isn't. Strange. Of course KDE provides command-line access to its IPC mechanism via kdcop; if GNOME provides such access to CORBA, I've never found it.)

(And yes, security holes in heavily-used components are bad things, as the holes in the HTML renderer in IE make clear. But we're not safe from that, as just using libraries is enough to trigger it: a hole in Gecko or glibc or libX11 could be just as dangerous if it were remotely exploitable. The key isn't `don't write components, they're insecure': it's `don't write insecure crap and then make it a component'.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 8:16 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually every GNOME article I've seen for a couple months now has had zero comments.

What happens occasionally is exactly what you see here, either a GNOME worshipper or a GNOME detractor posts something that gets the other set riled up, and so naturally they respond.

The OP is no more a troll than you are. You're both expressing your honest opinion. As am I. Try to show your fellow human beings a little respect, it won't hurt you.

Oh, and drop this fallacious assumption that GNOME detractor = KDE booster btw. It's nonsense.

Tsk Tsk

Posted Jun 14, 2006 9:56 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

One would think someone who prattles on about respect for fellow human beings (when not moaning about how "arrogant" and "insulting" other people are) would think twice before unloading pejoratives like "GNOME worshipper" on people with a different perspective. Apparently not. Try practicing what you preach; it won't hurt you.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 0:54 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (20 responses)

We have an announcement, here, from a project which is trying to collect real world info to improve its product. And on LWN, a site which usually has some of the most insightful commentary found on any of the Linux news sites, we have... mostly Gnome vs. KDE flames.

For shame!

Yeah, I like Gnome. I still think spatial is suboptimal. But they've done well.

KDE serves another community. And I'm glad of that. It keeps the pressure off of Gnome to be everything to all people. And KDE users seem a happy lot.

E, XFce, Fluxbox, et. al. relieve a bit more of that pressure and keep more people happy.

I think that the (misguided) idea that all the desktops could merge into one powerful force to end all others (OK. Windows. Why not say it?) drives a lot of the flamage. (And note that I say *could*, not *should*. That's a very different statement.)

It's not going to happen. And if it did, few of us would be happy. All sides have gotten enough things "right" (that advocates of other desktops would consider "wrong") that if the desktops did all merge and overthrow the "great destroyer" tomorrow we'd all still be moaning.

The sooner we face the reality that the most meaningful merging starts right here between the *users* of the various desktops the better.

Do we really believe in freedom? Or do we believe that everyone should be free to believe as we, ourselves, believe?

-Steve

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 9:30 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (19 responses)

GNOME has its place, indeed. That place isn't on my desktop :) but this survey is checking one of the places where GNOME can indeed be strong: large-scale installations, especially those where configurability is not desired because every node must work exactly the same. (I can't really see why you'd want such outside of safety-critical devices, and I'd not use GNOME on a safety-critical device, but I know that a lot of corporate IT departments seem to consider blocking all customizability to be a good thing.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 12:34 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (7 responses)

I can tell you exactly why customizability can be a bad thing in desktop rollouts. One of the first things most of my users do after I set them up a desktop is delete the task bar, and I get a long, rambling support request explaining in about 500 words and in 10 differenct ways, that there used to be this thing at the bottom where they could get back and forth between their windows and that now it's gone. Sometimes it's not the taskbar they delete. Sometimes it's the main menu. Sometimes it's the whole panel. Or sometimes they just have a HHHUUUGGGEEE vertical panel taking up the left 20% of their screen. One thing is consistent, though. They have absolutely no idea how it happened or how to fix it.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 17:30 UTC (Sun) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link] (3 responses)

The assumes a poor customizability system. There's no reason why the
sysadmin shouldn't be able to lock specific features down so, for example,
the task bar can't be removed. Leaving the decision to those managing the
deployments seems more constructive to me than having the developers
saying that something can't be done, ever.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 18:36 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

... and you can do exactly that with KDE, for instance. (IIRC you can do it with GNOME, too.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 18:53 UTC (Sun) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link] (1 responses)

I knew that to be true of KDE. I didn't know whether GNOME had this
feature, but one example is enough to make the point that it's quite
possible to provide both customizability and enough control over that
so end-users can't just break their system.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:33 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I was expanding on your point, not disagreeing :)

Customizability

Posted Jun 11, 2006 17:33 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

That is a clear example of why GNOME is heading in the WRONG direction.

I refuse to use any system that prevents me from customizing it. However, customization should be done by editing text configuration files. That way, power users can happily customize their desktops, while novices aren't even aware that it can be customized and therefore don't shoot themselves in the foot. Furthermore, power users can carry their config files around with them so they can easily duplicate their customizations on a new system.

I've set up a Linux box for my parents, and given them a locked-down version of XFCE. But they still run into trouble with Mozilla and Thunderbird when they end up deleting the folder list or making some customization without knowing how to back out of it. I think the old UNIX tradition of customization-via-text-editor has a lot going for it.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:19 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, I've heard this sort of tale before (I'm glad I've never had to support this sort of thing).

I wonder *why* some users go into a panic of delete-delete-delete upon the least confusion?

(Emacs at least provides keyboard-escape-quit on ESC ESC ESC so that if you get panicky you can get back into a sane state; the equivalent of some of these task-bar-deletion things would have keyboard-escape-quit delete the contents of your home directory. ;) )

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 16:52 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

Well, it's not quite so bad as I described. I try to make a bit of a game of it and take the 500 word support requests with a bit of humor.

Ironically, the less "computer savvy" users tend to have shorter, and more to the point, support requests. I can get their problems taken care of more quickly.

It's the users that fancy themselves as power users that send the 500 word ones stating the same thing over and over in different ways. They want to make it perfectly clear to me that they know what they are doing. When I call to actually support them, it takes somewhat longer, depending upon how long it actually takes me to get a word in edgewise after they start trying to "help" me.

-Steve

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 13:05 UTC (Sun) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] (10 responses)

As with many things in life, there are tradeoffs involved.

It doesn't take a large scale installation to see the benefits that can be had for customization. (From a support point of view.)

Even something so simple as a customized selection and placement of icons on the desktop causes wasted time on support.

On a visit, it causes a slowdown, on phone support it is even worse.

Have you ever done any support?

Now, that is not to say that those same customizations which cause support inefficiencies do not result in way more daily efficienceis, they may, I just don't know. I do know they are a time waster when it comes to supporting people.

all the best,

drew

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 17:33 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (9 responses)

> Long occupying the number one spot on the DistroWatch hit list (which is not the same as saying this is the most popular distro), Ubuntu has a large and growing following.

They are also, very often, time wasters for the people who do the customizing. Often, I find, they are "throw back" customizations to make the keys work like some obsolete piece of software that the customizer used 10, or even 20, years ago.

These customizations have been made over and over and over again on various machines over the years.

WordStar is dead. Get over it, I say! Your brain isn't static! Learn the new defaults!

Next up on the Tech Support Catharsis Channel:

"Why I Despise Employees Who Use 'Ergonomic' Keyboards" ;-)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 18:39 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (7 responses)

So, you think that humans should adapt to computers rather than vice versa, even to aspects of their behaviour which *can be changed*?

That's ridiculous. Computers are tools, not dictators.

(I'm baffled as to why use of ergonomic keyboards would be worthy of hatred. Because you want everyone to get RSI? *Crap* ergonomic keyboards are a different matter.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 18:41 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

Note the smiley.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:34 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Ah, right. I wasn't sure what degree of ha-ha-only-seriousness was being applied :)

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 11, 2006 19:12 UTC (Sun) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (4 responses)

The issues with people adjusting to computers and vice versa was something that came up a lot during early car days (1890's and so). People would say that since they could build the car to whatever they wanted they could put the steering wheel etc where-ever they wanted. After a while 'customers' wanted to have things to be the same way in most cars. Accidents/problems were blamed on lack of uniformity and regulations were put in place.

However, I still remember my grandfather saying the same thing when told he couldn't change his car to being the driver on the right side. "That's ridiculous! Cars are tools, not dictators." Then he went on the usual tirade about the stupidity of people who couldnt see the superiority of having a car designed this way (or the different gear shift layout he built etc) and how their stupidity was why the world would be communist by 1980 etc.

It is a sad sign of humanity that we are little different from the people who fought over whether you were Lutheran or Catholic in the 1600's. We just call our religions how our desktops look vs how many times we need to kneel.

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:38 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Cars are physical objects in which errors can be dangerous to lethal and which interact with each other and with pedestrians, so you want a centralized training scheme, mandated external signals, and enough similarity between models that buying a new model doesn't require relearning everything (and in which you can borrow someone else's car without crashing it).

*None* of these things are true of computer software, except perhaps the last, and even that fails if you provide tools to allow copying and publishing of configurations (his KDE runs differently from mine? OK, use my config). Secure global-scale distributed filesystems will provide the necessary infrastructure for this (paging Google, or perhaps <http://fs.net/>).

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 3:00 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry.. but a poorly planned desktop can be lethal in the right enviroment:

Hospital
Military
Aircontrol
911 dispatch room.

In the cases where time is of an importance having someone come into a different desktop can cause major problems. In other cases it can just be additional costs because everyone has decided what is best for themselves and they spend tons of time arguing over "gee my desktop design is so much superior to yours."

These are specialized environments.. and not the general case, however I am bringing them up as counter to your globalization account that it doesnt matter. If I am misunderstanding you.. sorry.. I always seem to minunderstand evangelical fundamentalists.

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:22 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I was overgeneralizing: obviously consistency is paramount in safety-critical environments (see virtually every issue of RISKS, for instance).

But *most environments are not safety-critical* from a software POV. Why on earth should people in non-safety-critical environments be locked down by requirements that only make sense if safety-critical software is in use?

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 7:16 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

It is a sad sign of humanity that we are little different from the people who fought over whether you were Lutheran or Catholic in the 1600's. We just call our religions how our desktops look vs how many times we need to kneel.

Yeah, going to war and burning and torturing people is the same as ranting on LWN. As a KDE and GNOME user, I feel so witch-hunted by these comments.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 15:23 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

Hmm... so when something comes along in ten years which has a completely new set of defaults that keep getting in your way and you can find no readily apparent way to change them, you'll just shrug and say "oh well, time I relearned how to do anything anyway"? Well, good for you, but you're in a distinct minority - most of us would rather our computers fit around our ways of working than the opposite. Learning new stuff is great - learning new stuff simply because someone else preferred it that way is doing so for no good reason and is a waste of everyone's time.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 22:18 UTC (Sun) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (36 responses)

There's nothing like a good old-fashioned KDE/Gnome flamewar to get one through a slow weekend. Sudden flashback to 1998.

We all know (deep down inside) that Gnome sucks, whether we're willing to admit it or not. I'd explain further, but the sun just came out. ;-)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 0:58 UTC (Mon) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link] (35 responses)

LOL... yes indeed... I started with gnome, had no choice, but it always bugged me. And found myself back on gnome, still had no choice, still bugged me. KDE was too heavy for the test box. That's not a problem any longer, so KDE is it for me.

I think the reason kde users post in threads like this is.. well, I'll speak for myself only: I like the idea behind gnome, I like the attempt to simplify, but I don't like how they do it, and I don't like the way options are removed at the whim of the developers, who have a decidely odd way of seeing the 'average user'. And I especially don't like the idea of removing all advanced configuration options totally. Or making you use command line tweaks or something to do something utterly simple, that should be easily done. Plus, I'd guess that KDE users actually care about their desktops, whereas Gnome users just sort of are ok with theirs, gnome doesn't waken much passion, it's just sort of ok, good enough.

But when I hear about Gnome doing more 'useability' stuff, I have to wonder, whatever or whoever is doing that currently, I don't know, I don't feel it makes it more useable, I think there is an IDEA of useability, but it's not a realworld implementation, although some of it is working now.

But most of all, when I look at the latest and greatest gnome desktop, I see something that is trying as hard as it can to please its corporate market. Why this is considered a good thing is absolutely beyond me. It's good for the corporate IT guys, but that doesn't mean it's a good desktop.

I don't see something made for me, that's where kde comes in, or any other interesting windows manager out there except gnome. I understand why people like different desktops, but I'm always disappointed when I check out the latest gnome, I know one day they will start to make a desktop without the current flaws, it has to happen. I think it's more the hype than anything else, I hear about 2. whatever, I check it out, and each time, it's like: is that it?

Re KDE: all the stuff people say, it's true, configurations, complicated. Settings changing I think has improved. Like other posters said, there's no point in me using gnome because I'd just end up installing all the kde apps anyway, especially konqueror, multipane view, once you've used it, like dual monitors, you can't go back.

But here's hoping that the Gnome team gets some good feedback, and, far more important, that they actually try to fix some of their issues that feedback is bound to point out. I know Gnome will be good one day, and I won't stop trying it once in a while.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 1:09 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (34 responses)

"""I think the reason kde users post in threads like this is.. well, I'll speak for myself only: I like the idea behind gnome, I like the attempt to simplify, but I don't like how they do it, and I don't like the way options are removed at the whim of the developers, who have a decidely odd way of seeing the 'average user'. And I especially don't like the idea of removing all advanced configuration options totally. Or making you use command line tweaks or something to do something utterly simple, that should be easily done. Plus, I'd guess that KDE users actually care about their desktops, whereas Gnome users just sort of are ok with theirs, gnome doesn't waken much passion, it's just sort of ok, good enough."""

I think the reason lots of KDE users post every time somebody mentions gnome is that they don't understand that other people don't have the same tastes or requirements as they do.

Personally I CAN'T STAND KDE AT ALL. If Gnome was more like KDE then I wouldn't use it. Plain and simple.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 1:21 UTC (Mon) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link] (33 responses)

nope, not quite, the reason I post is that I continuously marvel at how similar Mac and Gnome fans are in terms of being completely unable to hear criticisms of gnome or mac. I understand the concept behind Gnome, it's easy to see. And I like the concept. I just don't think it's that well implemented. As a very rough working draft it's OK, but it's not there yet, too many poor choices made. The flaws are so easy to see, and they will be fixed, despite Gnome fans, because the Gnome market will demand that they be fixed.

That's why I'm hopeful that the gnome developer community actually tries to hear what the feedback says, even if it doesn't agree with their decisions and biases.

The reason I keep trying gnome is that I want it to achieve its goals, I just don't think it has yet. Only listening to people who like a product isn't going to provide much room to improve it, not a good strategy. I know many of the flaws of kde, and it's interesting to watch them get fixed over time, but I don't pretend that they aren't there. It's that self-imposed blindness that is annoying, not Gnome per se.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 4:10 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (7 responses)

Bullshit.

So your telling me that Gnome people aren't working on improving Gnome,
that they don't believe that Gnome has problems?

That KDE has some advantage of self introspection that Gnome developers
lack?

I think that's a load of BS personally. I know that Gnome has problems,
but guess what Gnome is BETTER then KDE for what I want and what I want to
do. It's the default choice of MANY MANY Linux users and developers, many
of which were first using KDE with Knoppix or Suse and such but ended up
choosing something else. There is nothing you say that can change this
fact.

Anyways.

Since KDE is so configurable what is the easiest way to change it so that
I don't have to use ~/Desktop as the default folder. I want my desktop to
display the contents of ~/, how do I do that?

I've been clicking around in this and that for a good 20 minutes now and I
can't seem to find this elusive configuration item.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 5:10 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

> I've been clicking around in this and that for a good 20 minutes now and I
can't seem to find this elusive configuration item.

Keep clicking. It's there somewhere. I don't give up until after about an hour. If I haven't found it by then, I usually submit a bug report asking for another menu option to be added and they almost always say "yes".

It's done wonders for my productivity. My PHB seems to disagree. Can't understand why. Go KDE!

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 6:38 UTC (Mon) by warmcat1 (guest, #31975) [Link]

- Run "Control Center"
- select "System Administration" on the left pane
- select the child page "Paths"
- set your "Desktop" path

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 9:52 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (4 responses)

Of course you can't... In KDE it's impossible to find the useful features and options, because they're hiding in a forrest of useless ones...

How anyone can say that enhanced their productivity is beyond me, I've never seen so much clutter in my life.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:03 UTC (Mon) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (2 responses)

How anyone can say that enhanced their productivity is beyond me, I've never seen so much clutter in my life.

From a productivity standpoint, complex configuration is costly up front, but free thereafter.

A simpler system may minimize the initial configuration cost, but you pay for it with the decreased productivity that comes from using a duller, less suitable tool for the task at hand. In fact, the longer you use it, the more expensive it gets, since the cost accumulates. And the wider the adaptation that such a system achives, the more costly it gets, since there are now more users suffering accumulating productivity losses.

For example, I use the Gimp a lot for 3 or 4 days a month. I tend to keep the main window in the upper-right corner of the workspace. My window manager allows me to maximize windows along the y-axis, which allows me to create a new image, which opens a new window, which I can quickly maximize along the y-axis, move flush with the main window by relying on edge resistance (another feature that my window manager supports), and dragging the left border to the edge of the screen. This is complex to describe, but the combination of verticle maximization, edge resistance, and central window placement makes it easy to quickly maximize my use of available space, which is important if I am going to do this a couple hundred times a day.

Occasionally I am forced to work on a system that has only metacity installed, the operation described above becomes awkward -- and after just a few iterations -- irritating. Even if I am going to be working on said system for just one day, I usually find it more productive to download sawfish and configure it before I start. Even if I only break even from a time standpoint, it's worth it just to avoid the aggrevation.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:14 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (1 responses)

Huh? I use Compiz at the moment, but as far as I can remember, resizing along an axis is just Ctrl-click or Alt-Clicking maximize.

Besides, no one is forcing you to use Metacity for GNOME, it's just the default.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 13, 2006 2:14 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Besides, no one is forcing you to use Metacity for GNOME, it's just the default.

I'm using sawfish in fact, as I mentioned. It's been in a state of semi-maintance for years now, but I still find it better than the alternatives.

As far as vertical/horizontal maximization: yes, I think you can configure a keybinding for it, if you happen to find that convenient. I prefer to use the mouse (alone) for that sort of thing. I even wrote a patch for this feature back in 2002, but I was informed that it was "crack." I eventually got tired of patching my own version of metacity, so I reverted to sawfish. It seems to be faster anyway.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:48 UTC (Mon) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

> I've never seen so much clutter in my life.

I have it's called gnome (should be gone) . :-)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 10:15 UTC (Mon) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (24 responses)

> I continuously marvel at how similar Mac and Gnome fans are in terms of
> being completely unable to hear criticisms of gnome or mac.

I would agree with that assessment if you include KDE fans. As an outsider who normally uses none of the three, I find it highly ironic that you left out KDE fans from your list. In my experience, they are generally worse than GNOME fans, though certainly not as bad as Mac fans. As an example, I need merely point to this very article, which is full of KDE fans who are obviously ignorant of how GNOME works (and in many cases, apparently barely literate), and yet who still feel the need to rant and curse at those who do not share their ignorance.

I also agree that GNOME's implementation falls short of the conception. And, like you, I like their conception. I don't like KDE's conception, for the most part (though there are a few areas that are very well-done). In general, I find KDE ugly, cluttered, ad-hoc, awkward, and counterproductive, and I see no signs that they plan to go in any other direction anytime soon.

I'll keep checking both GNOME and KDE as they release new versions, but I have begun to strongly doubt that KDE will ever become a system I would want to use, while GNOME at least has that good potential. In the mean time, fortunately, there is no shortage of alternatives. :)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:29 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (14 responses)

Not all of us are ranting and cursing. Some of us are honestly curious about what draws people to one environment over the other.

I mean, it's obvious that both have userbases, and that those userbases don't intersect much: the question is why, and to what extent each environment can be rendered attractive for the other without ruining it for its existing userbase.

GNOME probably has a lot of detractors because it swung from a featureful GNOME 1.4 to a GNOME 2 with all the features removed. I at least stuck with GNOME 1.4 for *ages*, then made the big leap to KDE. There's a certain sense that the GNOME devs have decided they don't give a damn about a large part of their userbase, and some of the devs' own comments have tended to reinforce that. It's a pretty natural human thing to dislike being told that you will be ignored. (Even though of course the GNOME devs had no requirement to pay any attention, I at least consider it a point of honour when supporting software I wrote to try to keep *all* my users happy inasmuch as they don't have conflicting requirements, and not ignoring them is part of that.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 12:57 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (9 responses)

"I at least consider it a point of honour when supporting software I wrote to try to keep *all* my users happy inasmuch as they don't have conflicting requirements, and not ignoring them is part of that."
The problem with keeping *all* the users happy is that then you'll need to support a million features, a lot of which is useful to a few percent, and just an annoyance to everybody else. Perfect way to get to clutterhell.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 13:28 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (8 responses)

A search facility to search the config dialogs seems like a good idea.

(IIRC KDE has just that, but I'm not in X right now and I can't remember.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 14:30 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (7 responses)

You really see this as a good thing? Clutter from featuritis, solved with more clutter?

There really is a problem when you need to SEARCH for the dialogs...

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:12 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

Question: which is better, me cursing the system daily because I can't work out how to make it behave in an intuitive fashion, or the clutter caused by featuritis?

As an example, I grew up with systems where Ctrl-U was delete line, and Ctrl-W was delete word. I expect these shortcuts to work, and made the effort to configure the KDE desktop I use day-in, day-out to match my way of thinking. On GNOME, I can't find a way to make Ctrl-W anything other than Close Window; this may be a case of not enough looking, but I'm not prepared to unlearn the habits of 15 years learning, just because someone, somewhere feels that I shouldn't have them.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:24 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (1 responses)

Use emacs keybindings, no problem.

(Yes, some applications have Ctrl-w hardwired to "Close window", that's a bug, but hardly GNOME's fault).

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:47 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Even applications like, oh, gnumeric (a flagship GNOME application).

As far as I can tell, menu shortcut keys take precedence over the (fantastically arcane to set up) gtk-emacs-* bindings in every situation (although I haven't yet checked the Gtk source to verify this).

As such, you have to unbind all clashing keybindings in *every application separately* before things work as you expect.

(Oh, and those vaunted Emacs keybindings? You know how many keys they bind? Fifteen. That's pathetic, just pathetic: even readline beats that by a factor of two or three. Not even paragraph moving is implemented.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:39 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

By this definition, you'd slim down Wikipedia to a dozen pages or so. It's too large and cluttered to find anything in, you know, and search dialogs, well, they're 'clutter'.

I mean, sure, kcontrol is cluttered in the sense that there are an awful lot of settings in there (of course there are: the whole point of it is that *everything* that's configurable in KDE should be configurable from that place if necessary, and thanks to KParts this is done without adding bloat to anything) --- but because there's a search option, that clutter *is not annoying*. You can browse if you want, or jump straight to an option: both are possible.

Computers are good at looking for things. Why not let them?

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:08 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (2 responses)

Ok, comparing an encyclopedia with a desktop is just too far out...

The purpose of Wikipedia is to retrieve information, of course you want to be able to search that information.

The purpose of a control panel is to configure stuff. If a search box is needed for that, then something is wrong, at least in my mind.

Search for:[How to change pixelsize of that bar that I NEED to be 3 pixels wide, find it now, or I will not be able to WORK!]

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:49 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Simply searching for `bar' or `pixel' would be a good start.

And since it's an isearch-style search box (well, sort of like isearch mixed with M-x occur), you often don't even need to type in the whole word.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 15:31 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

"Ok, comparing an encyclopedia with a desktop is just too far out..."

Why? Both seek to be comprehensive, target themselves at all users, and are the first point of interface to their respective fields. Seems wholly appropriate to me.

Search isn't just for finding needles in haystacks; it's also for being able to focus on what you want rather than looking through everything, and for being sure you haven't missed an occurrence of what you're looking for. That's useful whether you have ten lines or ten thousand pages to look through.

On a broader point - why should my interactions with my computer be bounded by the limitations of your imagination?

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 15:03 UTC (Mon) by kelvin (guest, #6694) [Link] (3 responses)

GNOME probably has a lot of detractors because it swung from a featureful GNOME 1.4 to a GNOME 2 with all the features removed.

This has been repeated to death by now, but I've yet to hear an explanation of what 1.4-features that are missing. Please, I'd really like to know. Is it the ability to set the tile background on panel launchers? Is it the lack of "viewports" in Metacity (even though "workspaces" (or whatever they're called) have the exact same functionality). For all I know, the removed settings were simply work-arounds for behaviour that was broken in the first place.

The only legitimate regression that I've heard about is that emacs key-bindings are non-functional. This is clearly a bug. Is it a serious bug? No. Do any of the developers use this? Apparently not, or it would have been resolved by now. Have patches been written? I have no idea.

Second of all: GNOME 2.0 was released four years ago... get. over. it.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:45 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

The features that annoyed me most that were zapped (concentrating on the panel and other 'GNOME workspace' stuff here: some of the apps, like gnumeric, aren't half bad):

- a myriad tiny options, including 90% of the panel configuration: I hate the standard look of panels, and that was all I now had access to. (In KDE, for instance, I have three differently-sized panels in different locations, two autohidden, with background colours indicating function).

- the ability to remember the location of dragged menus and toolbars vanished (reported as a bug, marked WONTFIX, gee, thanks). Of course you can't do the dragging now without messing around with semi-undocumented options in gconf-editor.

- the session manager moved from being bad at coping with X apps on remote machines to being completely incapable of it. Sure, KDE is little better (I had to read the source to figure out how to do it), but I'd need to rewrite a fairly large chunk of gnome-session before it will work in GNOME, as far as I can tell.

- viewports and workspaces are distinct: viewports are views into a larger space, so you can have things positioned half-on-half-off different screens. My working style absolutely relies on such things, and has since the early 90s: why should GNOME force me to change decade-old habits because they can't be bothered to keep features that *fvwm 1* could handle easily?

... and much else I can't recall.

Roger Leigh has had trenchant comments on the API wreck that is glib, gtk, and the GNOME libraries in the past: search uk.comp.os.linux and you'll find them.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 19:55 UTC (Mon) by philips (guest, #937) [Link] (1 responses)

My favourite were shortcuts. 1.4 had a system where I could put a shortcut at any action. 2.x just cut it out. And highly customizable panels.

I spend long time trying to understand what went wrong with my shiny new GNOME 2.4(? - it was RedHat 8). I think I reinstalled at least once and tried to repair gnome installation several time. then tried to compile from sources and of course that failed. then went to forums just to find Havoc with new official line he just got from corporate HQ.

It was then Havoc was claiming that *nobody* want to configure desktop, everybory wants desktop preconfigured with proper settings. He is just from meeting with higher-ups - sorry, that's why the WONTFIXes were applied that late. The higher-ups gave him new results of new selected users poll. And he already knows the one true settings for everybody and all configurability would be eventually cut out since it's not needed anymore.

That's why I'm against giving GNOME any poll results. It's just hard to guess what would happen to GNOME 3.x then. And I think GNOME 2.x users have to be much more concerned of the poll consequence.

At last I have to thanks RedHat and GNOME for forcing me to switch to SUSE and KDE with IceWM. IceWM is just way too cool.

P.S.

"We are the nobodies,
Wanna be somebodies,
We're dead, we know just who we are" (c) Marilyn Manson.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 23:01 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

The shortcut behaviour is still available: you say

gtk-can-change-accels=1

in your ~/.gtkrc-2.0.

(This is documented nowhere that Google can find. "true" doesn't work, nor does "1". I found it in the Gtk source tree, in gtkmenu.c. There is, of course, no gnome control-center option to configure it, although gtk-qt provides a KDE control panel applet.

How terribly user-friendly.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 14:09 UTC (Mon) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (8 responses)

As an outsider who normally uses none of the three, I find it highly ironic that you left out KDE fans from your list. In my experience, they are generally worse than GNOME fans, though certainly not as bad as Mac fans.

But none of them are as bad as Volkswagen fans.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:25 UTC (Mon) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (7 responses)

> But none of them are as bad as Volkswagen fans.

Now that one i have just got to absolutley and totaly agree with , i would also put BMW and Mercedes fans in the same catagory total clutzes. and as for the jerks driving around in there dam bmw's sporting the english flag well that ought to be treasonable ..

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 23:03 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (6 responses)

I am ashamed for my nation.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 23:04 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

(That is, I am ashamed that it can produce someone as apparently incapable of coherent thought as petegn. BMWs, of course, are quite acceptable.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 13, 2006 7:36 UTC (Tue) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (4 responses)

are they hell as like .

Your old man obviousley did not spend the last war fighting the darn germans and running for his life because he believed in his country of origin bieng free from them (germans ) so dont come that one NO GERMAN ENGINEERING IS ACCEPTABLE IN THE UK .

END

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 14, 2006 21:24 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

No, my maternal grandmother's entire family were Austrian Jews: only two survived (by running to the UK in time).

Oddly enough it appears to have escaped your attention that .de and .at are fully-fledged democracies and among the most developed and civilized nations on Earth. The current citizenship of those countries is as blameless as anyone (and their ancestors suffered terribly from the dictatorship they lived under in that period). Repeat after me: *1945 was sixty years ago*. The war is *over*.

(I thought people with opinions like this didn't exist outside of bad parodies.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 23:16 UTC (Thu) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

yawnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 15:40 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, it's probably good to know that you're an all-round general purpose ignorant bigot. At least we know it's not isolated to your contributions on the subject of GNOME.

*plonk*

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 16, 2006 23:18 UTC (Fri) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

yawwwnnnnnnnnnnnn

jerkoff

Sabayon

Posted Jun 12, 2006 8:20 UTC (Mon) by penguin (guest, #36771) [Link] (2 responses)

Personally the thing i find hardest to do is setting up a central config for all the various apps. Sabayon goes a long way and i really really like the way you log into an Xnest server for configuring. Its way better than AD, GPO, Zenworks or anything i have ever seen when it comes to centrally managed desktops and settings.

I use it extensively for our linux terminal servers with very good result. If GNOME wants to make things easier it would be a good start to make heavy lifting on sabayon and make support for more applications. Sabayon is truly amazing for a Novell freak like me. I work with GPO and Zenworks all day and Sabayon makes those two look like some ancient SCO Unix thingy.

Sabayon

Posted Jun 12, 2006 14:51 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

Penguin, Penguin....

You'll never get noticed with a constructive, informative, and generally uncontroversial post like that. This is a *flame war*. And you must act accordingly.

Get with the program. ;-)

-Steve

Sabayon

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:45 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

At least it's a flamewar with mostly-polite participants actually trying to impart info on both sides. :)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

What a name!

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Subtle Irony Indeed

Subtle Irony Indeed

Emacs Key Bindings

Emacs Key Bindings

Moan Moan Moan

Moan Moan Moan

Moan Moan Moan

Moan Moan Moan Moan

Moan Moan Moan Moan

Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan

Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan

Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan Moan

Your reasoning is worse.

Your reasoning is worse.

Good Grief

Emacs Key Bindings

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Insecurity about the plusplus

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Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Don't like the taste of your own medicine?

Nonsense from Start to Stop

Questions for deployments of GNOME