The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 0:41 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience by sramkrishna
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

> We don't need a DE for a workstation or servers? All we have as a consumer
> desktop environment is netbooks, desktops, embedded devices, and cell
> phones and we want to be on all of them. We want to be able to come up
> with a user interface that works for all of them.

Cell phones and tablet computers need a fundamentally different interface than desktop PCs. You cannot create a single interface that works for all of them. Many have tried and failed, including Microsoft.

Embedded devices usually don't have an interface at all. If they do, it will depend heavily on what the embedded device is designed to do. Web interface are popular choices for consumer devices like Wifi routers; command-line interfaces are popular for business-oriented ones like Cisco routers. In any case, there is no room for Gnome here.

In my opinion, desktop environments should stick to what they do best: being boring, predictable and usable on desktop PCs. Being forced to learn new ways to do the same old things is bad. Change for the sake of change is bad.

I respect the GNOME devs for being willing to try out new things. However, maybe they need to explore more alternatives and get feedback from a statistically significant sample of users before really deciding what GNOME 3 will be.

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The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 4:14 UTC (Wed) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm not arguing for a "One Ring" solution here. I'm saying that we've setup our technology such that we can do that. You do want to show hardware manufacturer that linux + gnome is an all encompassing solution. You can have your embedded device and a great UI to go with it that you could change to your needs. It doesn't have to conform to the desktop style OS, it can be changed to suit your needs.

You're still thinking too technical here... wifi routers, cisco routers, etc. But in any case, we can in fact create a GTK+ interface using a web browser so absolutely you can create a GTK+ app using broadway technnology, See Alex Larsson's post: http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/03/15/gtk-html-backend-...

Alex Graveley did something similar a couple of years ago. So yes, there is room for GNOME there. How about medical devices? How about smart phones? How about a device that controls a multi media experience in your living room? How about a universal remote? How about a car stereo? How about the device that controls your house temperature? What about your TV? DVD player? You know your TV and DVD player all run Linux right? Imagine the devices that you interact with every day.

There might be some over-reach and that's fine. We pull back a bit, and then try to push some more. GNOME 3 is kinda boring right? It doesn't have a lot of visual options to change, the desktop is pretty blank except forthat top bar, it is a very unassuming desktop. But there is an extensions setup that you could do interesting things. It doesn't expose a lot of the API yet, but I can see them exposing more and more of the underpinnings.

We need to think big, dream big. If we didn't, it only leads to stagnation and for whatever parts of your life that interest you, you don't want that.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 13:16 UTC (Wed) by coulamac (guest, #21690) [Link] (2 responses)

This point should be repeated. The GNOME developers designed Gnome Shell so that it could be *easily extendable*, much like Firefox, through extensions written in javascript. (The developers are still finalizing the extension mechanism and the documentation about extensions. Most of that will probably land before Gnome 3.2. There are a few extensions already out in the wild, though.) So, the Gnome guys actually designed the shell to invite people to play with the desktop and change the way it behaves to suit the users' needs. They want Gnome Shell to be a power user's playground as well as a place suitable for newbies.

This may not be so apparent right now because the Gnome guys are trying to get the shell out the door in its default mode. After that's done, based on the feedback they receive, the developers will add options, change other options, alter some defaults, and create extensions. They will also invite the users to create lots of extensions. The developers have to get the shell out the door first, however. So, be patient. You may find that soon Gnome Shell will do anything you want it too.

Extensions and applications

Posted Mar 16, 2011 14:02 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

The GNOME developers designed Gnome Shell so that it could be *easily extendable*, much like Firefox, through extensions written in javascript. (The developers are still finalizing the extension mechanism and the documentation about extensions. Most of that will probably land before Gnome 3.2. There are a few extensions already out in the wild, though.) So, the Gnome guys actually designed the shell to invite people to play with the desktop and change the way it behaves to suit the users' needs. They want Gnome Shell to be a power user's playground as well as a place suitable for newbies.

This sounds a lot like what KDE 4 does with Plasma, although I may not be completely up-to-date with the terminology and whether it's specifically a particular flavour of Plasma or not which manages this. Generally, I find the "people who aren't real developers can tinker with JavaScript" attitude somewhat condescending, even if it is possible to make some serious extensions in these environments, but maybe the attitude towards languages other than C and C++ (and the about-face in adopting the awful JavaScript as a concession to "everyone else") is traditionally more of a problem within KDE than GNOME.

I have to say that the applications are what make KDE 3 interesting for me, although the theming obviously plays a role in making everything look largely consistent, and the desktop furniture plays its part by doing what one asks of it in a non-annoying way. Some applications are based on KDE frameworks which would suggest that those frameworks help developers to build decent software, so maybe the real test of a desktop environment should be whether it manages to cultivate applications one would want to use, not whether the designers thought up some radical paradigm that gets in the way of getting to those applications.

Extensions and applications

Posted Mar 16, 2011 15:37 UTC (Wed) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link]

> Generally, I find the "people who aren't real developers can tinker with
> JavaScript" attitude somewhat condescending, even if it is possible to
> make some serious extensions in these environments, but maybe the attitude
> towards languages other than C and C++ (and the about-face in adopting the
> awful JavaScript as a concession to "everyone else") is traditionally more
> of a problem within KDE than GNOME.

That's not correct. The motivation for choosing JS was three-fold: rapid prototyping, maturity/speed of the JS engines in Firefox/Webkit, and the massive pool of "web developers" out there who are already familiar with it. It has nothing to do with level of skill. If anything, JS can be harder to develop in because of some missing safety features.