Tweaking [LWN.net]

Tweaking

Posted Mar 18, 2011 10:37 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558)
In reply to: Tweaking by C.Gherardi
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Unless you're managing an uncommon set of users, I think you're at the wrong vantage point to see the problem.

Normal behavior on someone else's computer isn't normal behavior on your own.

Very few people's work demands enough of their computer that accommodations have to be made.

I've said it before: GNOME seems to be going the proprietary Apple/Microsoft route with ever-increasing doggedness, making the best environment they know how to make for 'normal' people. GNOME seems (from a distance now) to be measuring "best" as minimizing the volume of inexperienced users' baffled questions, and their vexed or bewildered responses to the answers.

I think that's a strategically unsound choice, but it's not my call and it doesn't irritate me -- so long as the tools themselves remain interoperable, and can use open-system standards to full advantage.

Because GNOME is not an open system. There are people posting on LWN who can't figure out how to make the simplest alterations to what they regard as their personal environment on their personal computer, and the answers they're getting aren't of the "here's the doc on how to do that" variety.

That a volunteer-based project is consciously excluding the "how do I make it do that?" crowd from its user base is ... well, like I say, I don't think it can last.

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Tweaking

Posted Mar 18, 2011 19:03 UTC (Fri) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not really headed in the proprietary direction per se, but it does seem to go in weird cycles of being more Apple-like to less Apple-like. Unlike Apple and Microsoft software, however, it isn't being designed with the corporate desktop user or developer in mind, nor with due consideration for the need to manage large numbers of those desktops and provide an interface people in such environments are used to.

My main gripe is that, instead of this, it's actually trying to cater to some weird subset of novice users who want a "My First Linux Machine" UI. But those people are going to run one of the popular other interfaces from other more embedded/tablet projects, and not GNOME (or GNOME OS, or whatever, that ship has sailed). Sure, lots of really excitable enthusiasts will run GNOME 3, and it'll get some great reviews. But people on Slashdot (and even LWN) are not the millions of the mass market.

I'd love it if they'd gracefully accept that other projects have been targeting netbooks and tablets, that things like Android and Chrome OS have won there, and move on, back to core competencies. Yes, I have an "enterprise" hat on in all of this since I want GNOME to be the desktop of choice and relevance for the enterprise first and foremost.

Jon.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 28, 2011 19:27 UTC (Mon) by pcarrier (guest, #65446) [Link]

Unlike Apple and Microsoft software, however, it isn't being designed with the corporate desktop user or developer in mind

After spending a few months writing code under Windows, I cannot disagree more. Microsoft still hasn't implemented a dynamically resizable terminal (horizontal scrolling if you try), or proper completion in their shell. Or a configurable prompt AFAIK.

Many trivial changes could prove very pleasing to developers, but they just never, ever cared. The corporate developer can shut up and hack (win32 code).