The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 6:26 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
In reply to: The GNOME project at 15 by hp
Parent article: The GNOME project at 15

> I'm disappointed that we probably lost far more users to OS X than to KDE or any other competing Linux desktop. (Was that because OS X had more configuration options?)

I would venture a guess it was because Apple didn't break random things from release to release for their users, as often as others did.

PS. I personally didn't switch (a bit more tolerant to breakage + really don't like OS X). But, you know what - Gnome 3 usability regressions did give me a moment of pause. Luckily I can still run mutter in fallback mode, the combo that works sufficiently "normal".

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 8:21 UTC (Wed) by AngryChris (guest, #74783) [Link]

While I think GNOME Shell is slick and all, the deal breaker for me was that it does not work, at all, under xrdp or NX Desktop. I've found that KDE works flawlessly and is more comfortable to use.

I last used KDE in 1997, beta 7, and when it was very CDE-like. I dropped it for GNOME 1.x (which was pretty bad, to be honest) because, at the time, I was a licensing purist. Now, 15 years later, I don't care anymore. I want something that works. I want indicators on my screen. I want multiple windows on my screen. I do not want an "attention focused" desktop. I'm back to KDE after all these years and happy again.

I miss GNOME 2.

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 10:31 UTC (Wed) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (2 responses)

After the GNOME 1 to 2 transition, GNOME was too huge and too slow for my machine, so I switched to XFCE (3?). After a while, GNOME developers did an amazing work and improved performance, memory usage and stability, so I switched back to GNOME. Now GNOME 3 drove me nuts (mainly the depressing dark colours I can't change and the inconsistent look of different dialogues, some dark, some bright), so I switched to XFCE, again. I'm sure, the GNOME developers will fix the issues.

Happy birthday, GNOME! We'll meet again.

(don't know where, don't know when, sorry Vera Lynn)

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 13:53 UTC (Wed) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (1 responses)

Apps for visual consumption are dark, the others normal.

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.x

Posted Aug 15, 2012 14:50 UTC (Wed) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]

And so are a lot of dialogues, e.g. of network manager applet, IIRC. GNOME 2 had a really nice and consistent default look and I had never the wish to change it. GNOME 3 is hard to read for my old eyes (too dark) and I could not change the look to sth. readable and consistent. But I'm sure, Debian Jessie will have a nice GNOME 3 (at the ago of 17 or 18 by then) for me, again :~)

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 11:35 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (7 responses)

> I would venture a guess it was because Apple didn't break random things from release to release for their users, as often as others did.

Yes they do. Even more often. But they sell it as improvement with a wonderful marketing machine.

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 12:06 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (6 responses)

That is interesting. Gnome gets released every 6 months, which is when breakage occurs (sometimes). So, you are saying that Apple break this even more often than that. I don't really use this stuff, but I do not remember my daughter dowloading a new OS X that often...

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 12:15 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (4 responses)

I have had an MacBook for the last 3 years, and it's a good machine and a nicely thought OS, but it's really inflexible and it breaks stuff gratuitously. I bought it in August 2009, with Leopard installed, but I got a disk with Snow Leopard with it in September. Lion came two years later, and it broke the dashboard (which I used and liked) and inverted the mouse wheel (I actually liked that so much that I use "natural scrolling" in my KDE machines), and in little more than a year came Mountain Lion and signed executables and other "goodnesses"...

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 15:49 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

So in 3 years they broke and re-fixed the dashboard, and added optional signed executables? That sounds like hardly any breakage at all...? Honestly curious, I'm very new to this Mac thing.

(A question: I see people going nuts over signed executables but I've downloaded Gimp, MacVim, GnuBG, Sublime Editor, lots of homebrew tools, and tons of other open source apps to my Mountain Lion machine with zero trouble. Where do the signed executable restrictions get in the way?)

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 16:56 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

I think people are justifiably worried that signed executables will be enforced in a future version of OS X.

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 16:55 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (1 responses)

While we're on the topic, does anyone remember how awesome Exposé was? Shame that was taken away in OS X 10.7 (Lion). :(

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 17:03 UTC (Thu) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Aw... And that just when I got used to it in KDE...

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 17:43 UTC (Thu) by gpoo (subscriber, #56055) [Link]

I do not think you can count many breakages (if any) between GNOME 2.8 and GNOME 2.32. And those were 12 releases in 6 years.

You can expect some "breakages" in the early stages of a major release, while the UI is being adjusted.

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 14:25 UTC (Thu) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (3 responses)

> I would venture a guess it was because Apple didn't break random things from release to release for their users, as often as others did.

I am seriously considering switching to OSX after using Linux for 17 years. Nothing to do with desktop work flows, notifications or animations (either lack or presence) but applications. There are too many desktop applications which Linux lacks (at least with the feature and support level) that I find myself in need of.

I sincerely cannot get the point of so many WM changes, or so many desktop changes when we still lack applications.

[...]

But I think you do have a point wrt Apple's stability through upgrades.

Having to maintain a Linux desktop for my non-technical parents who live far-far-away taught me a lot about how the Linux Desktop is really *not* ready for mass adoption. Things break too often. Fwiw, today I was explaining to my parents that they are getting an ipad to use next to the Ubuntu laptop.

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 15:02 UTC (Thu) by hp (guest, #5220) [Link]

It's because applications can't get critical mass. The desktop itself has a fairly small number of developers, but "everyone" using Linux is interested in it and the Linux distributions sponsor it a little bit (not a lot).

For apps, maybe 5% of those using Linux are interested in a given app? And number of OSS developers relates to number of users because generally some users become developers. Also for apps, fewer of the users know how to code (many developers use only desktop, browser, terminal, and editors, and little else).

But _each_ app can be at least as much work as building the entire desktop. And the distributions can't afford to sponsor many apps.

And on Linux there hasn't been much success with proprietary apps.

So that's why there aren't tons of apps. (In my opinion.) In fact it's sort of amazing how many there are. I'd say most of them have only 1 or maybe 3 core developers though.

The apps with the most developers are cross-platform. (Firefox, LibreOffice)

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 18:49 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (1 responses)

> I am seriously considering switching to OSX after using Linux for 17 years. Nothing to do with desktop work flows, notifications or animations (either lack or presence) but applications. There are too many desktop applications which Linux lacks (at least with the feature and support level) that I find myself in need of.

Just curious, what apps are we talking about? I use KDE for a long time, and for the last 3 years I have suffered OSX Leopard, Lion and now Mountain Lion, just because I developed some iOS software. There are no apps in my MacBook that are better than the apps in my home and office desktops...

The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 16, 2012 20:17 UTC (Thu) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]

> Just curious, what apps are we talking about?

Out of the top of my head:
- PDF editor (no, okular does not edit PDFs, it just pretends to do that). I used this PDF X-Change (proprietary) under Wine, but it crashes somewhat often.
- (Own a fancy video camera) a decent video editor (yes, there are video editors for Linux... no, I am not happy with them).
- (Own a fancy photo camera) a good RAW editor (yes, I know dcraw and the others, IMHO they are not as good as Lightroom or the RAW editor that came with my camera which I failed to run using Wine)
- a photo manager that allows me to easily create a high quality album for printing.

On a practical note, my wife uses OSX. Using the same OS would simplify some of my `family sys-admin duties`.