Day: The Next Step [LWN.net]

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 20, 2012 23:35 UTC (Tue) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (39 responses)

If those people want so much to have total control, to force the user into their preferred workflow by imposing a set of rigid, limited, not-customizable applications designed to run best on full screen and to hide completely what's really going on on the system, can they try to get a job at the smartphone division of Google, Apple or Microsoft and leave what remains of desktop Linux alone?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 20, 2012 23:40 UTC (Tue) by pbryan (guest, #3438) [Link] (16 responses)

You write as though you have no control, that they're forcing you to use their software, and that they're not collaborating on an open source project.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 20, 2012 23:45 UTC (Tue) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (14 responses)

I'm not using their software anymore, I'm just sad for what they're doing to the software I used to use.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 20, 2012 23:52 UTC (Tue) by pbryan (guest, #3438) [Link] (12 responses)

Ah, then perhaps the Mate project may be something of interest to you.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 6:42 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (11 responses)

Let's not forget, how much extra effort was spent by the Mate people due to the sabotage inflicted upon them by the GNOME 3 crowd.

I'm speaking about the parallel installability here.

And I believe that this sabotage was executed with intent.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 9:16 UTC (Wed) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]

> And I believe that this sabotage was executed with intent.

I don't think GNOME needs to sabotage MATE. They managed to sabotage themselves by forking parallel installable libraries (gnome-desktop, gnome-vfs, libwnck, etc.), and used git in a way that made it impossible to rebase upstream fixes.

Bloody hell, they forked stuff we tried to drop for many years like GConf, libgnomeui, bonobo. I'd like to hear those conversations where the evil GNOME developers told them to maintain old crap, forked into unmaintanable git trees.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 10:02 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (9 responses)

Sabotage? You're crazy! I've offfered git.gnome.org accounts various times. There have been various forks which went nowhere. MATE did things on their own, any mishaps are own that person (doesn't seem to be much of a team).

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 10:44 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (8 responses)

Did you read my message at all?

The sabotaged part was parallel installability of GNOME 2 and GNOME 3.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 12:01 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (7 responses)

I'm guessing your definition of sabotage is not what I see on e.g. Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia:

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction.

MATE arrived later than GNOME 3. Nothing was done to make parallel installation possible. However, no deliberate action was taken to make this impossible.

So in short: For once MATE arrived afterwards. Secondly it was not a deliberate action.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:06 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (6 responses)

Wikipedia article notwithstanding, there is sabotage by INaction, too. For instance, a worker can neglect to monitor the temperature of an industrial machine, and thereof NOT act opening a coolant valve, causing it to overheat and be damaged.

So, when the (simple) steps were not taken minimally to ensure that GNOME3 and GNOME2 were parallel-installable (KDE3/4, too!), it can be construed as a sabotage.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:24 UTC (Wed) by sebas (guest, #51660) [Link] (1 responses)

KDE3 and 4 are parallel installable. We spent quite some effort to make that possible, and distributions like openSUSE offered both for some time.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 22, 2012 10:43 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

At the present day, I even believe it is possible. When 4.0 came out, they shared ~/.kde and the newer apps used to botch config and datafiles of the old apps, rendering both DEs unusable. Yes, I know the paths are configurable. They just weren't well configured for parallel installation by default (and yes, IMHO they should be).

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:26 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (3 responses)

You're suggestion deliberate action or deliberate inaction.

Given this, it still does not match up. MATE still didn't exist at the time of GNOME 3. Furthermore, the inaction was not deliberate.

Lastly, you've suggested these steps were simple, while at the same time it resulted in sabotage. If those steps were simple then: 1) patches welcome 2) why make such a fuss about sabotage?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 16:46 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

He's talking about Gnome 3 parallel installable with Gnome 2. The existence of MATE has nothing to do with it.

This thread sounds deliberate to me: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-O...

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 17:05 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

I already explained the relevance of MATE before. Earlier in thread it was said that it was to sabotage MATE. If MATE didn't exist at that point, then even if you say sabotage, it cannot be about MATE.

In the email/thread you referenced was if there would be any development work to make this possible. It was decided to not invest any time into this and instead focus on getting rid of old technologies, porting gnome-panel, etc. Note that Bastien is not a GNOME release team member (he is a well known maintainer of various important components).

Note also my reply (in which I was dead wrong :P): https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-O...

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 25, 2012 14:09 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

If you would have thought a little, you'd come to the conclusion that the damage was inflicted upon _all_ potential paths of continuation of GNOME 2.

Mate is merely one of them.

It's not clear, what precludes you from being able to see this simple fact.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 22, 2012 0:56 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

Don't worry. In a couple of months you'll be back.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:51 UTC (Wed) by cmorgan (guest, #71980) [Link]

+1, totally agree

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 0:12 UTC (Wed) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (20 responses)

Ok, I hereby declare that this will be my last comment on topics related to GNOME 3, it just isn't worth it and it makes me seem some sort of maladjusted idiot. I swear it, I'm not thinking about GNOME all day, I mostly remember it exists when I find news here.

That said, this bug report is unbelievable. "Editing is a corner case, open text files and spreadsheets in a bad copy of Mac OS X Preview" who incidentally opens only images, PDFs and PPTs, that is only files that you mostly view, not edit, because when you have paying customers, even if you're Apple, sometimes you need to compromise your "vision of the user experience". Yes, even if you're a "designer".

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 3:41 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (1 responses)

> Ok, I hereby declare that this will be my last comment on topics related to GNOME 3

Come on! Where is the fun in that? :-)

Comment away, I say. That's kind of what the comment system is for, right?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 22, 2012 5:45 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

>That's kind of what the comment system is for, right?

And the comment filtering system. Perhaps someday it'll evolve some context dependence, e.g. ghepeu when comment contains gnome instead ofg just all ghepeu posts.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 5:52 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (8 responses)

OK, I don't use GNOME 3 butt this is interesting. What I would like to see is a fast finder like in OS X, that will find the document I'm looking for (right now it's usually faster to trust my vague memory plus some combination of ls, find, grep etc); but having found it, I want the finder to give me the full path to it, that's all. I will then CD to that directory in a terminal window and open the file via the command line with the program of my choice, the way I do almost all the time anyway.

I realise I'm not GNOME 3's target audience.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 8:08 UTC (Wed) by sybille (guest, #47093) [Link] (2 responses)

Sounds like you might appreciate recoll.

It only indexes what you tell it to index, at the time(s) you prefer, and is, for my purposes anyway, fast.

Search from the command line or from the qt gui, where you can right-click on a result to copy the file URL for terminal use.

http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/
http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/usermanual/index.html

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 8:23 UTC (Wed) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link]

Recoll is quite useful. And if you're in Emacs, there is a anything-c-source-recoll source, so there is no need to even switch away from what you were working on in the first place.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 8:53 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Now why haven't I heard of this? Will try it today. Thanks!

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 22, 2012 5:46 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (4 responses)

It's called tracker: http://projects.gnome.org/tracker/
Hth.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 26, 2012 23:17 UTC (Mon) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (3 responses)

Except that, in my experience, Tracker slows down a laptop by a factor of 3. Yes, really.

This is because so many Linux desktop programs make random file accesses (icons! wav files! fonts! translation files! background bitmaps! 52 shared libraries! 10 config files!) while starting. Watch them with strace or track disk block access sometime.

That means that if another program like Tracker is constantly reading the disk, it adds many extra ms of latency to every non-contiguous disk read. Because of the many random file accesses these ms add up to multiple seconds for each application launch.

Again, this is my experience with Tracker on a laptop with a hard disk and 2 GB of RAM. Your mileage or meters may vary.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 27, 2012 2:17 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

It's listening in on creation/write events using inotify. It shouldn't listen to reads, let alone slow them.

I've not seen the slowdown you describe as far as i know. I've used it since its initial release through ubuntu.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 27, 2012 9:09 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

It may have improved. I'm sure it has.

It isn't that it listened to reads. It is that its own reads would stuff the disk queue and get in the way of things I wanted the disk for.

It used to repeatedly scan files as they were downloading. It would continuously read my email directories because there were several new messages every minute. When downloading new messages in newsgroups it would scan those files. On a fresh login it slowed everything down while setting up inotify because my home directory contained probably 20,000 subdirectories in various places because of a lot of code projects and version control stuff.

It was *extremely* lame when Tracker would go wild just because of an SVN checkout.

I improved it some by setting a lot of directories to ignore, but how useful is a file search tool that can't manage to search a useful number of files?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 27, 2012 10:59 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

Isn't it a noatime problem?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 6:55 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (7 responses)

I think that today Enlightenment 0.17 and Cinnamon represent the hope and intent for a modern, yet traditional desktop.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 10:04 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (3 responses)

This blog post was about applications. Enlightenment doesn't provide applications AFAIK, Cinnamon only forks existing modules (applications/components).

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 10:47 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (1 responses)

The post _I_ was replying to was not strictly about applications.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 12:06 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

You mean you'll use GNOME 3 applications under those desktops? That is what I was wondering.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 27, 2012 22:25 UTC (Tue) by cgwaldman (subscriber, #9061) [Link]

> Enlightenment doesn't provide applications AFAIK

It provides a few ...

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 30, 2012 12:51 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (2 responses)

i hope not... Both have what, a few dozen contributors at most? GNOME and KDE still have an order of magnitude more contributors - lets hope they continue to go places...

I still don't get why everyone is so upset about GNOME, btw. Get over it, finally, move to that MATE or Enlightenment or whatever. Or get over the hate and use KDE - if any project has the open mind and user focus (and is not run by one company or individual) and has a bright future build on solid technology (does anyone even notice the actual tech these days or do we fall for the project with fancy mockups and lots of blogs and talking bigshots?) it is KDE.

Changes are scary

Posted Dec 1, 2012 22:03 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

Easy: if people dislike change in GNOME, they are going to dislike changing to another desktop even more. Even going (back) to MATE is a scary proposition, since we don't know if it will still be alive in a years' time. And going to KDE... shivers!

You can keep telling people that change is not scary all day long, but it is an emotional reaction. Once they get over it and move to the Promised Land of XFCE they will not look back -- unless they don't like it, which can also happen. I am really happy there, but I value a snappy interface over any other concern. (I compile my own Debian kernels mostly to enable CONFIG_PREEMPT=y; I am not a typical case, if there ever was one in Linux land.)

Changes are scary

Posted Dec 3, 2012 11:42 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

> You can keep telling people that change is not scary all day long, but it is an emotional reaction.

I would like to really know how much people really reject Gnome Shell because "emotional" reactions vs. more reasonable concerns like lacking the required hardware (which is my case) or finding that the Shell does not match their work habits (like a co-worker of mine).

I don't have numbers to back it up, but I do believe that the (miss)characterization of critics as change-averse is basically a defensive reaction from the Gnome camp.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:18 UTC (Wed) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]

> That said, this bug report is unbelievable. "Editing is a corner case, open text files and spreadsheets in a bad copy of Mac OS X Preview" who incidentally opens only images, PDFs and PPTs, that is only files that you mostly view, not edit, because when you have paying customers, even if you're Apple, sometimes you need to compromise your "vision of the user experience". Yes, even if you're a "designer".

That bug report thread was the most amusing piece I read in a while...

(Can you imagine being the user who submitted that?)

LWN should have a "Weekly WTF bug report thread" section.

[...]

No, I don't use Gnome3 (otherwise I would not be laughing), I just skim through LWN comments every now and then.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:22 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Some people (not me, but some people) actually *like* the kind of applications you speak of - and would prefer to use free software. Apparently, that's the audience the GNOME folks are trying to reach. I think it's good that folks who want that will have a free software alternative.

As a former GNOME user, the direction GNOME has taken isn't my style - but we also have Cinnamon and Mate offering more "traditional" GNOME experiences for folks who aren't on board with the current direction of GNOME. So - everybody wins, which would not be the case if the GNOME folks "try to get a job at the smartphone division of Google, Apple, or Microsoft."

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 0:25 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

I understand now what the Gnome 3 team is trying to achieve.

Since last I posted, I have seen MS Windows 8. Each dissatisfaction with Gnome 3 applies even more to MSWindows 8. E.g., it took a half hour just to figure out how to turn it off. (Secret: hover within an unmarked rectangle at the bottom-right corner of the screen, poke the "Settings" icon that pops up, then click on a "Power" icon, then choose "Shut down" from the menu that pops up; OR: poke the "Start" button on the keyboard, type a "t" or a "y" and click on the "Settings" icon that pops up under the text entry box, and then click on a "Turn off your PC" message that shows up in the left column, then on a "Power" icon in the lower right, then choose from that pop-up menu.)

Apparently the Gnome 3 team hopes to out-windows-8 Microsoft. MS enjoys monopoly status in its core office apps, Apple with its itunes, and Google with maps. The Gnome team are feeling left out. They want to take control of users' experiences on some class of apps, too, and make the Google, Apple, and MS teams likewise envious. (Good luck with that, I guess.) The only question is, why would anybody else want to participate in their game?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 0:37 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link] (16 responses)

I'm glad to see the update... and I'm excited to see the progress they are making. I actually like and use GNOME at home. At work I prefer KDE... and on netbooks or underpowered devices (or those that don't like 3D graphics) I use XFCE. They are pretty much interchangeable for me. I also use a wide variety of applications from various desktops.

If you don't like GNOME that's ok too... but if you don't have anything constructive to say... remember what Thumper's mom said. :)

Ok, I see you didn't listen to me. Darn it.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 6:51 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (15 responses)

> If you don't like GNOME that's ok too... but if you don't have anything constructive to say...

This "la-la-la your feedback is not constructive" trick is getting really tiresome.

Constructive feedback was provided aplenty, but it was overwhelmingly ignored due to certain issues with "vision".

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 8:00 UTC (Wed) by kigurai (guest, #85475) [Link] (14 responses)

So what you are saying is that your feedback was not ignored at all, it was just not in line with the vision of the project?

Ignoring feedback is bad, I think we can all agree on that.
But are you suggesting that dismissing feedback due to contradiction with the vision of the project is a bad thing?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 8:56 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

I was merely responding to the top poster's insinuation -- the suggestion that criticism of GNOME's design decisions is "non-constructive" by nature.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 8:59 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (12 responses)

Yes.

The vision should be to supply what users need. Unless you're Steve Jobs. Which the Gnome people are not.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 9:59 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (6 responses)

The way you word it you imply that Steve Jobs was not good in giving people what they needed.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 10:12 UTC (Wed) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link] (5 responses)

I think he wasn't all that much. Rather, he was good in making people want what he gave them. :)

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 14:41 UTC (Wed) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (4 responses)

It could be argued that his is a failure of the GNOME project. But giving people what they want is often a bad idea:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ― Henry Ford.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 14:59 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (3 responses)

The way that Steve Jobs introduces new tech is really awesome. It might be something new with loads of drawbacks (e.g. iPhone 1 didn't support various things, iPad is terrible to write loads of stuff on).

I recently watched how Steve Jobs presented the iPhone as well as the iPad and IMO it is really impressive how he does it. He does mention the things it is not intended for, though also focusses on what it is meant for.

It seems to give a trust. It cannot do everything, but whatever they focussed upon will be great.

Recommend seeing these presentations again.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:20 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (2 responses)

Nobody but Jobs could have sold a keyboardless computer to the world. The Onion speculated that he would, but even they didn't predict just how far he would go.

Now, Microsoft (of all people) is pointing out that keyboards are useful. If the Surface Pro turns out to be a useful laptop and is reasonably priced, I predict it (and similar products) will outsell the iPad within a year.

The company that should be worried is Google, and -- to get back on topic -- they should aggressively target the Unix/Linux crowd, as Apple successfully did a decade ago. I run Linux in a chroot on an android tablet and it works for me. If they can make it a genuine laptop-alternative, pre-installed with LibreOffice, the Gimp and other goodies, while maintaining the Android ecosystem, they have -- if not a winner -- a very strong selling point.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 22:30 UTC (Wed) by ingwa (guest, #71149) [Link] (1 responses)

In other words: Full of desktop software, none of which has a viable touch interface and none of which will get one within 1-2 years. Why on earth would they want to do that?

If you want to look at free software which actually can work on a tablet, look instead at Plasma Active and the accompanying applications there.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 22, 2012 0:00 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

not all work on a tablet requires touch software. Eliminating all existing software, simply because it isn't touch-enabled is as stupid as eliminating all text based software simply because it doesn't have a GUI.

A LOT of very productive work is done by people who are using all-text software that would work on a vt100 terminal, using this software in xterms (or equivalent)

Yes, there are advantages of having new versions of most of this become GUI enabled, but if you were to make it so that you couldn't run any of this old software, it would cripple many people (and historically, it would have doomed the GUI based desktop)

The exact same situation exists relating to touch-based software. It's nice, but you shouldn't eliminate everything else first. There's a LOT of software that exists and does things that you can't currently do on tablets that would actually work tolerably well if you just treated the touch as a mouse and let people run it (for some definition of 'tolerably' anyway ;-)

On top of that, a lot of places where people are using tablets and even phones, there are USB and bluetooth keyboards and mice available. Simply using a high-end phone/tablet as a portable computer and 'docking' it to a TV or larger monitor would work very well for many people, even without touch support.

you can sort-of do this today by installing a complete OS in a sandbox, but that's wasteful of space (something that's a rather limited resource on phones and tablets), it would be far nicer if there was some way to get the capabilities without having to duplicate the entire infrastructure.

If that's enhancing Android to allow it to run 'traditional' apps, fine.

If that's enhancing 'traditional Linux' to allow it to run Android apps, that's also fine (in some way's it's better, a lot of companies "don't support Linux", but support Android. Being able to run their apps on my Linux desktop would close a lot of gaps)

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 11:17 UTC (Wed) by kigurai (guest, #85475) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, they are delivering what I need. Why don't I count?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 11:55 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (2 responses)

You count. Because what you need fits with their vision. But the ones whose needs don't fit with the vision, apparently, don't count.

Time will tell which group is more significant.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 12:34 UTC (Wed) by kigurai (guest, #85475) [Link]

Well, that is more or less part of the definition of not being part of the vision, don't you think? And I don't think that is strange at all.

My own guess is that GNOME will live on successfully (it's already been more than a year...). Since there are multiple new desktops being spawned, hopefully the users that feel they do not fit the GNOME vision can find a home somewhere else.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 14:34 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2012-N...

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 30, 2012 12:53 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

everyone needs something else and most cant even describe it. So that wont work...

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 8:23 UTC (Wed) by cyanit (guest, #86671) [Link] (4 responses)

Doesn't all this stuff already exist?

Documents: Nautilus
Music: Rythmbox, Banshee, Amarok
Photos: Shotwell, F-Spot
Videos: Shotwell

Not sure what "Transfers" is, if they mean "downloads" then there is Firefox and Transmission.

Why is GNOME 3 apparently reinventing those?

Also, considering how bad they are at the UI design, and the fact that they probably aren't as knowledgeable in photo/music management as the authors of the existing apps, the result is likely going to be unusable.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 9:47 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

I especially enjoy how they have reduced Empathy to unusability, and perhaps more importantly -- how that reduction was presented as a cool thing.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 9:57 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (2 responses)

Why not actually read the blog instead of asking questions for which you can easily find the answer? For instance, Videos will be based off Totem. Not sure of the point of your comment. Of course all kinds of similar ideas/applications already exist.

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 11:04 UTC (Wed) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link] (1 responses)

> Why not actually read the blog instead of asking questions for which you can easily find the answer? For instance, Videos will be based off Totem. Not sure of the point of your comment. Of course all kinds of similar ideas/applications already exist.

AFAICT, they talk about new applications in both the blog post and the wiki, with the sole exception of using totem for video.

Are they really planning on writing new apps for the other areas? Or only rebranding current apps?

Day: The Next Step

Posted Nov 21, 2012 12:13 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

Depends on what is easiest. Sometimes it is a new application, sometimes reusing an existing application. For Totem and Nautilus, existing applications. For "Images" I think the idea is to fork "eog" while at the same time stop any "eog" development. For gnome-clocks and gnome-boxes there wasn't anything to reuse, so they were created from scratch (AFAIK).

In some presentation they explained that they actually might write several mock application. This to figure out the UI/design. Then later when the design is right, the real application is written. For the real application you'd of course use whatever is easiest. But to test designs, changing some existing application could take too much work (compared to writing a throwaway one).