Quotes of the week

[Posted January 30, 2013 by corbet]

Do you remember the GNOME 1.x => 2.x transition? Similarly to how there are forks of GNOME now to 'keep the GNOME 2 candle burning,' there were forks of GNOME 1.x to 'keep the GNOME 1 candle burning.'

Do you remember what they were called? I didn't; I had to look 'em up. Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Dead projects nobody seems to remember. Do we really want to switch to a desktop that history has shown is likely to become a dead project in a few years?

— Máirín Duffy

The only thing we're missing is a nice car analogy! So let me provide one.

systemd's an Edsel with the trailer and aircraft-carrier-catapult attachments, sysvinit is a Peel Trident. (I just want a Volvo.)

— "nix"

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Quotes of the week

Posted Jan 31, 2013 2:00 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

I was going to say Reliant Robin.. but Peel Trident works almost as well :).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Robin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_Trident

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 2, 2013 18:55 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Reliant Robins are too well known and were actually sort of useful for some purposes. :)

(Anyway, ncm's followup to my post was much better. sysvinit *is* a boat anchor with feathers. The feathers serve to make it heavier and more effective as a boat anchor, but make it very hard to add anything to, and the slimy layer of half-rotted feathers makes it a bitch to maintain. Hence its stability.)

Quotes of the week

Posted Jan 31, 2013 12:12 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (24 responses)

Trouble is, history has shown that GNOME 3 is likely to become a dead project in a few years. GNOME 2 became a dead project shortly after GNOME 3 was released...

I'm not saying the new GNOME is bad or should not be used, just that this isn't really a point of advantage of GNOME 3 against the various forks. At the moment they all have about equal likelihood of being unmaintained in say, five years.

Quotes of the week

Posted Jan 31, 2013 17:19 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (8 responses)

> I'm not saying the new GNOME is bad or should not be used, just that this isn't really a point of advantage of GNOME 3 against the various forks.

You mean that the fact that Gnome 3 is massively more capable and customizable then Gnome 2 ever was and that Gnome 3 is supported and maintained by the people that actually developed the code, unlike all the forks are not advantages?

Quotes of the week

Posted Jan 31, 2013 17:43 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (1 responses)

All those things you mention are certainly advantages.

I was addressing the specific point raised in the quotation - that it might not be a good idea to use the GNOME 2 forks because history shows they will probably be dead projects in a few years, just as the GNOME 1 forks are now dead. However, history also shows that GNOME 3 will also probably become a dead project once GNOME 4 is out - just as GNOME 2 is no longer maintained today - so this is not a point of advantage of GNOME 3 over the other desktop environments. In five years or so, the chance is they will all be unmaintained - at least if the past track record continues.

Quotes of the week

Posted Jan 31, 2013 17:57 UTC (Thu) by jwarnica (subscriber, #27492) [Link]

But there was a transition from stock GNOME 2 -> stock GNOME 3. At least, somewhat, with configuration files, settings, and such. There is the (implicit) promise that stock GNOME 3 will be upgradeable to the inevitable stock GNOME 4.

GNOME 3 development cared not at all about the post GNOME 1.x "forks", or even upgrading from stock 1.x, and GNOME 4 development won't care about the 2.x forks.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 5:54 UTC (Fri) by jmspeex (guest, #51639) [Link] (5 responses)

> You mean that the fact that Gnome 3 is massively more capable and customizable then Gnome 2 ever was

Sorry, this is simply not the case. Gnome 3 wants to teach you how to use your computer and prevents you from doing what you were doing before. Gnome 1 was probably the most customizable release. Then gnome 2 made it more "user friendly" by moving all the customization to gconf-editor-only options. Then gnome 3 just took it all away. I mean, if gnome 3 had gotten it right, it might still have been better than gnome 2, but certainly not more customizable.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 5, 2013 20:30 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (4 responses)

Just because we moved from gconf to dconf doesn't mean the options are suddenly gone. Suggest to open dconf-editor. We now even have a tweak tool.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 5, 2013 21:25 UTC (Tue) by jmspeex (guest, #51639) [Link]

Since I first installed Linux in 1995 (originally with fvwm), I've been using a 4x3 matrix of virtual desktops. Tell me how to get that back with gnome3 and dconf.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 9, 2013 17:58 UTC (Sat) by Jandar (subscriber, #85683) [Link] (2 responses)

I never had a wm with an always visible tool-/task-/whatever-bar. Can I have the maximal screen-estate with gnome3?

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 9, 2013 18:08 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

You mean no title bar? That only is done for applications which support it. If you want maximal screen-estate I guess you just want to configure the fullscreen key. See System Settings→Keyboard→Shortcuts→Windows→Toggle fullscreen mode. There also is a standard hint that applications can set to indicate that they do not want a title bar, maybe wmctrl can set that manually or devils pie automatically. Lastly, check for a different metacity/mutter theme.

Out of all suggestions, I don't think too many people have used anything other than just fullscreen so you might run into issues.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 9, 2013 21:21 UTC (Sat) by Jandar (subscriber, #85683) [Link]

No, I mean no bar from wm or whatever manages the workspaces. The applications I run should have windows with title-bars, or more precise attachments with knobs to control the windows. What I can do without are the permanent tool- and task-bars. Bars of the wm/desktop which can't be configured to autohide will be disabled by me. If there are remaining wm-/desktop-bars with clutter up the screen-estate I switch to a sane environment.

Quotes of the week

Posted Jan 31, 2013 23:13 UTC (Thu) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link] (14 responses)

Your argument makes sense if you consider GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 to be different projects. They are not. GNOME is GNOME, it's just for whatever reason folks get nostalgic about old major release versions as soon as the newest release version comes out.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 6:01 UTC (Fri) by jmspeex (guest, #51639) [Link] (6 responses)

> Your argument makes sense if you consider GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 to be different projects.

They are different projects. They happen to have the first part of the name in common, but that's it. Even XFCE is more similar to gnome 2 than gnome 3 is. The common part of the name is a distraction here. What really happened is that developers have abandoned their project (gnome 2) and decided to start a new one. If instead they had said "here's a few desktop called EMONG 1.0 use it if you like it" and kept working on gnome 2 in parallel, the situation would have been very different (also most likely the new desktop would never have been adopted at all).

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 8:26 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] (5 responses)

They are different projects.

they are really, really not.

they are made by the same people, literally; they originate from the same place; they are the natural evolution of each other if you look at the commit history and progression of development.

I understand that you feel that way, but there's a pretty well defined difference between you feeling something, and something being actually, you know, real.

but, please, don't let reality interfere with what you

think

is true; I believe it's called truthiness, these days.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 8:44 UTC (Fri) by jmspeex (guest, #51639) [Link] (1 responses)

> they are made by the same people, literally; they originate from the same place; they are the natural evolution of each other if you look at the commit history and progression of development.

I don't deny any of that. The problem is that the *result* has little in common. I'm a developer too (DSP, nothing to do with GUIs), but as a *user*, I don't care how similar the code looks like, I care about what it does. And in that respect, gnome3 has nothing to do with gnome2. For someone who's used to gnome2, an environment like xfce or even KDE3 would be more familiar than gnome3 is. That is why I'm saying it's really a new project.

Would you say that Android is a Linux distribution because it runs Linux underneath? Of course not, it's a different OS. Same for OS X not being UNIX despite the kernel. I'm still amazed at the state of denial gnome 3 developers are in, wondering why everyone else is driving on the wrong side of the road.

Oh and BTW, I consider the non-GUI foundations of gnome3 to be mostly OK. In fact I'm currently forced to run gnome-settings-daemon because xfce doesn't properly handle a few things (e.g. my trackpad). The thing that really sucks is the UI layer on top.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 16:57 UTC (Fri) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]

A different / redesigned UI doesn't make it a different software project. E.g., Final Cut Pro in the past year or so had a drastic UI change. It didn't please all users, but it doesn't mean it's a 'fork' of Final Cut Pro or an entirely different piece of software (it isn't!)

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 9:22 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

they are made by the same people, literally; they originate from the same place; they are the natural evolution of each other if you look at the commit history and progression of development.

What this has to do with anything? By this logic Netscape 6 and Netscape 4 are the same project while in reality they have so little in common it's not even funny. Heck, GNU AS and GNU LIBC will one and the same project (well, there are small difference: GNU AS is not abandoned... yet) if you'll use "who's developing it" criteria!

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 5:07 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

GNOME 3 and GNOME 2 are both desktop environments. Glibc and GNU AS are just two very different projects. Your comparison makes no sense. The apt comparisons would include say KDE 3 and KDE 4.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 5, 2013 20:32 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

Most of the code is the same. That is not true for Netscape, those just share a name.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 9:25 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (2 responses)

if you consider GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 to be different projects. They are not.

From the developer's point of view, maybe not. But from the user's point of view it does appear that GNOME 2 was abandoned and replaced by a new project GNOME 3 which is quite different. So, to adapt what you wrote: do you really want to base the distribution on a desktop environment which will probably be abandoned and replaced with something different a few years from now? (even if technically, the new thing is written by the same people and has a similar name)

(I would say the answer is probably yes, since Fedora is not RHEL and it is more important to have the latest stuff rather than commit to provide a stable environment for the next N years.)

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 5, 2013 20:38 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

Suggest that you compare GNOME 2.0 with GNOME 2.32. It changed hugely over the years. GNOME 2.x was released over a period of 8 years or so. It has been a bit over 2 years already since GNOME 3.0 was released.

Historically, GNOME has provided a very consistent desktop. Where is the data showing that a fork is viable? We do have data on various abandoned forks. I have not seen a fork going around for 8 years straight :P

Quotes of the week

Posted Sep 21, 2021 0:04 UTC (Tue) by efitton (guest, #93063) [Link]

It has been eight years. Not only was a single fork viable, multiple healthy forks. And technically ten years after GNOME 3.0.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 2, 2013 16:13 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

> for whatever reason folks get nostalgic about old major release versions as soon as the newest release version comes out.

Nice attitude. Are you choosing to be dismissive or do you really not understand?

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 5, 2013 20:33 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

Nice example of a loaded question!

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 6, 2013 7:06 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

An appropriate response to a loaded statement, no?

Seriously, I'm very curious where this contempt comes from. It makes following the Gnome project's many twists and turns fairly tough (for me anyway). I don't see it in any of the other open source projects I'm involved with.

Is it an intentional part of the Gnome project, from Day and McCann on down?

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 15, 2013 2:00 UTC (Fri) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]

My thoughts exactly.

Seems like a disease in the GNOME community.

The group think seems to go:

"You either love GNOME3 or are an idiot/nostalgic."

http://lwn.net/Articles/524114/

"We think, "good riddance" when someone threatens to stop using Gnome."

Quotes of the week

Posted Jan 31, 2013 21:24 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (7 responses)

I don't even remember noticing there were any GNOME 1 forks at the time. The GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 forks OTOH are very noticeable, and seem to have gotten a few users. E.g. Cinnamon certainly seems to get used.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 9:14 UTC (Fri) by mgedmin (guest, #34497) [Link] (6 responses)

I remember there was a fork with a raison d'être of swapping the order of dialog buttons (Ok/Cancel or Yes/No).

I remember a fork that was called GarNOME.

I don't remember if that was the same fork.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 9:30 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

I remember GarNOME, and have used it. It wasn't a fork of GNOME, but a build tool that made it easy to build GNOME from scratch, and install it to and run from an arbitrary directory, so you didn't have to risk messing up your system install of GNOME.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 2, 2013 9:04 UTC (Sat) by mgedmin (guest, #34497) [Link]

Gah, I meant GONEME!

Which illustrates the point rather beautifully. (Remember the old forks? Turns out I don't!)

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 16:21 UTC (Fri) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link] (2 responses)

GarGNOME was a different fork than goneme.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 16:35 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Except it wasn't a fork!

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 16:58 UTC (Fri) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]

sorry fair enough, s/fork/project

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 7, 2013 10:51 UTC (Thu) by grawity (subscriber, #80596) [Link]

I remember a mailing list thread about this.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 5:35 UTC (Fri) by naptastic (guest, #60139) [Link] (17 responses)

Apples and oranges. Gnome 1 had serious problems and needed to be put out of its misery.

The only thing wrong with Gnome 2 is that it isn't Gnome 3. It offers the user too many choices, and too few buzzwords. Too much power and not enough bling.

Gnome 3 isn't better. It's different. They should have just called it something else.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 6:03 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (15 responses)

"The only thing wrong with Gnome 2 is that it isn't Gnome 3. It offers the user too many choices, and too few buzzwords. Too much power and not enough bling."

That's pretty much a precise description of people's complaints about Gnome 2 back in 2003. You can't blame developers for noting that they've been here before.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 0:55 UTC (Mon) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link] (14 responses)

> That's pretty much a precise description of people's complaints about Gnome 2 back in 2003. You can't blame developers for noting that they've been here before.

And they only quelled those complaints when -- after a couple years of work -- they weened themselves from the idea that users were to stupid to handle features.

Try comparing the featuresets of the early 2.x line with some of the late versions.

We stopped complaining because they fixed it, not because we forgot. :D

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 2:50 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (12 responses)

There is also the concept of a minimum viable product which can explain the behavior. Build what is needed to ship the work on filling out features, based on the feedback you get. It's good engineering practice. Even GNOME 3 shows good engineering, even if many don't care for the new shell, it is clear that the developers are not dummies

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 3:11 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (11 responses)

There is a huge difference between

"the feature is not available, we'll get to it someday"

and

"the feature is not available, because we believe the feature is wrong and we will never implement it"

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 5:02 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (9 responses)

And? Major projects routinely rejects features.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 10:51 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (8 responses)

> Major projects routinely reject _new_ features.

Fixed that for you.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 15:00 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (7 responses)

Wrong. Sometimes they remove existing features and sometimes they get added back in a different way, via extensions or a different workflow. Think: Firefox and status bar. Think: KDE and desktop icons.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 17:26 UTC (Wed) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (6 responses)

>Think: Firefox and status bar. Think: KDE and desktop icons.

What are you talking about? Wrong on both counts, which you could have discovered in a few moments if you had bothered to check (as I just did).

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 19:06 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (5 responses)

Umm. Firefox doesn't have a status bar by default anymore and KDE 4 has changed the way you add desktop icons. So, no, I am not wrong on either counts.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 19:28 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (3 responses)

In KDE4, you can have desktop icons just like you have in KDE3. It's just the default that changed. You right-click on the desktop, choose the "folder view", and voila. Works on 4.9, I tested.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 20:51 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

Precisely my point. It was not there in KDE 4.0 and it got added back via a different method.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 20:54 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (1 responses)

That's not my recollection (KDE user since 2.something). AFAICR, It is what it is since I made the somewhat precocious transition from 3.5 to 4.0.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 21:24 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

KDE 4.0 had some issues with desktop icons. It wasn't implemented properly until a couple of revisions later. I wrote a review at

http://magazine.redhat.com/2008/05/14/fedora-9-and-the-ro...

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 21, 2013 12:22 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

I disagree that 'having some bugs in the unfinished x.0 release' counts as 'feature removed and added in a different way', but I certainly can't disagree that there were indeed a boatload of bugs in KDE 4.0, so if that's what you're really meaning, then fair enough.

On Firefox though, this is taking a turn for the bizarre; I can't understand where there is scope for disagreement. When I tried it yesterday it was using the version from the Ubuntu repo, so I wondered if maybe it had been mucked about with. I just downloaded a copy of the Windows build from their website and ran it with a fresh profile - I definitely have a status bar without changing any settings. Maybe you're seeing a bug or a repackaged version with changed defaults?

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 14:10 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I think that actions should be louder than words, and they did implement requested features.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 5, 2013 20:40 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

GNOME always add features with every version. However, I used 1.x and various thing that you could do in 1.x you never could do in either 2.x or 3.x.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 16:58 UTC (Fri) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]

"Apples and oranges. Gnome 1 had serious problems and needed to be put out of its misery."

LOL that's certainly quite easy to say now, but back in... 1999 / 2000 was it? Not quite the case at all.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 1, 2013 17:54 UTC (Fri) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link] (1 responses)

Is upstart a Volvo?

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 19:24 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

It's a Pinto.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 4, 2013 19:05 UTC (Mon) by ssam (guest, #46587) [Link] (2 responses)

Redhat will still be maintaining GNOME2 for RHEL 6 until 2018/2020.

By then I suspect that either xfce, mate, cinnamon, consort, gnome or maybe someone else will have a widely used DE that looks pretty much like GNOME2.

GNOME2 used to be used by a sizable majority of linux users (i'd guess 70-80%, assuming that most use ubuntu, fedora, opensuse, debian or mate with default desktop). assuming that a silent majority have stuck with their distro default then gnome has lots most of its users to unity.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 7, 2013 13:19 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

SuSE and OpenSuSE have NEVER defaulted to Gnome.

SuSE has always been a KDE distro, although the OpenSuSE install used to be agnostic, not pre-ticking a choice for you. It now pre-ticks KDE. It has NEVER pre-ticked Gnome.

(I've been using SuSE since 5.x whenever that was :-) although I now personally use gentoo. I've never got on with Gnome.)

Cheers,
Wol

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 20, 2013 19:07 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

SLED did default to GNOME.