Please don't shaft scientific computing users!

Posted Jun 10, 2016 16:12 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: Please don't shaft scientific computing users! by pizza
Parent article: Distributors ponder a systemd change

I think that's my answer in different words? At least for those of us who don't see Gnome as progress. For some of us, if it works, don't fix it, unless there are security considerations.

I'd be more sympathetic if Gnome had produced a desktop that was widely regarded as awesome. Instead, in something like 17 years now, Gnome has produced Gnome1 which was a bad knockoff of KDE/CDE; Gnome2 that was a quite useful thing for some people; Gnome3 that threw out Gnome2 in favour of chasing some mythical unicorn. In that time, diehard Unix users moved to Linux and the BSDs, but many, eventually, to OS X. And desktop users of all persuasions (including Windows) became a minority in the face of the mobile onslaught. Where Linux dominates, but in a form (Android) that has little to do with Unix.

If you want to chase the market, just adopt Android on the desktop already. If you want to go after people who like the Unix way, stop pulling stunts like this that make decades-old habits suddenly stop working. Really.

Please don't shaft scientific computing users!

Posted Jun 10, 2016 17:32 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (4 responses)

> In that time, diehard Unix users moved to Linux and the BSDs, but many, eventually, to OS X.

That only demonstrates that said "diehard unix users" actually prioritize "JustWorks" or even "OOooshiny" far higher than "respecting unix conventions".

Please don't shaft scientific computing users!

Posted Jun 10, 2016 19:30 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (3 responses)

Most Linux desktops are now in the unenviable position of lacking all three of those qualities, and more.

Please don't shaft scientific computing users!

Posted Jun 10, 2016 20:51 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> Most Linux desktops are now in the unenviable position of lacking all three of those qualities, and more.

Oh? By any quantifiable quality, things are better now than they've ever been.

As for touchy-feely stuff like "respecting UNIX conventions". Twenty years ago in my academic days, I was taught that the overriding principle for UNIX was the simplicity of implementation. That was prioritized over everything else, including correctness, performance, and ease-of-use (for both developers and end-users)

Oh, for sake of discussion, I'll refer to this list:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UnixDesignPhilosophy

I'll note that even UNIXen at the time that list was published didn't really adhere to UNIX conventions all that well. As does the entire notion of GUIs.

Please don't shaft scientific computing users!

Posted Jun 11, 2016 21:25 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

I know it was worded the way it was but I'm not entirely stuck on the idea removing those is bad. Some of the awful acts committed in the mid-00s in the name of “shiny” are best left forgotten (and some forms of “just works” too; nobody'll miss ndiswrapper!)

Unix (the abstract ideal people usually talk about) shouldn't be confused with UNIX (sometimes spelled with an ®). I think most here would see ignoring the latter's conventions as a feature, on the other hand I agree with and often design systems according to that list. There are even a few points in there I didn't know about, but was doing anyway...

Please don't shaft scientific computing users!

Posted Jun 13, 2016 13:17 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

So much better that I switched back to WindowMaker (running under mate-session) the other year. Cause session-management works - least for the stuff I care more about like non-GNOME/gtk apps, older apps, xterms, etc. and - for all its flaws - it at least isn't heave everything up and over on me every 6 months.

If I really wanted to shake up my desktop, I'd probably just go for Android as my desktop, and use some rootless Xserver for whatever older apps I needed. I'd have tried that already, but I can't just 'yum install android-desktop' on my Fedora desktop and laptop.