LWN: Comments on "Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME"

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

Zizzle — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:53:36 +0000

And ironically they have alienated themselves from all the new-user friendly distros.

How do they expect to attract "Ma & Pa" users? With Fedora?

On the other hand they have alienated long time users by dropping functionality and making common tasks harder or require more clicks/mouse. Taking a hard line on annoying things like the accessibility icon not being removed from the (largely useless and wasted) panel.

Not to mention a bunch of hostile personalities representing the project here on LWN (including attacking the editors and writers).

I still follow planet.gnome.org, but not sure where I will go in the next distro cycle. Ubuntu is dropping GNOME 2. Fedora has swallowed the GNOME 3 pill.

A major set back for the Linux desktop. Hopefully XFCE is up to scratch.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

knobunc — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:30:35 +0000

"Please try to be polite, respectful, and informative".

Future article idea

speedster1 — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 16:46:28 +0000

Well yes -- but if kmself took up my (somewhat joking) challenge and wrote up an article on windowmaker as an example of the classic windowmanager paradigm contrasted to the all-in-one desktop environments that you get with most default linux installs... it could get published here.

No fair challenging me to do it myself; comments are about as much writing as I can stand. I squeaked through grad school with an impressively short list of papers ;^)

Future article idea

dlang — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 08:09:51 +0000

well, the lack of recent coverage could be related to the lack of recent development (or at least releases)

the latest item in the news on the main page is from 2008 and the lastest release is from 2005

Future article idea

speedster1 — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 07:27:41 +0000

I nominate you to contribute an LWN article on WindowMaker! WindowMaker for the win, yes!!

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

brouhaha — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:08:57 +0000

It's been obvious for a long time that the GNOME developers don't care about their existing users. They've been dumbing it down for a long time to attract new users, without any concern about losing existing users, e.g., removing Emacs key bindings, changing to and from spatial navigation, etc. I have a hard time believing that it's a viable strategy, but who knows.

I spent a few days with GNOME 3, then moved to XFCE. It doesn't seem like that much of a step back from GNOME 2 to me. I'm much more productive with XFCE than with GNOME 3, so I don't care what the GNOME developers do from here on out. I'm not "threatening" to go elsewhere; I've gone. The GNOME developers won't care, and that's fine.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

jschrod — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:07:05 +0000

I guess the main takeaway from your comment is that Zonker states facts and that you don't like the facts?

To make it clear what I mean: Zonker states (a) that the GNOME user community is not unanimously rallied behind GNOME 3 design decisions, in particular concerning the GNOME shell, quite the contrary; and (b) that the Linux desktop doesn't take traction beyond its current audience. Writing as somebody who's interested in current Linux desktop developments, these observations seems spot on.

FWIW, a disclaimer: I don't use GNOME at all, neither GNOME 2 nor GNOME 3. So please don't pin the label "doesn't like change" on me.

Why should we expect softball pitches from LWN ...

kmself — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 07:07:30 +0000

... just because it happens to be covering your pet project.

I want to see the closets emptied and the skeletons rattled. That's what I'm paying for with my subscription, and it's the fair and unsensational airing of issues in an area of tech I care a lot about, but which falls flat in the mainstream tech media because it's "noncommercial", is a core value proposition of LWN.

I do however protest most stridently the utter lack of coverage of recent news and development for my favorite, and The One True, window manager, WindowMaker.

I mean, not just last September did Debian rebuild against libjpeg to pick up unversioned symbols in an NMU.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

jordanb — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:59:42 +0000

If GNOME were a WWII liberty ship, GNOME Shell would be a Nazi torpedo...

Audio of Karen Sandler announcing her new position

bkuhn — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:30:18 +0000

For those interested, I co-present an oggcast, called Free as in Freedom (FaiF) with Karen Sandler. She talks about her new position on Episode 0x12 of FaiF.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

jzb — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:53:32 +0000

The amount of work notwithstanding, all of the questions I posed to Karen were based on the reality facing GNOME as she takes the job. "Happy smiley faces" are not really the objective - asking legitimate questions is. As a long-time user of GNOME, I don't see the current release as a marked improvement. As an observer of the industry, I only see one company that seems pleased with GNOME Shell -- and that's a company that doesn't express any interest in pursuing desktop Linux. The company / project that has the largest share of the Linux desktop has essentially rejected GNOME Shell and seems to be moving towards Qt.

In short - The questions were legitimate, and you can be pretty sure other reporters will ask the same things if they interview Karen.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

nirbheek — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 05:12:32 +0000

> I was hoping this change of staff might bring some new ideas, but it seems their new staff member is already well into the ethos of the org.

> "All [the changes] were made with what is best for the user in mind" reads a lot like: We're just doing what's best for you you understand, it's for your own good. There is only one class of "user", so we already understand everything we need to.

You're expecting technical direction from her?

I believe the article says:

> One thing Sandler won't be doing is driving the technical direction of GNOME. Sandler says that, like Peters, she has "a limited role" in the technical direction of GNOME, and says "I'd support whatever the community and release team decided."

So, that settles that.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

nirbheek — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 05:05:08 +0000

When someone spends months and months on a project, working more than is expected, on something that they think is really great and will make the lives of users easier; broad-sweeping assertions and dismissive remarks about how the heavens are falling because of the hard work put in, will of course lead to happy happy smiley faces on all sides.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

ringerc — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 03:01:38 +0000

I was hoping this change of staff might bring some new ideas, but it seems their new staff member is already well into the ethos of the org.

"All [the changes] were made with what is best for the user in mind" reads a lot like: We're just doing what's best for you you understand, it's for your own good. There is only one class of "user", so we already understand everything we need to.

Sigh.

Bitter? Not really; I'm benefiting from the freely given work of others and have no right to bitterness or - really - even complaint. If I don't like it, I should fix it or go elsewhere. Since they won't accept changes to fix some of the things I (and some others) need, that means I must go elsewhere or fork. Maintaining a GNOME fork isn't realistic. I'm kind of stuck with "like it or lump it".

My use of GNOME is of no benefit to the GNOME project, so "threatening" to go elsewhere is meaningless and pointless. Why do people think it means something? It's not like they're a customer. I've been on the receiving end of this, and it's a mixture of annoying and laughable to have someone using the work you published for free demand that you change it to fit their needs.

I guess the powerlessness is the frustrating bit, combined with the *removal* of things that *used* to work well. I'm not permitted to fix or add things, can't hope to maintain a fork, and have no way to influence proceedings or convince anyone. So instead I get to learn how much of a step back from GNOME 2 it is to use XFCE.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

dgm — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:29:53 +0000

> The fact that he repeatedly had to point this out, rather than talk about what Karen would be doing is what bugs me.

Wow. No, really. Wow. You're a bit touchy, aren't you?

The subject of GNOME 3 only appears towards the end, when discussing the context in wich Karen will be developing his duties. All in all, the article only mentions GNOME 3 in a total of 8 (eight!) paragraphs. The whole article is 27 paragraphs. It's barely a quarter of the article. Now, would you really call this "repeatedly pointing out"? Really?

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

njwhite — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:46:55 +0000

I'm very happy about this, and wish Karen the best in her new role.

It seems (from very much an outsider position) like a good strong spokeswoman would have been useful in addressing some of the recent (non-technical) difficulties related with Gnome3.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

alexl — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:23:22 +0000

I don't deny what you are saying, but that doesn't mean you have to mention it multiple times in an article that is only peripherally related to that fact.

The fact that he repeatedly had to point this out, rather than talk about what Karen would be doing is what bugs me.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

ewan — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 11:47:26 +0000

I don't think you can get that at all; the nearest you could say is that the author recognises that a lot of previous Gnome users don't like Gnome 3, and regardless of the actual merits or otherwise of the design direction that Gnome 3 is taking, that seems undeniable.

Karen Sandler on her new role at GNOME

alexl — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:55:14 +0000

I guess the main takeaway from this article is that the author doesn't like Gnome 3.0?