

Linus Torvalds finds GNOME 3.4 to be a "total user experience design failure" - tanglesome
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-34-to-be-a-total-user-experience-design-failure/11127

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ajross
This is just a transcription of a Google+ post. Is that really what ZDNet has
come to? Can't even email the guy to get a quote first and pretend to be doing
journalism?

(edit: fixed link:)
[https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDp...](https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDpF4i)

FWIW: I'm using Gnome 3 and don't hate it. It's thrown lots of stuff out the
window, but I find many of the new idioms pretty nice -- the vertically
stacked automatically expanding virtual desktops are amazingly great, for
example. And the things that don't work (the app launcher basically sucks,
"app" switching instead of "window" switching with Alt-Tab is a total fail
when you have a dozen console windows open, nautilus doesn't manage icons on
the desktop...) are easy enough to configure around or ignore. The biggest
specific complaint seems to be the very poor multiple monitor support, but I
use a laptop screen full time and am not affected.

~~~
technomancy
Yeah, it's started growing on me once I learned about what's possible via
extensions. At some point as long as they expose the APIs to build the right
thing it stops mattering to a degree how the defaults work. Witness things
like Conkeror (<http://conkeror.org>) being built initially as a Firefox
extension due to the fact that all the extensibility to build a better UI was
there from the start.

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YEPHENAS
But he also writes in a subsequent comment:

 _"And for all the people wasting everybodys time with "Why don't you use
Unity/KDE/xfce/xyz" - I've tried them. They are even worse"_

[https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDp...](https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDpF4i)

So Gnome 3 is officially the best Linux desktop.

~~~
ysangkok
He wasn't moaning when GNOME 2 was around, so why exactly doesn't he like
MATE?

~~~
YEPHENAS
He was. He called the Gnome 2 developers "interface nazis":
[http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-
sauce/9680-i...](http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-
sauce/9680-interface-nazis-in-torvalds-line-of-fire)

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shrub
I couldn't agree more with Mr. Torvalds. I'm relieved to know I'm not the only
one - I was thinking maybe I was too picky, or too dumb to set Gnome 3 up the
way I wanted it. I spent a half hour searching and Googling to find where they
had hidden certain settings only to discover they had removed them, as if to
say "This setting you depend on everyday, we don't think you need it - too
bad!" I don't mind tinkering with things that may or may not break when I'm at
home, but I've got to work at work, so I back-peddled to Gnome 2.32.

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scribblemacher
I've never understood who exactly is the target audience of Gnome 3 (and, to a
lesser extent, Unity). It seems like these things would be great on an iPad or
something like that, but what Linux users are really running Fedora or Debian
on a touch device?

Not only that, I think many of these designs don't make sense to novice users
either. I recently let me wife try a few live discs to see which one she liked
best (she is very non-technical but was sick of Windows running like maple
syrup). She ended up liking Mint's LXDE remix the most because it was simple
and very fast. Unity's unifed menus and Gnome's app-not-windows design just
confused her. Granted, she's just one person, but if it's not for me (the
nerd) and it's not for her (the non-techie), who is supposed to be using Gnome
3?

What confuses me is that Gnome is community driven, and somehow a consensus of
intelligent developers decided that this is the direction they want to take
the project, despite Gnome's poor track record on mobile platforms and that
the design paradigms don't accurately reflect the hardware on which the
software is run. You'd think someone might have raised a hand and said "um,
this design makes more sense on cell phones, which people are not running our
product on."

~~~
bratsche
> It seems like these things would be great on an iPad or something like that,
> but what Linux users are really running Fedora or Debian on a touch device?

What you just described, sir, is a classic chicken/egg problem. Why would they
design Gnome or Unity for multitouch users when there are none? But why would
anyone use Gnome or Ubuntu on a multitouch device when the previous UIs were
so mis-suited for that environment?

~~~
pan69
This is exactly the reason they shouldn't even be trying to get into that
market. Competing with Apple, Microsoft and Google, why?

There will always be workstations. It would have been a great opportunity for
Gnome to make the best damn workstation UI that ever existed (and they where
on the right track with Gnome 2) but instead they jump on the touch screen
band wagon in the hope of being adopted by device manufactures while in the
process of doing so they're alienating their existing user base.

In the end, everyone loses.

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hahainternet
I use Gnome 3 daily, and I have to say that some of the points do have
validity.

However, it's only a matter of time until these minor issues are fixed, and I
happen to think that the general design is excellent.

~~~
ajross
Gnome 3 has been shipping in Fedora for over a year now, and they just pushed
the third such revision. I'd say they're running out of their matters of time
and entering the realm of "long standing breakage" at this point.

Here's my biggest personal peeve: keyboard navigation in the overview screen
has never worked. The gnome-shell process in that mode steals events from
gnome-settings-daemon (which normally handles hotkeys). This means that if you
like to do things like launch apps from the keyboard (I mean: who wants to
launch an app when in the overview/app-launcher screen?!) it just doesn't
work. Combine that with the fact that the overview screen pops up
automatically when you close the last window on a screen (I mean: who wants to
launch an app just after closing another one!?) and it drives me up the wall
daily.

Three times now I've straight up decided to fix this, but it's a non-trivial
codebase and I always give up before making it work. The core folks really
need to look at this problem, but at this point I doubt they ever will.
Consistent keyboard navigation is clearly not a priority.

(edit: this is the issue in question:
<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643111>)

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attractivechaos
My major concern with gnome/unity/xfce is that the default font sizes look too
big and really ugly. I guess choosing the right font sizes is not so trivial
given various resolutions, but on fonts, every bit of effort will be paid off.
And this can certainly be achieved. I am happy with the default system fonts
in Mac and Windows nearly all the time.

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jebblue
I wish someone would make a Gnome 2+, that would be cool again. Good
performance, very configurable, doesn't slow my games down.

~~~
ineedtosleep
Honestly, I hope that GNOME fork (based on 2) panned out. I didn't follow it
closely, but after having Linux Mint for over 3 months now running "GNOME
Classic", I don't think I can go back to GNOME 3 proper, every now and then
I'd switch to Cinnamon, but the Compiz effects (or maybe just GNOME 3 in
general) screw with my ATI video drivers.

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webreac
Even if it does not fit the Gnome agenda, there is a way to make everyone
happy: just add an annex section in Gnome documentation describing how to
configure all the tweaks asked by Linus. This "Linus section" would be useful
for many people to understand how to configure gnome to their wish.

thanks

~~~
bronson
Only if these tweaks work on every Gnome release.

And I can virtually guarantee they won't... extensions.gnome.org is full of
obsolete, incompatible extensions.

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drcube
I still can't believe Linus doesn't use Arch, or LFS or some sort of custom
setup. The great thing about Linux is that you don't have to put up with the
crap some distro gives you. Just remove Gnome and try something else.

~~~
jeremysmyth
15 years ago I'd have agreed with you. However, there comes a time in your
life when playing with your tools becomes less fun and you want to just get
down and use them.

I've gotten to the boring stage of my life when I am happy with Ubuntu LTS,
because it means I can opt-out of a week of less productivity every six months
when a new version comes out and breaks my workflow by forcing me to work
around some "clever new idea" that won't last another couple of years.

I'm sure Linus is even busier than I am, so I'm pleasantly surprised that he
takes the time to experiment with and evaluate new distros and environments as
much as he does. That's probably not what he wants to spend his time doing
though, and not where he's most productive.

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agumonkey
Too bad desktop is only a minor part of Linus needs, if he was a graphic
designer he would have invented dit long ago.

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zoowar
I just learned that 'forced fallback mode' is still available in gnome 3 on
fedora 17.

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kstenerud
While he does raise some good points, it still feels a little like the pot
calling the kettle black what with the UX nightmare of git.

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jm4
It would be interesting if Linus finally broke down and developed his own
desktop.

~~~
YEPHENAS
First he should fix that horrible Tcl/Tk based Git GUI.

~~~
ysangkok
Maybe he likes Tcl/Tk, he is old school after all. :P

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Toshio
On a slightly related note: Kudos to Linux Mint for showing the way forward.
Thanks a bunch guys and keep up the good work.

~~~
themstheones
Mint is cool. Firefox in Mint ships with Duck Duck Go as the default search
engine.

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FixThisPOS
"I’m really tired of the f*cking old “just use the keyboard shortcuts” crap."

Amen. This is the same bullshit you hear from Apple apologists whenever
they're confronted with some glaring functionality omission in the Mac UI (or
keyboard, as in the case of Apple's missing Delete keys).

~~~
hmottestad
Fn+Backspace

And cmd+arrow keys for home and end.

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vph
Linus is spoiled; he uses a MacBook Air.

