
GNOME (et al): Rotting In Threes - EdiX
https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/
======
acabal
On one hand, I agree that these projects (Gnome, Unity) are going in bad
directions, for much of the reasons the post outlines.

On the other hand, I understand the practical necessity of limiting the number
of moving parts in a project. If Gnome thinks developer manpower is better
spent in a place outside of the theme framework, then that's just a symptom of
not having enough developers. It's the practical reality: some parts of the OS
get more love than others.

I also don't get his Launchpad example either. Canonical never built it for
anyone but themselves. Why complain that they won't give open it up? They
wrote it, they can do what they want with it.

What I think this article is truly complaining about isn't lack of choice or
branding, but the core cause of those things: the slow creep of "I know better
than you do" design. Personally I blame two actors for this: Steve Jobs and 37
Signals. Steve Jobs made a zillion bucks cramming his design decisions down
peoples' throats. 37 Signals was the developer's darling for many years, and
were the big early proponents of "opinionated design." Both of these things
appeal greatly to a human being's ego:

"Yeah, Steve Jobs is right! I'm such a great designer, so if I want to make a
zillion bucks, I must realize that users are idiots and my beautiful product
will make them love their lives again, and if they don't like it they, can
suck it!"

"Yeah, 37 Signals is right! I'm so smart, I can decide what my users want, and
if they don't like my opinion, they can suck it!"

Well, there's no doubt that those models worked for Steve Jobs and 37 Signals.
Both are very successful. But when they start preaching that stuff to regular
developers who lack the luck and talent to become a multi-million-dollar
success, what we get is projects like Gnome 3 and Unity. People acting like
design dictators--Steve Jobs--but forgetting that he was a once-in-a-century
genius. People acting like their opinions are the best and different ones can
suck it--37 Signals--but without the special sauce and determination that made
that team successful.

Folks: _You are not Steve Jobs and you are not 37 Signals._ With few
exceptions the cult of design dictatorship is the worst thing to happen to
fledgling software projects in the past decade. Good designers (both graphic
and architectural) can succeed as dictators, but good designers are few and
far between. What the cult _really_ does is give bad designers an excuse to be
always right. And when bad designers are always right, bad design becomes par
for the course.

~~~
alexlarsson
I don't understand this reasoning. Sure, not everyone is a design genius. But,
if you're not (and how do you know?), what are you supposed to do?

It just seem like you're arguing that everyone (except Jobs) should not try to
have any control over the project they're working on at all, but just
implement whatever any user requests.

However, that is not gonna produce anything useful, nor will it help you when
what different users want conflict, and its most definitely not a good way to
allocate the sparse resources there is.

~~~
acabal
Well, you can tell if your users start complaining--Gnome 3--or your products
aren't successful.

Users of Gnome 3 are being very vocal with genuine (and some not-so-genuine)
complaints about how the design process is going and what the final product is
like. Since the Gnome guys are now in the cult of design dictatorship, they
are always right no matter what--even at the expense of their own users--and
their users are wrong to complain. The result will be an ultimately failed
product. (I would bet money that at some point in the next 2-5 years Ubuntu
will fork significant parts, if not the entirety, of Gnome--and when the 500lb
gorilla picks up his toys and leaves, the game's over.)

Yes, a product must have some kind of vision, and at the end of the day
someone's got to implement it, regardless of their talent. But humble
designers recognize complaints and the needs of their users. Design dictators
ignore them, because the dictators are by definition always right. That's a
bad attitude to have, because most designers aren't perfect--but the human ego
loves having control and loves being right. When people are told that success
means being opinionated, it's a very easy thing to agree with, because
everyone thinks their own opinions are the best.

~~~
kaolinite
_I would bet money that at some point in the next 2-5 years Ubuntu will fork
significant parts, if not the entirety, of Gnome..._

The replacing of Gnome has already begun. They replaced Gnome Shell with Unity
and GDM with LightDM. They're using Qt more often now as well (I believe
Ubuntu One is Qt and I know that Unity2D is too), so it seems that perhaps
GTK+ will be next.

~~~
steevdave
The parts that aren't already replaced are heavily patched and can't really be
used by a default install.

------
opminion
Two golden quotes from a Gnome dev. Beware, they are taken out of context:

 _I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE
app_

and

 _for the first time we may have ability to really shape the user experience
and form an identity for the GNOME platform_

Why would the windows manager be a "brand", rather than the distribution? (Red
Hat, Ubuntu).

There is no point (for them) in people "recognising the install" if they don't
have easy access to it.

Having wasted enough time configuring appearance, I now would be in one of two
scenarios:

1\. Install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu or Red Hat and then use
whatever comes as a default (and avoid fiddling around to save my time for
more important things). Won't use Gnome if it is not the default.

2\. Install whatever allows me to use the same appearance as in the other
machines. SuSE/KDE used to have a "Redmond" theme that looked and behaved like
Windows Classic. Do the same in the Windows machines.

~~~
EdiX
> Two golden quotes from a Gnome dev.

That's not _a Gnome dev_ that's William Jon McCann, the main Gnome 3 designer.
That McCann claims ignorance of XFCE without shame is pretty shocking.

~~~
steevdave
Pretty sure he is more than just a designer. He's the mastermind behind
consolekit (now abandoned I guess in favor of logind or some such from
systemd).

~~~
jejones3141
He's also the fellow who brought us gnome-screensaver, which gave a hint of
what was to come. It didn't just take away options, it did them under the
theory that the user is evil and will do evil things if allowed to set
screensaver options. (See
[https://live.gnome.org/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyAskedQuest...](https://live.gnome.org/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyAskedQuestions))

------
graue
This was a depressing read. But I noticed there was no dirt on the Xfce
project. They continue to produce a useful, stable, customizable desktop
environment that doesn't radically change every 6 months or try to force its
way on you. And so, I continue to give Xfce my highest recommendation for
anyone interested in running desktop/laptop Linux.

~~~
rwmj
Actually I've noticed that Xfce themes are continually broken at the moment,
and I wonder if this [GNOME nonsense, not Xfce] is the reason?

~~~
zem
possibly relevant discussion:
<https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=140277>

------
josteink
_I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE
app_

That's it. Gnome has peaked.

No point supporting people who are unable to grasp the idea that they work in
a software-community and that pieces, even ones they don't use or make, will
need to fit together.

~~~
takluyver
This is the really bizarre thing. In the name of consistency, people build
GNOME apps, KDE apps, Ubuntu apps to comply with the relevant design and human
interface guidelines. Then we go and use Firefox and Libreoffice, which don't
exactly fit into any of the desktops.

Consistency is nice, but I'll take good inconsistent software over mediocre
consistent applications. Only a couple of key apps, like file managers, really
seem worth linking with the desktop.

~~~
josteink
_Then we go and use Firefox and Libreoffice, which don't exactly fit into any
of the desktops._

This is true for _any OS_ (with the possible exception of OSX, which I don't
use, so I'm not going to make a blanket-statement about that). Use Windows and
consider how consistent apps look there. Hint: They don't.

Look at Android and see how consistent things are there. Again: They aren't.
Same with iOS.

No widely developed-for OS on the planet has a 100% consistency rates with
conformance to HIGs (nor near 100% for that matter).

Why on earth do Linux DE-developers, the most fragmented of them all, on the
most fragmented of all platforms, think they have a realistic chance of
getting consistency nailed?

Why are they wasting time, theirs and other's, on this widely unrealistic and
meaningless goal? Theirs, I could be willing to accept. Other's shows a lack
of respect and understanding.

And what fuels this lack of respect? The importance of "the brand". To be
honest, every time I read "brand" elevated to something ulterior in that
article it made me cringe. Has marketing departments taken over FOSS? Doesn't
the developers see the destructive force they are unleashing on the community?

Seeing all this wasted effort, bridges getting burnt, etc. It's just such a
shame.

------
likeclockwork
I find myself thinking about the historical criticism that has been aimed at
the Linux ecosystem, that it lacks design awareness and doesn't have a unified
aesthetic principle..

Then I see something like this and I wonder if in a way that wasn't a
strength.

I mean "brand coherence"? I can't imagine what that has to do with Linux.
Everything has always been so configurable, that in a way a lot of aesthetic
decisions were left to the user and the app developer. People used Gnome 2,
and other desktop environments to design their own desktop.

I used Gnome 3 for a few months last year when I was making my swing back to
using Linux full time with Fedora. I found it usable enough, but it's lack of
configuration options became frustrating because it didn't allow me to fine
tune my GUI workflow, it also handled multiple monitors terribly and being
unconfigurable didn't allow me to adjust that.

I was initially excited about Gnome 3 but it was pretty shallow. KDE 4 is an
amazing desktop environment, with lots of configurability and in keeping with
letting the user design their own experience. I made a good long stop there,
for about a year, optimized my windowing workflow (one size simply does not
fit all) then ended using xmonad but running some KDE apps..

It looks like GNOME and Unity are turning against the traditional spirit of
the Linux community. I don't think that's for the better. The answer now to
the question "I don't like it." for these Desktop Environments is "If you
don't like it, tough." where as before it was "If you don't like it, change
it."

I don't think Linux devs should ape Apple, Google, or Microsoft. Linux can be,
and is, for everyone.. but it's especially for hackers and for people who like
to tweak their experience. A project like a DE is huge and by turning away
from hackers they're going to limit their ability to pick up new devs and devs
are going to turn away from the GTK.

For some people Ubuntu IS Linux, Gnome IS Linux.. but for others not so much.

I don't develop desktop applications currently but I would like to. I don't
see myself wanting to start a new project or get intimately involved with one
that is dependent on the GTK at this point though.

~~~
vacri
Fine tune? It doesn't even coarse tune. I'm using gnome 3 at the moment and it
allows me to set my preferred media player as VLC over the default Totem...
but it won't bother using that setting and cranks up Totem every time.

Also, rather humorously, the 'preferred applications' part is hidden behind
System Settings > System Details > Default Applications. News to the Gnome
folks: user app preferences are "Personal" not "System" (using their own
terminology). Unless, of course, my selection here changes all users'
settings... which would be equally insane.

------
PaulHoule
This is news?

GNOME killed the Linux desktop on the day it was started.

KDE was a real start to a Linux desktop that could have been competitive with
Mac OS and Windows. Red Hat didn't like the license, and ever since, Linux has
had a plurality of broken desktops and none that work.

The oddest thing is that the developers just haven't realized how bad their
products are, or that the Linux desktop experience has been consistently
getting worse over time.

Look at Unity in Ubuntu. All the most basic things, like cut and paste,
scrollbars, and window resizing are FUBAR. Rather than recognizing the world-
class nature of the shell environment and providing a better _-term
application, we just get bloated terminals for which cut-and-paste almost
works.

(I'll admit the system monitor app that comes with Ubuntu is pretty, but I
wonder how it makes the CPU go to 25% on a machine that's capable of high-end
gaming)

This year I learned how to make a "Linux desktop" that's better than all of
them. I run Windows 7 or 8, then I install Ubuntu inside of VirtualBox. Most
of the time I ssh into it with a putty terminal, which is much better than any
_-term in Linux? (Why? Why can't Linux make a *-term that's better, or at
least not worse, than xterm was in 1993?) Most X Windows apps work great with
the cygwin X server, getting managed by Microsoft Windows.

The biggest problem is that the people developing this garbage don't have any
idea of how bad it is. Mac OS and Windows have been getting better over the
last ten years, but Linux enthusiasts won't admit that Linux has been getting
worse.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not sure what is wrong with the terminal application? Copy and paste works
fine, though you need to do Ctrl + Shift + (C | V) I guess this is because the
Ctrl combinations may be required by the terminal apps themselves.

If you want fancy tiled terminals there is also terminator or tmux.

This is way nicer than powershell which seems to take an age to load and won't
let me resize it properly.

Not sure how the window resizing is FUBAR, but I also hate the default
scrollbar in unity (unless I am running on a netbook).

------
supar
I wouldn't normally care about the state of GNOME, but as a developer myself
I'm in a really sorry state of affairs regarding _GTK_ itself.

At some point with 2.x, GTK stopped being GIMP's toolkit and became part of
GNOME. Fortunately it remained more or less self-contained, but it's no longer
the case with GTK3.

As an user, I cringe about the usability and responsiveness of GTK3
applications. I really dislike how the built-in dialogs have become. I don't
like how some widgets now work. No (easy) theming (as a reversed color theme
user) is also a major letdown.

I always considered GTK a nice toolkit from the user's perspective, and up to
GTK 1.x it was also considerably faster than QT. GTK2 killed that, and at the
same time removed any support for exotic OSes. I had 1-line patches refused
under pretty much the same reasons you read in the article.

But as an user I still preferred GTK because of some nice unix-centric
features (tear-off menus -- that disappeared at some point, column-based file
browsers -- again killed later, user-customizable key bindings on any
application -- can you still do that? I don't even care anymore, low memory,
fast engines, etc).

But now QT is just superior in any front. QT has _native_ support for OO and
nice, consistent, multi-platform API, whereas GTK3 still depends of the shitty
glib stack that pretends to be an OO framework (and doing a poor job at it).
Ever got random glib warnings by GTK applications on the console? My xsession-
errors is _full_ of them. As a developer I just cringe at GTK. It was always
_bad_ from day 1, but now it doesn't really make any more sense. Whenever I
need to consider a toolkit for a C-only based program (where QT or FLTK is not
an option), I usually go for UIP. It's a shame that the looks of these
toolkits do not integrate in the rest of the UI.

Right now I actively remove any GTK3 application. Whenever an application gets
rebuilt I switch to a QT counterpart, which is usually more responsive and
more stable over time. GTK didn't deserve this.

~~~
msclrhd
Qt/KDE have their issues as well. Both Qt and KDFE have their own versions of
each object (e.g. QAction vs KAction). This means you have two choices when
writing an application in Qt -- Qt only or KDE-based.

The Qt stack does not have support for mimetype handling for files (e.g. I
want to open any text/html file). You need KDE for that.

Qt/KDE requires you to generate moc files (preprocessing the C++ code) which
can make it harder to maintain if not using CMake or the Qt project format.

Qt broke the behaviour of QAudioDeviceInfo by moving it to a different package
(QtMultimedia vs QtMultimediaKit). There have been times where Qt has not
shipped a pc package (esp. in the package QAudioDevice moved to) which makes
it difficult to add that package on build systems other than the Qt build
system.

Qt does not support using gettext for translation.

Qt is in a transition from QtWidgets to QtQuick which (like Gtk3 themes) is
currently a moving target.

------
dkhenry
So two things I would like to point out.

1\. Gnome is at 3.6 they have many things that are changing rapidly. I don't
expect them to limit the things they can do to make the DE _better_ just so
that they have a stable API for themes.

2\. I actually find myself liking gnome3 and gnome shell better then Xfce ( my
fallback for the early days of gnome3 ).

The workflow they introduced hurt at first because it was different and scary,
but its so natural now I find myself missing it when I work in Xfce or KDE. I
know there are some developers who value above all else the freedom and ideals
espoused by the FOSS movement and want a system stack that is true to those
principles above all others. I am actually enjoying a well _designed_ and
coherent desktop experience. Also I have the source code if something really
is bothering me I can change it, but I am finding after 15+ years of tweaking
config files to get everything to work the way I wanted it to I am now content
to just have something that works out of the box even if I have to acclimate
myself to some of its nuances. It turns out most of the time what I thought
was a problem actually works better for me once I get used to it.

~~~
DeepDuh
Could you comment on the points that have been made about removed features in
nautilus and things like removing launchers? I'm not a heavy linux user myself
but those issues stroke me as very significant, to the extent that I would
never touch gnome3 because of this.

~~~
dkhenry
I just copied a .sh script to my desktop and clicked on it. It launched the
application. However the right click and make new shortcut has been removed.
Was it a feature , yes. Should they have kept it, I say no You can't keep
every menu option ever in all your dialogs. There are other ways ( and better
ways ) to do the same thing.

~~~
thwarted
What are those other and better ways? The ability to bind random,
personalized, easy to create scripts to file actions has been removed as far
as I can tell.

Not being able to drop a shell script into some place to make GUI file
management easier is a regression. (I say "some place" because when I was
using this feature, it took forever to find the right place as it changed
between released/distributions and I had to experiment to find the right set
of env vars that are set, because docs were lacking).

~~~
stuaxo
Pretty sure nautilus scripts still work; I'm on gnome 3.6 and have a bunch.

~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts

~~~
DeepDuh
I wouldn't bet on it in the long run though, the way they are murdering
through features.

------
mercurial
This was posted on r/linux too. While I completely understand that you can't
make a UI to please everybody, it's not an excuse to ignore user feedback and
sacrifice everything to branding.

I had wanted to check out Gnome 3, actually, just out of curiosity, but being
one of these people who actually like to select their terminal emulator, I
realized I'm not part of the target demographic.

~~~
ch0wn
I recently switched to Fedora on my desktop, because I wanted to fiddle around
with systemd. Coming from Unity, I really enjoyed how snappy it is.

And for the rest, I spend most of my time either in my browser or the
terminal, so there's not really much I expect from a desktop environment than
being fast and stable. I don't really care anymore.

~~~
GuiA
You might just want to use i3/awesome/xmonad then :)

~~~
mercurial
Xmonad/awesome (haven't tried i3) are absolutely fantastic, however, in my
experience, you need to spend some days tweaking configuration files in order
to achieve a satisfying experience (especially if you want dual-screen support
to work in a less... interesting way in Xmonad). From what parent was writing,
this is exactly what s/he does _not_ want to do.

~~~
regularfry
I found the awesomewm defaults good enough to be useful out of the box on
Squeeze. I've made some minor tweaks since then, but nothing major.

~~~
jlgreco
Yeah, the only thing I have ever customized with Awesome is changing the
default terminal to xterm. After that it just does exactly what I expect, and
doesn't get in my way; I don't know what more I could ask for.

------
aes256
GNOME is clearly trying to imitate OS X. That much is plain to see.

In doing so, it seems the devs have adopted the Apple approach; dictatorial
design. In many respects this is a good thing. It gives them the good sense to
say "no" to certain proposals; I'm sure there are active GNOME contributors
who would prefer Nautilus to have five customizable toolbars, and the system
menubar to have a mind-boggling array of system stats. No.

Obviously, haters gonna hate. People who get a kick out of relentlessly
customizing their desktop environment will no longer feel welcome. GNOME sold
out, it went mainstream, whatever. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

This is a victory for ordinary users. This is giving the developers focus. A
lot of user suggestions are just pointless distractions from the core goal,
which is apparently to imitate OS X as much as possible without being called
on it.

~~~
kaolinite
The problem is that there are few "ordinary users" currently using Gnome and
as the technical users leave Gnome because it's not as useful to them anymore,
they're losing their main source of advertising and endorsement.

OS X is a pretty good example of how an operating system can be simple enough
for regular users to use but still have advanced options that power users and
technical users require. I understand why they're attempting to copy it, but I
don't think they're going about it in the right way.

~~~
rbanffy
> as the technical users leave Gnome because it's not as useful to them
> anymore

[citation needed]

I'm fairly technical and I'm not leaving Gnome. There was a time I spent hours
downloading themes, sometimes building my own from them, so that I'd have the
"perfect" desktop, but not anymore. The most time I lost in the last 6 months
was tweaking my init.el file so my Emacs would start with everything I need to
work comfortably. I also built a console font so my terminals and text editors
would mitigate my 3278 nostalgia (<https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font>).

A theme is just a theme. We don't have to fight much over it.

API breakage, OTOH, is a problem. Anyone who develops for Gnome should have a
continuous testing install somewhere running tests against the latest master
branch to prevent nasty surprises down the road. Also, people who develop apps
and feel Gnome is going in the wrong direction should get involved in Gnome
development. App (and theme) developers are the users of Gnome's APIs much
like I am a Firefox user. If it "feels wrong", I'll get in touch with the
developers and try to help fixing it. Ranting is not going to help.

~~~
kaolinite
I left a few months ago (now I run a mixture of OS X and Linux with Openbox)
and I know I'm not alone. I'm afraid that I can't post statistics - although
I'd be very interested to see them, if there are any - however the general
feeling I get is that a lot of users are very unhappy. Here's one high profile
incident, which I'm sure you'll have seen:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/05/linus_slams_gnome_th...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/05/linus_slams_gnome_three/)

I've also spoken to a few of the developers of the core Gnome applications and
morale, from what I've seen, seems to be pretty low with some groups of
developers simply refusing to implement changes planned by the design team.
I'm very concerned about the project - I think the new vision will lose them
both users and developers, at a time when they need them more than ever.

~~~
rbanffy
Most people I know who moved to Macs didn't do it because they felt Gnome was
bad. Most of them did so because Macbooks are excellent computers and OSX is a
good enough Unix they can work with.

This design-development schism seems bad indeed. Maybe Gnome lacks a decent
leadership, one that lets it be Gnone rather than Windows (Mono, seriously?)
or OSX. But then we'd have to know what it is to be Gnome. I kind of like
Gnome Shell and Unity and lack of themes means I spend less time customizing
my machine and more time working, but I'm not a typical Linux user anyway.
What worries me the most is not product quality, but all this toxicity
floating around.

------
VMG
Lots of hilarity and conspiracy in the comments - evidently Google is behind
the decline of Mozilla and Redhat is killing Gnome.

Gnome3 has it's problems, however I as a user much prefer having _one_ pretty
theme and a changing API instead of a stable API and a forest of ugly themes.

Despite all the ranting and foaming of mouth, Gnome3.6 still is the best DE
out there in my opinion.

~~~
edoloughlin
> Despite all the ranting and foaming of mouth

There seem to be plenty of links to discussions in the bug tracker to support
this article.

E.g., the attitude of the dev in response to reasonable argument from his
users in <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=485846> is pretty much
"I'm not changing it, just because". That would make me rant and foam at the
mouth because a reasoned approach patently failed in this case.

~~~
VMG
I was just talking about the apparent problem of not having a stable theme
API.

The developers never promised to provide a stable theme API, even selecting
themes as a user is basically only possible via "gnome-tweak-tool", so this
had "alpha code" written all over it from the beginning.

 _E.g., the attitude of the dev in response to reasonable argument from his
users in<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=485846> is pretty much
"I'm not changing it, just because". That would make me rant and foam at the
mouth because a reasoned approach patently failed in this case._

Even this case isn't as clear-cut as you make it out to be, especially if you
look at comment #14.

~~~
dalai
Unfortunately comment #14 doesn't say anything. He just posted the links to
search on three bugtrackers for brightness. There is still no specific bug
that he mentioned.

------
acqq
Here's my vote to "Reintroduce location/path bar toggle button." I really need
the location edit box in file dialogs, and those %$£% removed it. Now I can't
simply paste the whole file path to open or save the file, no, I have to
click, scroll, click, scroll for every path component, instead of just one
paste. %^$#

I also don't understand this "brandmaking" by alienating as much people as
possible. Depressive read.

~~~
xiaomai
hit ^l in nautilus.

~~~
andor
It's CTRL+L on my keyboard. In addition to Nautilus and all the file dialogs
it also works in browsers and even in Windows's "Explorer" file manager.

I use Gnome 3.4, though. Did the Gnome developers remove this shortcut from
3.6?

~~~
chousuke
You can just start typing a path. Typing / shows an input field, and it has
tab completion too.

------
silentmars
Another article in what has really become a vast sea of Gnome criticism. I
definitely appreciate the extensive quoting of Gnome and Ubuntu people,
though, which is not too common in these kinds of articles.

The thing is, Gnome is focused on an idea of "user experience." What's
implicit in this pursuit is their mental model of the user. Who is Gnome for?
Well, if you're reading HN, it's probably not for you. They're making it
pretty clear that if you're an old school linux person, if you like
customization ability, if you like options, then you're not the user they have
in mind. For those of us who are not "the users they're looking for," we have
to be ok with that, accept that's what they want to do, and make our choice
accordingly: we can suck it up and use it anyway, we can use something else,
or we can fork Gnome.

At the same time, I suspect that they don't really know what they're doing,
and the "user" in their "user experience" is largely illusory; the product of
the imagination of a few Gnome designers. They seem prepared to double down on
this concept though - I think this is the only explanation possible of their
arrogance in the face of widespread denunciation from almost every corner of
the traditional linux community, including typically scathing flames from
Linus. The Gnome people seem to feed on this negativity, like it's validation
of their plans. "It is not for you, it is for 'them'" - whoever "they" are.

I wonder if their concept of who they're targeting as users couldn't be boiled
down to a fairly basic distinction: traditional linux stuff is for people who
enjoy using computers, and Gnome is designed for people who don't. Or put
another way: people who use computers, versus people used by computers - the
latter group belonging to a sort of corporate mindset.

Regardless, this mindset is being taken to far in its application to GTK,
which for a large number of reasons should not be taken as simply another part
of Gnome. It leads to almost a Kubuki Theater situation in which Gnome devs
try to push around apps like transmission, which merely uses GTK, to fit into
their Gnome user paradigm, while pretending nothing else exists. "I have never
heard of XFCE" - come on.

~~~
keithpeter
_"Who is Gnome for? Well, if you're reading HN, it's probably not for you.
They're making it pretty clear that if you're an old school linux person, if
you like customization ability, if you like options, then you're not the user
they have in mind."_

Perhaps it is the 'old school Linux' people who provide much of the voluntary
input to open source projects. Perhaps the younger ones who like shiny shiny
just buy Apple and set up a terminal to their Linode. Perhaps not good for
long term health of the project?

------
compilercreator
I disagree about KDE4 not being customizable. While the earlier iterations of
KDE4 (such as 4.1) were lacking in options, newer iterations like KDE 4.8/4.9
are really customizable. See also Linus Torvalds' recent post where he also
praises the configurability of KDE4, saying that it may even be too
configurable.

~~~
klearvue
It is incredibly customisable however the article lists a specific
customisation (ability to re-arrange applications in the taskbar) that was in
KDE3, missing in KDE4 and is actually useful to have. The ability to tilt
desktop widgets at odd angles, mentioned by Linus, is utterly pointless. So
the article has it right - they ought to start listening to user input.

~~~
milliams
> ability to re-arrange applications in the taskbar

This is now possible in KDE and has been since at least 4.3 (over 3 years
ago).

~~~
klearvue
Thank you so much! To enable I needed to change 'Sorting' to 'Manually' in
Task Manager Settings.

------
api
I like Gnome 3. It strikes me as incomplete, but what's there is good and does
not look like cluttery crap. KDE is more feature-complete but looks like a
clutterbuck 90s desktop. I can't stand it. After using Apple products for a
while (I use both OSes) clutter makes me want to claw my eyes out.

~~~
Andrex
Agreed. Gnome 3 may have a lot of problems, but it's probably the most elegant
and "quiet" desktop environment.

------
f4stjack
This is so true. And, unfortunately, this rot is not limited to GNOME only
IMHO. In the good old days the desktop environments used to be cool and
functional. I mean look at kde 2 and compare it with windows 98. Or take kde
3+compiz and compare it with xp and windows vista. Those desktop environments
were different, has an unique style and blowing the minds of the windows + mac
users. I mean compiz for god's sake. A lot of my friends' eyes go wide when I
started rolling my desktop left and right and said it is all native, and uses
this much of ram.

Having said all of that, let's take a gander to kde 4 and gnome 3. Can you
really see that kind of difference and coolness? I, for one, can't see it.
What I see is desktop interfaces which tries to macify themselves, which is
sad.

~~~
mercurial
I'm not sure I would use compiz as a shining example of something that makes a
desktop more functional.

Regarding the differences between Gnome 3 and KDE 4: I haven't tried Gnome 3,
but from I've read (including TFA), they go out of their way to make the
desktop not configurable. Before switching to awesome and then Xmonad, I was a
heavy user of KDE 4, and it is _extremely_ customizable. It also had some
novel ideas about grouping widgets/applications depending on the current
activity of the user, which is probably implemented by now, and which I don't
think is present in GNOME 3.

------
kzrdude
> It is my hope that you are a GNOME app…

I can't really wish this guy anything other than good luck and good bye.

------
bkor
Allan Day is a designer, not a developer. Obviously he's not involved in GTK+
development. It is true that GTK+ is not much tested on any other theme than
the default theme, but that is a matter of focus and lack of manpower.

IMO easier to be honest about it (no focus).

------
josteink
After reading the full piece, it's obvious Ubuntu and KDE are not that much
better than Gnome. Should we say 2012 looks like the year Linux "lost" the
desktop after a few years of prosperity?

For someone running Ubuntu 12.10 with "basic" desktop needs, can anyone come
up with some recommendations for a more open, forthcoming distro and DE?
Someone to reward for their efforts?

It seems like using and supporting Ubuntu, Gnome etc at this point would be
sending out the wrong signals.

~~~
noisy_boy
After years of stubborn refusal to give up Ubuntu 10.10, I finally moved to
OpenSUSE 12.2 (which uses KDE 4.8). Setting aside the Yast related rants
(which have some substance), I couldn't be happier and the credit goes to KDE.

Even though some simple things are still hard to do (you still need to go
through few hoops to get a custom application launcher added to taskbar), I
haven't yet found something which can't be managed with either straightforward
GUI configuration or with scripts. Things I like:

1\. I have a sane & traditional icons+multiple taskbar+desktop setup

2\. I get to choose how many windows I can see at a given time and what size
they are (KDE also remembers the size)

3\. Dolphin retains Split/compact/tree view and infact does it with all the
customizations I could ask for based on what I need regularly.

4\. Dual displays took exactly 2 minutes to setup - all driven by GUI. It even
has the audacity to offer me separate wallpapers for each display without
actually going through any kludges. Depending on which desktop I right-click
and choose "Desktop settings", it allows me to set background etc. for that
display.

5\. I can choose the sort order and grouping of the applications on the
taskbar - I like them unsorted (i.e. the order in which they were launched)
and ungrouped (until there are too many and need to be grouped) - all this was
configurable in "Task Manager settings".

6\. I get to choose my own Terminal Emulator and I'm absolutely happy with
Konsole because it even lets me customize the shortcut keys to manage tabs.

I could go on (and I never thought I would about KDE; I've always considered
the simplicity of Gnome 2 superior to KDE) but KDE 4.8 is a fantastic
experience for a Linux power user.

~~~
psionski
This sounds fantastic... I think I'm gonna `aptitude install kde-standard`
after reading this :)

------
mpyne
rekonq is not the default KDE browser, and is not shipped with the KDE
Software Compilation or KDE Platform.

Instead, it is a valued KDE-community-developed browser available from our
"Extragear" repository.

However I will say that even we at KDE are not opposed to configurability in
general (especially to the extent listed for GNOME 3 and Unity... as far as I
know we don't have a stick up our collective asses regarding the "brand
experience").

But we have to maintain patches we accept (e.g. in the case of the task
manager). LUCKILY we are quite happy to have even our core components ripped
and replaced by something better. E.g. there is Craig Drummond's "Icon Tasks"
taskbar available for Plasma (which I use).

As far as SVG themes, that was a 10 steps forward, 1 step back kind of
thing... overall the desktop is much improved by having those as an option,
even if it makes it more difficult to implement color toning. But if someone
were to submit a patch implementing "themed color variations" (so that you as
a user could choose the "light" color, "dark" color, etc. and the rest of the
theme remains unchanged) then I would be very surprised if that were to be
rejected outright.

------
Tmmrn
> > 2.) A close button on the corner of the bubble as soon as a mouseover > >
> occurs (like Growl, instead of disappearing away)

> Same. The design of Notify-OSD is specifically not clickable, and we > would
> NOT accept patches to change that.

Excuse me, Mr. Shuttleworth, but have you tried using blueman? When you get a
pairing request blueman expects you to click "accept" in a notification...

~~~
pyre
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but how? I thought that the interface for
notifications was just to provide some text and maybe an icon.

~~~
fmoralesc
You can also have action buttons in notifications. See, for example,
<http://minus.com/lbpCsG> which is a minimal MPD client written as a
notification for gnome-shell. In gnome 3.6, you can interact with it using
only the keyboard (<Super>M, left/right to select the notification, up,
left/right to select the button and then enter to activate it), which you
can't do with the usual status icons unless the app is programmed to behave
like that, and which I think you can't do either with indicators like those
used in Unity (though I haven't used that in a while, so I might be wrong).

------
gpvos
All this "we have simplified the interface" makes me think of the Emacs
antinews file...

~~~
disgruntledphd2
I had no idea this existed! Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Its
somewhat wonderful.

To save people some searching, here's the antinews file for 24.1:
[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ant...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Antinews.html)

------
kayoone
There is alot of unnecessary Windows bash in that article, mainly because most
of the arguments applied could also be said about Apple eg:

"...as I read some of the GNOME developer comments below, I was given to
believe that this breakage stems from a Microsoft-like climate of preventing
users from customizing their systems..."

------
donniezazen
Gnome is heading to its demise. I don't really understand their point. They
keep messing up with power menu. 3.4 was shipped without all power options.
3.6 doesn't have logout or hibernation/suspend. Notification system is messed
up. It is always hidden and you can't really right click.

Ubuntu Developer's are also thinking of switching from developmental build to
stable build for Ubuntu. Nautilus has been put on hold. I will not be
surprised that Ubuntu will fork Gnome and develop its own variant.

Transmission developer sums it up.

------
nxn
_Not only are Windows users moving to Linux, but Windows devs seem to be
arriving as well, bringing their diseases with them – corporate ‘kill off the
competition’ mentalities that don’t serve Linux, merely exploit it._

Delusional is the only way to describe this statement. It almost resembles the
garbage Fox News has been giving for reasons why Romney lost the election.
First of all, developers in a "corporate" (I emphasize "corporate" because
this has nothing to do with windows development) environment generally aren't
the ones with the "kill off the competition/brand" mentality. This mentality
lives higher up in the corporate chain where business decisions are made.
Developers themselves don't make these choices, they simply execute them
because that's what the business has decided needs to be done. If the claim
was instead that CEOs, VPs, etc, are switching to Linux and getting involved
in the management of Gnome, the claim would still be wrong, but at least it
could have made some sense.

------
eric_bullington
This is exactly why I moved to Linux Mint (Mate or Cinammon, your choice) on
my desktop and crunchbang linux (with openbox) on a relatively low-powered
laptop (even though Linux Mint would run fine on it -- I like a little
diversity).

------
josephlord
Thankfully Ubuntu 12.04 is the Long Term Stable release. I think I'll be
sticking with it for a really long time partially due to all this nonsense.

If 12.10 was the LTS I would probably have looked at switching distros.

~~~
keithpeter
What has 12.04 got that 12.10 hasn't?

Not challenging, just interested. Both have fallback, both allow the
installation of XFCE4 desktop, both have the Lubuntu-desktop packages?

~~~
josephlord
Mostly not having to worry about removing shopping lenses and any other
things. It's a growing lack of trust in Canonical.

I don't use my Linux boxes as a desktop most of the time otherwise I would be
giving XFCE a proper try. In fact the main desktop use is child use so I don't
want to change it too much.

~~~
keithpeter
LTS is the way to go for stability, especially with 5 years support on stock
Ubuntu.

Regarding the Amazon search stuff in 12.10, there is a kill switch in system
settings, it was added in an update after all the hooha.

------
micaeked
so, i read through some of that, the complaints about api changes and the
developer responses. i did not read the entire thing

however, from what i read, i agree with the developers. they want a certain
thing, so they are making it. they don't want people changing their ui/ux. if
you don't like that, don't use it. use something else. or, fork it. make it
what you want it to be

~~~
vacri
You may have missed this gem: _Getting in deeper, not only are GNOME devs
content to break their own desktop, but they want features removed from apps
simply because GNOME no longer supports them!_

~~~
micaeked
umm... just to make sure i understand. they want to change their software.
they are telling others who rely on their software supporting something that
they are getting rid of that. i see nothing wrong with that. they can do
whatever they want with their software. don't like it? fork it, start your
own, etc. or am i misunderstanding?

~~~
guard-of-terra
GTK is a huge thing used by hundreds of unrelated projects, some of whose very
big. It is a responsibility. Gnome developers basically plundered the
development of GTK and now only care about their use cases. They should admit
that they are irresponsible. It is bad.

~~~
krakensden
In defense of GTK, there is really only one person working on it, plus the
occasional patch submission.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Maybe they should focus on maintenance then instead of runaway development
featuring breaking backwards compatibility and existing use cases? I
understand you can't have both stability and new features with limited
resources, but they should choose stability.

------
hnasarat
ignorantGuru (the author of that article) ended up talking to Benjamin Otte,
the lead developer behind GTK+ currently, about ignorantGuru, about the issue
of themes breaking. Otte explained the reasons behind this, and acknowledged
not ideal communication and developers and encouraged more to get involved to
steer the project in a way that they find desirable.
<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687752#c9> As they say, put up, or
hack up.

------
vacri
_I am really concerned about this effort to encourage and sanction themes and
extensions._

Sanction is a great word - it's an antonym of itself!

------
drivebyacct2
On the one hand, I don't like Gnome's attitude. On the other hand, I love
elementary OS even though it has a similar approach and it builds on Gnome. I
think I excuse the behavior because they actually pull off the experience well
:/

