
The problem with GNOME 3 - felipec
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/
======
darklajid
I don't understand these posts. More, I dislike them a lot.

Gnome 3 rants are boring. Yes, people don't like the way the project moves.
Some of those are very vocal and outspoken. Some rant on a blog. The thing is:
Either the author cares about the Gnome project, in which case this is _no_
constructive way to put it (Hey, why don't you work on a better legacy mode?
Propose a Gnome Shell extension API?). No, the 'But I tried it before, over
and over, and they don't listen' argument is no excuse.

Or the author just does't like the project and wants to bash it. In that case
posts like this one might make some weird kind of sense, but I yawn skimming
them, hit flag on news aggregators like this and wish the author good luck
with a Gnome 2 fork or a different DE of his choosing.

Hi, my name is Ben and I'm a happy Gnome 3 user. I'm sure there are others out
there like me. Maybe we need to shout more? That would certainly remove stupid
'Google suggestions' arguments or 'of all the people that took this weird
poll, x % hate Gnome 3' pseudo-statistics from future rants.

~~~
dkhenry
As a fellow happy Gnome 3 user I think the problem is no one complains about
what works for them. It took a bit to get used to, but now I find all other
environments lacking.

~~~
jamesgeck0
Similar thing here. I wanted a taskbar for a while, until I installed an
extension that put it back and realized how clunky it felt. I love the
combined launcher/virtual-desktop/expose screen. The vanilla experience is
pretty great.

I love how much the environment gets out of your way and doesn't bother you.
The instant message notification that can be ignored, or answered briefly and
ignored. The lack of noise. It feels like an alternate history version of the
Mac OS X Finder; my workflow transitioned with very few changes when I started
using OS X at work.

~~~
runeks
Interesting. One question: does it feel "fast"/responsive? That's one of the
things I value the most in a DE. Unity doesn't live up to my standards
regarding this.

------
CoffeeDregs
I agree with some of the author's points, but I've been using Gnome 3 from
back when I had to use a damned crowbar and Debian Experimental repos to
install Gnome 3. I certainly did have some not-totally-happy moments to begin
with, but Gnome 3 has turned into a straightforward and very clean GUI. I'm
pretty much using the default functionality and theme, so haven't needed too
much configuration.

And I was all about configuration in Gnome 2... Gnome 3 is definitely not like
Gnome 2's tweaker's paradise. It was an effort to strip down to a minimalistic
GUI and, after a rough start, they've done quite well. I've not missed the
"Start" menu at all. I've not missed all the configuration/tweaking. I
appreciate the functionality exposed by the Windows button. I've gotten used
to Alt-` for switching windows-within-applications.

But I definitely agree with the author's points about the Gnome devs' response
to feedback. Without regard to the trajectory of Gnome 3, the developers seems
not to have managed or responded to criticism well. And Gnome 3 development
and direction has been fairly quiet from a PR perspective, and a bit more
PR/blog-posts could have been effective and mollifying the haters.

Note: I don't really use multiple workspaces, so can't comment on the author's
comments there.

~~~
felipec
The author here. I understand that some people have no problems with GNOME 3,
that's fine. Based on the evidence I've gathered through the years, my
estimate is that half the people that used GNOME 2 liked GNOME 3, and half
didn't. In my opinion that's __way too many __people to piss off in one
version bump.

Judging from the responses after two years from the debacle, I think it's fair
to say that GNOME will never be as successful as it once was.

------
programminggeek
There is a much bigger problem with GNOME 3, it is fighting a battle that
nobody cares about anymore. People using GNOME and KDE used to have this
notion where they are trying to build a Windows replacement or a Mac
replacement to get people to use FOSS.

Ubuntu showed that what needs to happen is to make a better UX overall and
that has nothing to do with Mac or Windows.

What I mean by UX is stuff like drivers working, being able to install on a
laptop or just buy it on a laptop and stuff "just works". People will pay
money to support things that work. They will buy things that work.

Millions of people are using Android, which is Linux based, because it just
works on their device. The experience is pretty great and it makes it easy to
do what you need to do when you need to do it.

GNOME 3 didn't solve any user experience problem. It is new and shiny just
because. It didn't make it better than Ubuntu, or Windows, or Mac, or Android.

~~~
krakensden
This isn't particularly useful or accurate. The larger Gnome diaspora has been
pretty instrumental in draining the swamp of hardware problems and dumb broken
things.

Gnome's 'flagship distro', unfortunately, is Fedora, which is... structurally
not super-suited to creating a user-facing distribution.

Canonical has done lots of interesting work over the past decade or so, but
ultimately most of the 'just work' they have didn't really come from their
employees or investments.

~~~
felipec
> The larger Gnome diaspora has been pretty instrumental in draining the swamp
> of hardware problems and dumb broken things.

True, but not particularly more than KDE, or any other environment.

~~~
Zardoz84
KDE works in broken graphics drivers. GNOME only give you missing characters,
deformed windows, etc... And isn't GTK getting something wrong. I try for
example OpenBOX and all works fine.

------
dhruvmittal
Another pretty big problem with the Gnome Project recently is that they've
made Gnome less modular. Gnome used to be a collection of associated software-
you had a window manager, a panel, a compositor, panel applications and
widgets, a settings-daemon, a keyring manager, a screensaver, etc. If you
wanted something other than what Gnome wanted to provide, you swapped out
metacity and compiz for xmonad. Or you bolted the settings-daemon onto another
window manager. It's been subtle, but with every 3.x version of gnome, a
little more of the functionality just gets rolled into gnome-shell and is
unable to run without it. Most recently, with 3.8, media keys are no longer
handled by gnome-settings-daemon- you can now only have gnome's media keys if
you're running gnome-shell.

I know a lot of people are going to say "well, you're not using the software
for its intended purpose. it's not their fault for breaking it." And that's
true, but modularity a big part of the Unix philosophy and this is Gnome
showing the Unix way the door.

------
u2328
I'm a big fan of GNOME 3, and strongly prefer it over other desktops. The
GNOME guys/gals have been doing a great job, and all the hate it gets is old
and tired. If you don't like it, that's fine. There are many other great
options available to you.

Look, we're on GNOME 3.8 now. The ship of GNOME's desktop design philosophy
has sailed. Either GNOME broke up with you, or you broke up with it, but the
relationship is over.

Get over it.

------
jmhain
This article is so ignorant and painfully wrong in every single way. I think
the author is just butthurt about being banned from GNOME's bugzilla (which he
very much deserved in my opinion).

GNOME 3 is by far the best desktop environment I have ever used. The extension
system is brilliant; I have used it to tweak every aspect to my liking. Every
person I've shown it to, developer and otherwise, has loved it. It is
incredibly polished and stable, especially in the latest version 3.8.

I'm tired of all the bullshit being spread about GNOME 3. If you're going to
cling to the past, you're free to use a shitty--I'm sorry-- _traditional_
desktop environment.

~~~
homosaur
This is exactly the kind of tone deaf developer suck-up attitude the article
complains about. It doesn't really matter what you or I or person X thinks,
the fact is that many many many user surveys have been taken and the majority
despise Gnome 3. The Gnome developers have taken the exact same stance you do,
that people are just not smart enough and have ulterior motives for hating
Gnome 3. The only thing it's gotten them is being pulled from default on
several distros and rapidly plummeting market share.

But good for them, it's easier to be "brilliant" and "forward thinking" with
zero users to support.

~~~
darklajid
I stated my opinion elsewhere on this thread: Use what works for you.

That said, I do wonder how you'd like to back up your claims here? I mean - if
you'd just say "Bah! Gnome 3 is a step in the wrong direction and the Gnome
developers are clueless. I'm moving on" that'd be fine and cool - I guess
everyone could understand reasons to do that, without neccessarily agreeing.

But you

\- state that a 'majority' hates Gnome 3.

    
    
      What? Really? A 'majority' of .. which representative group?
    

\- state that Gnome developers consider their users as dumb (I .. hope I
didn't misrepresent you here)

    
    
      That's impossible to back, insulting and quite frankly it's hard to assign a
      single motive to the 'Gnome developers'
    

\- argue that they lost market share for some reason

    
    
      Ignoring whether you're right or not (I .. tend to disagree): Why would that be
      important? Why do you consider 'rule the DE market' / 'be a leader in the DE
      market' (what market??) a worthwhile goal of the Gnome project? In my
      opinion they should provide one of a number of consistent desktop
      environments..

------
smacktoward
The biggest problem with relying on a survey of users to determine what
direction a software project should go is that users don't know what they
want.

Or rather, they know it, but only deep down in their subconscious, their
lizard brain. Their conscious mind doesn't know, because you're asking them to
pull specific things out of the nebulous cloud of the possible, and there's
too many of the damn things in that cloud for them to know which ones map to
what they want.

That's why they need developers. Developers know how to translate requirements
into features. Users don't. And they shouldn't have to!

So if you ask them, what you get back tends to be:

\- too vague ("it should be easier");

\- pie-in-the-sky stuff ("it should whiten my teeth while I use it");

\- or falling back on what they know, which is what they've had in the past
("bring back feature X").

If you want to learn what users want, you have to watch them use the product,
pick up on their frustrations, and creatively solve them. Asking them what
they want leads you nowhere.

~~~
vegasje
As mentioned in the article, you are correct in saying that users don't know
what they want. However, they darn sure know what they _don't_ want, which is
why many of the complaints are completely valid.

~~~
jamesgeck0
Well, sort of. Users of an existing application tend to cling to the old
version in the event of a major UI overhaul, even if the new version is easier
to use.

For example, Microsoft Office 2007 came out just after I started university.
I'd never used Office before, and I spent a lot of time digging around in
Office 2003's menus looking for things. I'd googled for help using programming
languages before, but googling for help about an office suite seemed strange.

When I tried Office 2007, I thought that the tabbed interface was fantastic; I
had a far easier time finding the options and features I was looking for. The
more I used it, the more impressed I was at how intuitive Microsoft had made
it.

My father had been using Office for decades. I excitedly showed him the new
version and installed it alongside his older version so that he could open the
docx files that people were starting to send him.

He _hated_ it. For over a year afterward, I heard about how terrible it was
and how he had to unlearn everything and how he couldn't find anything. I even
heard that all his keyboard shortcuts were broken, even though that wasn't one
of the things that changed and even though he couldn't demonstrate any that no
longer worked.

Users know what they don't want, and they really don't want change.

~~~
EdiX
Yes, of course, everyone who doesn't like a major UI overhaul is just an
irrational luddite. New UI is always better UI.

However you got one thing right: familiarity always trumps ease of learning,
ie. the easiest thing to learn is what you know already. So if you define
"good UI" as "user friendly UI" (as we have done, for some reason, for 30
years) you will find that the best UI is always the old one, because virgin
users do not exist anymore.

------
QEDturtles
If you're looking for a useful critique of the Gnome 3 desktop, look
elsewhere. Here's ts;dr: Gnome developers are dumb. Every decision they ever
made was stupid. I'm the smartest. They should listen to me but they don't
because they're stupid.

~~~
homosaur
Maybe you should try reading more than 2 paragraphs before commenting, it
makes you sound a lot more informed.

~~~
dkuntz2
Maybe the author should write meaningful pieces that actually contain even a
modicum of objectivity. It's basically exactly the same as a handful of other
pieces he's written about how he doesn't like GNOME because they were 'mean'
to him (even though based on everything he really seems to have deserved the
punishments dealt to him).

Sorry, but it peeves me that his articles still get near the top. They're
worthless diatribes against a project that doesn't care about his input. And,
more importantly, doesn't need or want to care about his input.

------
zalew
Hated it at first, but recently switched do Gnome (3.6) and loving it.

> There’s no other way to put it; GNOME 3 was a mistake.

There’s no other way to put it: your blog post is a mistake.

------
js4all
I am happy with Gnome 3. I can't understand the rants. If you don't like it,
use something else.

------
neumino
I'm pretty sure if Apple would have release a desktop environment like Gnome
3, people would have love it.

I personally like how they do things, they provide what people need, not what
people want. And I do believe that they provide an awesome and by far the best
desktop environment.

------
bfrog
Honestly gnome 3 convinced me to switch from using a few assorted others
(xmonad, kde, xfce, etc) and just use gnome 3.

Its the only one that just works 90% of the time with crap that should work.
Network, bluetooth, notifications, window management. I like the way all these
things work. I have my minor qualms with it (alt+tab, multimonitor support,
poor virtual machine performance)

Those few things aren't deal breakers for me though

~~~
virtualwhys
Multimonitor support, shit, that's an absolute must here.

Window management pales compared to tiling WMs like Awesome and i3, so being
able to drag title bar to windows edges to get a split screen is like, is that
all? How about a key binding for that, and while we're at it, how about
splitting the screen arbitrarily using keyboard shortcuts?

I get that Gnome 3 is good in the sense that things mostly work, but it seems
tailored to touch screen devices or use of a mouse to interact with the
interface. This frankly blows if your go to tool of choice is the keyboard.

Saying that, I wouldn't consider going back to Gnome 2, am moving toward a
Gnome-less stack.

------
bad_user
1\. configuration options are usually a symptom of a bad UI. But sometimes
they are necessary.

Personally I get why Gnome 3 or Unity developers have cut down on
configuration options, but on the other hand, for example it's really
frustrating in Unity not being able to move the left bar to the right. On OS X
or on Windows (7 at least) this is extremely easy to do, as you can place that
bar wherever you want it, to the left, to the right, at the bottom, wherever
it feels more comfortable to you.

So it's good that Gnome developers strive for interfaces that work well out of
the box, but some choices have been rather dumb.

2\. developers do listen to users, but unfortunately every user is different
and have different preferences and needs, so whom do you listen to? Also,
users aren't really aware of what they really need, so you have to read
between the lines. This is a sixth sense that many of us lack.

You need to have a strong dictator with good taste to drive good design. It's
pretty sad that we don't have a dictator like Linus Torvalds for Gnome. Now
that's a guy that would have driven things forward.

3\. it happens with us technical people that every time interfaces change, we
bitch about it. Well I decided to embrace change. I like Gmail's new Compose.
I like most UI decisions from Ubuntu/Unity. There I said it.

Good design doesn't necessarily feel right from the start, because the lack of
familiarity gets in the way. But the ultimate pursuit is that of simplicity,
composability and usefulness. So from time to time, we should sacrifice
familiarity for the mentioned purposes.

On the other hand, there's no excuse for releasing broken interfaces. Gnome
fell in the same trap that KDE did when version 4 was released - as in barely
functional software getting released to unsuspecting users.

------
mixmastamyk
The evisceration of nautilus is now a daily handicap... I don't know what to
do about it. There are some things the terminal isn't good at.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Thanks everyone. I know there are other choices, but they always involve
drawbacks as well as benefits. I'm looking for something slightly more
powerful than nautilus in gnome 2 and will try the alternatives you've
mentioned.

------
adrianlmm
I'm a GNOME 3 user and I love it, I feel I'm more productive with it than with
any other desktop.

GNOME 3 developers, you rock!

------
bluedino
Tweak tools, customization - people need to learn that this doesn't matter.

Look at the Mac. You can't change anything. You can't even change the colors.
You're stuck with what you've got. But people just learned to live with it.
After you stop complaining and start working, you actually get things done.

Whenever I turn my Linux machine on, I'm always tweaking something. I can't do
that on my Mac. I've sat at Starbucks for over an hour installing themes and
such. Talk about wasting time, but I guess I find it fun.

(I'm still using the old GNOME)

------
riquito
> I complained about GNOME 3 since day one

Maybe you need an attitude change

------
uvtc
If you prefer a more traditional-style desktop, Xfce is very nice.

------
pjmlp
Well, we could also use twm instead.

