I love Gnome, they piss some people off by making radical choices, but slowly they keep iterating and coming up with something nice over a long term. They have a vision and stick to it for years. I'm happy they don't just feel offended by posts like yours and act like short term pleasers. It's foss, you can fork it, you can use KDE. you can switch to Windows if you want. That's what free as in freedom is.
Personally I would have preferred matrix/element but hey Discourse>mailing lists for me.
> they piss some people off by making radical choices
No, people are not pissed off by the radicality of the choices. Stop taking people for uneducated jokers. People are pissed off because they understand the choices and do not agree with them or what they imply. Gamification, pushing apps and app stores, using the same disempowering concepts as mobile plateforms, changing design every so often for no good reason, focusing on simple design over features to the extreme which is again disempowering users, disregarding high performance requirements or assumptions such as recent hardware, stop pushing touchscreens. Nobody is arguing against having clean and accessible design for newcomers and nobody is saying that all of gnome is bad. It's just the same kind of critics that happen against wikimedia foundation or against mozilla: it is addressed to the management and the people that control the marketing and reads basically: cut the crap, stop doing futile stuff, your core things are good but they have been in better shape and would need more actual useful work, your goal is not only low entry barrier but also and very importantly high ceiling, if you target entry users your goal is to educate and teach. Also you are not a product (which needs to succeed and keep growing) but a tool, for users, by users, which solves a given goal and will be irrelevant when this goal becomes irrelevant, and that's ok.
I did not interpret "radical" in the prior comment to have either a positive or negative connotation. It merely implies that some of GNOME's decisions are polarizing and a drastic departure from norms, not that people who object to those decisions are "uneducated jokers".
I think it's great that a few open source projects are willing to be more radical and experimental, even if that results in pissing off a large number of reasonable and well-educated people.
The alternative seems to be a kind of milquetoast design-by-committee that satisfies the majority of people but also perpetually plays catch up to proprietary products by recreating their features without ever breaking new ground.
> The alternative seems to be a kind of milquetoast design-by-committee that satisfies the majority of people but also perpetually plays catch up to proprietary products by recreating their features without ever breaking new ground.
How is this not a description of gnome? I specifically argue this is my previous comment. In contrast to say plasma/xfce/lxqt which are mostly an idealized windows xp in terms of concepts, ie a frozen target, not playing catch-up.
> I did not interpret "radical" in the prior comment to have either a positive or negative connotation.
Neither do i. :)
> It merely implies that some of GNOME's decisions are polarizing and a drastic departure from norms, [..]
> I think it's great that a few open source projects are willing to be more radical and experimental [..]
This is not true, they are following quite closely the most recent trends in design. Specifically mobile platforms and quite apple-like: round squares, low-contrast thin-outlines, switch-style toggles, dock and launchpad-style app selector, simple window decoration, hamburgers, ... And this is a well-known choice, which has a history, motivations, requisites, etc. And surprise! the critics made at gnome are kind of the same (with a lower intensity) that are maid at apple or at mobile walled gardens: being dumbed-down, hiding OS concepts, discouraging any customization.
I'm really not very angry at gnome. It's fine to do this design style. I don't use it but not because of the look, in fact i like some apps they do. They just need to understand better how and why the thing they are inspired by has been maid and pay attention the the stuff that they should not reproduce, either because it doesn't make any sense in their case or because it's bad for the users.
The main reason I'm not using Linux at home is exactly updates - I don't want to be bothered for hours figuring out arcane error messages for each and every round of updates. When a distribution will be able to handle updates like the mobile platforms I will reconsider, and until then I'll handle this hassle only at work where I'm paid for it.
> I don't want to be bothered for hours figuring out arcane error messages for each and every round of updates
That's not really a thing if you're on a stable distribution. That's the entire point with going with distributions that do periodic releases rather than rolling releases - you benefit from testing others have done before you.
This is why my main machine is always on an Ubuntu LTS (although I use kde and not gnome); some more experimental server stuff I put on Arch and honestly even Arch really hasn't made dig around for hours in probably over a year. Ubuntu just keeps on ticking as long as you don't have hardware issues, and I build my machines around Linux, so that's not generally an issue.
I don't care if you run Linux or not, but for a home computer try a LTS distro, maybe Kubuntu , don't install third party PPAs and you should not get any problems updating. Using an LTS means that you are not getting the new shinny thing that you might see on the internet though.
But if your current setup works painlessly for you then keep using that.
It's not that easy, you will be tied to GNOME just by fact this or that app (for which there might not be replacement) picked GTK for its interface, so you have to at least go thru configuring it to look the same as the rest of your desktop. No matter which DE you chose you will be under GNOME's malady of design decisions.
> They have a vision and stick to it for years. I'm happy they don't just feel offended by posts like yours and act like short term pleasers.
If your design decisions are so bad there are multiple projects that migrate off you or stick to the old version (hell, GIMP is still stuck at GTKv2 IIRC, with GTKv3 slowly getting there) then your "vision" might not be that great. Honestly GNOME is there because of inertia more than quality of the changes.
> Personally I would have preferred matrix/element but hey Discourse>mailing lists for me.
The interaction for randoms is much easier but I hate how much space it wastes. I wish there was "my desktop is not phone" default theme there...
> Honestly GNOME is there because of inertia more than quality of the changes.
I have heard this explanation before for why GNOME is so popular despite the fact that so many people vocally dislike it. It's certainly possible, but I find it implausible.
For one thing, this would imply that we see a slow downward trend in GNOME usage which does not seem to be the case. For another thing, Linux users in particular seem less likely than most to just "go with what everyone else uses" since that would mean not using Linux in the first place. Finally, it doesn't seem like Linux desktop environments have enough of a moat to create serious inertia, at least not compared to things like mobile operating systems. Programs written for one Linux desktop environments typically work with only minor aesthetic issues in others, so that should not be a major impediment to distro-hopping.
I think it's worth considering an alternative hypothesis, that many people have evaluated multiple options and legitimately prefer GNOME to the alternatives on intrinsic merits such as design, stability, extensions, etc. I would also find it plausible that some of its popularity is due to many popular distributions choosing it as their default, but then the question is why those distributions do so, and again the most plausible explanation to me is that they are making the decision for pragmatic rather than legacy reasons.
> I have heard this explanation before for why GNOME is so popular despite the fact that so many people vocally dislike it. It's certainly possible, but I find it implausible.
It's also a default for few prominent Linux distributions. Ubuntu, Debian and the Red Hat variants all come with GNOME since forever (aside the Ubuntu's Unity endeavour
> I think it's worth considering an alternative hypothesis, that many people have evaluated multiple options and legitimately prefer GNOME to the alternatives on intrinsic merits such as design, stability, extensions, etc.
Or that just most people use GNOME so distros pick it as default and so most people use GNOME.
Why most people use bash while it can be argued that zsh is wholly better replacement ?
Also "better" doesn't matter if improvement is small enough that it doesn't improve your workflow, or small enough that it is not worth the effort to re-learn everything.
GNOME isn't really "bad" as much as "a bunch of developers changing shit that worked just fine for mostly imaginary gains (or just plain old "generating work to stay employed")", which just pisses off people that were entirely fine with it and now got a bunch of annoyances to re-learn after updating their machines.
> For another thing, Linux users in particular seem less likely than most to just "go with what everyone else uses" since that would mean not using Linux in the first place.
Right but the fact it's higher on average doesn't mean that on average majority will still just use Ubuntu with whatever default DE it is coming with.
> Programs written for one Linux desktop environments typically work with only minor aesthetic issues in others, so that should not be a major impediment to distro-hopping.
I mean I use i3 and it has been a bit of a PITA to have both KDE and GNOME side to not look shit (especially with dark theme... altho that part became a bit easier) without installing the entirety of both environments just to change settings, so dunno about that.
GTK was a GUI toolkit, it was DE agnostic and also cross platform (though it looked like shit). But as we can see from your comment GTK was captured by GNOME to be a GNOME exclusive project, if a change broke XFCE , GNOME people pretended they do not know what an XFCE is.
Did you know that
GTK was a cross platform tookit, even on Windows and Mac OS? Andf you did not had to install GNOME on Windows to use a GTK app, because it was a tooklit for making apps, and GNOME was a project that combine GTK apps, and a window manager to make a DE.
Many apps ported to Qt so I don't think there is a chance that GTK will get a viable fork, Qt will be the only cross platform toolkit
Nice, the now popular dev worldview "break things, and break things often". Just for the sake of breaking. I love it, why didn't we stumble earlier over this magnificent piece of discovery.
> Personally I would have preferred matrix/element but hey Discourse>mailing lists for me.
Seems like there will be a Matrix bridge; FTA:
> GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator Andrea Veri [...]
> [...] also mentioned reducing fragmentation of the GNOME communities, along with improved integration, such as a bridge to Matrix for live chat. The move is part of a general modernization of the GNOME Project's infrastructure, which has also seen a move from IRC to Matrix and from cgit to GitLab.
You know that that is (your/an) opinion, right? I think it is not at all "generally agreed". It wouldn't be the default on most major distros if it did. And even if it was, why would you care even?
It is certainly possible that GNOME is only popular because of legacy inertia, and that it will eventually be surpassed by other desktop environments as, by definition, inertia doesn't last forever.
But it's worth acknowledging that it's also possible that a large number of people simply disagree with you and actively choose it on its own merits.
The second factor is being "good enough". Not many people will move DE if they are 5, 10, even 25% better. The complaints are also mostly from power users
Especially now where most of stuff you do is "switch between few full screen apps" so as long as access to the basics is not obstructed I'd imagine most users wouldn't care
GNOME UI is very snappy and pragmatic, in my opinion much better than macos on a laptop screen for example. Out of every OS, I will happily use Gnome on wayland without a second thought, and I’m not alone.
It’s also very good on a laptop with a touchpad. You swipe up for overview, swipe left right for another desktop, each desktop contains a few windows. It’s easy and fast.
I'm not sure what you mean by this comment to be honest! But I've been using Linux for the past 15 years, with a detour to OS X for a while cause all the DEs/WMs sucked in the KDE4/early GNOME 3 era.
Try as you may but you're not going to get me to crack, my friend. I've been on Linux since the mid nineties. Things were much better for us before i-things rose to prominence, UI wise. I still love you as a fellow nerd and human, however, I do have some wishes that your laptop be smote, if only just to give you enough reprieve to notice the err of your ways.
Count the number of GNOME forks and the number of KDE forks , then also consider the reason of those forks. Something happen with GNOME3, something that spliting one big community in more smaller ones, I am not sure if the "vision" is good if the first step is to kick out a big chunk of the community that do not agree 100% with your vision and half of your left community is screwing your vision with their unsupported customization. But it happens in other projects too, when big ego gain control, they will not accept they are wrong, then they are kicked out and you get back to normal (google the KDE cachew thingy)
I'm not convinced that the mere presence of forks is necessarily evidence of poor decisions. It's been eleven years since MATE and Cinnamon were forked from GNOME and they all seem to be relatively healthy projects.
Discourse means a resource hungry (both on server and client terms) application unable to be integrated by anyone, with sugar eye graphics you do not get from mail due to mere lack of development.
With emails you can have your own UI in your own desktop, a thing only very few know nowadays and even less know how powerful and free it is. Sometimes people see in-Emacs presentations and say "that's like magic", it's just the classic desktop model vs the modern ex-IBM crappy model.
And people did, twice! Some distros are offered in two main variants: a fork of Gnome 2, and a fork of Gnome 3. I believe this should give Gnome developers some food for thought.
Closing mailing lists is another step away from the free Internet. Mailing lists have searchable, multiple, non-centralized archives and are harder to censor.
Discourse is centralized, moderators delete messages, rename and manipulate threads. The inner circle has all the power. Upvotes induce groupthink and cliques.
I would be happy if projects would convert their mailing lists to newsgroups. They are the perfect forum for discussions. The main benefits being that I can download all the historical messages easily (difficult with mailing lists), and I can use an interface that I am accustomed to no matter the provider (difficult with web forums where each uses their own theme).
As someone who formerly used to be in no-ML camp, I am proudly converted. Mailing Lists are decidedly democratic, and have least barrier to entry. It is also technically superior in providing unified interface to patches, communication, bug reports and everything adjacent.
Compared to that any fancy service provides lock-in under thin veil of "friendly interface".
> Mailing Lists are decidedly democratic, and have least barrier to entry.
Oh no, they are not. I loathe projects that only do mailing list support, because that means I have to subscribe to the mailing list, create a new folder and filter rule so that the mailing list doesn't flood my inbox with stuff I don't care about, and once the problem is solved, leave the mailing list, remove the filter and folder.
In contrast, issues on GitHub/GitLab or public self-hosted GitLab instances only require me signing up once (and in most cases via some form of SSO), I can add attachments such as screenshots or detailed logs that would just blow through the ridiculous size caps on mails, and I only get notifications on topics I explicitly subscribe for.
In most cases, you can send to a mailing list without subscribing, and people will include your email when they respond. I've filed multiple bugs this way. It was as easy as sending an email and attaching a patch.
Whenever I tried interacting with mailing lists in the last five years, I always needed to subscribe or wait for days for someone to moderate the spam queue.
Anti-spam measures are a large part of what made using MLs so annoying. From a moderation side, MLs are more work for that reason as well - Github and Gitlab at least get rid of spambots shilling shady cryptocurrencies, weenie enlargeners or questionable quality designer drugs. With MLs, all of this ends up in your moderation queue as well.
All the relevant mailing lists for my interest projects have web interface/archive, I can selectively reply/participate in any or no ongoing threads, and stop at any time.
> Every one of your proposed advantages are not about the community's health, but about your convenience and ability to ignore the community as a whole.
What makes a ML based workflow better for a community?
> It's fine that you have a preference, but claiming that your preference is more democratic is incorrect.
Most development is not done over MLs, that's a fact. The percentage of ML-based development done over time is shrinking. So I'd say the democratic vote is not one in favour of MLs.
> Every one of your proposed advantages are not about the community's health, but about your convenience and ability to ignore the community as a whole.
You were talking about MLs being more barrier-free than "friendly interfaces". I showed why that is not the case. The effort required for dealing with MLs is way higher.
I think most developers would find it easier to contribute to a github/gitlab/gitea project than a ML one. Besides, there are definite downsides to like MLs, like CI integration and pulling patches to local trees.
Now, there are strengths too. Like being archived easily & having threaded conversations integrated.
CI can definitely done on mailing lists. The interface is bit worse than PRs, but I'm sure with enough imagination that can be overcome.
Pulling local trees has been absolutely better IMO with mailing list. I can literally with single keybinding apply patch to relevant repo, something that takes much longer route with Github. (convert URL to raw.github/whatever, copy and paste to apply, or do clicky-clicky in the Github app or whathaveyou)
> Maybe one day we will be free of software development on MLs.
This is the same as saying we should only ever do open source development on closed proprietary platforms which only exist and allow access on the whim of a single entity which responds to no one.
As opposed to communicating over a completely open, decentralized and inherently free protocol.
What does CI have to do with a mailing list for software support?
Rich markup: you can use HTML in mail. I think it's silly, but you can do that.
Simple patch management: that's what version control systems are for; if your vcs doesn't support email, you can't do that. If it does, you can.
Edits to messages: you mean altering the past? That's a terrible idea.
Issue tracking: that's what bug trackers are for. You add a link to the bug number, or, more likely, you send a mail message to the bug tracker's email interface and get a bug number back. Send more email with the bug number in the subject and it gets added as a comment to the bug.
The comparison is not "git to github" but "mailing list + git" (aka. Linux Kernel development model) vs "github". As. You know. The thread is about mailing lists ?
Technically there are git based issue trackers and code review systems but that's unrelated note
nothing, but kids dont want to hear that. github can fuck us 12 ways to sunday and people will still refuse to submit diffs via email bc it's a different paradigm.
GNOME is formally a FLOSS project, but in reality a managerial-drive Open Source project, a way to elict free works for contributors for the sake of a company business...
Mailing lists are hard not much because mails layer too many tech but because people do not know them anymore due to the big push toward web crapplications, a push choosed for commercial purposes. As a result instead of being on a decentralized infra we end up in centralized ones, get too much overhead than switch to some giant cloud services.
Unfortunately it's not only "generic people" (CL/UL in the Simon's BOFH tails terms) but also technicians who tend "in crowd" to behave as any other "crowd" by Gustave Le Bon...
It might be, but not because of this. Even GitHub is gamified in a way.
I don't understand the issue with it. Badges, achievements, progress dashboards, etc. are mostly fine, and have been around for decades in multiple flavours and platforms.
Many OS projects closed their mailing lists. Google groups become unusable, and maintaining your own infrastructure is pain.
Plus many OS devs resigned on providing unpaid customer support. So far Github issues seems to be a good place for relevant bug reports. And people who need help (and paid) have direct phone number.
Personally I would have preferred matrix/element but hey Discourse>mailing lists for me.