Gnome Turns 25

https://hpjansson.org/blag/2022/07/23/gnome-at-25-a-health-checkup/

by miohtama • 4 years ago

133 175 4 years ago

hpjansson.org

dtx1• 4 years ago

Gnome turns 25...still no image preview in the filepicker

ginko2• 4 years ago

And people that try to provide workarounds will get called 'clowns' and sabotaged by the GTK people:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/4829

jeroenhd• 4 years ago

I love using Gnome but I hate the Gnome developer mindset. Everybody but them is an incompetent fool because they dare use their precious code in a different way. Every time one of these issues come up I consider just switching to KDE because although the UI doesn't sit as right with me, the developers and culture around the KDE project just seem so much better.

kuschku3• 4 years ago

If users have to use debug flags because your software has no customizability whatsoever, the fault isn't with the users using those flags, the fault is with the developer not offering proper solutions.

WTF Gnome, why do you hate your own users so much

zasdffaa5• 4 years ago

A couple f years ago I installed linux on a machine to do some dev that wasn't supported in windows. My first time exposed to gnome. I have never used such a mis-designed clueless UI, and I could not believe the number of outright bugs I encountered. It was like it was designed by kids.

nomad41• 4 years ago

It's funny because that's my exact experience using Windows. Buggy and incredibly bad defaults, completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls. macOS is bearable and I can be productive on it, but I think GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity. To each their own, I guess.

zasdffaa5• 4 years ago

completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls.

Certainly not. I suspect you aren't familiar with win, it has a lot of these although MS seems determined to wreck them.

I'm no MS shill, I wish they would DIAF, but I do find windows highly reliable and the UI was pretty good until they decided to fuck with it. By comparison I found gnome actively user hostile. Even small niceties that windows has are missing (eg one of very many, go up a folder in windows and the folder you were on will be the one selected, very handy). I would like to sit down with you and compare experiences, but ain't going to happen. Glad it works for you though.

input_sh• 4 years ago

but I think GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity

I'd agree if it weren't for the default keyboard shortcuts.

Like every app in existence uses ctrl+tab to switch between tabs, but GNOME's apps (like Files and Terminal) use ctrl+pgdown.

emerongi• 4 years ago

GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity

GNOME is quite decent in its current form and the most user-friendly desktop out there at the moment. People who hate on it just have some historical gripe with it, I feel like.

Ideally I'd be using something like Sway, but I can't be bothered to spend time on making things work the way they need to. GNOME gives me everything out of the box and doesn't get in my way. KDE is much more customizable, but less friendly on the eyes. Windows is probably OK if you're used to Windows (I'm clearly not). I have to use macOS at work and it's just a worse version of GNOME - bad defaults, weird design choices, less features, minimal customizability.

philliphaydon• 4 years ago

Windows has never had as many DE bugs as any Linux DE.

And Gnome is far from a perfect desktop experience out of the box. Once you add a few plugins it’s pretty decent but out of the box. No. Just no.

But the productivity of linux is so far superior to windows. The only reason I subject myself to windows is games and old .net framework projects.

aidenn0• 4 years ago

completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls.

Is this really true now? If so, it's sad how far windows has fallen. It was very easy, almost pleasant to use Windows with no mouse, from 3.0 all the way through XP (which was the range of my regular windows use)

oblio2• 4 years ago

What have you tried and failed to do with a keyboard, as opposed to the other somewhat mainstream options (MacOS, Gnome, KDE)?

silon42• 4 years ago

I find the exact opposite. Windows (was, aka <= 7) reliable, with good keyboard support... MacOS is useless by default until you add Alt+Tab.

secondcoming2• 4 years ago

completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls

Wait, what?

amelius• 4 years ago

Funniest moment in UX design was probably when Windows invented the lock-screen curtain (the screen that you have to drag up to unveil a password input box), and the Linux desktops copied that.

iasay2• 4 years ago

Yep. I find it’s absolutely horrible since they went bananas post gnome 2. All the discoverability and consistency is gone.

Honestly this is the biggest barrier to adoption of you ask me. I can’t hand a windows user or a Mac user a gnome desktop (or any of the other Linux options) and just leave them to it.

I tend to recommend a mac these days for people. They just work.

jraph4• 4 years ago

Cinnamon and KDE, and probably Mate, look quite similar to Windows, with the bottom panel having a "start up" menu at the left, the tasks, the status icons and the clock. The settings manager is arguably simpler than the numerous messy UIs on Windows.

I don't think the UI is the issue. I even think some DEs are better than both Mac and Windows on most topics. I don't like Gnome but it is okay I think, especially on Ubuntu. The rough edges are the issue, and above all, the incompatibility with Office (you might have to interact with people using it) and with the various domain-specific proprietary programs.

Windows also has - different - rough edges (and probably mac but I don't know it enough), but you'll find help online or from a nearby acquaintance.

But if I had to set up a computer for a complete newbie, that would be Linux. In any case I would have to help them, but on Linux there are just less disturbances, less risks, easier for them, the UI is better structured, everything is more predictable and since I'll need to help, I'll have better time with Linux.

beebeepka• 4 years ago

As a long time user, and a front-end developer, Gnome 2 and its derivatives don't make much sense to me. "Vertical taskbar? Not on my watch!"

Sometimes I feel like I am the only person to setup a vertical bar and complain about them using a repeating 1x30px (don't remember the actual number) image for background, rendering the bar barely usable. Something MS nailed back with windows 95!

Gnome 3 is mostly fine but not before you reach for at least a couple of basic add-ons. I truly believe believe they are trolling people with the default behaviour of Gnome 3

I liked Canonical's Unity very much, although it's no longer the prettiest. I realized that last part due to the recent reboot

lproven• 4 years ago

« As a long time user, and a front-end developer, Gnome 2 and its derivatives don't make much sense to me. "Vertical taskbar? Not on my watch!"

Thank you for saying this, because I very often feel like I am a lone voice crying in the wilderness when I point this out.

« I liked Canonical's Unity very much, although it's no longer the prettiest. I realized that last part due to the recent reboot »

Also this.

This, though:

« Gnome 3 is mostly fine but not before you reach for at least a couple of basic add-ons. I truly believe believe they are trolling people with the default behaviour of Gnome 3 »

This, however, less so.

It is possible to give GNOME 3 a partial makeover into something better, with a lot of addons, some now getting very hard to find.

The snag is that addons are tied to that particular version of GNOME Shell, and thus inevitably, an OS update that updates the shell breaks your entire desktop.

The misplaced confidence of the GNOME team is such that they provide but do not embrace the addons scene, and so there is no support for a safe mode, for example, so that if your addons crash the desktop can recover.

I would guess that the dev team use it unmodified and do not test for such things.

"If you break it, you bought it." IOW: we didn't supply the extensions, so if they broke your desktop, it's not our problem.

ralmidani2• 4 years ago

I use the latest Ubuntu with Gnome and it seems… OK? I’m not super picky, I can find my way around - and tolerate - anything as long as it’s not Windows.

That said, I have a Framework laptop for my personal use (my company gives us Mac devices), and they say Fedora has the best driver support. Since I’ll be evaluating a new distro, I’m also considering taking another serious look at KDE after a long time using Ubuntu’s Unity and Gnome. Concretely, what would I gain, and what might I lose?

wildrhythms2• 4 years ago

I still miss Unity sometimes :( One thing I don't particularly like about the "new" Gnome is that it makes the searchable launcher[0] fullscreen. So whatever context you're in is completely covered up by the launcher when you simply want to search for something to open. Remember when Windows 8 did the same thing? Microsoft moved away from that pattern since then. For all of the issues people had with Unity (the Amazon integration circa 16.04), at least it got the launcher somewhat right[1]

[0] Gnome launcher: https://imgur.com/l422pxK

[1] Unity launcher: https://imgur.com/sfw76Et

mmsimanga• 4 years ago

I have the same attitude as you do. When I was younger I spent so much time tweaking and changing Linux distros and desktops. Now I just install any Debian based distro and enable the dark theme. I pretty much leave everything as default. I spent most of my time in the apps I use, DBeaver for database work, Firefox and whatever editor I am using. I am bemused by the passionate partisan comments in this thread. I am long past that but thankful to all developers working on Open Source desktops.

ralmidani2• 4 years ago

Yeah, I have a hard time justifying hyper-customization. I understand that folks want to work efficiently, but as a dev, I need to stop and think about what I’m doing. I also have a tendency to rabbit-hole (actual feedback from my peers and manager), and if I leave myself unchecked I’ll probably spend more time “optimizing my workflow” than doing actually useful stuff.

These days, the only real changes I tend to make are installing oh-my-zsh (thereby outsourcing the low-level tweaks to someone else) and Sublime with a handful of plugins (does that count?).

christophilus• 4 years ago

Fedora is excellent, and I find stock Gnome to be preferable to whatever it is Ubuntu does to it. Your mileage may vary, etc.

rmahan• 4 years ago

I’m the same way, not picky as long as I can figure out where to click. I just did the reverse of KDE -> Gnome, I miss KDE here and there but I’ve been able to take the pieces I miss and replace them with gnome extensions.

Gnome was faster to get started with but KDE felt deeper. KDEs UI is denser, which imo makes it feel less “modern” but both KDE and Gnome are usable.

Best thing you can do is to spin up a VM and try it out yourself! Everyone’s different.

pjmlp2• 4 years ago

The maturity of a desktop project that drops the GUI designer, expects devs to simply type raw XML, while the upcoming designer uses Web technologies to draw what are supposed to be native UIs.

voxadam• 4 years ago

Interesting, I had no idea that KDE predates GNOME by more than two years. I would have assumed that GNOME release years before KDE.

It's not important who came first, I'm just expressing my surprise.

loloquwowndueo2• 4 years ago

Gnome was created in part as a response to kde using the Qt toolkit which at the time had some licensing issues. This is why gnome was based on the gtk toolkit which was free as in speech.

Symmetry• 4 years ago

Huh, looks like I've been using Gnome for most of its history (since Feisty). Replacing the default window manager with xmonad has gotten a little more complicated over the years I've been doing it but I'm still happily writing this from my Gnome-monad setup thanks to the magic of autostart and `--replace`.

loloquwowndueo2• 4 years ago

I don’t think you have - 25 years means Gnome has been around since 1997, while Feisty was the 7.04 Ubuntu release, so about a 10-year difference.

jraph4• 4 years ago

2007 to now is 15 years, that's more than half of 25, which is 12.5.

ognarb• 4 years ago

Looks like I will need to update https://carlschwan.eu/2021/04/29/health-of-the-kde-community...

jl63• 4 years ago

25 years since Gnome was created.

10 years since the type-ahead find bug was opened on Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681871

(bug now moved to Gitlab: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/1157)

7 years since a patch was provided to fix the issue.

Still waiting.

Note that this was a feature that Gnome used to have, but removed. Windows Explorer and macOS Finder both have the feature too.

fsh• 4 years ago

This is not a "bug" or an "issue", it is a matter of taste. Some users prefer search, others prefer a simpler "jump to file" function. The maintainers have decided to implement the former. Arrogant comments like this really make me wonder why people are still putting work into open-source projects.

elcritch• 4 years ago

The newer issue proposes to provide both methods, similar to windows. The “bug” seems to be that the maintainers prefer one style and refuse to let others add the alternative. That would jibe with what I’ve read about other anti-user attitudes in Gnome.

HeckFeck3• 4 years ago

a matter of taste

Shouldn't that then be left to user choice? The attitude that there's only one true way to do things and that's the developers' way is what put me off Gnome.

pessimizer• 4 years ago

Arrogant comments like this really make me wonder why people are still putting work into open-source projects.

If they hate it, they can stop. Work on a project that has a higher proportion of praise if they need to. Work on proprietary stuff.

edit: Trying to guilt-trip people into not having strong opinions is not going to accomplish anything, though.

j-james• 4 years ago

It's a bug when it stalls out your computer for 2-3 seconds because the file picker is doing a recursive search through all of your files.

Thankfully, patches that fix this (along with some other bugs and anti-features) are actively maintained by community members, despite being ignored by the GNOME project.

https://github.com/lah7/gtk3-classic

hendi_• 4 years ago

That's when and why I left the project (former contributer)

andrea76• 4 years ago

This is why I abandoned GNOME in favor on the other major OS DE.

HeckFeck3• 4 years ago

Agreed, but unfortunately we're still stuck with the problem in the GTK file picker, which is used everywhere.

kzrdude2• 4 years ago

You can use other file managers even in a gnome environment. For example, use Nemo.

jl63• 4 years ago

Don’t worry, I switched to XFCE and Thunar years ago.

zvmaz2• 4 years ago

I have used all possible DEs and Window Managers, and finally settled on Gnome.

I feel that I am very efficient using it, more so than when I was using tilling window managers (wmii, i3, dwm, etc.).

Gnome is just an incredible piece of software that works out of the box. Try it.

098799• 4 years ago

When someone says "that works out of the box" what I hear is "I don't want to spend time customizing things to work better for me", which is fine, but surprising coming from someone who claims to have used tiling window managers.

Darmody3• 4 years ago

To me it means: I don't have to spend a whole week tweaking stuff so the DE won't get break my workflow with annoying things.

Which then translates to bugs here and there, inconsistency and may other problems.

And while Gnome is a pain in the *s sometimes because they remove features, it's still better than the alternatives to me.

zvmaz2• 4 years ago

It means: "I don't want to spend time customizing things that may not even work better for me."

I acknowledge that some people like crafting their own computing environment[1], and it can be really interesting and rewarding , but some people like to work on other things, or simply lose interest in fiddling indefinitely with config files and all (like I have).

For the latter, there's Gnome.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/SystemCrafters

alpaca128• 4 years ago

I also "claim" to have used tiling WMs (in fact I'm using one right now) and Gnome is my favorite DE as well. I've tried pretty much everything and in the end it doesn't matter what you use as long as you can define useful keybindings.

And imho dynamic tiling is the wrong approach. Automatic rearrangement of windows never works well in real situations that just don't fit a small selection of fixed layouts. Not sure why static tilers are so rare, but Gnome offers static tiling and is very polished, so I guess that's why I like it.

21432• 4 years ago

"I don't want to spend time customizing things to work better for me"

That's me.

I have tried every major DE, and something or the other is not right with all of them!

I used to use gnome with a lot of customizations.

Over the past couple of years I decided to adapt my workflow and muscle memory to what's provided by default. Works well for me now, even though it was a little awkward at first.

I'm currently using gnome with no customizations.

I'm not claiming gnome is the best DE or anything.

I also really like XFCE btw.

johnchristopher2• 4 years ago

but surprising coming from someone who claims to have used tiling window managers.

Why are you using the verb "claim" if not to throw doubt over op's word ?

When someone says "that works out of the box" what I hear is "I don't want to spend time customizing things to work better for me",

I call that putting words in people's mouth.

petepete2• 4 years ago

I used Awesome WM for years but now use GNOME exclusively. It looks great, works intuitively, isn't resource heavy and with Wayland is super smooth.

I used to tile terminal windows but now do everything in tmux. I spend 95% of my day in either browser or terminal.

SebastianKra• 4 years ago

The core discussion here is: "how much should the computer adapt to the user vs how much should the user adapt to the computer".

On the one hand, the benefit of customizing a system for yourself should be obvious.

On the other hand, adapting yourself to a system also means adapting to other people. This allows improving the shared understanding of how computers should be used:

- Designs can push users to more efficient workflows.

- New features, use-cases and apps can be developed based on shared assumptions.

- Other developers can integrate with or expand on the existing designs. eg: MacOS launchers [1] build on various system features.

In IntelliJ, I regularly discover new functionality that I wouldn't even know existed had I used a text editor with extensions.

Customise your system too much, and you cut yourself off from this "conversation". Perhaps this is why some users still live in heavily customised terminal environments, despite massive improvements to GUIs [2].

[1] Raycast, Alfred, Launchbar [2] https://capiche.com/e/consumer-dev-tools-command-palette

seba_dos16• 4 years ago

I think it's more like "I don't want to be overwhelmed with lots of decisions right at the start, but I want an ability to change things incrementally to serve my needs as I go". Which is why I like Plasma too for its out-of-box readiness and configurability.

greyw4• 4 years ago

That is also me. I used i3, dwm, awesomewm etc. I spent just too much time maintaning these frankenstein configurations. By setting just a few shortcuts in gnome I get 90% there. My graphical shell is anyway just used for launching emacs, terminals and a browser.

jlarocco• 4 years ago

I spent just too much time maintaning these frankenstein configurations. By setting just a few shortcuts in gnome I get 90% there.

Curious what you mean by "maintaining these frankenstein configurations", and what you were trying to do. Was the WM under heavy development with user breaking changes or something?

I can't argue with your experience, but I've only touched my StumpWM config a handful of times in the last 10 years or so, usually to add a new defcommand or keyboard shortcut.

pizza2343• 4 years ago

I feel that I am very efficient using it, more so than when I was using tilling window managers (wmii, i3, dwm, etc.).

Gnome/GTK is the only software I can think of, which slowly but surely reduced the end-user efficiency.

One starts working one day, and finds out that mnemonics (menu shortcuts) have been disabled. Another day, the file manager side-by-side panel has been removed. Another day, a convenient filemanager shortcut (new folder) has been forgotten in the transition to a new version (and nobody cares). Another day, and the file search has been replaced with an incredibly slow, and buggy search. Another day, and one finds that tiling capabilities of the terminal are severely limited because the devs are hostile to APIs that would allow such functionality (see Tilix debate). Files sorting in the file manager? Overrated¹. And let's not get into the Gnome branding debate².

In the FOSS land, I find Gnome/GTK to be the most user-hostile approach to design I've ever experienced. The statement "I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry" says pretty much everything about the project(s) attitude².

¹: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=355152

²: https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...

Crysstalis16• 4 years ago

Please see my above comment for why it is wildly incorrect to describe the removal of features as "user-hostile": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32205125

In general, going to developers with a list of demands for patches to revert is not going to be helpful, it is much more likely that behavior is seen as hostile, coming from a user. It would be more useful to ask them why they have removed those features, figure out what their goal is, and then discuss it so you can reach consensus.

because the devs are hostile to APIs that would allow such functionality

This one is blatantly incorrect, see this twitter thread from a GNOME developer: https://twitter.com/tobias_bernard/status/145743855381055898...

kmac_• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, I share the impression, even the most basic "office work" use cases are not covered, like switching audio devices or UX decisions that make no sense, like auto-ditching notifications (like what the heck, the UI knows better what notifications are important and which aren't). The GTK API is like the wierdiest pseudo-objective UI API ever, and the number of modern GTK applications and their complexity can atest that. Gnome's stability makes it the best Linux native DE right now, but the gap between Mac OS and Windows is wider and wider every year. No wonder why people choose WSL as their everyday driver, they have Linux and work environment at the same time.

wooque2• 4 years ago

I have used all possible DEs and Window Managers, and finally settled on Xfce.

It's tried and true desktop paradigm which gets the job done. Vanilla GNOME is very inefficient and extensions are just lipstick on a pig.

loeg2• 4 years ago

I used Xfce for years after Gnome 3 happened, but eventually found KDE to be better in every respect. I like that Chrome reopens windows in the correct virtual desktop, for example — something that never worked in Xfce.

kombine• 4 years ago

KDE is more powerful and configurable in every way, unlike of forcing the user into a particular paradigm like GNOME does. Also the software suite is stellar.

21432• 4 years ago

more powerful

"More powerful"? What does that mean, in the context of DE?

nani8ot• 4 years ago

"More powerful" in the context of features.

E.g. Kate (text editor) has many advanced features not available in Gnome Text Editor.

For me the reduced feature-set of Gnome apps is what I want because I don't usually need them. I like the (imo) clean and easy UX of Gnome apps.

indymike• 4 years ago

I think both Gnome and KDE are pretty nice... Powerful is probably not the right word. KDE has a lot more features, and a lot more of those features are user configurable. Gnome has taken the path of a well executed, smaller feature set with fewer places the user can customize. KDE has taken the path of more features, but at the cost of more code, and more things that could have bugs. Personally, I love customizing everything, so I prefer KDE. But both Gnome and KDE are fantastic and give OSX a run for its money on usability, and both are superior to Windows 11 (which by the way is the best Windows UI since about XP).

greyw4• 4 years ago

It's also full of bugs. Kwin_x11 regularily crashed on me requiring a manual restart of it. I'd rather have something that works than a lot of configuration options that don't work. I'm using gnome nowadays (without any extensions)

SkyMarshal3• 4 years ago

I tried KDE recently b/c that new Nordic theme is beautiful. But setting it up was a major pain, and there’s apparently dconf-like utility that can export the settings into a save file. Went back to gnome afterwards.

SkyMarshal3• 4 years ago

I meant “… apparently no dconf-like utility…”

seba_dos16• 4 years ago

You don't need to export your settings because they're already files in ~/.config.

loeg2• 4 years ago

The best version of GNOME was Gnome 2. Before Gnome 3, I used Gnome for years. They really burned a lot of users with that reduction in functionality and consistently user-hostile attitude.

The closest modern desktop environment to Gnome 2 is KDE’s Plasma. It’s easy to use out of the box and doesn’t require any configuration (unless you want to do that kind of thing, and then it’s available — unlike in Gnome 3+).

squarefoot• 4 years ago

What's much worse is that most of the problem is on GTK, whose terrible post V2 design affects lots of software outside of Gnome.

MichaelCollins2• 4 years ago

Plasma seems like the worst part of KDE to me. It looks nice and has good functionality when it's working, but unfortunately it's riddled with bugs. Panels crash all the time and don't come back until I restart plasmashell.

I gave up on Plasma. I still use kwin and several KDE applications, like Dolphin, but now I use those with LxQT instead of Plasma. It doesn't look as stylish, but it seems to be rock solid. Plus I still get all the nice compositing effects and configurability of kwin.

seba_dos16• 4 years ago

Worth noting that this approach would have been impossible to execute on GNOME Shell, which integrates its shell, compositor and window manager in a single component.

silisili• 4 years ago

I liked 2 the best, especially with a dock. I understand what they were attempting in 3, but it was such a letdown.

Writing everything in JS was a weird decision. I remember for the first few releases, having to constantly restart the shell because the JS engine leaked so badly. You could watch RSS grow indefinitely everytime you moused over the top left corner.

It's a lot better now, usable with a few extensions...but I still think what a waste it was tossing 2 like they did. Extensions are an OK idea, but because they're mostly JS and CSS, there doesn't seem to be much safety there. It's very common for them to break each release because of some obscure attribute change.

jonkoops• 4 years ago

Personally I think GNOME 3 nowadays is one of the best DE I have ever used and I continue to use it every day.

nebalee2• 4 years ago

With GNOME 3 being the default on Fedora and Ubuntu (and others) I'm sure it has more users today than GNOME 2 ever had.

behnamoh3• 4 years ago

Why is it the default on most modern distros?

LeoPanthera• 4 years ago

Surely the closest DE to Gnome 2 is MATE, which is literally just GNOME 2, but with development continued.

Crysstalis16• 4 years ago

It is not a "user-hostile attitude" to remove features. Every project that does some kind of user study will do this eventually, because:

1. Not every feature is equally useful

2. No one is using the feature, and so maintaining it is a waste of time

3. Sometimes developers discover a better way to implement a feature

4. Some features can turn out to be just harmful and misleading

5. There is no one available who wants to maintain the feature and so it slowly deteriorates and breaks over time, and must be removed to prevent further breakage

And so on. If you program in your day job, I bet you can think of a few other valid reasons you have removed a feature at work, too. GNOME has not done anything out of the ordinary here, and it is incorrect to describe it this way. If you believe they have taken specific actions that were hostile towards you, then you should say what those actions are. But the mere act of changing or removing a feature that you happened to use is not a display of hostility, it is just the normal development process working as intended.

and then it’s available — unlike in Gnome 3+

This is incorrect, Gnome 3+ can be configured with shell extensions.

phkahler• 4 years ago

> No one is using the feature, and so maintaining it is a waste of time.

I wish they would drop more features that I don't like. I have a 55" monitor, so I dont use workspaces. I also dont need every window to shrink and move about when I want to bring up the launcher. Also, drop the hiding the launcher feature.

In the other direction I would like the application menu back ;-)

Otherwise I'm still mostly content with it.

hitekker• 4 years ago

I thought the flagged sibling comment was harsh but wow, 9 angry comments in just the last hour. That's not healthy

traverseda3• 4 years ago

It is not a "user-hostile attitude" to remove features. Every project that does some kind of user study will do this eventually, because:

I'd argue that it's not necessarily user hostile. You can definitely do it in a way that is user hostile however.

bcrl2• 4 years ago

You are making assumptions that are wrong. Just because you think a feature isn't used, that doesn't mean that there aren't users of that feature. Not every user participates in developer mailing lists to advocate for working features they currently use. Gnome has consistently made user hostile changes, like the time a minor release update changed key bindings from Unix style to Windows style for cut / paste / edit. Was nobody using keyboard shortcuts? I sure as damned hell don't think that was the case.

I used to change the window decorations to something smaller than the default, because I like having more of my screen real estate available for actual content rather than useless UI padding. The current iterations of Gnome are unusable to me, when Gnome was visually appealing and highly usable 20 years ago. Window transitions and icon docks have done nothing to improve usability, and bigger borders are not better borders.

Thankfully other desktops have far better feature retention rates.

linuxhansl• 4 years ago

Totally agree. Used Gnome 2 some, then switched to KDE and never looked back - to be honest.

asoneth5• 4 years ago

I just don't get these comments.

It's perfectly reasonable to prefer KDE because you like Plasma or it has the functionality you need. It's a nice desktop environment with a lot of functionality so I can see why it appeals to many people. What I don't get is why so many people feel the need to diminish open source projects they don't even use.

What is your end goal with a comment like this? Are you just expressing your opinion so that no one forgets that many people do not like Gnome 3? Are you hoping to better understand why the Gnome community has a different development philosophy than the KDE community? Are you trying to convince someone of something?

traverseda3• 4 years ago

Gnome has pissed a lot of people off, and this is the end result. I mean I think it's pretty reasonable for people to have ill will towards the project and I think that politely interjecting with the occasional "we don't like gnome" is reasonable. If only to encourage new projects to use a toolkit that isn't so closely tied to the gnome experience.

That being said I do have to give them some respect for XDG-desktop-portal, which has made my main complaint (gnome's filepicker being bad and non-optional for even basic software like firefox) no longer an issue.

sebow• 4 years ago

The best version of GNOME was Gnome 2.

Very much in agreement.If my unix* history is correct, even the apple design copied(or let's say "was influenced") a lot from the gnome 2 UI.

Postosuchus2• 4 years ago

Am I the only one who feels that Gnome, somewhat hilariously, is unable to get basic consistent UI over 2.5 decades - something that KDE nailed down at ... what was it? ... KDE 1.1?

I mean it is kind of sad, but educational - you get the project without clear goal, with zero consistency, without any regard to backward compatibility - and after 25 years you end up effectively with a mediocre window manager and a bunch of programs with wildly inconsistent UIs (which predictably break next time your UI toolkit goes from 2.4.8 to 2.4.9 making a migration to the new minor release a multi-year saga which invariably loses features that worked before)...

Say what you want about rms but he indeed has a talent of ruining a successful (and free) software project with his religious views (Gnome vs KDE, Guile vs Tcl, the list goes on)...

MichaelCollins2• 4 years ago

They had it nailed in Gnome 2.x, but they let self-styled designers constantly churn the UX. Designers who will never admit that UX churn is bad UX.

kzrdude2• 4 years ago

Well, KDE is still stubbornly sticking to the wrong order of OK/cancel buttons. It's quite puzzling.

Narishma• 4 years ago

There is no wrong order.

pengaru2• 4 years ago

Say what you want about rms but he indeed has a talent of ruining a successful (and free) software project with his religious views (Gnome vs KDE, Guile vs Tcl, the list goes on)...

To blame rms of all people for what you've described demonstrates a lack of understanding his scope of influence and participation in gnome especially in this era.

I can get behind blaming rms for gcc's missed opportunities, ultimately ceding its dominant position to clang/llvm. He clearly overplayed his hand there.

But when it comes to gnome I recall little more than mailing list bickering over gnome being a GNU project or not and what the G in GNOME stands for. Perhaps my memory is failing here, but it feels crediting rms with anything more than wasting a bit of gnome devs time and frustration would be overstating it. Not that any FOSS devs need more of that with how entitled and obnoxious users already can be, but they tend to have developed thick enough skin to ignore rms's aspy silliness.

Can you provide any examples to the contrary?

Postosuchus2• 4 years ago

My memory might be failing me but the whole raison d'être for GNOME project was the call by RMS. The premise was as follows: Qt was not truly free (despite promises by TrollTech at the time to address) and thus KDE could not be considered free desktop software.

zasdffaa5• 4 years ago

Those who can't, will criticise and attempt to bring others down to their level. Their lack of worth is a disease they have to spread.

Klasiaster2• 4 years ago

For a polished GNOME experience I recommend Fedora (once you know how to install the missing media codecs). Even Firefox there runs natively under Wayland and you also benefit from the latest advancements such as the Thunderbolt or performance managers.

behnamoh3• 4 years ago

Fedora in general is more "sane" than most other distros. Something about it just feels mature, stable, and well-thought-out.

Spivak3• 4 years ago

It’s because Red Hat has the engineering talent and bodies to make a cohesive system by carrying a frankly insane amount of patches to bend all software to the RHEL way and tackle extremely ambitious userspace plumbing projects.

I’m so sad at what IBM will eventually do to them.

Klasiaster2• 4 years ago

I think the proposal process works very well to modernize the distro and drive forward the improvements of the default installation, while in Debian the teams seem to do their own thing and innovation is very slow and even controversial (e.g., the systemd or merged /usr/ migration are sad examples but even small things like a good zram setup, systemd-oomd, and btrfs by default make a large difference).

jrm4• 4 years ago

I'm really glad to see this because I think we can now have a smarter conversation than the typical one on why people dislike Gnome so much and why it is okay, even good to criticize it. People get angry at me for insulting it because of the ridiculous "It's open source so you don't have the right to criticize" argument.

As this shows, there's a lot of corporate contributions to the codebase. For better or (mostly) worse -- that means the project will likely have much more of a "proprietary-like" mentality than perhaps what we think of when we say Free/Open Source.

This plays out, right? The thing people don't like about Gnome frequently boils down to backward-breakage and not being able to meaningfully contribute.

And yet, Gnome enjoys a lot of popularity in the space that affects the "Linux" ecosystem, and I think the way they do things messes it up. This is why, for now, I am explicitly anti-Gnome. I hope it changes, or I hope it gets less popular.

Gnome Turns 25

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