Ubuntu 10.10 To Not Use GNOME Shell By Default

[monraaf]

Tried it and it works okayish with the oss radeon driver. But I don't find it very useful without gnome-panel and it's applets. A clock is all you get, this is minimalism to the extreme.

[mar04]

People like you

But back to the actual topic: IMO Gnome 2.x never was useful. Its inconsistent placement and scaling of icons on the desktop -- esp. with enabled file previews -- drives me crazy.
Maybe Gnome Shell will make this better.

Just set /apps/nautilus/icon_view/thumbnail_size to 48 and Gnome will become useful... to you. Or maybe not.

People like you who look for something to bitch will find it in every software. That doesn't mean that you represent the majority of users.

[KAMiKAZOW]

Ah yes, and now the personal insults when you don't like the truth.

I'm not insulting you. You introduced the term "to bitch" to this discussion. Don't whine that others use it as well after you introduced it.

You, btw, don't have the authority to define the truth.
Before I wrote my comment, I googled for KDE 4.2 reviews and clicked through the first 5 or so results. Their conclusions ranged from generally positive ("This release feels like a usable desktop" (source); "with the release of 4.2, the pressure should be off. KDE can still use additional enhancements, but, after KDE 4.2, almost all of the criticism is going to sound increasingly petty and spiteful." (source)) to glaring praise ("The new Plasma desktop is a huge success" (source); "The KDE "Gang of Five" (Dolphin, KMail, Konsole, Gwenview and Okular) sets the new standards of performance, look, and usability without sacrificing essential features" (source)).

If that's your main criteria for what a successful desktop environment should handle well then well there you go.

It's not my main criteria, but if a DE can't even handle icons well -- which sorta is a DE's core functionality along with basic window handling--, it IMHO fails.
That's not saying that I hate Gnome in general. I use Gnome applications almost every day. I just can't stand it as a DE, but that's only my opinion.
The Gnome and KDE communities serve somewhat different audiences. That's OK. On back-end technologies (dbus for example) both cooperate deeply.

[mugginz]

I'm not insulting you. You introduced the term "to bitch" to this discussion. Don't whine that others use it as well after you introduced it.

You, btw, don't have the authority to define the truth.

I said;

Those that praised it were obviously fairly easy to please. People want to bitch and moan about Windows Vista but aside from Vista's ridiculously hight memory footprint it was vastly more reliable than even KDE 4.3 and really also 4.4. What functionality Windows has at least works for the most part. If it doesn't they have millions upon millions of people bitching so I guess that's a great motivator to get things fixed not to mention the billions they rake in.

I was saying that many people, including those that are fans of the Windows platform generally, were discerning enough to both see the value in the platform, but also felt free enough to criticise it where it was less then stellar, and then if those types look upon the KDE offering they'll likely have a lot more to say with regards to how KDE performs. There are many who have higher standards than just "It mostly works, and the bits that don't, well I just wont use them". My statement is to highlight what others were saying.

When you said "People like you who look for something to bitch will find it in every software", you seemed to be suggesting that I personally go out of my way to find do nothing but criticise and wont stop looking until I find something to complain about. The exact opposite is the truth. I ran KDE 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4.2 as my day to day desktop environment (I also used the KDE 3 series earlier). I could do this because I was in a position where the flaws in KDE didn't impede me to the extent than it would had I not had the knowledge to work around it's flaws. I couldn't recommend it to users new to Linux or to those with tighter time constraints than I. While I was aware of its flaws, I simply "gritted and bared them" in the hope that they would get fixed. Some have been fixed, and some, well, not so much.

Before I wrote my comment, I googled for KDE 4.2 reviews and clicked through the first 5 or so results. Their conclusions ranged from generally positive ("This release feels like a usable desktop" (source); "with the release of 4.2, the pressure should be off. KDE can still use additional enhancements, but, after KDE 4.2, almost all of the criticism is going to sound increasingly petty and spiteful." (source)) to glaring praise ("The new Plasma desktop is a huge success" (source); "The KDE "Gang of Five" (Dolphin, KMail, Konsole, Gwenview and Okular) sets the new standards of performance, look, and usability without sacrificing essential features" (source)).

"The new Plasma desktop is a huge success" - There are some plasmoids that work, and there are some that were shipping in a broken state. Depending on which ones you were running you might of been either pleased or disappointed. Again, if the reviews don't mention the breakage here I have problems with the review.

"The KDE "Gang of Five" (Dolphin, KMail, Konsole, Gwenview and Okular) sets the new standards of performance, look, and usability without sacrificing essential features" (source)) - Well lets brake this down.

Dolphin - While early on a bit limited and criticised by people hanging out at forum.kde.org (some people there still do criticise), it has matured and blossomed and I personally find it to be the best file manager for the Linux platform and is a complete win for KDE. This is one stellar aspect of KDE. It's stellar in the respect that it does its job so pleasingly as to disappear into that background of consciousness where it allows you to get what you want done, and done effortlessly.

Konsole - Fairly full featured and I'd still say it's superior to the Gnome Terminal.

Gwenview & Okular - Largely pretty good but that depends on what you want to do. YMMV

But...

Kmail, and for that matter most of the Kontact package is a bit of a disaster. Have you tried Kmail with IMAP? Very poor indeed. Glaringly bad, and any review that doesn't note this has likely been a fairly superficial one indeed. Oh, and the Kontact Calendar. Again falls down when used with remote calendars, especially when the entries are in different time zones where it gets time translations very wrong and largely making it useless for this task.

It's not my main criteria, but if a DE can't even handle icons well -- which sorta is a DE's core functionality along with basic window handling--, it IMHO fails.

Icon handling is a very visible aspect of a DE, but hardly critical as long as it works and doesn't crash. (Unlike plasma which was still crash prone in 4.2) Some also worry about all of the different plasmoinds running in a single process where a crash in one brings down the whole deck of cards. How Windows 3.0 of it. (Or Mac OS7 or AmigaOS if you prefer)

That's not saying that I hate Gnome in general. I use Gnome applications almost every day. I just can't stand it as a DE, but that's only my opinion.

Sounds reasonable to me.

The Gnome and KDE communities serve somewhat different audiences. That's OK. On back-end technologies (dbus for example) both cooperate deeply.

I agree with this.

[smitty3268]

Some also worry about all of the different plasmoinds running in a single process where a crash in one brings down the whole deck of cards. How Windows 3.0 of it. (Or Mac OS7 or AmigaOS if you prefer)

The plasmoids running in managed languages (javascript, etc.) won't crash plasma if they go down. The javascript bindings just became usable, so hopefully it will become the preferred way to make most of them and that will help with stability.

[Hephasteus]

Who really cares. I won't use it when it's complete. As long as they let you use gnome without the shell I'll stick to gnome.

[NoEffex]

I hate gnome shell as is (I really like the current GNOME setup. It's by far my favorite desktop environment)..so I'm not the least bit upset.

[Yfrwlf]

I still don't "get" KDE 4, though I think it's better in some ways than Windows 7 though worse in others. It's just not very intuitive to me, I think Gnome is much more intuitive for someone to pick up and figure out. I'm sure it's a little skewed to say that since it could be more due to what desktop paradigm you're used to, and the Gnome desktop is like your typical "window file menu" paradigm, but I just don't find the KDE 4 desktop to be very helpful for new users to figure it out.

When you're trying to play with that weird random plasma addon button thingy in the top right and suddenly your desktop disappears, it's just a wee bit disturbing.

They've made it better, but I just think it still has a ways to go before it makes better sense, if it ever will...

This is all that is needed in a desktop though:
1) Quick way to load a program you want to use including access to movies and images.
2) Quick way to have programs, pics, and movies side-by-side at the same time for when you need information from them all at the same time.

Whatever desktop does these things in the easiest, fastest, and most logical way wins. ^^