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GNOME Is Still A Ways Off From 10% Goal

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  • #41
    Disingenuous article?

    In a way Gnome was promoted with Ubuntu. Even as Unity is a healthy competition to Gnome, and I use Gnome Shell in Ubuntu, I can say that the target of 121 millions of users is not met, but Ubuntu itself (which is mostly based on Gnome technologies) is a big number. How big? "In fall 2011 Canonical estimated that Ubuntu holds a global usage of more than 20 million users".
    I'm not here to say that is a big number or a small one, but is impressive. If we combine with users by other reasons, like Gnome on RedHat tools, Gnome in schools, or such, number is a big higher, and is a destktop environment to care about.
    Gnome if failed, it did not failed as Gnome, but as distribution of drivers, like WiFi drivers, video graphic drivers, Pulse-Audio drivers, and so on. Probably the driver quality is the part that did not give optimal experience for users, but numbers are pretty hefty, by all standards.
    Without wanting to open monsters, Ubuntu gives a lot of great platform defaults: automatic looking for codecs/drivers, having a Mono stack, would permit for enterprise desktops to switch some Asp.Net applications, the same happens using Java/Tomcat.
    At the end probably Gnome failed, but just because there was a better competition: Android. Not on desktop, but on devices. A solution I think may be just to get Android on desktop to get all the ecosystem of VM applications.
    Last edited by ciplogic; 03 January 2012, 09:27 AM.

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    • #42
      Originally posted by XorEaxEax View Post
      I'm pretty sure they are, both have gtk2 as dependencies and gtk2 theming affects the appearance of both.
      Nope, they have their own internal toolkit, and only use Gtk2 for final drawing, and only on Linux. Of course, the Windows and Mac versions of Firefox and Thunderbird don't have anything to do with Gtk.

      Since the dependency on Gtk is so weak (and only really used on Linux), you can also build firefox with a Qt front-end. But this is not well maintained and buggy.

      Same is true for LibreOffice, but LibreOffice works just fine with a Qt front-end.

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      • #43
        Originally posted by susikala View Post
        I think people are missing two points. First, toolkits do not spawn software. At least they aren't supposed to if the software is well designed, since the interface is not the most important part (I would personally argue the least important). Specifically when talking about a browser, I'd go for speed, correctness (of rendering) and stability every day over a sleek design. I don't need any interface, something like uzbl is perfectly fine. (User) Interfaces are highly overestimated in the industry, and that leads to so much bad software. So toolkits do not spawn stuff, they're merely there to offer a comfortable user interface abstraction.

        Second is the direction gnome is going. I think it is good. Really good. Simpler is better, since the world is getting dumber and all those kids playing with their facebooks, twitters and smartphones want a simple interface. They don't want a thousand choices etc., they're apple fanchildren-like in their approach to software -- it should work and I don't care about the details (thank you Steve Jobs for that). If we disregard for a moment the fact this is a very dangerous mindset, it is the prevailing mindset today amongst the younger people and growingly everyone. Now, you can say screw it and go with a complicated beast such as kde which no one eventually would really want to use, or you can say flow with it and do what gnome does, simplifying and streamlining things. If I can't change the mentality of the population, I can at least try to give it what it wants in the form of FOSS software and not some horrible apple stuff.

        So from my perspective, gnome is actually doing the right thing. I'm no gnome user. I downloaded the last fedora and played with it. It really does look amazing. It looks beautiful. There are almost no options to configure, but it mostly just works. Obviously it's garbage for my personal workflow, since I work with tiling window managers and mostly with the keyboard, but that is not to say I cannot appreciate what gnome is trying to do. They're tapping to the times, and it's a good thing. They're doing a pretty good job at it, too.

        So disregard for a moment the sensationalist lack of quality of this article -- the point is gnome is doing something good, and we should all appreciate it.
        Why does the choice have to be between ratpoison/twm and an environment from this century?

        Why should it not be possible to use something modern and integrated, AND have the workflow you enjoy? Make a apple-toy default, but let people use tiling or keyboard shortcuts or anything else if they want to?

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        • #44
          Why does the choice have to be between ratpoison/twm and an environment from this century?
          susikala has created a false dichotomy. Probably because he doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.

          Simple is FUCKING HARD. Making simple interfaces that are effective requires a very significant amount of effort, sophistication, and time to pull off. It is extremely difficult.

          The traditional approach for Linux desktops was to just take a bunch of different features, and programs... get them working so-so, slap them together half-configured, and then throw them at the users with enough dialogs, options, and configuration interfaces with the vain hope that users will be able to piece together something useful. This is a very bad approach.

          It is not useful for developers. It gets in the way for "power users", and it terrible for regular people.

          The only people that this appeals to is folks that like endlessly dicking around with their desktop. Trying out different background widgets, carefully trying out one dock after another, farting around with theming and so on and so forth. Basically doing nothing productive and just wasting time trying to make their system look pretty.


          Why should it not be possible to use something modern and integrated, AND have the workflow you enjoy? Make a apple-toy default, but let people use tiling or keyboard shortcuts or anything else if they want to?
          You have just described Gnome 3.

          It's a simple GUI with keyboard friendly bindings. I even have tiling, right now. It works fine.

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          • #45
            Originally posted by Michael View Post
            As soon as I'd forego the registration it would get picked up by squatters.... Look at http://www.nouveau-driver.org/ when previously was using that for collecting IRC logs and didn't bother renewing it and now that goes to garbage sites. I usually always keep domains renewed even if they've been dormant for years.
            Well, let's say I buy that. You act like a benefactor (paying, year after year, for something GNOME-related that GNOME itself doesn't want), but then you redirect the domain to a place where you enjoy bashing GNOME in articles like the one that provoked this discussion. Sorry but that makes no sense.

            An obvious suggestion for the redirection: https://live.gnome.org/10x10. Or just leave it empty with a message explaining what's the domain about. It might take less than five lines of simple text and a link to the 10x10 discussion.

            As it is today, it looks just like what someone already described: a spurned lover's reaction. Anything but professional.

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            • #46
              Originally posted by drag View Post
              You have just described Gnome 3.
              Actually, I described KDE.

              Is it possible to remove that Apple bar from the top of the screen in GNOME 3? How do you do it? Can I have a hiding taskbar on the top of the screen? How do you do it?

              And as a bonus question: Can I have Apply, OK and Cancel in the correct place? Where do I set that?

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              • #47
                Originally posted by drag View Post
                You have just described Gnome 3.

                It's a simple GUI with keyboard friendly bindings.
                It seems Gnome 3 is something opposite. Being simple doesn't mean it's simple to use. It's simple compared to far more popular environments like Windows, OS X, Unity and KDE (while Ubuntu doesn't count as Gnome anymore KDE is more popular, I guess) in term it doesn't offer so many features. There are even more simple environments than Gnome and why aren't they successful?
                KDE is more simple to use than Gnome, because it allows you to do common things easy - like minimizing, maximizing windows, launching applications and it gets out of your way. It doesn't force you to tweak every thing, but it allows you to do this. Gnome isn't simple at all (in term of usability), it's featureless and it complicates things that were easy. It's stupid experiment that failed. Gnome 3 stack is only usable with Ubuntu or modified shell.

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                • #48
                  Originally posted by susikala View Post
                  Second is the direction gnome is going. I think it is good. Really good. Simpler is better, since the world is getting dumber and all those kids playing with their facebooks, twitters and smartphones want a simple interface. They don't want a thousand choices etc.
                  Gnome isn't simpler, it's much more complicated. Free people like choices, why wouldn't they?

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                  • #49
                    Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                    Nope, they have their own internal toolkit, and only use Gtk2 for final drawing, and only on Linux. Of course, the Windows and Mac versions of Firefox and Thunderbird don't have anything to do with Gtk.
                    No the Windows and Mac versions use their native toolkits for 'final drawing' as you so put it. So from Mozilla's perspective I'd say they chose gtk2 as Linux's native toolkit and I can sort of get that as gtk2 is in wider use than qt on Linux (Chrome did the same), but on the other hand if there's one audience which doesn't see a toolkit as a deal-breaker then it's the Linux users and I doubt anyone apart from the diehard zelots cares if it's gtk2/gtk3 or qt which delivers the gui, I certainly don't.

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                    • #50
                      I don't care what toolkit apps use either, as long as the apps don't look out of place, and there are solutions for this.

                      What is more worrying is the fragmentation of the actually useful desktop environment components: sound, network transparency, metadata, indexing, etc.

                      DBUS and this new SecretAgent stuff are steps in the right direction, as are standardised icon themes and other work from the FreeDesktop project. Even PulseAudio (which I still consider pointless), if everyone standardises on it, could be good. But really, it would be nice if these things were planned better in advance, with all interested parties.

                      If stuff like kioslaves were cross-desktop, and all toolkits had consistent themes (like they do on Mac and Windows), the desktop would really be just a matter of choice and we'd have a common base for interaction, leaving app developers to choose the toolkit they prefer. At the moment, if you want kioslaves, you must use Qt, and if you use GTK, you get that worthless confusing file dialog.

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