Ten Suggestions For The GNOME Camp

[Adrinnho]

Adrinnho, thank you for not taking my post personal and thank you for the reply. It makes your thoughts clearer to me.


Well, yes. My problem is that - based on past experience - I expect a tile based DE (Metro anyone?) in Linux by 2014 the latest. Not because it makes sense. Not because it is good usability. Just because "It's the way one does DEs nowadays". And it makes me angry because I didn't invest in a 27+'' TFT to have office apps in fullscreen. Oh wait, there is an option to have a fixed split by 1/3rd vs. 2/3rds. Hightech. And there is simply NO ONE out there who actually says "Wait guys. Does it make sense? Do we need the same look and feel for Tablets, Smartphones AND Desktops? Or are the usecases and the requirements different?" In the past Linux to me allways meant "the practical alternative which is customizable to my personal need". And Unity just isn't anymore. Gnome - to be honest - never was. And I don't want to change the way I do things just because a developer thinks he knows how i should do stuff. That's why I ended up with KDE.




But I (for example) have different needs depending on what I do. I want a "Mouse only" DE f?r "Onehanded surfing while doing something else besides". And I may even cope with some sort of keyboard involvement when I'm sitting on my workstation doing things "fulltime" and "all hands involved" ;-).
But what is even more important: I do not want to have different DEs just because of these two usecases. And that's a pain in the ass.



And that's the reason why - in the desktop area - the number of Linux users more or less correlates directly to the amount of developers involved. Developers are the users. If you are fine with that and don't have any ambition in bringing Linux to end users PCs. Fine. Go for it. If you want Users to use Linux, change the attitude regarding their needs.
Interesting enough, Linux only really works where there is a customer focused company taking their customers serious. Generally Smartphone manufacturers and producers of other embedded system, that hide the nature of linux and the developer community from their customers. And yes, in these cases it makes perfect sense to cut it down to what the device should do. But that's not necessarily true for a desktop pc.



They're not silly. They are verbal expressions of what users want. One use case can be: I want to be able to navigate on my desktop without having to use a keyboard (searching a program name by typing its name DOES require knowledge as to what is installed and whats the name). When I'm at someone else's machine I just want to navigate the menu and see what's on that machine. Telling me that is silly disqualifies the person taking requirements. I'll invest zero energy in trying to convince. I'll just use something more up my alley and let them play with themselves.


Forking is killing open source. It does not lead to "single mans desktop" meaning one user per desktop, it leads to "single developer projects" and that just doesn't cut it. And to be precise on that one: It is NOT about choice. I'd rather have no choice but ONE application that actually works - instead of 10 choices with 10 different major issues. Just one example out of many: There's KMail. There's Thunderbird. There's Evolution. And there's more. But is there ONE real alternative to Outlook that actually works and is NOT Webbased requiring the setup of a groupware server? No.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to convince you of something. I just realise that many of the Linux-Projects do go down the wrong track - my opinion. Maybe I'll just stop upgrading and keep the old stuff. Vintage is cool anyway.

Regards,
Martin

Nice post, intelligent and documented. I have my thoughts on this, but I think we should let it go for now. We tend to drift towards 'computer philosophy' and that's no man's land.

We'll see where this Gnome-Shell thing goes...

Regards.

[D0pamine]

erm - just get rid of compositing as default and dont assume everyone wants a touch interface

maybe have a few gnome types - one for tabs/touchscreens/phones and one for desktop/laptop ... by all means have compositing as an option but as default with most gpu drivers in a state of flux is just sillyness in the extreme ( fallback is just shit )

gnome2 was by far the best desktop as far as usability is concerned and at the end of the day thats what counts - not flashy graphics

[kazetsukai]

Felipe was not ignored on GNOME mailing lists.

I apologize if you misunderstood, I meant his idea about building some kind of feedback system into the DE itself (via a distribution package) was ignored. If Gnome wants to get feedback from the groups it is hoping for, it needs to be able to reach out to its users. He effectively did all of the work in this regard.

What I think the GNOME developers (some of them) did wrong was, predict the outcome to be something they didn't want to hear, and use that to attack the legitimacy of a survey altogether. One even argued that it would be more helpful not to have a survey at all than have one, and have someone do all the work of analyzing the data. If you want to defend the Gnome developers, you should start here, although I think that will be difficult.

The difficulty was partly that e.g. we feared that any response would be ...

We? Who?

... for a developer (which I am not btw).

Are you sure?

Anyway, on a more serious note:

The difficulty was partly that e.g. we feared that any response would:

1) not accurately represent GNOME users (e.g. the million+ Spanish Extremadura users)

And the (unknown number of) users who responded, be it developers, engineers, designers, system admins, do not represent the Gnome userbase? This is the point many are having a hard time sympathizing with the GNOME developers on- the vocal people, as loud and represented as they are, are (perceptibly) not heard. How is it fair for those who vote, to be outvoted by those who don't? I'm sure the GNOME developers are trying to cater to some kind of user here, but that user just seems to not care in the first place (since they're not leaving feedback). That or they care, and are mistaken for the "geeks" just by virtue of having responded to any kind of feedback request. This is nonsensical.

2) that the outcome might be unusable, thus spewing more 'GNOME doesn't listen to users'.

You can ignore your users, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring your users. Its clear that the "surveyor" had an objective when creating this survey- but you have to remember something: He cares for the project, and his goals ultimately were for positive change.

My argument, is that for this kind of survey to work, and be truly unbiased, it needs to be built on concepts that are not tied to the project, or the purpose. Otherwise, alot of questions will sound very suggestive. I'm willing to try and make that happen, and give the developers (GNOME, KDE, whoever) the tools needed to create feedback gathering mechanisms- and there are obviously other people out there ready to do the work and make sense of it. So lets do it, and learn from this example, rather than dismissing this already done work (effectively, the proof-of-concept) as biased and seeking ulterior motives.

[bkor]

Gnome. You are dead to me. I tried and I tried to use the Gnome 3.x. I just can't get used to having to make more movements or clicks for the same result. Can someone point me to the idiot who came up with the idea of not having a taskbar anymore? Sometimes killing people leads to faster progress....

Hello,

I am involved in GNOME. I'll be going to FOSDEM and I will be behind the GNOME stand. Suggest to the GNOME stand and make the same statement to me (just ask for bkor) after which we'll go in a group to the local police station to file a report about the things you are stating.

Note that I have been going to FOSDEM various years.

In any case, put up or shut up

[devius]

Sometimes killing people leads to faster progress....

Yep, it sure worked that way for ReiserFS!!...

...Oh wait...

[bkor]

Since you say you are involved in this gnome stuff, can you please tell me how did it happen? How did you people come up with the idea that the taskbar is something that must be got rid of? I mean someone droped acid and came up with the idea and the rest just followed not questioning the decision? Or the others were just sitting in a circle shooting heroin and couldn't focus to find a flaw in his idea? I am very interested how does it happen that some people who are theoretically smart come up such retarded ideas and call them progress? And don't start with that bullshit on me how the new way is better than the old way or more logical or more whatever you want. Its slower! Can you people not see that?

You haven't responded to my saying to go to FOSDEM. Let's start with that.

[devius]

And don't start with that bullshit on me how the new way is better than the old way or more logical or more whatever you want. Its slower for me! Can you people not see that you must do as I please?

FTFY...

Seriously, do you really think that the Gnome developers would do something if they didn't really believed it was the best way to go? You can complain all you want that YOU don't like it or that it doesn't work for YOU, but to generalize and say that "it doesn't work" is just wrong. Also, if you like task bars there are lots of options out there, so why complain so much about one specific project?

Just for the record I think that the new top panel is a waste of space. I would prefer a global menu on it as that would also eliminate the wasted space on applications windows.

[D0pamine]

the old gnome was easy to customize

i'm loving mate on my gentoo - thanks to everyone who was involved in getting the ebuilds together

^^ that'd be the sabayon peoples