Clear Linux Switches From Xfce To GNOME, Benchmarks

[starshipeleven]

That is nothing but assumptions on your side.

Yeah sure, Win8's interface flaming and lack of sales was all assumptions on my side, Cinnamon and MATE were also created by assumptions on my side, even Ubuntu's Unity's interface flaming was all assumptions on my side.

Neither of that really happened and isn't proof that maybe, and I say MAYBE, there is people that find touch interface paradigms retarded on a desktop system where you don't have a touch screen.

Meanwhile, none flames Android or iOS for their touch-oriented interface. WHY OH ZOD WHY.

Till you bring hard evidence trough relevant user studies showing that GNOMES HIG and GUI causing troubles to several different people (including those not having trouble adapting to new and efficient mental models) in comparison to the ones you mentioned you are doing no better then Griffing here.

Yeah right, you also want me to give you money?
The above is the best I can do for free, I hope you can understand.

Not everyone wants to be stuck on the win95 and pre methaphers.

I would love some fresh air too, but placing touch UIs where they don't belong and hiding all options behind an arcane windows-registry-like system is not an improvement. Sorry, maybe I have too fine tastes, but I still think that taking something that works well in a field and shovel it in another is not innovation, nor gives good results.

Besides, a DE doesn't exist in a vacuum. Most Linux (or even WIndows) applications are still designed with the old desktop metaphor and won't change so easily, so either your DE is able to handle them in the most productive way (i.e. same as they were designed to be used) or it ends getting in my way, and I don't like that.

I still prefer a productive win95 metaphor desktop to a desktop that looks cool but can't fucking multiwindow properly, and I don't see why I should change my own habits to suit a DE's stylistic choices that have adverse or no impact on productivity.

[starshipeleven]

starshipeleven In few posts erlier I proved that polls could give you result you wanted..., and as I said, using misleading data is much worse than using no data at all. But as Mark Twain said, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics", so i will leave it at that since I do share that viewpoint.

If you aggregate data from different sources you still get more close to the truth than just speculating, because all errors in data gathering will even out or stick out.

This is basic scientific method, the fact that malicious people select their sources to show the results they want does not make it invalid if used properly.

Well, that is your subjective view of DE, but you are refering to layout, including layout of applications, personally i fail to see significant difference between those and GNOME

Yeah, the fact that start menu in GNOME is a bigass full-screen app drawer, that the areas where you are supposed to click to trigger some action are very large for a desktop (because touch UI) and that its Files lacks many menus and options found in others is very subjective.

Well, from what i saw "plasmoids" are mainly widgets, very limited, I don't know if that is limitation of structure of KDE, but it is nothing comparable to GNOME extensions, are there extensions that would completely change layout of DE?

sorry I derped. I should have linked the store here, KDE has an extension system, but most things are just options or have multiple effects you can choose from so there are probably less extreme extensions than on GNOME https://store.kde.org/browse/ord/latest/
Cinnamon has smilar system (being a GNOME 3 fork) https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/ but I can't vouch on how good that is as I don't use it.

XFCE and MATE have less-polished extension system with far less stuff, but can still be customized to a good extent if you disregard high-end effects. For example XFCE's file manager has Custom Actions which are quite nifty (and something I sometimes miss on Dolphin) http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/06/2...ustom-actions/

Or something similar to "Coverflow Alt-Tab"?

KDE has multiple effects for alt-tab function by default. Configure Desktop > Window Behaviour > Task Switcher
And then in Visualization part you have a menu with like 10 different effects, the "coverflow" effect is called "cover switch". You can install more from the store, https://store.kde.org/browse/cat/211/order/latest

hell, in KDE you can even install more pages/tabs for System Monitor.

[leipero]

starshipeleven
If you aggregate data, but we have only one source, even worse Arch source that consist of more advanced users, it cannot represent actual usage in any way, on polls, well..., we came to the conclusion about polls earlier. Statistics do not actually go under category of scientific method, logical thesis and evidence do, for example, if you used compulsory "declaration" of computer users, what DE they use etc., and you have verification method, it could fall under category of it, but still, ingoring possibility of change over time, but you already know that. Statistics, no matter what, can be "massaged" to the way those doing it want it to be..., is the same as claiming "most people do not X" without any evidence to support it, so argument goes both ways...

Well, as i said, the only difference is CSD and fullscreen, that's why I try toa void your method of discussion, by qoting separate things out of context, it's always better to read whole post first, in context, than to reply to specific lines in someone's sentences.

Neverminf, I've searched and saw the store actually, from what I'm getting, it is flexible, but categorized, not as flexible as Gnome-Shell extensions, but that is due to the overcomplication of KDE DE in general, I've used Cinnamon for quite a while, most of those addons are applets/widgets and stuff (similar to KDE), and to be honest, I did tried a few, never really used it, no need for it.

The whole point of GNOME 3, in my view makes a lot of sense, you ahve basic important options integrated in DE, while other less relevant things, such as customization etc. are moved to separate application (tweak tool) that usually comes with GNOME 3 DE. The only problem i find with it, I think that fonts settings (at least size) should be moved from tweak tool to control center, and extensions should be managed internaly (search/install from the tweak tool etc.), and I'm sure 2nd one will be done soon, while for fornts there's good argument against it, but i disagree.

To the contrary of GNOME, Cinnamon, MATE (XFCE to the extent) and especially KDE, keep those customization options as integral part of DE, and that is a problem in a long-run, and bad design in my opinion. Also, as I argued before, KDE (and even MATE) have tons of useless customization settings, while more important privacy options are not avilable, in MATE for example, in mate panel default (application, system, places) menu, recent files are listed, and there was no option in any settings to disable that, I had to resort to deleting "recently-used.xbel" file, creating folder with the same name and some otehr things in order to fix that problem, in KDE i didn't even managed to disable recently used applications/files in start menu, that is very bad, since that option is far more important than any customization option, for me at least, and for most people, and for privacy in general.

I mean, GNU is generally customizable, and you can do (if you know) anything you want, but i found it hard to believe that lack of privacy options is "accident", and i refuse to use such systems.

[ldo17]

That to assemble a complex multi-argument command like for example those used by [random GUI tool] I need to read the manual and that may take a long while if the manual is long, while if I use [random GUI tool]'s UI I do what I needed to do in like 2 minutes and I'm off doing something more productive than re-learning how to interact with a dumb machine.

Until you find yourself doing that task repeatedly, and you have to go through the same sequence of keystrokes and mouse clicks every time.

That’s the time you wish you could get the computer to do the task, instead of having the computer get you to do the task.

[sirblackheart]

Starship and danielnez1. Please confirm how KDE does easy customizations like Gnome's GTK inspector.

Customization?

There seems to be a GUI Debugger equivalent to GtkInspector for Qt: https://github.com/robertknight/Qt-Inspector

[starshipeleven]

Until you find yourself doing that task repeatedly, and you have to go through the same sequence of keystrokes and mouse clicks every time.

That’s the time you wish you could get the computer to do the task, instead of having the computer get you to do the task.

Decent GUI programs like handbrake (or also clonezilla for that matter) allow you to save presets, so the same job can be launched in a couple clicks.

But this is not always possible as in many cases you need complex interaction with multiple programs, which is why I say (like the author of that blog) that the best is having both GUI and command line interface.

But CLI is mostly useful as "script interface", basically a poor man's programming API, not as main human-machine interface.

[sirblackheart]

per-app customization.

Is GtkInspector even intended for that? Do any modification stay saved at restart of the system?
Don't get me wrong I just recently used GtkInspector and it is a great tool do debug Gtk but I did not even know it is intended to be used as application customization tool till you brought it up.

[danielnez1]

How is using gnome 2 not a working rollback for you?

Should we really start to compare tools with medicine?

In the old days of GNOME 3, people could still use the Fallback session, however once that was removed and before GNOME classic came on the scene, if a system was upgraded, without removing their old profile, GNOME would simply crash with the infamous and useless "Oh no something has went wrong".

Comparing tools to medicine is an analogy, just like what the Desktop metaphor is supposed to be...

As to Horton/Griffin's latest rabble about the GTK inspector, to they seriously think end users should use such a tool to make basic changes to the UI? That's not very "user friendly" or something you'd expect to use in a "professionally developed" desktop now is it?

[sirblackheart]

In the old days of GNOME 3, people could still use the Fallback session, however once that was removed and before GNOME classic came on the scene, if a system was upgraded, without removing their old profile, GNOME would simply crash with the infamous and useless "Oh no something has went wrong".

I mean install GNOME 2 packages or some fork of it and not use some fallback mode of GNOME 3 that uses extension to simulate a GNOME 2 experience.
I believe the current version of what you are talking about this is the GNOME Flashback session.
https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback

But it is true that GNOME did a hard break and not offer an easy way to transition to the new way of things e.g. by no allowing to easily switching fort and back single features from old to new. That may have not been their best move but one probably inspired by the likes of Steve Jobs when he removed the arrow keys from the keyboards so people had to start using the mouse instead.

They may have wanted people to try out their new concepts without everyone just switching to GNOME 2 mode by default and no one ever trying out the new stuff. Again this may have been a bad move but I understand why they would have done it.

At the end GNOME Flashback will stay a mixup experience of GNOME 2 Desktop concepts with applications clearly designed for GNOME 3.
It may ease the transition for some people.

Comparing tools to medicine is an analogy, just like what the Desktop metaphor is supposed to be...

I just think it is a rather bad analogy as we start to use it further for more examples and build a debate on it. Staying with a tools analogy is much more in line with what DEs actually are and tools is the place where many metaphors we find in current DEs come from. Basic lectures about HCI and Interface Design and use analogies to tools for a reason (Not going into the detail here as it is getting a little bit to much Off-Topic).

( Maybe rather use the drug analogy for describing FLOSS as an option to heal people from proprietary software )

So would you not use a more modern tool that if you learned to work with it may be more efficient for you? Would you keep using a scythe because it was proven to be a reliable tool for farming although new tools are available? You know that people believed they would die from the speed the first trains where going? People adapted and by today we have all means of transportation and that is not because of the people who kept screaming we want to keep doing it the old way.
You will find many of the old things trough your life some kept for nostalgic reasons, some by people who wanted or could not change their ways and sometimes because it still is the best way to do things.

It still may be good to accept that both those things can happily coexist and sometimes even learn from each other.
No one is saying the old way is essentially the worse way to do things but it needs people and projects that try out new stuff.

But if people only can hate on DEs that do not fir their use that is sad. Like I said that energy could all be used to either express constructive critic or by contributing to projects that are more in line of what they expect their tools to behave.

Believe it or not there are people out there that enjoy GNOME 3 as a DE and user experience.

As to Horton/Griffin's latest rabble about the GTK inspector, to they seriously think end users should use such a tool to make basic changes to the UI? That's not very "user friendly" or something you'd expect to use in a "professionally developed" desktop now is it?

I still don't believe it works that way as it did not save my changes to use the dark adwaita theme on restart. GtkInspector is a tool to inspect your running Gtk application that also allows to do some element attribute changes in real time and visualization off different stuff very similar to how developer tools in a browsers work.

[leipero]

Leipero. Extensions don't need to go to tweak tool. Installation is done from gnome-software, and that comes with appstream data and reviews. Fully searchable!

That's neat, I didn't know that, still argument stands for Font scaling at least on gnome control center.