GNOME's Need To Broaden Its Audience For Greater Impact & Funding

[andyprough]

bash2bash That makes no sense. Very few people use the alternative Fedora spins.

Yes, I am sure they are just awful and no one wants them anywhere near their system. About like all those horrendous Ubuntu respins.

[Charlie68]

The problem with KDE is not KDE, but the distributions, which in many cases ship it broken. Most people who have an approach with KDE do so with Kubuntu. Kubuntu unfortunately ships outdated versions, they don't update Lts to bug fix releases, to put it in a nutshell they don't do a great job for KDE. If you really want to try KDE, go to Arch or Tumbleweed or if you prefer a fix release, go with openSUSE. KDE Neon is good, but even then, it has to compromise with Ubuntu packages. It must be understood, any DE or distribution can test the default settings, it cannot test the 1000 customization combinations.

[Snaipersky]

For me, my main PC uses KDE, and my laptop uses Cinnamon (my dad wanted to try linux since he was fed up with windows, and settled on that, so I use it to have a reference when troubleshooting). A big thing for me is screen space efficiency, and is a big gripe for me on most DEs - Gnome has insane padding, KDE can feel like toolbar hell, Cinnamon actually does okay (I'd still like nemo to merge it's toolbar and titlebar, and the cinnamon memory leak that the developer refuses to acknowledge). Mate feels sane, if not ideal. Tiling WM's have just never clicked for me, though they would really scratch my pixel efficiency itch. GNOME has always felt so wasteful and counterproductive, with a massive dock and poor window management, the need for gnome-tweaks, the hostility towards extensions and the idea of different workflows, and the "GNOME 40 is revolutionary" when it's just felt incremental at best. Cinnamon and MATE have felt logical enough that they would not benefit from a major UI overhaul, and KDE seems to actively challenge the community to be as creative as possible with making your desktop environment fit your goals instead of adapting to the desktop.

I guess my main point in that rambling is: if they're actually looking for external input, they should be ready to have their core paradigm challenged, and be ready to adapt to that. "My way or my way" only works when you don't need outside help (see apple, hobby projects.) Canonical have made several missteps, but I have to applaud their willingness to adapt to the wants of their userbase, memorably the window controls on the left or right and 32bit support. Both times they were adamant in their position being right, but when the community showed them otherwise, it took them like 2 weeks to accept it and move in the direction wanted by the community. I haven't seen that from anyone else that I can remember.

[Paradigm Shifter]

No ability to have multiple selections in the questionaire. I use Cinnamon, XFCE and Openbox (with the occasional brief excursion into Budgie and KDE). I've avoided Gnome like the plague since Gnome Shell first launched, because there was no ability to customise easily. Obviously gnome-tweak now answers that. I do go back to try it occasionally but it's always such a frustrating experience. I'm sure now one of the usual suspects will comment that Cinnamon is just Gnome Shell. OK. But Cinnamon demonstrates that it is possible to make a desktop like Gnome Shell that permits customisation, flexibility and a degree of choice. Ultimately, however, as a few others have said, I'll go with the desktop which means I have to do the least messing around getting things working as I desire.

edit:

...and the cinnamon memory leak that the developer refuses to acknowledge...

Oh yes. Nemo is particularly troublesome if you leave it open for days at a time...

[skeevy420]

KDE users would try GNOME and it would crash, so they'd use KDE which was stable. GNOME users would try KDE and it would crash, so they'd use GNOME which was stable. It was all down to different workflows and it looks like that's still the case.

Who are You, Who are so Wise in the Ways of Science?

[Trapezoid]

I use GNOME. System76 gets the cash. I may not buy their computers but I do pay for PopOS.

I despise the top bar and its function in GNOME. Either that needs to be a global menu with system tray or just get rid of it.

In my opinion the entire linux desktop options are rather garbage. Even worse its been 30+ years of research into human/machine interactions. Some basic fundamentals are known to exist yet are ignored.

Examples.

Fittz law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
Revisit of Mac OS 10.6. http://morrick.me/archives/9220

Mistakes are being made at every level. The most recent annoyance I’ve had is Firefox removed the icons from the hamburger menu. Why did they remove them?

I’d bet my left testicle icons are easier to discern from the rest of the visual information and therefor quicker to locate. Additionally removing icons is a disservice individuals with dyslexia as the words themselves present an interaction/interface challenge.

[DanL]

GNOME deserves almost as many (perhaps more) Linus Torvalds' middle finger GIFs as Nvidia.

[linner]

In my experience KDE has always been unstable as hell. I blame it mostly on Qt but who knows. GNOME is just plain unusable and gets in my way. Unity is the same way, always in my face annoying the bejesus out of me.

So I use XFCE. Lightweight, relatively bug free, and I don't even have to think about what desktop environment I'm using. When I set up systems for non-computer people XFCE is always their favorite because it's just straightforward to use.

The only other acceptable DE might be GNOME Flashback but it's heavy and can be buggy like GNOME. But it uses the newer modern GNOME stuff unlike MATE.

[Grim85]

Yes, I am sure they are just awful and no one wants them anywhere near their system. About like all those horrendous Ubuntu respins.

Spins are the same level of support as the Workstation versions. The KDE version is really good and doesn't get the sort of attention it deserves, because traditionally Fedora is associated with Gnome so heavily

[Mez']

For me, my main PC uses KDE, and my laptop uses Cinnamon (my dad wanted to try linux since he was fed up with windows, and settled on that, so I use it to have a reference when troubleshooting). A big thing for me is screen space efficiency, and is a big gripe for me on most DEs - Gnome has insane padding, KDE can feel like toolbar hell, Cinnamon actually does okay (I'd still like nemo to merge it's toolbar and titlebar, and the cinnamon memory leak that the developer refuses to acknowledge). Mate feels sane, if not ideal. Tiling WM's have just never clicked for me, though they would really scratch my pixel efficiency itch. GNOME has always felt so wasteful and counterproductive, with a massive dock and poor window management, the need for gnome-tweaks, the hostility towards extensions and the idea of different workflows, and the "GNOME 40 is revolutionary" when it's just felt incremental at best. Cinnamon and MATE have felt logical enough that they would not benefit from a major UI overhaul, and KDE seems to actively challenge the community to be as creative as possible with making your desktop environment fit your goals instead of adapting to the desktop.

I guess my main point in that rambling is: if they're actually looking for external input, they should be ready to have their core paradigm challenged, and be ready to adapt to that. "My way or my way" only works when you don't need outside help (see apple, hobby projects.) Canonical have made several missteps, but I have to applaud their willingness to adapt to the wants of their userbase, memorably the window controls on the left or right and 32bit support. Both times they were adamant in their position being right, but when the community showed them otherwise, it took them like 2 weeks to accept it and move in the direction wanted by the community. I haven't seen that from anyone else that I can remember.

I hop on that train, seems like I could go somewhere interesting with it.
I will just detach the last car, the one wanting to merge nemo titlebar and toolbar, it's inefficient and slowing down the train for no good reason.