GNOME Shell 2.29.1 Arrives w/ New Stuff

[BlackStar]

I didn't disagree.

Never said you did.

Some other people posting here, on the other hand...

[Apopas]

There's a rather big difference between "not customizable" and "less customizable than KDE".

I didn't disagree.

[BlackStar]

Gnome, unlike, windows or osx is very customizable. KDE is just a bit more.

There's a rather big difference between "not customizable" and "less customizable than KDE".

[Apopas]

Gnome, unlike, windows or osx is very customizable. KDE is just a bit more.

[BlackStar]

The only people who try to argue that Gnome isn't customizable are KDE trolls. I wonder why that is.

[val-gaav]

We support Gnome, because it provides the most sane, intuitive and consistent experience, as well as the best applications in the Linux world.

Gnome is very customizable.

ROTFL ... Seriously that was the best joke I've heard this week

[kraftman]

Once you pick something, you stick with it unless there is a *very* good reason to change. It doesn't matter that KDE became non-commercial at some point, because by that time it was too late: the choice was already made.

Even if KDE is superior to Gnome nowadays (I disagree), the difference is not large enough to justify the change. Doubly so for commercial customers, who treat change as the devil.

This is now clear and what can I realize RHEL doesn't aim at typical desktops, so like RahulSundaram said: "The big picture is that, the choice of desktop environment is irrelevant to many of what is really important to customers.". I was wondering why did they choose Gnome, but like I noticed before it's also clear now. It wouldn't be clear for me if they would aim at the same target as Ubuntu, but I believe they're not aiming there. I was also wondering why did Ubuntu choose Gnome, but it seem they're making an OS X clone and Gnome is probably more OS X like then KDE.

Your complaints do sound somewhat trivial:

- yes, you have to use gconf to edit button placement but you can also download one of the dozen tweak apps in existence. Interestingly, none of the users I support has asked me for a way to tweak the buttons (I guess Ubuntu 10.04 will change that).

- no there's no GUI for screensaver preferences. Still, who in their right mind uses screensavers nowadays? That's a Win98 relic. (Or do you really enjoying having your laptop/desktop fans ramp up and power consumption jump by 200% when you are not using your computer? Doesn't really make sense.)

- what icons can't you sort?

Yes, they're trivial (my main objections are related to some applications, but it doesn't matter right now). Ok, I can agree with the first and the second and I didn't know there exist some tweaking apps. I was talking about the desktop icons. I don't remember if there's an option to sort them (I was using the newest, stable Fedora release one or two weeks ago).

[BlackStar]

I wondered why did you choose Gnome and you chose it, because QT was proprietary. Then I wondered why didn't you make KDE default DE (which is evolving equally with commercial DEs, so it's probably more attractive for newcomers) when QT became free and like I assumed you probably didn't do this, because (unlike Ubuntu) you're not interested in the typical desktops. You've got different target.

Once you pick something, you stick with it unless there is a *very* good reason to change. It doesn't matter that KDE became non-commercial at some point, because by that time it was too late: the choice was already made.

Even if KDE is superior to Gnome nowadays (I disagree), the difference is not large enough to justify the change. Doubly so for commercial customers, who treat change as the devil.

Your complaints do sound somewhat trivial:

- yes, you have to use gconf to edit button placement but you can also download one of the dozen tweak apps in existence. Interestingly, none of the users I support has asked me for a way to tweak the buttons (I guess Ubuntu 10.04 will change that).

- no there's no GUI for screensaver preferences. Still, who in their right mind uses screensavers nowadays? That's a Win98 relic. (Or do you really enjoying having your laptop/desktop fans ramp up and power consumption jump by 200% when you are not using your computer? Doesn't really make sense.)

- what icons can't you sort?

[kraftman]

Kraftman, reading your posts would make one believe that Gnome is some sort of non functional piece of software, or perhaps just a primitive one.

It sometimes sounds like this, but this is wrong. At least it's not unusable.

But the missing features you have so far mentioned are trivial:

They're trivial and missing while such features are present in other desktops since more then ten years and this is the most annoying :> Details matters in this case. If it wants to be successful it shouldn't be lacking of things which are something common.

You can't be serious. Are those the big basic flaws of Gnome? Is this what justify all the hate towards it? Sorting icons. Really? And who on Earth cares about moving the window buttons?

Dozens of people who are using Ubuntu 10.04 right now. Many users probably wants to sort icons too.

I bet that all the two of you who do won't have much problems editing a configuration file.

Of course not, but newbies have problems with doing this.

I have my own (strong) opinions about composite desktops, as do the people posting in the Compiz thread; you can see that your preference for this feature being built-in is not universal. It's true that, at least in the past, there was no GUI access to the screensaver settings in Gnome. I take that as an indication of stupidity of a single individual, not of the whole project. In any case, you can't count that as a major loss of functionality, can you?

The point is Gnome doesn't evolve equally compared to other DE's, but it's only catching up (some great things were made with Gnome in mind at the first place like Pulse Audio, but then it became available for KDE too and Gnome lost such advantage). KDE has advantages when comes to some noticeable things and Gnome has advantages when comes to far more interesting things, but only for very short time, because then they're taken to KDE. Of course it's not a rule, because some things were taken/copied from KDE to Gnome.

But there's not "all those things". What you listed are (very) minor issues that not everybody care about. And even in the case of the example you cited with an arguably widespread interest--composite desktops--your view is not shared by everybody.

Personally, I don't care too much about compositions, but about evolving equally to other desktops. If Linux DE is missing some things compared to Windows or OS X, a user has less reasons to switch.

@RahulSundaram

Red Hat does have some very large customers using it on the desktop but suffice to say that what you consider missing features and what customers want from Red Hat are different.

I understand this. I assumed you're not interested in a typical desktops and it seems it's correct.

The big picture is that, the choice of desktop environment is irrelevant to many of what is really important to customers. Red Hat continues to invest heavily on those core technologies including being the largest contributor to Xorg as a distribution vendor.

I wondered why did you choose Gnome and you chose it, because QT was proprietary. Then I wondered why didn't you make KDE default DE (which is evolving equally with commercial DEs, so it's probably more attractive for newcomers) when QT became free and like I assumed you probably didn't do this, because (unlike Ubuntu) you're not interested in the typical desktops. You've got different target.

[yotambien]

Kraftman, reading your posts would make one believe that Gnome is some sort of non functional piece of software, or perhaps just a primitive one. But the missing features you have so far mentioned are trivial:

It's customizable, but it's missing some basic stuff compared to KDE, Windows or OS X like sorting icons, setting up a screen saver, compositions without some third party software and to move min/max/close buttons you've got to edit some file.

You can't be serious. Are those the big basic flaws of Gnome? Is this what justify all the hate towards it? Sorting icons. Really? And who on Earth cares about moving the window buttons? I bet that all the two of you who do won't have much problems editing a configuration file. I have my own (strong) opinions about composite desktops, as do the people posting in the Compiz thread; you can see that your preference for this feature being built-in is not universal. It's true that, at least in the past, there was no GUI access to the screensaver settings in Gnome. I take that as an indication of stupidity of a single individual, not of the whole project. In any case, you can't count that as a major loss of functionality, can you?

All of those things makes it less usable then KDE in my opinion.

But there's not "all those things". What you listed are (very) minor issues that not everybody care about. And even in the case of the example you cited with an arguably widespread interest--composite desktops--your view is not shared by everybody.