It's Easy To Guess What Angers GNOME Users

[russofris]

The issues that I faced with gnome-shell:

My workflow demands a number of open windows (terminals, browsers, etc). I need a taskbar, a launcher, and a quick-switcher (alt-tab). GS, Unity, and Win 7 seem to want to combine the launcher and the taskbar. This is cumbersome for those of us that run more than a hand full of applications at once. One might suggest that I make use of tabs and workspaces, and to whatever extent is possible I already do, but the combo-bar (AKA - LackBar) needs a split replacement for productivity-oriented users.

Compiz. That's "Compiz Period". No compiz? No Gnome shell. It's really that simple for those of us that remember what PCs looked like in 1997.

Stability. While this may not be directly related to gnome shell, I have experienced a great number of issues with the systray applets under gnome. The positioning changes randomly, applets crash without warning (volume control). It's a mess and needs to be fixed.

PIM Integration - An app (suite) that everyone needs, and is not quite filled by Evolution. Unfortunately, KDE's PIM is a mess right now as well, so there are not a lot of options for productivity-oriented users right now.

[LinuxRocks]

As far as people's needs for a taskbar, that is arguable. Psychology has long proven that the more ways people divide their attention across unrelated tasks, the less efficient they become in getting work done compared to if they focused on one task at a time. This has been proven again and again and again since the 1960s..

Sigh, never did buy into psycho-bable crap anyway...

Besides, the concept of using multiple resources to accomplish even one goal at a time (Hence the need for computers and window managers that can multitask) has been around, equally, for a long time, but the notion of focusing on one task at a time has, as you so eloquently put it, long since moved on...

Further, all that psyco crap from the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s was nothing but seeing the effects of electric shock on humans or what different drugs did to humans (Most notibly the current FDA approved variations that most people are suing companies over these days).

Spare us the religious psycho rhetoric and just agree that Gnome Shell SUCKS!

[cynic]

As far as people's needs for a taskbar, that is arguable. Psychology has long proven that the more ways people divide their attention across unrelated tasks, the less efficient they become in getting work done compared to if they focused on one task at a time. This has been proven again and again and again since the 1960s.. Anybody who has ever tried to do some coding while trying to answer instant messages at the same time knows exactly what I mean. Anybody who has ever tried to text message while driving a car will know exactly what I mean.. Computers are getting so fast now that people spend less and less time waiting on the computer to do things, so they shouldn't be multi-tasking as much as has been needed in the past. The multi-tasking mess that Bill Gates created will most likely just go away but it's unsurprising that some people want to clutch onto it because it's probably how they've been using a computer their entire lives.

That's exactly the problem with Gnome3: PEOPLES TELLING ME WHAT'S WRONG AND WHAT' RIGHT FOR ME!

If the taskbar is distracting for you, it doesn't mean it must be distracting for everyone in the world. Indeed, it is a fundamental part of my workflow having a taskbar and you have no right to tell me how my workflow should be and you are not in the position to say that the need for a taskbar is arguable.

[russofris]

As far as people's needs for a taskbar, that is arguable. Psychology has long proven that the more ways people divide their attention across unrelated tasks, the less efficient they become in getting work done compared to if they focused on one task at a time. This has been proven again and again and again since the 1960s.. Anybody who has ever tried to do some coding while trying to answer instant messages at the same time knows exactly what I mean. Anybody who has ever tried to text message while driving a car will know exactly what I mean.. Computers are getting so fast now that people spend less and less time waiting on the computer to do things, so they shouldn't be multi-tasking as much as has been needed in the past. The multi-tasking mess that Bill Gates created will most likely just go away but it's unsurprising that some people want to clutch onto it because it's probably how they've been using a computer their entire lives.

The taskbar is a view into the processes that are running, and is not the cause of people trying to do too much at once. If you're implying that operators should try to reduce the division of their attention, then you need to take the matter up with our bosses and customers. Alternatively, you might develop features to serialize someone's workflow, rather than governing/inhibiting it to suit an un-vetted metaphor.

Having faster computers means we should be able to do more in less time with bigger data sets and greater accuracy. It does not mean that power-users should be encumbered by someone's misguided utopian workflow.

[DoctorPhil]

Wow, there has been some bad articles, but this takes the price. I've read more than enough of trash on Phoronix now, I'll unsubscribe now. Sorry for generating ad revenue, it was my fault.

If you are not realising why this is a horrible article, Nishou took some of his/her time to tell you.

I think this might be the last time I respond to a survey on this site. Isn't the usual way of presenting results to wait for the deadline, analyze the results and then present some numbers (with some chosen quotes to back it up if necessary), not to go through the responses one day into it and pick out the worst quotes you can find that supports your preconceived notion, and then proceed to write a troll-article about it. It's possible that the responses that criticizes gnome constitutes the absolute majority for all I know (although I know for a fact that it's not the only kind of response), but these kinds of troll-fluff-filler articles are just.. blargh.

[Delgarde]

Yikes! As someone who really likes gnome shell I hope gnome dev don't listen to the masses. :P

Absolutely. It's not perfect - there are a few annoyances - but I do think it's an improvement over both it's predecessor, and KDE.

Besides, this poll isn't "what angers GNOME users". It's "what angers Phoronix readers who respond to this poll", which is a very different thing. There are no shortage of people happily chanting "GNOME must die" even though they've never used it, and a great many GNOME users who don't follow this site. In short, it's a complete waste of time, just like every other internet poll out there...

[wizard69]

It is the difference between the Apple and Linux worlds.

Judging from the quality of many of these comments I'm starting to think that designing for retards might not be such a bad idea after all...

Well designing for the mental capacity of some of the posters on this forum would result in an environment that could be replaced with a 10 cent post card.

But seriously, people should try to be more constructive and perhaps name a few things they don't like and suggest how it can be improved. Posting useless "this shit sucks"-comments isn't helping anyone.

It is notable that Apple has had suck age with some of their OS features. However Apple recognizes that they aren't perfect and actually are willing to hire people that can demonstrate a good alternative. This openmindedness directly impacts the speed at which they can evolve their OS. Sure you hear "this shit sucks" from the Apple crowd but it is far more mutted.

Especially mutted from the third party app developers! Why? I think the thing here is that most of these guys are in business (software development) to make a living. As such they realize that there are two types of software, software that ships and software that is finished. If you are in business you need to ship to stay alive, that means writing software that works around the rough edges in the APIs and avoids the bugs found in almost all software. For whatever reason the gnome community seems to expect perfection in the latest version. That will never happen because frankly some things have to be proven out over a large number of users.

I'm not talking so much about bugs here as the rough spots in the GUI / DE that cause user frustration. It is pretty unreasonable for people to expect any OS to perfectly fit their needs. I mentioned moving to a Mac Laptop a couple of years ago, I did so not because it is perfect but rather that it fit most of my needs better. If gnome isn't doing it for some of these complainers it isn't like they are welded to gnome on Linux.

At one time I had like three different Window managers setup on one of my Linux machines. This was years ago before things evolved into what we have now but it solved certain problems at the time. All you had to be was smart enough to setup the machine to give you that capability. There is really no reason to bad mouth gnome over ones personal objections when Linux provides many alternatives.

[LinuxID10T]

To all the "gnome-is-great" 'tards in here:

Those of us who despise gnome-shell are basing their perception of it on the fact that it is BLOODY SELF-CENTERED USELESSNESS.

The DE should NOT be "in your face". It should make it EASY to accomplish what you are trying to do, and then GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY. What they've done is made it exactly the opposite of what it should be. They've made a bloated big thick ugly slow pain in the ass -- they're trying to make use of a computer ALL ABOUT THEM, when their purpose is to FACILITATE, not conquer.

That is what was beautiful about gnome-panel. It was small, it was functional. It categorized things logically and made it easy to get where you want to go.

Gnome-shell is the product of some whiny attention whores with an inferiority complex. They want it to be about THEM. I'm sorry gnome-devs, but I don't use a computer to see pretty gnome, I use it to actually accomplish tasks. If you're going to get in my way, you are going to be eliminated in favor of something that does what it is supposed to do.



The big problems with gnome-shell are the result of a bunch of VERY poor design decisions.
1) It doesn't do anything special that it requires compositing. It may be "pretty", but it just makes it SLOW and UNRELIABLE.
2) It most DEFINITELY should NOT take up the entire display area. The bigger the area it takes, the further the user has to chase across the screen to get what they're after.
3) It should NOT require flipping across the screen 17 times and 273 mouse clicks to launch firefox.
4) It would be nice to have an easy way to see what programs are running and switch between them rather than opening that insane big ugly bloated mess (one click), and switching into (whatever they call the stupid mode where every open window is shown in microscopic overview so you can't tell the difference between them), you know, something like a WINDOW LIST PANEL!!!!
5) How about a PARENT DIRECTORY BUTTON IN NAUTILUS???!?!?!!?! Instead, you open, say "Desktop" and you're TRAPPED there....
6) The "Every bloody .desktop thrown into a single category" category is a completely useless MESS. GET RID OF IT!!!!! -- but no, instead, they're getting rid of EVERY OTHER category, and will ONLY be showing the "holy shit" category. Now, rather than logically finding the application I'm after by its category, I have to scan the hard way through 10 THOUSAND ICONS IN ONE BLOODY MESS. WTF ARE THEY THINKING???!?!?!


So, the process of fixing gnome-shell;
1) get rid of compositing, or at least make it OPTIONAL.
2) Less screen space taken up by uselessness.
3) One click to open the menu, one click to select the category, one click to open the program.
*** here's a decent idea.... how about a FREQUENTLY USED category?
4) lower panel showing running applications.
5) add a ".." button to nautilus.
6) remove the "holy shit" category, keep the rest of the categories.

Thank you, my thoughts exactly. The thing I liked most about Gnome 2 is that I could do stuff in a logical manner. An example, when I click on an icon, I expect it to open up another instance, not bring the current instance forward. Seriously, that is what the task bar is for. I like GTK 3 and all, I just wish they would give us the interface we know and love.

Further more, THANK YOU MICHAEL for bringing to attention what the VAST majority of users think.

[TheCycoONE]

If asked what I thought about gnome3's gnome shell; I'd probably have mostly complaints.

I find the desktop full of icons approach to launching an application difficult to navigate and unintuitive. I dislike the normal, large, larger font options, and that at least in 3.0 the largest one wasn't in all the font size selection menus and broke various windows.

That said I hardly use gnome 3. I don't begrudge its existence because it offers a choice to users, the same way openbox, kde, and awsome all offer choices to users that prefer their respective environments. (I know openbox isn't technically a DE, but I often run it on it's own with a random collection of my favorite applications.) What I can say about gnome 3 is that it's different; some people might find it intuitive, and others who were comfortable with gnome 2 obviously don't.

I think there was a lot of overlap between gnome 2 and xfce, and that perhaps people that were fond of gnome 2 but don't want to switch to gnome 3 may find it a more suitable choice.

Eventually there will probably be a small fork, like trinity. Like trinity I predict for all their screaming few people will actually jump on board.

[Delgarde]

That's exactly the problem with Gnome3: PEOPLES TELLING ME WHAT'S WRONG AND WHAT' RIGHT FOR ME!

If the taskbar is distracting for you, it doesn't mean it must be distracting for everyone in the world. Indeed, it is a fundamental part of my workflow having a taskbar and you have no right to tell me how my workflow should be and you are not in the position to say that the need for a taskbar is arguable.

Then do something different. It's not like Gnome Shell *can't* be extended to support that kind of thing - you can do a lot with shell extensions, and I'm sure adding a traditional task bar wouldn't be all that difficult. It's just that nobody seems to have bothered.