GNOME Is Still A Ways Off From 10% Goal

[Alejandro Nova]

Wow Spanglish.

It's not Michael's fault that English can't differentiate between free as in freedom (libre) and free as in price (gratis).

Spanish can, and does.

[Soul_keeper]

I enjoy using GTK in my projects
I find it well documented, powerful, and nice looking.

However, I'd never consider using gnome/kde as a desktop environment because 90% of their features/dependencies are things I don't need or want.
I prefer XFCE and disable the panel, desktop icons, and file manager.
This gives me a light yet modern desktop which is great for productivity as I typically do most my work in Terminal or firefox never/seldom closing them.

[blackiwid]

For people who asks for a good qt app that is not kde-only present, I would suggest to look over one of my favorite programs minitube. The guy who did program it programmed a few other players that are maybe nice too. But minitube is a great tool, it allowes you to watch youtube in a easier better way than with the browser and you don?t need fuckin flash anymore.

Ok there is also a totem plugin that playes also youtube but the interface is better for this purpose and I think the gap between api changes from google and a update on minitube is smaller than on this plugin.

But it looks like a gnome-program so from a programmer viewpoint qt is not bad but they especialy kde progs have no good look and use-feeling so if you make look a qt programm perfeclty immitate the look and feel of a gnome app it can be great but that tells much about kde And yes I know there are themes but I did not see anything that looked and feeled as good as a good gnome-desktop. (Even I know it would be possible relativly easy). Except this qt app that did use the gnome-or-gtk-theme.

So back to the topic, I excepted a source where someone would try to estimate the percentage of linux or gnome on the desktop where we would see that its less then 10%. But instead there was nothing like that, so where is the source that proves that gnome is far away from its goal is it your representive friend-cyrcle or what, if I look around to the desktops of my friends I know only one person who refuse to use linux most of the others use linux on all of there desktops some completly exclusive some use dualboot. So that maybe also not representive but there is no good way to know how many use that.

When I look into stores where they are selling magazines I think there are way more linux-specific ones than apple or microsoft ones, and the normal computerspecific also have often much linuxstuff in it. When I think of the millions of linux-cds that will be sold alonely in germany each years with all this magazines then I cant think that they all land in the trash unused and additionaly many people download linux, and each download gets copied there for people again. so MAYBE the 10% of Gnome-desktops are reached we dont know it so this news is a bit stupid.

[alazar]

It's not Michael's fault that English can't differentiate between free as in freedom (libre) and free as in price (gratis).

Spanish can, and does.

I know, I'm spaniard.

[Awesomeness]

I find it curious that GTK, being the supposedly lesser toolkit, seems to foster great apps such as Chromium, Inkscape, Shotwell, Firefox, Thunderbird, The Gimp

I find it curious that from the 6 apps you mentioned 3 aren't even GTK apps. Others already explained that FF and TB are not GTK apps. Same is true for Chromium whose toolkit is Skia. In all these 3 cases GTK is only used for minor stuff like Open/Save windows and only on X11 platforms.

The question really is if *any* free desktop environment ever can reach 10% and if so, what kind of user experience that would have to be to attract *new* users and not just fight over current GNU/Linux geeks. Copying Windows or OS X hasn't really worked so far. I actually think Gnome is on the right track of creating a distinctive desktop that can go mainstream.

That statement implies that GNOME (I suppose you mean version 3.x) is the first Linux DE to not copy Windows or OSX whereas in fact Plasma dropped the fixation on the traditional desktop metaphor long ago. While the default configuration of Plasma Desktop resembles a traditional desktop, with only a few mouse clicks everything is arranged so differently that it has next to no resemblance to traditional DEs ? see Plasma Netbook.

The 10% goal is stupid anyway. The only goal that matters is being usable and both GNOME and KDE projects achieved that goal long ago despite what random trolls say.

[liam]

It's not Michael's fault that English can't differentiate between free as in freedom (libre) and free as in price (gratis).

Spanish can, and does.

Well, "our" word for it is libre. English, being an unusally mutt language has no problems taking on words from other languages if they are useful. The japanese do the same thing, but they maintain this artificial separation (katakana) b/c of ideas about language purity. English speakers have no such problems, history has shown.
It seems as though schadenfreude has nearly entered the language, and, to my knowledge, this is b/c of The Simpsons (in which episode it was remarked how the Germans have a word for everything -- my understanding of why that is is b/c they have a tradition of concatenation which leads to words of absurd length, but English has much in common with German).

[liam]

I find it curious that from the 6 apps you mentioned 3 aren't even GTK apps. Others already explained that FF and TB are not GTK apps. Same is true for Chromium whose toolkit is Skia. In all these 3 cases GTK is only used for minor stuff like Open/Save windows and only on X11 platforms.



That statement implies that GNOME (I suppose you mean version 3.x) is the first Linux DE to not copy Windows or OSX whereas in fact Plasma dropped the fixation on the traditional desktop metaphor long ago. While the default configuration of Plasma Desktop resembles a traditional desktop, with only a few mouse clicks everything is arranged so differently that it has next to no resemblance to traditional DEs ? see Plasma Netbook.

The 10% goal is stupid anyway. The only goal that matters is being usable and both GNOME and KDE projects achieved that goal long ago despite what random trolls say.

Isn't skia "merely" the drawing kit used, not the widget side? That is, they are using skia as opposed to gdk?
BTW, I agree that the goal is a bit stupid. For one thing, it is unrealistic unless something tectonic happens.
For another, what is the point? As long as Linux has a strong 3rd place showing, it will only increasingly be supported, and a strong 3rd place showing need not be more than 4% or 5%, as Apple has shown, BUT we need a better developer story. This means not only further standardization, but also better drivers, and that is going to be really hard without lots of money.

[AnonymousCoward]

The japanese do the same thing, but they maintain this artificial separation (katakana) b/c of ideas about language purity.

The "language purity" part is not neccessary true. For example, the imported word club/kurabu/クラブ has a kanji representation: 倶楽部. The problem is more that they import a lot of words, and fitting them into the existing readings of kanji is difficult. In some media at least, the "English" reading is used for the Japanese word, e.g. some Tokyo Jihen Albums like Variety/娯楽 or Adult/大人. Also, there's no strict "katakana word = English" / "word imported from English = katakana", though the second part is often true.

[gururise]

What's the big deal? The Gnome Foundation wasn't interested. I see nothing wrong with Michael having a domain he owns direct to a site also owned by him.

Well, let's say I buy that. You act like a benefactor (paying, year after year, for something GNOME-related that GNOME itself doesn't want), but then you redirect the domain to a place where you enjoy bashing GNOME in articles like the one that provoked this discussion. Sorry but that makes no sense.

An obvious suggestion for the redirection: https://live.gnome.org/10x10. Or just leave it empty with a message explaining what's the domain about. It might take less than five lines of simple text and a link to the 10x10 discussion.

As it is today, it looks just like what someone already described: a spurned lover's reaction. Anything but professional.

[Kirurgs]

If stuff like kioslaves were cross-desktop, and all toolkits had consistent themes (like they do on Mac and Windows), the desktop would really be just a matter of choice and we'd have a common base for interaction, leaving app developers to choose the toolkit they prefer. At the moment, if you want kioslaves, you must use Qt, and if you use GTK, you get that worthless confusing file dialog.

I fully agree, I tried KDE4 multiple times, it's perfect functional desktop which you can customize to your needs and habits or just accept defaults which are very good. But things like kioslaves vs gvfs or evolution won't fully work in KDE4 (no notifications on email and no calendar shown anywhere to quickly look at) are really bad ones. I have to use evolution, because it's the only on with exchange-mapi support. I can't save document on Win share with kioslaves and openoffice just because kioslaves are not transparent, I can't transparently watch a movie from ssh share or any other except samba. KDE4 sometimes forgot my settings, which is annoying as I have to set 5 small details each time I log in. But if not kioslaves, evolution and things like that, I would use KDE4. Performance is perfect on my HD3650 (fglrx).

I currently switched from ArchLinux to Ubuntu, because they support Gnome2 until Oct 2012 Gnome3 is no good for work, I can't imagine myself to work productively on that platform as I have to have open a lot of stuff - they all appear on that stupid launcher bar no matter on which desktop (project) I'm working on, when I have a lot open, that bar can't hold all the stuff (like OSX), alt-tab the same. Extensions are good, but not yet to my liking / habbits / needs. Gnome2 + Compiz = best for people who actually work in the DE with a lot of programs and fixed workspaces opened to difference the work on projects.

Gnome3 on the other hand nicely fits on my kids computer, it's fine and working, but again they had to be told that when application is not visible it's not lost it's just in background as they can't clearly see what's opened and what's not. But as I said they use couple of progs, mainly firefox and maybe some standalone games, maybe skype or so. So G3 at the moment are for surfers and kids
I hope G3 will become mature when I will be forced to use that or there will be nice alternatives - Unitly will mature or Mint will make some wunderbar DE out of G3

Goal is useful only when it's reasonably reachable. It's true that it's hard to estimate how many gnome desktops are around.