GNOME Is Losing Relevance On The Linux Desktop

[ninez]

No, not really, lots of other things changed too, like the control panel and stuff.
I am sure MATE would have appreciated an interim GNOME 2 release based upon GTK 3.

The whole idea of the Mate Desktop was flawed to begin with because it really is unsustainable (in the long term) and has no place to go (in terms of development). I remember when the project first started out and it was a bad idea to begin with, IMO. What i think would have been a much smarter move (and easier to maintain) would have been to fork gnome-panel (gtk3) and add the functionality missing (using gtk3/gnome3 tech) and whatever other bits of software the features correspond to.

Yeah, GNOME 3 Fallback Mode (gnome-session-classic which use gnome-panel) is what I use.
GNOME 3 with gnome-session-classic is great!

I also use fallback, but without gnome-panel (i use AWN + compiz 0.9.8-bzr, instead).

Fallback is perfectly suitable - that is why (in part) i think MATE is a waste of time. if gnome-panel (in fallback) wasn't upto snuff, fork it and then possibly see if Gnome developers might be interested in upstreaming those changes, or at least get some feedback to see what they might be willing upstream, for fallback / people not using GS, as their shell.

[n3wu53r]

Of course he didn't wrote the "staring into the abyss" article. But he thought it is good opportunity to point out the Cinnamon and the Mate projects, as they are bringing those good old memories about the GNOME 2.0 desktop.

There are more of his thoughts, likings and opinions. Like those for example:

"The negativity towards the GNOME project isn't surprising since the botched GNOME 3.0 release."

"Prior to reading Otte's GNOME abyss blog post last night, I myself was thinking of what desktop environment to use next. For nearly two years my main production desktop has been Ubuntu 10.10 with GNOME 2.32 virtualized within Mac OS X on an Apple MacBook Pro. With my new retina MacBook Pro, it's time to move past Ubuntu 10.10 and the most pressing problem has been missing GNOME2."


Every interactive application - being either console or graphical one - is enforcing a certain way of work flow. A way that the developers thought it may be the best one for this king of activity. Take for example the once hugely vibrant competition between Vim and Emacs - two overpowered text editors with very different manner of achieving the same goals.
Also the various console mail clients.
Or even the numerous Unix (-like) kernels at the time when they were not so different from one another.
The thing that made them distinguishable were their philosophy which explains their different way of achieving same common goals.

GNOME 3 _is_ different and it is different for a reason. You _cannot_ work the same way, like you did with every graphical interface since Win95. If you need to use your old work flow for whatever reason (no time to figure out how to be as productive with the new tool, no appreciation of the benefits it brings you, or just plain stubbornness), then you _have to_ chose another graphical environment. Here is a recent interview that Michael could've appreciated if he wasn't so GNOME 3 disappointed and not following any GNOME-related news source:

Treat Gnome3 as something new? by Allan Day

And to address the "disappearing GNOME developers" claim, I will highlight another 2 short weekly reports:

1778 commits, in 207 projects, by 207 contributors in a week

1816 commits, in 178 projects, by 214 contributors for a week

both of which are from this month.

First the commit digest. It shows there are a large number of commits, but it doesn't show whether they are increasing or decreasing. (actually, the one that is dated earlier has more contributors).

Second, don't lecture me on the differences of Gnome 3 and how it changes your workflow. Although I do not like the attitude of gnome developers, I use gnome 3 everyday as it is incredibly efficeint and I absolutely love the UX. However there are a lot of people who feel the opposite way and it is hurting the health of the gnome project. The whole 20% market share by 2020, and Gnome OS stuff anounced at GAUDEC is batshit crazy.

[johnc]

When people say they don't like GNOME 3, are they referring to GNOME 3 or GNOME Shell? Is there something about GNOME 3 that they don't like?

[n3wu53r]

When people say they don't like GNOME 3, are they referring to GNOME 3 or GNOME Shell? Is there something about GNOME 3 that they don't like?

Just Gnome Shell of course.
Everything other then shell they like about Gnome 3.

[n3wu53r]

The whole idea of the Mate Desktop was flawed to begin with because it really is unsustainable (in the long term) and has no place to go (in terms of development). I remember when the project first started out and it was a bad idea to begin with, IMO. What i think would have been a much smarter move (and easier to maintain) would have been to fork gnome-panel (gtk3) and add the functionality missing (using gtk3/gnome3 tech) and whatever other bits of software the features correspond to.


d
I also use fallback, but without gnome-panel (i use AWN + compiz 0.9.8-bzr, instead).

Fallback is perfectly suitable - that is why (in part) i think MATE is a waste of time. if gnome-panel (in fallback) wasn't upto snuff, fork it and then possibly see if Gnome developers might be interested in upstreaming those changes, or at least get some feedback to see what they might be willing upstream, for fallback / people not using GS, as their shell.

If Fallback isn't up to snuff for you, use Cinnamon.

[D0pamine]

i dont like any desktop that uses the gpu by default, yeh yeh fallback mode but thats a half working gnome3 i'll stick with lxde until gnome2 is replaced by mate in the portage tree

[1c3d0g]

Ninez: I agree. MATE is a waste of time, but I guess some people like to hang on to old things.

[ninez]

If Fallback isn't up to snuff for you, use Cinnamon.

Exactly. but i would also add that you can easily put together a nice usable desktop, using whatever components you like. ie: use whatever WM/CompositingWM that you like and use whatever parts of the gnome 3 stack you want to use. if there are components you don't like - remove them from your .session file, startup apps, etc. Gnome is pretty flexible that way.

When people say they don't like GNOME 3, are they referring to GNOME 3 or GNOME Shell? Is there something about GNOME 3 that they don't like?

For myself anyway, i can say i like Gnome 3, but am not interested in using Gnome-Shell. ...and i think there is a distinction to be made between Gnome 3 and Gnome-Shell (GS is just a shell and the 'default face' of Gnome 3).

the only thing i don't like about Gnome 3.x is 1. gtk3 theme breakage on every big update (ie: 3.0 to 3.2 to 3.4 broke every time) and 2. GTK isn't as nice looking, nor as feature filled as QT. Well designed QT apps look and feel more modern than gtk3. /usr/bin/gtk3-demo shows the odd flashy thing that gtk3 can do (transparency/shadows, offscreen windows; rotation, reflection, pixbuf, etc) and some stuff you can do through theming, like active window focus, 3-tone feedback on widgets (ie: inactive, hover, active) but QT seems, like i said, feels more modern and polished in some ways.

[boast]

i dont like any desktop that uses the gpu by default

Its 2012, you don't have to keep living like this...

Press the "Videos" button in Dolphin and you get all your videos. Press the "Music" button and you have all your songs, regardless of their actual location. You can even sort them by Artist, or by Album. Press "Today" and you get the files you opened this day. Press "Last Month" and Dolphin will show you all files accessed last month, with nice auto-generated folders separating them by days. And they fixed nepomuksearch://, so, you can also have virtual folders again. And all this happens fast (~40 secs for 2,800 files totaling 2,9 GB, images)

Mac sort of has that, but its just a "recent documents" section split by file type. Still, this sounds good.

KDE 4.9 upstreamed the Akonadi-Google experimental resource, meaning that you have Google Calendar, Contacts and Tasks working from day one and with no strange configuration needed (now you get a nice, web 2.0, Google login). And KDE 4.10 is going to do the same with Akonadi-Facebook and the new Akonadi-Microblog, meaning you'll have live Facebook status updates, live tweeting updates, and live synchronizing between your calendar and Facebook events from day one.

Oh man, that sounds sick!!!! I've been waiting so long for KDE to be able to integrate google stuff. I'm excited. Finally linux pushing the desktop further again and not sticking to the past.

[Panix]

The only real thing that bugs me out is that they removed the shutdown button but even that can be added by a plug-in.

There's way more negatives than that. So, one has to do a google search in order to figure out how to reboot or shut down their system?!? LOL! With that type of design, Gnome3 is easily a failure.