GNOME 4.0, GNOME OS Coming In 2014 & Other Crazy Plans

[Meyithi]

So they're basically abandoning all attempts to be a DE - well that's just great, they still haven't worked out that a DE is exactly what the people want, D as in Desktop, not M for Mobile or W for Web, D!

Project is pretty much doomed with these muppets running the show, could perhaps be salvaged is something happened now but well, we've seen their future plans :/

[Teho]

Just because Krita has a lot of focus it doesn't mean it has ANYTHING to do with KDE as a desktop environment.

Well it kinda has. Having excellent applications is absolutely essential for the success of open source desktops and Krita is one of the best. Not only that but the projects also share quite a bit of code.

Jhen there's no backend and all alternatives are insufficient (or unmaintainable), then create something new. Correct me if I'm wrong but I doubt that applied to koffice.

Like I said it's 11 years old project and it makes it older than OpenOffice.org. Also KOffice/Calligra share plenty of its code with other projects. First of all all the components of Calligra share most of the code together. This includes Krita, Karbon, Braindump, Words, Flow, Kexi, Plan, Stage, Sheets and Words. Some of these applications also have mobile interfaces. Then the next level would be toolkits and other shared dependecies. These include Qt, kdelibs, lcms and numerous other libaries. Also considering in how horrible state LibreOffice is (that's why there have been insane ammount of clean ups lately but it's still 12 million line monster compared to 1 million line Calligra Suite).

And yea obviously you can still use calligra on gnome or other platforms, that isn't my point. I'm not sure if calligra is in the same situation as K3B but if it is, I shouldn't have to download an ADDITONAL 300MB of packages to use an office suite. If it just uses Qt libraries and nothing else then fine, NBD.

LibreOffice alone takes around 200MBs and that doesn't even include all of its dependecies. If you don't have any of the libaries that Calligra needs then I guess it could take over 200MBs but even that is going get better with the upcoming release of KF5 (modularization of kdelibs). However few hundred megabytes is nothing nowadays when hard drives cost nothing. I think you are kinda contradicting your own point if you believe that it's a good thing that software only depends on Qt or something similar. I mean then it has to implement a lot of stuff that already exist as independent libaries itself. If you are somehow allergic to KDE or Gnome libaries then it's your own problem. However saying that these applications are forcing themselves to become a part of desktop enviroment is just wrong. I mean seriously most of the KDE applications are available for Windows... and they work.

[Awesomeness]

Both GNOME and KDE keep focusing on things that they never had to touch in the first place, such as how they both have their own office suites

GNOME never had an office suite. There are a few individual office-related applications developed withing the GNOME community but there has never been an actual office suite by GNOME.

Why does everyone always want to create their own OS? GnomeOS, FirefoxOS, ChromeOS, etc. One of the chief complaints from most projects is lack of developers, but somehow a desktop specific OS will somehow make things better? Doesn't that require more developers and fragment existing developers? What does a custom OS buy you other than more stuff to support directly and less chance to share the load?

I've read so many conflicting messages about GNOME OS, I'm not really sure the GNOME community even has a uniform idea what it actually is.
The slides talk about GNOME OS being a real distribution, while I've heard other interpretations that GNOME OS is not supposed to be actual software but more of a holistic vision (I've interpreted it as ?We'd like a GNOME-running OS to behave like XY but the actual implementation is other people's task?).

[schmidtbag]

They will work on the projects they like in any case. If KWin developer doesn't want to work on KWin he won't unless someone is paying him to do so.

Right, I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm just stating that if they're going to take on a big project, they ought to finish it and not leave it half-assed for someone else while they take their interests elsewhere. Its more of a personal opinion, where if considered, productivity of DEs would improve. Many people are complaining about GNOME, KDE, and Unity and it is things like developers taking the wrong priorities why this is happening. Defend them all you want, but don't come crying to us when something degrades because of lack of attention.

Krita is also the most actively developed drawing application for Linux and it's used and developed commercially so it's far from being "irrelevant".

Most actively developed doesn't mean its the best. I'm not sure whether its better or worse than gimp but regardless, you're missing the point. If you're developing the core GUI of an OS that thousands of people use, you shouldn't just walk away from it to work on a program that has nothing to do with your main project (hence being irrelevant). Just because Krita has a lot of focus it doesn't mean it has ANYTHING to do with KDE as a desktop environment. With your argument that's like saying "I started an orphanage but I'm going to donate all my time and money toward cancer research, because more people are doing that and its still a good deed". Ok, but who will take care of the orphans?

KOffice (now Calligra) is over 11 years old project and it's structurally years ahead of LibreOffice. It has modular and simple architechture and it uses mostly already existing solutions instead of reinventing the wheel on just about everything like OpenOffice has done before.

Fine, maybe calligra was a bad example, however, if it's as good as you say, I feel like it'd be doing better than libreoffice. Anyways my point is it is counterproductive to the linux community when people decide to start a competing project entirely from scratch just for the sake of slightly improved integration with a DE. Again, create a frontend to an existing program and everyone wins. When there's no backend and all alternatives are insufficient (or unmaintainable), then create something new. Correct me if I'm wrong but I doubt that applied to koffice.

This wouldn't bother me so much if these programs weren't deliberately designed for a specific DE. It's kinda like Windows 8 and the metro interface. I don't like metro, I personally find it inefficient but I can see why some people might like it more than the start menu. HOWEVER, don't force it upon me. Metro, or Win8 for that matter, become much easier to dislike when you are required to use something you don't like. K3B used to be my all time favorite CD burning program on any OS, but once I found that you have to install half of KDE in order to use it, I had to ditch it. GNOME and KDE programs are being more than just GTK vs Qt, they're forcing themselves to become apart of the DE in a way that doesn't matter.

I would say that if something is selfish and rude in "open source perspective" it's demanding people to work on projects they do not like on their freetime. You can't create communities by forcing people. Also these projects are not "DE centric" and you can easily use Calligra on Gnome, OS X or even Windows. Just because they use existing solutions (kdelibs) doesn't mean they can't be used elsewhere.

I'm not demanding it, I'm suggesting it for the well being of the community and its users. And yea obviously you can still use calligra on gnome or other platforms, that isn't my point. I'm not sure if calligra is in the same situation as K3B but if it is, I shouldn't have to download an ADDITONAL 300MB of packages to use an office suite. If it just uses Qt libraries and nothing else then fine, NBD.

You're acting like I want all DE centric programs to be eliminated entirely and that I want to dictate that everyone must develop 1 thing, and that isn't the case.

[F i L]

I really like *most* of Gnome Shells design. There are a couple extensions which should be default (Alternative Status Menu, Dash to Dock) and the shell theme and Icon set could be a bit more "airy", but overall it's a great experience. I like the simplified UI, it's clutter free, and ailment KDE suffers from. I like the Activities management, it make it easy to keep track of lots of apps open at once, and customize each one to the task. I think overall, Gnome-Shell is the best DE, with only a very few exceptions in certain areas. (the Double-Click-icon to reveal-all-app-windows on Unity's Dash is I very nice feature I wish Gnome-Shell would copy... after they make Dash-to-Dock default behavior of course :P)

[rafirafi]

Best article of the year

By far the more funny new since the beginnig of the year.
Perhaps gnome 5 could run exclusively in the cloud, it could be the perfect OS the only thing to do is to remove the main source of bug reports, you know, the user.

[Anthony]

So there you have it -- Gnome3, a DE which suddenly is designed for Tablets but doesn't run on any Tablet that exists on Earth.

Why couldn't they make a Gnome tablet spin-off and just left the desktop alone? Why did they have to kill Gnome2 in favor of this rubbish? Do they really have big enough balls to create a new desktop environment and kill a very popular and functional one and then tell us it's not designed for desktop use? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

I hate Unity but I can't blame Ubuntu for distancing themselves from Gnome..

My prediction is in 2020 Gnome still won't run on any tablets and even if they do manage to push a tablet out, it will fade to obscurity in the blink of an eye. KDE released a tablet, which probably 200 people on the planet own but at least they didn't destroy KDE and alienate their user base to make it.

The tablet fad is ridiculous, people will be using desktops and laptops for a very long time. It's sad that open source is suddenly drinking the Apple Kool-Aid.

My only hope is that gnome panel is fully ported to GTK3 and developed further -- I've read some distros are starting to use gnome panel "classic" as the default DE -- GOOD, Gnome Shell and this tablet nonsense is a road to nowhere. I don't know why suddenly every "me too" company is trying to get a slice of the iOS (and to a somewhat less extend, Android) pie.

For what it's worth, I'm replying to this on a tablet running Gnome shell. There are a few issues, the virtual keyboard is not great, but with a bluetooth keyboard for typing it's fine.
I also run gnome shell on my main desktop, and find it great there. Not going to lie, Alt-Tab is a bit awkward, at first, but once you get used to it, it's a lot tidier.

You laugh at the idea of an OS for a desktop and a tablet, but I think Gnome shell works great for this. When I want to, I can sit on the sofa, and use my tablet like an classic tablet; facebook, films etc. Or othertimes, I can stick it on my desk, connect a mouse and keyboard, and I have a desktop.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head, which would be easier or faster in gnome 2, than it is at the moment in gnome shell. There's also quick access to most things, whether you have your mouse or your keyboard in your hand.

[Teho]

Give up the Qt dream. Despite thousands of man years it still isn't making much money. Interest doesn't seem that high outside of the KDE community. I have to say I was surprised how few high profile applications have made use of Qt (from the Qt site). You'd think cross platform apps like the Adobe Suite or Firefox/Chrome would use it.

Eh... there are 450000 Qt developers around the world and it's used very widely in the industry. From Wikipedia:

Qt is most notably used in Autodesk Maya, The Foundry's Nuke, Adobe Photoshop Elements, OPIE, Skype, VLC media player, VirtualBox, and Mathematica, and by the European Space Agency, DreamWorks, Google, HP, KDE, Lucasfilm, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, Volvo, Walt Disney Animation Studios and Research In Motion.

It's also base of the GENIVI Alliances (BMW Group, Delphi, GM, Intel, Magneti-Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Visteon, and Wind River Systems) automotive in-vehicle infotainment systems and all of this is just scratching the surface. Projects like Chrome and Firefox both have their own toolkits and only use GTK+ on Linux for better integration.

[johnc]

I nearly cried when I heard about the new Nautilus. They're removing the Extra Pane feature (and some other features) because it's not "touch friendly". And they removed the menu bar and replaced it with a "gear icon".

God I love the Extra Pane.

I don't know WTF is wrong with those people, but they are completely ignorant.

[liam]

Really wish some developers would rally around Qt 5 and make an alternative to KDE. I'm tired of Gnome 3 and I dislike all the other GTK attempts to go back in time like Mate.
Despite the rocky start I think KDE and Unity are the best bets moving forward. However, now that Qt is LGPL(has been for a long time) and has an open governance model, I really would like to see a desktop environment take it seriously other than KDE.

Give up the Qt dream. Despite thousands of man years it still isn't making much money. Interest doesn't seem that high outside of the KDE community. I have to say I was surprised how few high profile applications have made use of Qt (from the Qt site). You'd think cross platform apps like the Adobe Suite or Firefox/Chrome would use it.
More than converging on a toolkit (keeping in mind gtk on its own does only small fraction of what Qt does) I'd like to see the two big desktop.projects work together more often. Basically make fdo a much more active and far ranging project.