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

[liam]

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

While some GNOME developers and users see the once fledging desktop environment fading into abyss, other GNOME developers see nothing but GNOME getting better with the best yet to come. It's been called for this week from GUADEC that GNOME 4.0 to be released in March of 2014 along with GNOME OS. That's not all of their ambitious plans but they think they can gain a 20% market-share by 2020 and they also have some other plans on their agenda...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTE0ODg

That picture is in extremely poor taste.

[Teho]

I have no problem with people creating programs for KDE or GNOME, what I have a problem with is (if) core DE developers are dividing their attention to work on those programs when there are bugs to fix and performance hits to improve. For example, the kwin dev should not be working on something completely optional and irrelevant such as krita.

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. 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". 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.

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.

[schmidtbag]

KDE is a huge community. People mostly work on their freetime on project they like. It doesn't take away resources from developement of Plasma when people work on Calligra and so on. I would say that KDE Telepathy is the best instant messager available on any platform and its future looks very bright. Krita is the best open source drawing application available and it's part of Calligra Suite. digiKam is the best phono organizer for Linux. Kdenlive is the best open source non-linear video editor for Linux. KDE offers excellent libaries so why not use them?

I have no problem with people creating programs for KDE or GNOME, what I have a problem with is (if) core DE developers are dividing their attention to work on those programs when there are bugs to fix and performance hits to improve. For example, the kwin dev should not be working on something completely optional and irrelevant such as krita. Also I'm not sure about all of those programs you mentioned but kdenlive is just a frontend, and as stated before frontends are nice since it isn't a 100% new project.

Creating a frontend to an existing project is much better than starting an entirely new one because all other frontends will benefit. For example with CD burning you have Brasero, xfburn, and K3B which are all just frontends to things like cdraro and growisofs. When the developers of one of those frontends needs a new feature or needs to fix something, ALL of them benefit, so no matter which GUI you prefer, they all win. Starting a brand new project that competes against something much grander (such as koffice vs libreoffice) is really just selfish in an open source perspective.

If linux and open source wants to be the best, we need to work as a community. When you make something DE centric and start from scratch, nobody wins.

[disi]

haha nice joke, if there would be only 0,1-0,2% desktop users, than I would not get week after week 10 linux magazines on my kiosk... we both have not accurate numbers, and how do you cound dualboots? so I say another number what I think would be more realistic something about 2-5%. And do you only count private desktops or also desktops on workplaces? but I think my numbers are way more accurate than your numbers...

and thats only the numbers here in germany and maybe in america and other western countries, in other countries with more users the linux-quote should be higher.
and if you count android its on the way to the market leader... so it depends strongly how you count... and yes android tablets/notebooks I would count also as desktop. and if you dont call it desktop... (desktop replacement) then you have to realise that more cell phones and more laptops gets selled than classic "desktops"

From what I always read, Linux is much more used in Europe.

http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm

6.26% of users visiting Wikipedia use Linux...

[MichaelSerious]

Dumb

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.

[blackiwid]

Let's see, Linux has gained like 0,1-0,2% of desktop users for the past 10 years and they aim to get a hundred times more?

That's called wishful thinking at best.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Notes-from-the-Ubuntu-Developer-Summit-1572943.html

I have here some numbers, so even on the preinstalled market (there are not that counted that install linux on their windows pc or the pc with freedos or something like that)

Kenyon said in his talk that Ubuntu was shipped pre-installed on eight to ten million computers worldwide last year. Canonical expects this to increase to eighteen million next year, which they calculate to be five per cent of the total market.

so if we say the 18 million are 5% of the sold systems and lets say today its 9million (8-10 million) it would be the half so even preinstalled desktop-systems are at 2,5% and I think we can agree that more more of the 97,5% of the rest of the market mostly windows but also freedos users have switched to linux than from the 2,5% switched back to windows. It is a very high change that I am right here. So my 2-5% is very realistic if not a conservative guess.


I dont know how is the market share in india or china or russia or other countries so maybe we are because of that states even nearly at 10% today. but ok thats a wild guess... ohh and I forget, thats only the preinstalled Ubuntu pcs not linux in generall, so the real numbers are even higher today...

so even if I ignore that this 2,5% are only the ubuntu installs not linux in general and 50% of this 2,5% users switched back to windows and only 5% of the windows/freedos users installed manuelly linux we are at ~ 6% market share of linux... maybe thats even bad, but 20% of linux market share is not that cracy (but again they even admit that they most likely will not reach this goals but they want to set high goals because small goals doesnt help...)

[Teho]

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, web browsers, instant messengers, music players, etc. - things that have no reason to be DE centric.

KDE is a huge community. People mostly work on their freetime on project they like. It doesn't take away resources from developement of Plasma when people work on Calligra and so on. I would say that KDE Telepathy is the best instant messager available on any platform and its future looks very bright. Krita is the best open source drawing application available and it's part of Calligra Suite. digiKam is the best phono organizer for Linux. Kdenlive is the best open source non-linear video editor for Linux. KDE offers excellent libaries so why not use them?

[blackiwid]

Let's see, Linux has gained like 0,1-0,2% of desktop users for the past 10 years and they aim to get a hundred times more?

That's called wishful thinking at best.

haha nice joke, if there would be only 0,1-0,2% desktop users, than I would not get week after week 10 linux magazines on my kiosk... we both have not accurate numbers, and how do you cound dualboots? so I say another number what I think would be more realistic something about 2-5%. And do you only count private desktops or also desktops on workplaces? but I think my numbers are way more accurate than your numbers...

and thats only the numbers here in germany and maybe in america and other western countries, in other countries with more users the linux-quote should be higher.
and if you count android its on the way to the market leader... so it depends strongly how you count... and yes android tablets/notebooks I would count also as desktop. and if you dont call it desktop... (desktop replacement) then you have to realise that more cell phones and more laptops gets selled than classic "desktops"

[birdie]

Let's see, Linux has gained like 0,1-0,2% of desktop users for the past 10 years and they aim to get a hundred times more?

That's called wishful thinking at best.

[AJSB]

Let me check...no....it's not April 1st...weird....