Starting Development Of GNOME Shell, Mutter 3.10

[brosis]

this is not surprising. many linux enthusiasts do not use linux as their main machine. therefore, linux is just a part time plaything, they are not taking the desktop linux seriously.

Nope, that applies only to you.

it's the same way with BSD, but there the devs never had an agenda to overtake Windows, so their usage of Mac/Windows is open and without pretension.

Nope, its because Linux has much bigger marketshare and is actually relevant.

Had BSD bigger marketshare in any area, it would immediately be attacked by windumbs. But this will never happen.
Because first thing they had done is of course copy-paste all BSD technology (if any?nevermind.) to overcome it technologically. BSD is not protected from this by license, unlike Linux.

But keep on trolling, windumbs fanboi.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

Many of the usability designers are self taught just like many of the best programmers in Linux and it can be done quite successfully but it isn't true that none of them have the background to do it.

Also, comparing GNOME 3.0 to 3.8, it is very hard to argue that there isn't major improvements. GNOME Shell extensions have "hooks" just fine and in fact can change *anything* in the shell. The work done to provide better defined and documented entry points as well as extensions.gnome.org has helped. There were posts expressing valid concerns about the nature of extensions from several releases back but many of them have been addressed. For instance, GNOME classic mode is just a bunch of supported extensions and there is a feature in the next release to auto-update extensions on demand which should help with breakage. So the project continues to evolve and address the issues cited here.

[liam]

It wasn't a red herring at all. Adoption just naturally follows ease of use typically and when organizations fund usability studies, adoption is precisely the end goal of the move but since Linux users tend to be more technical and have adopted the UI for a specific workflow, they tend to be resistent towards any sort of new UI even if usability studies shows that it works better in general.

In the case of GNOME 2.x, there was massive amount of flameworks and forks before things settled down with incremental improvemens in subsequent versions. I expect some of that pattern will repeat itself for GNOME 3.x which does have several professional UI experts involved.

To be clear, I meant red herring in the sense of changing the subject. You made with a provocative, but non sequitur, statement (i.e., that b/c Unity had usability testing, and they don't seem to have had much additional adoption, therefore usability tests don't help adoption --- I wasn't arguing about any of those points, and, moreover, it is clearly not a logically sound position, thus provocative and non sequitur).
I certainly wouldn't argue that the end goal of usability, from an investment perspective, is to increase adoption, but, necessarily, usability only relates directly to ease of use. Yeah, it's pedantic, but I wanted to be clear what I was attempting to say.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the main designers have formally trained in the hci field (john, jakob, owen, allan, cosimo, or jasper), but I certainly could be wrong (not that it alters my point about usability testing, however, which can be done cheaply --- at the autumn summit in boston there was talk of putting together a testing suite since nearly all the tools already exist in foss. However, you still need someone to actually write the tests and conduct them, and that is one of the things that requires serious knowledge and skill.
I'm not going to address your view of linux users tending to be more technical since that would, again, lead to off-topic areas.
I'm aware, though not intimately, of the early period of gnome 2.x, but things are a good bit different today. For one thing, the UI is so much more different from 2, than 2 was to 1 (in case you don't remember me, I have no problem with some of the major changes, but it simply can't be reasonably argued that the design was robust enough to handle more than a single monitor, or that it works well with more than a couple open applications). Two, Miguel has completely left Gnome. Three, we're now approaching the fifth release of gnome and things don't seem to be improving. With regards to the last point, I am in particular concerned about the reluctance of the developers to set hooks into the shell for extension. I am of the firm belief, and I know John doesn't like them, that the reason GS is doing as well as it is almost solely due to the ability to extend it. It's almost like going back to sawfish, except with a vastly lower bar of entry, and more possibilities, but, like they've done with themes, you can't break extensions each release and expect people to keep re-writing them forever. One of the most talented designers that created Gnome themes has already stopped updating his themes b/c of this issue, and there was at least one extension writer who seems to have done the same.
I'm not saying any of these things are easy but the can be accomplished but it requires much more openness, and much more willingness to treat with others, than has hitherto been the case, and blogging is not a substitute. That is not a meeting of equals.

Depending on how studies are set up (number of participants, participant selection etc.), they can be a useful as a chocolate teapot, especially if its set up to get the answers you want to hear, not what you ought to hear.

This is the dance I was speaking of, Rahul. It is a tricky thing to accomplish. Not only being willing to hear these things, but knowing precisely both what you want to test and how to test to test it.

[RahulSundaram]

It doesn't matter what the Usability Studies (tm) say, if the new workflow is worse for Me (tm).

It's not resistance of change, it's resistance of change to a worse situation.

In other words, you are agreeing with me strongly. What matters to many users is whether a new UI fits into their workflow or not.

[znby]

I'd say the audience of Phoronix is far different from the audience for GNOME. People who do very technical work with their computers probably have very specific requirements of their desktop environment.

Or they might not. For many people, Doing Serious Things With Linux = using the shell. I use Gnome 3 on my laptop, and (with some extensions and customizations) I find it completely suitable for day to day tasks. But when I'm doing some work, I open the terminal and full screen it. I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do for any desktop environment I might use.

[danielnez1]

Depending on how studies are set up (number of participants, participant selection etc.), they can be a useful as a chocolate teapot, especially if its set up to get the answers you want to hear, not what you ought to hear.

At least the classic mode brings back some sanity but given the other issues with GNOME/GTK such as the theming and their apparent pathological need to remove useful functionality, I fear there has been a lot of damage done to the Linux ecosystem.

[curaga]

but since Linux users tend to be more technical and have adopted the UI for a specific workflow, they tend to be resistent towards any sort of new UI even if usability studies shows that it works better in general.

It doesn't matter what the Usability Studies (tm) say, if the new workflow is worse for Me (tm).

It's not resistance of change, it's resistance of change to a worse situation.

[RahulSundaram]

Usability isn't about adoption, but about ease of use. Gnome had its 2.0 hig backed by research and experts (i.e., not simply coders who read a few books and decided they were experts), and it was, I think, quite successful. Whether it was b/c of the hig I can't say.
BTW, I think you realise that your final comment is a red herring, but I decided to respond to it regardless

It wasn't a red herring at all. Adoption just naturally follows ease of use typically and when organizations fund usability studies, adoption is precisely the end goal of the move but since Linux users tend to be more technical and have adopted the UI for a specific workflow, they tend to be resistent towards any sort of new UI even if usability studies shows that it works better in general.

In the case of GNOME 2.x, there was massive amount of flameworks and forks before things settled down with incremental improvemens in subsequent versions. I expect some of that pattern will repeat itself for GNOME 3.x which does have several professional UI experts involved.

[danielnez1]

Red Hat might very well be the only corporation being profitable and behave favorable in a push for desktop linux. It is really sad to see this effort being put down.

IMHO its great that Red Hat can make a profit with Linux as it just goes to show how viable the platform is. However I dread to think what their customers' reaction will be when GNOME 3 is included by default in RHEL.

I'm a demonstrator for a System Administration module at the University I study and the machines run Fedora with a CentOS VM for the students to use for their coursework. Over the few months the module has ran, nearly all of the students have had problems with using GNOME 3 and many have given up using it and access their VMs through their own laptops.

I wouldn't say GNOME 2 was the best thing since slice bread but I am completely baffled by the GNOME devs decision to essentially throw a decent DE just for their horribly misguided idea of what a "simple and easy to use" DE should be. It really does seem that the lunatics now run the asylum and I'm surprised there has been no intervention from Red Hat to try to address it.

[liam]

It was mostly Sun that wanted to do it but they are not there anymore and Oracle has pulled off funding. Novell has stopped funding Evolution and UI studies as well. Red Hat is shouldering most of the cost of GNOME development along with the rest of the volunteer community and I don't think the broader community is focused on usability studies.

Canonical did some studies with Unity but I am not sure it has helped with adoption.

Calum seemed to limit his involvement with Gnome some time after 3.0. I don't know what, if anything, happened, but he seems to point people to the designers when it comes to usability (http://list-archives.org/2012/12/01/...n/f/5351379188).
However, he is not who I was speaking of, and I won't mention who it was. I don't think it was something that was "top secret" (i.e., you can google for it), but the gnome community has the grim tendency to form cliques.
Usability isn't about adoption, but about ease of use. Gnome had its 2.0 hig backed by research and experts (i.e., not simply coders who read a few books and decided they were experts), and it was, I think, quite successful. Whether it was b/c of the hig I can't say.
BTW, I think you realise that your final comment is a red herring, but I decided to respond to it regardless

That is true. I never understood the idea of bad mouthing the few enterprises left doing desktop development. Im sure there is an explanation though. Any effort by Gnome or Red Hat is usually disliked by quite a few people. I dont get it.

I've noticed that as well. While I'm not certain, I think it is at least partly due to the strong anti-corporation sentiment that folks like Stallman seem to have. They don't seem to understand that corporations are made of people, and that just b/c profit is their raison d'etre that doesn't mean that the people in the company can't steer things in directions that benefit others as well. RH understands that communities are a hugely important source of not just testing, but also source improvements, boosters, and future employees.