I don't kow why he bothers with it
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Jun 06, 2012 5:16 AM EDT |
There's Mint /Cinnamon, Mint/Mate (and by now probably every other distribution) and almost anything KDE. So why bother trying to make a steam pile of dung like GNOME 3 actually work. |
| jacog Jun 06, 2012 6:30 AM EDT |
or xfce, or e17 - both can do the things he mentions not being able to do in gnome3 |
| penguinist Jun 06, 2012 9:46 AM EDT |
I like Fedora's approach to user selection of the desktop: yum groupinstall LXDE yum groupinstall Xfce yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment" yum groupinstall "KDE Software Compilation" Whatever your favorite DE is, you just install it and that desktop becomes available as a selection at login time. This idea that there has to be a separate distribution for each DE is a bit inefficient in my opinion. |
| montezuma Jun 06, 2012 9:47 AM EDT |
Yeah Linus needs to pay attention a bit more to desktop options. When the gnome devs went off the deep end last year I was worried. So I tried out about 10 different desktops until I found one I liked. I guess Linus is too busy to do that. |
| caitlyn Jun 06, 2012 10:08 AM EDT |
Of course, his favorite distro (Fedora) uses GNOME by default, as do the leading enterprise distros. GNOME was the #1 choice for Linux desktop for a while there. Linus' concerns about GNOME and his efforts to give it a chance makes sense in that context. |
| jdixon Jun 06, 2012 10:51 AM EDT |
> I like Fedora's approach to user selection of the desktop: Which is largely the same one used by Debain and most other "elderly" distributions. > This idea that there has to be a separate distribution for each DE is a bit inefficient in my opinion. Of course, but it is more user ready. I think that's why it's become popular. |
| caitlyn Jun 06, 2012 11:05 AM EDT |
Quoting:Of course, but it is more user ready. I think that's why it's become popular.I'm a bit perplexed by this. How is choosing from a list of downloadable isos to get the desktop a user wants more user ready than downloading a single iso and choosing from a similar list of desktop environments in the installer? I can see a different advantage: smaller download size. In places where bandwidth is still limited or metered that really is important. |
| jdixon Jun 06, 2012 12:08 PM EDT |
> How is choosing from a list of downloadable isos to get the desktop a user wants more user ready than downloading a single iso and choosing from a similar list of desktop environments in the installer? If all the desktops were included in the installation, it wouldn't be. But due to size constraints, they're normally not. And while installing the relevant desktops is only simple package manager session away, it's not something you want a new user to have to worry about. |
| CFWhitman Jun 06, 2012 2:46 PM EDT |
Quoting:Whatever your favorite DE is, you just install it and that desktop becomes available as a selection at login time. This idea that there has to be a separate distribution for each DE is a bit inefficient in my opinion. Well, it seems you can do the same thing with pretty much any distribution with dependency management. There's nothing stopping you from doing that with Ubuntu if you want. The idea of different distributions or editions for different desktops is about two things: 1. Probably the main reason for it is to have the maintainers be dedicated to making one particular desktop work completely. Other environments are secondary. This would be a reason to expect that Kubuntu would be better than Ubuntu with "apt-get install kde-full". (of course you can "apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" or "apt-get install kubuntu-full" instead and get Kubuntu, but that's beside the point, and related to the other reason). 2. The other reason for a separate edition of the distribution for a different desktop is to actually have the whole system on the installation disc. You can have multiple desktops on the installation disc, but there are limits to what is practical to include on the default iso file. Of course, in practice, I sometimes find the default installations of an environment, like the vanilla ones you find with the environments included with Slackware, for example, more to my liking than the customized versions provided by many distributions. That doesn't mean the distribution maintainers aren't at least trying to add value though. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 06, 2012 2:56 PM EDT |
I've found that most distributions work much better with their 'default' DE than with anything else. |
| BernardSwiss Jun 06, 2012 6:37 PM EDT |
(This may seem a little presumptuous, but I think it needs saying -- or at least consideration.) Who was it who so famously said that software freedom is wasted on end-users, because the users are stupid? Oh. Yeah. This is the second recent incident (and rant) in a relatively short period of time. where Linus has encountered aggravation and trouble because the OS doesn't work the way he is used to it to working, expects it to work, and/or wants it to work. I wonder if Linus will find these brief encounters with the end-user's perspective at all illuminating? (edit: spelling) |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 06, 2012 7:26 PM EDT |
The kernel isn't a UI issue, so I think Linus is on steady ground. That he acts like a normal user when confronted with major UI changes just means that even though he knows about OS kernels, he just wants to get thing done in a UI, and things like a paradigm-shifting change from GNOME 2 to 3 with nothing in between aren't exactly conducive to productivity. A parallel development track with a "stable" and "experimental" branch would have been nice -- with GNOME 3 given some time to settle down before reluctant users needed to take it on. |
| jacog Jun 07, 2012 6:06 AM EDT |
Bernard - Obnoxious maybe, but not wrong - end users ARE stupid. Depending on one's definition of stupid, I'd say the majority of people are stupid. Corporations and governments rely on this. |
| gus3 Jun 07, 2012 6:47 AM EDT |
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the average intelligence of the consumer." |
| jdixon Jun 07, 2012 8:40 AM EDT |
> Depending on one's definition of stupid, I'd say the majority of people are stupid. One common theme on one of the blogs I read is the contained in the acronym MPAI. Most people are idiots. Of course, there's also the caveat that we're all most people a good percentage of the time. :) |
| montezuma Jun 07, 2012 10:29 AM EDT |
I thought Linux had a point last year when gnome 3 first came out. Now he just sounds like he is venting. As I recall last year he suggested that gnome 2 be forked. Well it was and MATE is the result. Also gnome 3 was forked and Cinnamon was the result. IMNSHO it behoves Linus to acknowledge these new projects. |
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