How many Gnome forks now?
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cmost Jan 18, 2013 7:17 PM EDT |
Hmm, let's see...how many forks of Gnome have sprung up since the disastrous release of Gnome 3.x, let me count them: Unity, Canonical's own creation built on Gnome 3.x libraries; MATE (forked from the abandoned Gnome 2.2x); Cinnamon, an alternative (and IMHO a more functional) Gnome shell, and now we have Consort built from the abandoned remains of Gnome 3.x fallback mode. Let's also mention for the heck of it the number of forks of Nautilus since the neutered 3.7 version arrived. Nemo and now Athena. If all these forks aren't sending the Gnome developers a strong message that they're doing a terrible job listening to what users really want then I don't know what will. My guess is that eventually the only people using Gnome 3.x will be Gnome developers. Regular users will have moved on to one of the better alternatives that actually work and deliver what users want!! |
| DrGeoffrey Jan 18, 2013 7:25 PM EDT |
Isn't Cinnamon based on Gnome 3.x? Clement reports it's been favorably received. |
| tracyanne Jan 18, 2013 8:13 PM EDT |
Yes Cinnnamon is based on 3.x, which pretty much suggests that cmost has a good point. The underlying GNOME 3 libraries, it appears provide hooks to additional functionality, not available in 2.x. The problem with GNOME 3 is the execution of the UI, aka GNOME 3 Shell. |
| Jeff91 Jan 18, 2013 8:44 PM EDT |
I'm just confused why all these people forking the same code bases don't work together. This is what Github/SVN was intended for :) ~Jeff |
| Koriel Jan 19, 2013 2:11 AM EDT |
Im with Jeff on this one, I have seen a marked degradation in the quality of Linux desktops since Gnome3/Unity debacles and I pretty much put it down to too few developers and too many forks. They really need to concentrate on just one major fork my vote would go to Cinnamon which I like, but it currently has too many issues on my machines for me to be able to use it full time, I know this is a pipedream but I can always hope. Speaking of forks I wish someone would fork Pulseaudio and by that I mean stab it multiple times with a pitchfork until it dies a horrible death, I dont know how many years it has been on the go but I have still yet to encounter it ever working properly on any of my machines. |
| Fettoosh Jan 19, 2013 11:08 AM EDT |
Quoting:I have seen a marked degradation in the quality of Linux desktops since Gnome3/Unity debacles ... Come on now Koriel, KDE is a Linux Desktop too. By the way, when was the last time you checked KDE 4.x? Unless there is very a specific reason you don't like it or can't use it, may be it is time to give it another try. :-) |
| Koriel Jan 19, 2013 11:24 AM EDT |
Oh I like KDE 4 but its debacle was a long time ago and it has recovered to become a nice desktop just unfortunate that since im poor I cant afford a machine good enough to run it and yes I should of specifically excluded it from being covered by my previous statement regarding the state of the other desktops sorry about that. The last KDE4 based distro I tried was Mageia 2 and although very nice even with the eye candy turned off its performance on my old machines was not good enough for me to be able to live with probably due to my very old Nvidia cards just dragging windows was a bit jerky. It performs very well on my higher powered gaming machine but I keep that as a Windows only machine. Cinnamon performs very smoothly and is responsive on my older machines which impresses me no end Clem has done a good job there but other issues prevent me from using it as my regular desktop. These issues will be fixed over time as they are mostly related to the lack of Cinnamons maturity. Currently I use Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon loaded with XFCE as my main desktop for development its fast, efficient on my low end machines use very little resources allowing me to operate a vmware virtual machine as well as the regular desktop with no major slow down. |
| cmost Jan 19, 2013 2:39 PM EDT |
@ Koriel While KDE did go through a rough patch and its own user backlash when KDE 4 first debuted. I personally switched to Gnome until the dust settled. That being said, it's notable that the KDE 4 code base, or even the plasma-desktop was never forked. Much less forked a mind boggling three times as is the current state of Gnome 3.x. I think the KDE devs did a great job coming together to gather user feedback and work quickly to implement the changes that users demanded and have yielded the current KDE 4.9.x series which is critically acclaimed, rock solid, powerful and maintains the beloved Desktop paradigm. I'll admit, it's not a lightweight, but most people have the hardware to take advantage of its key features. While it's true that the defunct KDE 3.x code base was forked to become Trinity, that DE is nowhere near as widely adopted as the much younger MATE desktop, which forked from the very popular Gnome 2.x code base and is now available in Mint, Fedora, Gentoo, Sabayon, Arch and others. |
| AmyT Jan 19, 2013 4:19 PM EDT |
Re: "The problem with GNOME 3 is the execution of the UI, aka GNOME 3 Shell." Shouldn't that read: "One of the... " Whilst for moi, Gnome3 is improving in it's usability as the Gnome developers LISTEN to the community, it still remains a huge memory hog (and likewise Cinnamon); the latest Fedora release on this netbook is up from the Gnome2+Compiz RAM usage of ~250MB, to a humungus >600MB; yeah, and Nautilus is a pain for intuitiveness (read.. familiarity). I'd love to get to grips with which part of Gnome3 is so resource hungry, because if they manage to lean it down, it'd not only be faster and more efficient, there'd probably be less bugs. I guess the days of being forced to program within constrained memory size constraints are long over (and it's a pity), and this is the result- quantity over quality? BTW- keep on trying KDE for some reason, perhaps to keep it as an option, but there's always something wrong with the distro I test; the Mint Nadia64 failed to let me access the WiFi, or the Intel hardware accelerated graphics. The Gnome version gives me both... strange, no? |
| Fettoosh Jan 19, 2013 4:23 PM EDT |
Quoting:and yes I should of specifically excluded it from being covered by my previous statement No big deal, I kind of figured it was a slip but wanted to make sure. |
| tracyanne Jan 19, 2013 4:27 PM EDT |
@AmyT, obviously you didn't read Koriel's comment.Quoting:Cinnamon performs very smoothly and is responsive on my older machines which impresses me no end Clem has done a good job there but other issues prevent me from using it as my regular desktop. These issues will be fixed over time as they are mostly related to the lack of Cinnamons maturity. |
| Fettoosh Jan 19, 2013 4:40 PM EDT |
Quoting:but there's always something wrong with the distro I test; the Mint Nadia64 failed to let me access the WiFi, or the Intel hardware accelerated graphics. I run Kubuntu and I don't recall having any issues with Wifi for a long time now (Kubuntu 12.10 KDE 4.9.5). I also tried Suse 12.3 and Fedora 18 with KDE 4.10RC off a flash drive the other day and it worked flawlessly. It must be something with Mint, which really doesn't take KDE support that seriously. May be it is worth while checking them out just to be sure. |
| Koriel Jan 19, 2013 4:52 PM EDT |
As Fettoosh says I would probably try to stay away from Mint KDE, I also have had issues with it. The MATE & Cinnamon spins get all the love im afraid. If you want KDE then use something like Mageia, ROSA or Kubuntu as they are far superior. |
| cmost Jan 19, 2013 5:38 PM EDT |
@ Koriel "If you want KDE then use something like Mageia, ROSA or Kubuntu as they are far superior." ...or Sabayon, which IMHO is a stellar but little known rolling binary distro based on Gentoo. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!