who cares?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Alcibiades Jun 08, 2013 8:33 AM EDT |
Really my reaction is who cares? They have made themselves irrelevant. Its a pity, but Mate and Cinnamon have taken over. Not to mention xfce. The lesson of xfree86 has been learned one more time. If you don't own the code, you can't dictate to the users. Gnome was great in its day until some ideologues got control of it and closed the doors to the echo chamber. A pity, but life goes on without them. |
| thenixedreport Jun 08, 2013 9:11 AM EDT |
Actually, I'm running Gnome Shell on two of my systems and haven't had any problems. Granted, it's the version included in Debian Wheezy, but I was able to adjust to it. Then again, I'm interface-agnostic for the most part. Give me enough time and the appropriate resources, and I'll figure out how to operate it. :) |
| mrider Jun 08, 2013 11:58 AM EDT |
The problem with Gnome's insistence on going their own way is that it also bleeds into other systems. E.G. Linux Questions.org |
| seatex Jun 08, 2013 12:03 PM EDT |
I've been running Xubuntu 13.04 and Mint 15 with Mate on my laptop, and Mint 15 with Cinnamon on my desktop. I still use use LXDE for old P4s with limited RAM. I think all of these DEs are great (XFCE, Mate, Cinnamon & LXDE). But even if they didn't exist, I would run KDE before I would run Gnome 3 or disUnity. |
| Fettoosh Jun 08, 2013 12:43 PM EDT |
I run KDE 4.x for what it is and what it offers no matter what any other DE does. But Gnome is making good progress on what I said a long time ago that eventually gnome will restore the classical Gnome interface just like KDE has it in Plasma. Gnome developers are heavily influenced by Apple's interface and wanted to quickly jump on the touch screen interface thinking they would eventually gain few steps ahead of KDE. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 08, 2013 1:43 PM EDT |
If you look at it, the "conservative" interfaces out there at this particular moment are Apple's OS X and KDE. GNOME, Unity and Windows 8 are aiming to bring a touch/mobile paradigm to the desktop (which is usually neither touch-capable nor mobile). I expect Apple to iOS-ify their OS X product at any moment, so that will leave KDE, Cinnamon, Xfce, etc. as "traditional" desktop-focused OSes. While I like GNOME 3, I'm not using it right now due to Linux/Xorg/Radeon/Catalyst not yet liking my video hardware (though Catalyst 13.6 is slated to add my video chip). So it's an increasingly capable Xfce for me until that happens. |
| djohnston Jun 08, 2013 5:31 PM EDT |
Quoting:Really my reaction is who cares? They have made themselves irrelevant. As far as the Gnome DE goes, maybe. However, as I understand it, the Gnome devs still work on the GTK libs and apps. Regardless of whether you use KDE, XFCE, Openbox or JWM, there will be some glibs that make up part of the core of the system services you are running. If you use a systemd distro, then consolekit goes away. If you're using a sysvinit distro, it's still there on bootup. Besides the glibs, I'm also thinking about DBUS. Some of the /etc/xdg/autostart/.desktop files still default to the "OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;" line. Kinda like everyone uses only Gnome or Unity. |
| caitlyn Jun 09, 2013 10:04 PM EDT |
GNOME is still popular and is still the default desktop in a lot of distros, so lots of people care. A lot of us said "who cares?" early in the KDE 4.x development process and things turned out well in the end. I see the same thing happening with GNOME, albeit more slowly. I've tried some recent GNOME builds, it's not my favorite DE (never has been), but it really is usable and not awful at this point. |
| Alcibiades Jun 10, 2013 5:46 AM EDT |
I've not tried the latest versions. I was upgrading a Debian installation for someone, and when it installed the then version of Gnome 3 I realised there was no way it could be sold. They had worked for years with a plain slate coloured desktop with all their frequently used folders on it. Then one task bar at the bottom with the apps to the left, the virtual desktop manager to the right, and in between the slot that shows the running apps. And it worked very well, this was a non-technical user who had got used to moving between desktops for different apps so as not to have windows obscuring windows, could find all the documents instantly, could start up all the apps needed with one click. All of a sudden one was going to confront them with this weird big tile layout that had nothing to do with the way they were used to working? After a bit of googling they ended up with xfce and still using nautilus to manage the desktop. Its not quite identical to the old Gnome but its close enough to allow the same workflows. The question is why the Gnome devs think they know better than my user how they should manage their work? There is no rational reason at all. Its pure blinkered arrogance. I'll take them (and the others who are similarly placed) to Mate fairly soon. This is actually important to people. Its not fashion, this is people who are working for a living, and you cannot just tell them that you are changing everything because you know better. Its the same kind of madness that has led to Win 8, and that is going to have to change as well. Startisback and similar were the only result of trying to abolish the desktop there. Personally I use fluxbox, but that's another story. This is about respecting the non-technical end user. Respect, that's what its about. |
| gary_newell Jun 10, 2013 8:11 AM EDT |
I think Gnome is actually pretty decent. I have always preferred Gnome to KDE. |
| DrGeoffrey Jun 10, 2013 9:03 AM EDT |
And it is that ability to satisfy the needs of disparate users that makes Linux so great. What choice do Windows-only users have when confronted with 8? 7? What about DRM? |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 10, 2013 7:20 PM EDT |
Windows 7 is the XP of the 2010s -- it'll be around for a long, long time for people who want to avoid Metro. |
| BernardSwiss Jun 10, 2013 8:02 PM EDT |
Quoting: Windows 7 is the XP of the 2010s -- it'll be around for a long, long time for people who want to avoid Metro. Yes -- Windows 7 was probably the first Windows version of Windows (with the arguable exception of Windows 2000?) that worked pretty much as advertised. I can understand people peing happy with it, and being reluctant to switch from it to Linux (or OSX). I'm not entirely certain I would have buckled down to making the switch if my option was upgrading to Win 7, rather than Win Me or Win XP (Of course, migrating to Linux was also also much easier, by then). Mind you, if one is already comfortable with Linux, switching in the other direction (Linux to Windows) is also unattractive. For example: Just this very weekend I was struggling with a friend's computer, trying to figure out some way to create a proper Windows 7 system (re)install iso on a USB stick -- without having to actually buy and download an entirely new copy from Microsoft (*). What was absolutely clear was that the difficulty in putting such an installation iso onto a (re)install USB instead of onto a (re)install DVD was in fact a purely arbitrary restriction deliberately coded into Windows by Microsoft. (*) I think it's possible, but I'm not sure yet. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 10, 2013 8:12 PM EDT |
Windows 7 ISO are out in the wild. Not so much with Windows 8. I found some Win 7 links here: http://forums.cnet.com/7726-19411_102-3320466.html |
| jdixon Jun 10, 2013 8:56 PM EDT |
> Windows 7 ISO are out in the wild. Not so much with Windows 8. Windows 7 iso's used to be freely downloadable. I don't know if the still are or not. Hmm. Looks like they still are. See http://www.w7forums.com/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-dow... Get them while they're still available. I wouldn't expect it to be much longer. Once you have a Windows 7 iso, you should be able to use Yumi (http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/) to make a bootable USB Windows 7 installation drive. There are undoubtedly other methods. |
| BernardSwiss Jun 10, 2013 9:37 PM EDT |
Thanks, guys -- that saves me a fair bit of time. (Of course, these things -- somehow -- always take longer when you've got an impatient friend or relative hanging about, hoping you can finish the job in a reasonable time-frame.) |
| BernardSwiss Jun 10, 2013 10:57 PM EDT |
Addendum: those Digital River links look familiar -- I've seen reference to Digital River before. I would probably have eventually found them (I already remembered, not the name, but where I'd come across them once before (in an article I actually bookmarked, about how to do a "de-crap-ified" Windows re-install) and I would have checked that eventually, if my search-engine-foo failed me. But I'm quite happy to have skipped all that. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I've been looking for. Maybe better, actually -- I was assuming I'd have to somehow generate a brand/model-specific ISO from the installed system. Aside: Of course, this is all "trade secret" and "techie knowledge" not readily apparent to "typical", ordinary Windows users -- and should such a user even think of using a USB stick instead of DVD, they get told by the Windows backup/restore program, that a USB stick is "not a valid destination" and the button to proceed is even grey-ed out and inaccessible (and further more, although USB is an option for restore/repair disks and back-up files, the Windows help system explicitly points out that USB is not an option for system disks). But funnily enough, if a use should decides that there ought to be a way, if only one can find it out, it is pretty easy to find one particular "work-around" -- that one can put a system install on a USB stick, if the user just downloads (ie.purchases) a new Windows 7 OS as an ISO image from Microsoft, and then downloads and uses Microsoft's generously provided "free" tool for placing that ISO on a USB stick (4 GB or larger), instead of burning it to a DVD. - - - Every time I start to weaken, and think I might be being harder on Windows or Microsoft than they deserve, Microsoft finds some way to disabuse me of such foolishness. |
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