GNOME emits 'head up the arse' desktop update

The GNOME Project has updated its desktop barely six months after the controversial introduction of version 3.0. GNOME 3.2 has a new online accounts manager for accessing web-based services and data storage and integrating this with the browser and other software. The new code also has a viewing application dubbed Sushi, which …

[sebacoustic]

head up arse

nice soundbite. However, Linus' desktop preferences aren't the measure of everybody's needs.

I dumped Natty Narwhal's "Unity" for Fedora and Gnome 3 and i'm happy with it. One simple thing is a god-sent: in addition to the usual "Alt+Tab - switches between applications" you get this: Alt+[key above Tab] - Switches between the windows of the same application. I find that much more useful than the huge list of mostly identical icons I get to tab through on Windows' "Alt+Tab - switch between windows"

BTW, for while I'm at work, is there a keystroke to do that in Windows: switch between apps, switch between current app's windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Optional

Control-Tab normally moves through the current app's windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus...

Yes, specialist IT guy in not dealing well with change, shocker!

In other news sky still blue, etc. etc. etc.

Personally I stuck with it, worked out how to undo some of the silly (in my opinion) changes they'd made, such as icons on the desktop, and I really like it now. There are still a few annoyances, but these are on a par with the previous version of Gnome. All in all, a pretty good update.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sticking with it...

That you had to work out how to undo some of the changes they made in order to be comfortable with it is a good indication that you were not happy with it, and that the developers don't want you to mess with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC 1507

I have to change every OS and every windowing environment that I use to be happy with it. For instance I can see why a default Windows installation doesn't show the "Computer" or "Network" on the desktop, it doesn't mean that I'm not happy with it, just that I need to configure it for my preference.

[Rob Dobs]

you don't "get" Linux

Agree with first point that having to make changes counts as a negative vote.

However your last statement is entirely untrue and against the nature of Linux in general.

The fact that he CAN make these changes says the the developers DO want you to be able to "mess with it". In fact I would say that is the very nature of Linux in general, that the user is free to make changes and tailor the environment to suit what they like (as opposed to want M$ or Appull say you must have). Don't like Unity? Use Gnome or KDE, Like Gnome but not some things about it? Simple, just change it.

[BitDr]

Yes you CAN make the changes... but..

When things are hidden, undocumented, not communicated, or deliberately made a pain in the arse to do, it presents as a barrier; an 'abandon all hope ye who enter here' sign.

Yes, the developers can claim that it is configurable, much in the same way that the plans for the bypass through Arthur Dent's house were claimed to be 'on display'. However, having to do the equivalent of taking a torch into the cellar to dig the information out of the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet that's been ferreted away in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door that says "beware of the leopard", is, IMHO, not the "nature" of Linux in general.

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl-tab

[Mr Spoon]

Not the same thing. If you launch 3 windows of an app such as Nautilus or Firefox, ctrl-tab doesn't cycle the windows.

[Mark #255]

switching windows in windows

It's application specific, unfortunately, but many apps implement Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to cycle backwards and forwards. Firefox and Komodo also use Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn (Ctrl+Tab takes you to your "previous" tab)

[Darryl]

[key above Tab]

The technical term for that key is the "Squiggly Key"

[Anonymous Coward]

[key above Tab]

Not on all keyboards.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Waste of time

For a start, I prefer Dolphin over Nautilus anyway; it annoys the heck out of me that I still can't find the way to make the sodding thing work the way that I want it, rather than the way they want me to use it.

Folders in teh "places" section vanished in to a "bookmarks" area that I don't seem to be able to easily edit.

Gnome has become so difficult to work with that last week, I actually gave Unity another try ... it lasted ten minutes.

[Tim Walker]

I'd rather they fixed the Compiz integration first...

Whilst I'm not totally averse to change on the desktop, the Unity desktop on our Ubuntu Natty-powered "nettop" PC has proven anything but positive.

Compiz in particular is a patience-tester of Job-ian proportions. If I do anything as "rash" as, say, expand a drop-down menu on a Web form, the desktop chokes and everything on-screen vanishes for 5-10 seconds until returning. And it KEEPS doing this, often as you're trying to close down the offending window. It's like playing "pin the tail on the donkey", except someone keeps moving the picture.

The last few months of updates, appear to have brought no resolution to the problem. I know the Ubuntu and GNOME development teams aren't the same, but I have reached the point where I'm seriously considering switching the nettop to another distro like Lubuntu, or repurposing the machine as an XBMC box for our telly.

Believe me, I'm grateful to get a whole OS for free - I just know Linux can do better than this... (Ubuntu pre-Unity, Arch, almost any other distro, really :-( )

[Anonymous Coward]

Compiz

Gnome shell doesn't run atop compiz, it uses mutter.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I thought I was badly off!

Having spent a couple of hours on Compiz eye-candy (11.04, Gnome 2 "Classic") this evening (and nothing that 10.04 wouldn't have coped with) I was pretty pleased with the visual result (as pleased as I could be without Emerald, which seems to have been taken from us unless we want to compile it ourselves) --- until I found that I could not move windows around the desktop without lagging, dragging and tearing. I was able to back it all out in a few moments (Thanks, Ubuntu Tweak!) but it was a disappointing waste of time.

[Russell Howe]

How about a link to the release notes?

http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.2/

[Angus Ireland]

Oh dear.

The screenshot titled "Viewer for Certificate and Key files" under "But Wait, There's More…" is showing DigiNotar... Surely a better choice could have been made?

[FreeTard]

+1 what Torvalds said

Being an upgrade monkey, I installed a F15 on my own laptop when it came out.

I ran with gnome3 for about two months and eventually it just drove me mental, and reverted to LXDE instead.

I ended up installing my purchased SLED11, but it is far, far slower (to boot) and uses more resources, but hey, its better than gnome3 so I'll live with it. The wife still have F14 on hers and is happy with it.

[Ami Ganguli]

> The GNOME Project has updated its desktop barely six months

> after the controversial introduction of version 3.0.

Not the best choice of lede, IMHO. Gnome has been on a six month time-based release cycle forever. There was never any doubt about when 3.2 would be release, nor is there much question about when 3.4 will come out. Or 3.6, or 3.8, etc.

[Miek]

"The GNOME 3.2 release builds on the foundations that we have laid with 3.0 and offers a much more complete experience"

so basically they laid some really dodgy foundations, and Gnome is still functionally incomplete.

[James 47]

Gnome3 sucks serious balls

Torvalds was right, I can rarely bring myself to boot into Ubuntu.anymore. Well that and the fact using Wifi causes a kernel panic.

[DrXym]

Ubuntu uses Unity

Unity is not what Linus was complaining about. You can install GNOME shell on Ubuntu (it's what I do) but the default is not that.

[Rob Dobs]

true but,

Since Unity is the default and he was already altering the install to use Gnome instead, and then went to xfce, I would say its safe to assume that Linus gave an implicit "No" vote for Unity as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that because of troubles with broadcom chip based wifi adapters?

[Justin Clements]

Time to Stop!

I'm a firm believer that some software has just reached it's pinnacle, and developers just need to stop. Whether it's big ticket applications like Photoshop or Office, or web apps (anyone remember Mambo?), there just comes a time when developers need to step away from the keyboard, and stop developing.

Strikes me that Linux has long since reached this point - look Linux is great - now stop fucking around with it. Please. It's brilliant, or it was until you screwed it for no good reason. Make it faster, more efficient, but stop adding features that are ill thought out, badly implemented, and that no one will ever use.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Time to stop!

I agree wholeheartedly. Ain't broke don't fix. It's like KDE. I stopped using it when 4.x came out. What was wrong with version 3.x? I now use XFCE and have not looked back.

[Big-nosed Pengie]

Indeed. One of the (many) things that drives people from Windwoes is changes that do nothing to improve the system and generally make it worse. Why the fuck should Linux do the same thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger they are...

Its ironic actually..

Its /the/ big problem for software companies. Some people want change or even thrive on it while others simply want to have an ongoing experience. However, in order to make money you need to do something since you can't sell the same product over and over again (sorta). You need to apply some changes and improvements. Stuff people would want to buy.

So here came the open source movement; doing things right. And in the beginning that was just what was happening. Several window and desktop managers which all had their own specific look and feel and maintained those while slowly (but steadily!) working towards a more mature interface.

The problem I see is that some projects became so big that they actually think to be calling the shots. While in fact they're not; their users are. That is; the users who are in it for the product experience and not because its "cool" to use that certain product.

Gnome suffered from this, KDE suffered from this and there are several other examples too. Windows? At least they try to remain backwards compatible. I can easily make my Win7 look like Win98 yet only with a 'double sized' menu. Still, still a small change considering the life span of 13 years.

More and more people complain about drastic change without any means to go back to what they want. Think FireFox, think Thunderbird's mail tabs, etc, etc. There is a growing part of the market which doesn't /want/ big changes in short periods of time.

And what does Microsoft do? They're about to enforce Metro onto their users, where the desktop users will most likely suffer dearly wrt the system being user friendly.

Why do I get the feeling that Apple is going to end up being the company with the last laugh here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Web2.0 ....

Ever since the Ximian "Let's make the file manager a browser and put EVERYTHING in it - it worked for Microsoft" days, Gnome has lost the thread of the story. Instead of focusing on the really good ideas: object based system using CORBA, small sharp modules that play well with each other, etc., they are now making big globs that don't play well, and making more crap "online". They are making my desktop look like my phone, ignoring the user pleas that keyboard/mouse/big screen(s) require a different user paradigm than touchscreen/no keyboard/small screen. They take working things like Totem's ATSC support, and summarily drop it in favor a a video daemon that only speaks DVB (let's ignore the third largest country in the world, shall we?) Rather than focusing on Parrot and Python for cross-platform support, they fawn all over CLR and C#, opening the system to risk of attack by Microsoft whenever it becomes convenient for Microsoft.

And Canonical isn't helping - all they want is a good way to "monitize the consumer into a revenue stream", and if making all my files live "in the cloud" and creating an app store does that, so be it.

[fussy_joe]

Cononical supoprt for GNOME 3 ?

"Other Linux builders were also less than impressed, but this software is being publicly supported by Canonical and Red Hat"

.....you sure ? I thought Canonical had moved away from Gnome to an inbuilt solution, ie Unity in the latest 11.04 release

For me, I moved away from Ubuntu and onto Fedora 15 because of Unity, and I think Gnome is much better,

[MrWibble]

Nope. Ubuntu uses Gnome with Unity over the top.

Gnome Shell is the travesty that most people are on about...

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved away from UBUNTU

Before Unity (unity just steels my resolve not to use UBUNTU) and moved to Fedora 13. Now with the Gnome silliness I'm sticking with F13 & F14 and looking for something with some measure of stability with evolutionary improvements.

[henrydddd]

I moved from 11.04 to 10.04 LTS.. I believe in my heart that Canonical is doing the best job it can with difficult situation of Gnome and Unity being their only logical choice.

[Anonymous Cowherder]

Just give me the bottom panel back! I can't work without it, ever since its introduction with Windows 95, the taskbar or bottom panel is how I navigate between my open applications.

Please, please let me have it back?

[keithpeter]

choices

Linux: choices, XFCE, OpenBox a la crunch bang, Gnome 2 with years of support with centos/scientific linux. Debian stable + dwm and thunar for me. Really good on a larger screen for the desktop. XFCE4 for the netbook with one panel at the bottom so it looks like a computer desktop to other people who use it now and again.

[karolbe]

Thank you!

Thanks Gnome team! Thanks to Gnome 3 release I discovered KDE and you know what? It is damn good! :)

[FredSmith]

Why why why?

"a viewing application dubbed Sushi, which previews the contents of the Nautilus file manager and can display previews of images, text and PDFs."

As though there are not about 10 million of these already for Linux/X11. So another re-invention of the wheel with another forgettable name.

[Wile E. Veteran]

I hate overyly-complex UI's

Maybe it's just my 46 years computer experience, but I've grown to absolutely hate UI's that want to anticipate my every move , make easy things complicated and complicated things nearly impossible. Minimal, "stay out of the way until I need it" UI's work best for me. Hence I like Xubuntu with its XFCE4 with its minimal screen real-estate Windows Task bar running along the top and its CDE (remember that?) hidden-until-you-put-the-mouse-pointer-at-the-bottom icon bar for my most-used applications.

Of course, I'm one of the two or three people outside of Bell Labs who actually LIKED the User Agent on the pre-GUI AT&T 3B1/7300 if that tells you anything. :-)

[Chika]

Potato

I had this discussion with a couple of colleagues recently. I have to put up with various Windows UIs at work with all their wizards and stuff, yet I used RISC OS for many years which, with only a few exceptions related to specific software installation and configuration, is completely free of this pre-emptive mallarkey. It basically meant that if I wanted something to happen, I had to make it happen myself rather than try to do something in the hope that the UI wouldn't try to second-guess me and possibly guess wrong, doubling my work.

The argument came down to this; while that might be OK for me, there are others out there that wouldn't survive without this second-guessing regime. Maybe that's one reason why so many folk use Windows rather than RISC OS (after all, with RISC OS, you had to *think* about what you wanted to do).

The same thing is true of Linux - and I should not need to remind folk out there that Linux is NOT Ubuntu - Unity aside, this whole mess is more about the doings of GNOME's developers rather than what Canonical are doing, whatever we might think of Unity. Linux is not RedHat either. They can support whatever they like but the ultimate decision is what the end user is going to want to use. It's for that reason that I once stated that Microsoft needed to take more notice of what its users wanted rather than try to push unwanted new features down the user's throats, and for that same reason, the various developers in the Linux arena need to be a little more attentive too.

After all, there are reasons why I still use KDE 3.5.10 rather than KDE 4, even on the latest version of openSUSE, just as there were reasons why so many people ignored Vista and kept on using XP. If GNOME can't or won't learn the lesson, then they are doomed to obscurity.

However, one other analogy that I could bring forward was the result of my discussion with my colleagues in that the reason why AOL became so popular back in the day was because it held the user's hands. It effectively represented a dumbing down of the whole experience, something which WIndows' wizards, Unity, GNOME 3 and so on could also be accused of. And just as with AOL, all it meant to me was another computer with a bunch of useless code that needed removing but to the ordinary person who probably thinks that the ECDL is the ultimate height of achievement, it's probably a godsend.

[Fenton]

Still looks pig ugly

I know Linux is all about function over form. But no matter the GUI it still looks pig ugly to me.

If Apple can design a decent looking UI ontop of unix why can't the linux community.

I like to get back to a nice looking desktop after being burried knee deep in unix terminal sessions

[Anomalous Cowturd]

@ Fenton

May I refer you to Cairo Dock.

All the Apple-esque shiny you'll ever need. ;o)

HTH.

[Antidisestablishmentarianist]

> why can't the linux community.

Community - there is you answer. Very similar to a committee. We all know anything designed by a committee is flawed (to put it nicely) or shit (to put it truthfully).

Sometimes just sometimes dictators do have their use. Heck didn't Greenpeace even admit that under democracy they'd never get through all the green measures needed to save the earth? Sometimes you just need a dictator. And Apple have/had one of those.

[eulampios]

compiz surpassed both apple's and windmond's eye-candiness once and for all

To me both Apple and MS UI don't look as good as Gnome2 or KDE, or even enlightenment. Plus how much control do you have over them?

Tried expose on the Win7 desktop -- so lame awkward and slow even with good hardware. Aero and Cocoa are no match to the beauty, sleekness and power of compiz.

[RISC OS]

Because...

They probably didn't use Adobe Creative suite to come up with the designs and mockup and so on...

They probably tried to us the Open Source shite that so many Linux bedroom "designers" (who only ever seem to make websites for their brothers best mate and their sisters hair dressing salon) think that GIMP and Inkscape can even be compared to Adobe's offerings.

You get what you pay for... if you use free crap you produce crap. Also Apple employs and listens too user interface designers... whereas Linux devs go to a designer after producing their crap and think something is still salvageable.. and then decide not to do what the designer suggests because there interface is so complex and the code created by so many people that it is impossible to actually make useable.

[fnj]

Bull

Bloated commercial money-grubbing software is the crap, not open source. Commercial is dying. Get over it. There is life after the dinosaur.

Just because Gnome shat a brick, does not mean open source is finished. KDE, Xfce, and others pick up where Gnome dropped the ball on their toe. Your view of linux as some kind of controlled monolith like Windows, OSX, and other commercial turds, couldn't be further from the mark.

[Steve Sutton]

If apple can design a decent UI, then why the hell do they continue to use their current crappy one?

[DrXym]

I'm growing to like it

I'm using GNOME shell (in Ubuntu 11.10 no less) and it's actually quite a pleasant experience. Everything is well thought out and relatively intuitive. It feels taskcentric and way windows are scaled and arranged in the launch view is very satisfying. It's also incredibly slick thanks to hardware acceleration & clutter / mutter. That's not to say it's without faults. My major gripes would be:

* Favourites / launcher are only visible from a a separate screen. There should be a way to see it on the main screen permanently for those who want to.

* The "corner activates stuff" paradigm used to see notifications and the launcher really needs to be improved for multi head desktops and VMs where jamming the mouse into the corner of the screen isn't always possible.

* Nautilus needs be in charge of the workspace so icons and folders can be plonked on it. This is configurable from gnome tweak and it's bizarre that it's not on by default.

* Nautilus needs a way to see the directory path which is easier to remember than Ctrl+L

* Virtually all of the buried settings which you can only see through gnome-tweak-tool need to be in the UI somewhere

So lots of room for improvement but my experience is generally positive.

I've also had plenty of time to play with Unity and it really is pretty sorry by comparison. In some ways it's a more traditional experience but it simply doesn't work on large screens. The global menu is bloody annoying, the hover scrollbars are bloody annoying, the Ubuntu store suggestions peppered through the app menus are bloody annoying. I think Unity is fine for a netbook but it's not addressing the needs of people with large screens. And like GNOME shell it needs to expose some settings so it can be configured.

[Anonymous Coward]

Xubuntu

XFCE.

There, I said it. Inevitable really.

Gnome 3 and Unity both completely disregarded what users actually wanted and set about dictating what users should have. Swayed by trendy hip touch screen mobile devices, they've done their upmost to drag the desktop in that direction.

In the interim, Microsoft & Apple continue to innovate by seperating the Desktop & Mobile OS, because they are aware these are two separate paradigms.

Software development rule one - don't piss off your user base.

It's the concept of familiarity - whether the current accepted desktop interaction is the best or not, it's what people are familiar with. The Dvorak keyboard layout is arguably a better solution, but everyone knows qwerty. Qwerty wins.

By dramatically changing the way the desktop works, Gnome & Canonical (unity) have effectively forced a 'Dvorak of the desktop' upon unwilling users, assuming their desktop reshuffle is actually any better of course, which arguably, it's not.

Those users voted with their feet (or fingers) and switched desktops.

Yet Gnome & Canonical continue forward, convinced they've got it right and the rest of us are wrong. So answer this then, if your direction is the right one, why are Microsoft and Apple not following a similar route? Simple. They know it leads to a dead end. But hey, Gnome, Canonical, this is you:

"La la la la la - I'm not listening, I have my head up my arse...."

[DrXym]

Contradictory statements

"Gnome 3 and Unity both completely disregarded what users actually wanted and set about dictating what users should have. Swayed by trendy hip touch screen mobile devices, they've done their upmost to drag the desktop in that direction."

As the saying goes, if Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted they'd have asked for a faster horse.

I'm sure xfce does appeal to people who want an old school desktop but developments on Windows, OS X, Android, iOS would suggest many people do want an attractive, minimalist, taskcentric, compositing UI. Given that GNOME 3 is only into its second iteration this day I think it's still doing a pretty good job of delivering that. It's certainly not flawless but I find it very usable although I had to tweak it a bit.

[Ben 42]

Henry Ford

Except I would argue that in your analogy, Henry Ford was working on iOS or Android - something new that performs a similar task to what came before. Whereas what Gnome is doing is building a car by putting a horse on a treadmill. It's awkward, forced, and doesn't make sense because it's mixing paradigms. Cramming a touch interface onto a desktop makes no more sense than a horse-powered car.

Although to be fair, that may apply more to Unity than Gnome, and I haven't spent enough time with either to say for sure. Mostly I just liked the analogy. ;-)

[This is my handle]

"All your online accounts are belong to OS"

Well, it sounds like English, but the words don't quite fit together to make like, you know, a sentence thingy.

[Anonymous Coward]

fyi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm

Read much IT (and specifically hacker) related tech news much?

I'm guessing not.

Either that or you missed the <joke> icon off your comment.

[Robert Carnegie]

Look up "all your base are belong to us" - written like that.

I think what is actually meant in this context is "It can use your online accounts."

[NumptyScrub]

it's an internet meme

"All your online accounts are belong to OS

Well, it sounds like English, but the words don't quite fit together to make like, you know, a sentence thingy."

No doubt I've been beaten by several posters, but it's based on the mistranslation of Zero Wing that did the rounds a while back:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

[Tristan Young]

Garden Gnome

I've been fairly <strike>unimpressed</strike> disappointed by the Gnome project. I began with Gnome, and found it fairly nice, but over the years, it really started pissing me off as the updates rolled out.

A few years back, I switched to KDE, and haven't looked back. Now KDE hasn't had the best track record either, but it definitely hasn't pissed me off nearly as much as Gnome.

The most recent Gnome is not going to grace my desktop, and here's why...

While Ubuntu and Kubuntu went from networking in v6 through v8 to notworking in subsequent versions (each release seemed to get worse than before, with more problems that I needed to figure out how to fix), Microsoft was busy working on their trashiest OS yet - Windows Vista, and subsequently on their greatest OS yet - Windows 7.

I finally had to give up on Linux because I was spending more time fixing stuff just so I could surf the net. The music software available was also far too limiting (and non-functional), and the disaster which is Pulseaudio meant I couldn't even produce music without hearing pops, clicks, and noise.

Now I'm with Windows 7, and it works great. It doesn't crash on me. Networking just works. I don't get pops and clicks while composing music. I don't have to try and fix anything, because everything just works.

I still keep Linux around on a junked laptop so I can keep up with the technology, but I have barely used it in the last 6 months. Linux distros and developers need to wake up and smell the coffee. Their user experience was starting to get really good, then plummeted. Rather than take their competitor's shortcomings and build and capitalize on their weakness, companies like Canonical, and coders turned the distro's into epic failures, and allowed Windows 7 to shine. Just because it (Linux) is free, doesn't mean it's good. It was really good, and then it started sucking in a big way.

Productivity means getting work done. Linux held me back. But I'm back on track now.

[FreeTard]

Choice mate

No one is forcing you to stay with a single UI. I have several installed on various laptops and switch them around every now and then. KDE, LXDE, XFCE and sometimes, but rarely Gnome again.

With windows, your stuck with no choice.

[BitDr]

Music players is not a good enough reason...

"I finally had to give up on Linux because I was spending more time fixing stuff just so I could surf the net. The music software available was also far too limiting (and non-functional), and the disaster which is Pulseaudio meant I couldn't even produce music without hearing pops, clicks, and noise."

Haven't heard any clicks or pops in a LOOOOOONG time, I surf the net daily and never worry about malware. Music software is not why I use a computer and I certainly will not buy Windows just for music.

My biggest complaint with Linux isn't with the O/S but with the idiots deciding that they can dictate what we use, hiding and changing functionality is not the Linux way, its the way of more proprietary systems... so when I see these patterns of behaviour I cringe.

Fork Gnome.

[DrXym]

Nonsense

"My biggest complaint with Linux isn't with the O/S but with the idiots deciding that they can dictate what we use, hiding and changing functionality is not the Linux way, its the way of more proprietary systems... so when I see these patterns of behaviour I cringe."

Proprietary systems can afford to fund extensive usability studies and discover (shock horror) that normal users don't like a billion switches and settings and would just prefer their bloody thing desktop to work properly with minimum configuration.

The problem for Linux usability is too often an afterthought or ignored entirely. GNOME is different and has put usability front and centre which would explain why it is the most popular desktop for Linux.

[squilookle]

@FreeTard The choice thing is a double edged sword. While it is sometimes nice to have the choice, and the ability to switch UI's if you don't like changes to the one you're using, do you *really* need to be able to do that? Most users don't.

My experience is similar to that of Tristan Young: I use Windows 7 and view it as a tool. It lets me do the tasks I need to on my computer, with no tinkering. I don't need to customise it or change the way it works, I just want to get stuff done. Some people do want to customise and that's fine, but I believe they are a minority.

I used Linux on the desktop for about 6 years, and I enjoyed it but constantly found myself trying different desktop environments and distributions, either because another one introduced a feature I liked the sound of, or because the one I was using changed for no apparent reason and annoyed me.

I am disappointed with the way desktop Linux is going, in general. I think change for the sake of it (GNOME, Ubuntu) over the last few years has damaged some experiences that were rapidly improving, and were catching up to those of Windows and OSX.

I still run a couple of web servers with Linux, and I'm happy with those.

[eulampios]

tough love

If windows is cool, why their best text editor notepad or anything else sucks so much? Is there a reasonable shell and a terminal program (not that stupid ugly-looking thing they still have)? Have Win7 become modular finally? What about those shoutings "don't click on the link, don't insert a DVD/usb, don't open this email message - they might be dangerous"?!!! Or you just love running a piece or two of extra bloatware, called an AV scan that constantly grind your hdd, occupy your RAM/CPU and might do some other stuff, you do not have an idea of?

[eulampios]

GNU/Linux (*BSD) + music=awesome

<<The music software available was also far too limiting (and non-functional), and the disaster which is Pulseaudio meant I couldn't even produce music without hearing pops, clicks, and noise.>>

It might have been just a driver issue. Now pulseaudio is very stable and good. My experience is that with Linux/FreeBSD I had much more choices than Windows people had. Consider cdrdao, shntools, sox etc. Yes they are available for Windblows OS as well, however, it is not usually accessible to those who are so afraid of the command line (yes the right way to communicate with the machine. )

Anyways, let me brag about my music collection I was able to build thanks to GNU and Linux. Turned ape into flac all over. Populated all cuesheets (with sed, awk, bash and cuetols). Enjoying now Bach (the papa and sons), Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and other great stuff playing in clementine. Good 'ol xmms, audacious, even mplayer are also very good. Maybe it is just me with classical music, some kind of rock rocks and pop pops up on Windows only?

[Matthew 25]

"It might have been just a driver issue. "

I think this is exactly the point he was making. He doesn't have to mess about with drivers - it just works.

[eulampios]

That is a pretty rare issue nowadays. Last time I had it with... FreeBSD-7 3-4 years ago.

[Chemist]

"I am disappointed with the way desktop Linux is going"

I use OpenSuse 11.4 on 6 machines with KDE and it all just works

Don't know what the rest of you all are doing.

[Chika]

Celery

Before anyone says it, yes, Linux is not openSUSE either. ^_^

[eulampios]

sorry for it

What an unfortunate and rare experience! I am sorry for you, sir, as well as are a few former Windows users being quite happy with GNU/Linux (Ubuntu, so far Unity-free) after I helped them install it.

Yes, I remember I too sometimes get disappointed with certain upgrades. Freshly-baked cutting-edge Fedora and Ubuntu are not supposed to be absolutely problems-free. LTS Ubuntu or Debian (stable) are stable as rock though. With free and open software everyone has much more choices than with the locking-in alternatives.

Tried Win7 recently, it's not as good as my Gnome2 though, nor KDE, nor XFCE, nor Enlightenment, nor Fluxbox (especially, on this very thin hardware, obsolete according to M$). No bash nor any other reasonable shell, no control, no freedom, very little common sense.

Gnome2 is/was almost perfect. Why changing it? Linus is right, I hope gnome developers will learn a lesson here. And all of us still have plenty of choices, this is (partly) why many of us left the Windows camp in the first place.

[goats in pajamas]

Needless.

That's the problem with the Gnome Devs - needless, pointless change, for the worse, followed by weeks of sneering at anyone who questions their work.

Anyway.

I care not.

Fusion Linux 14.1

Fedora 14 respin - just lovely.

Gnome 2.3.

Everything works straight out of the box.

For me, Ubuntu is finished, as is any other distro that uses Gnome 3.

[Chika]

Rhubarb

Ubuntu finished because of GNOME 3? I doubt it. I might not be Umbongo's biggest fan but there's more to a Linux distro than one dodgy UI.

[theDragon]

Polish a turd and it still is a turd

Title says it all

[Will Godfrey]

Another OpenBox-er here.

[Anonymous Coward]

A pox on most of your houses

I used to love messing with computers. I've been a computer geekette all my adult life (I'm in my 50's) until this year. This was the year that I first experienced Android (on a 7in tablet. In a word - dreadful), and the year that Gnome decided to change direction radically when they were soo near perfection with Gnome 2 - and this following the huge mistakes that KDE made when they decided to go for a major change of direction.

I've quite simply lost interest, I'm fed up of computing devices that fight me and make things unecessarily awkward. Just about every computing device I have to come into contact with these days aside from my Xubuntu 10.4 desktop on this PC are awkward, 'twitchy' (prone to do weird things because of numerous secret ways to prod the UI supposedly to be helpful but which actually make using them an excercise in frustration), and frankly, awful. That includes Windows on the PCs at work, as well as Android 2.3 on my tablet (- an absolutely absymal horror of a UI - only surpassed in horror by the web browsers on Android and the Android app store).

Gaaah. Goodbye messing with PC's for fun. . A pox on Windows, Android, Apple, Unity, Gnome 3 and KDE. I'm taking up dressmaking instead

[Peter Besenbruch]

I Know what you Mean

"I used to love messing with computers. I've been a computer geekette all my adult life (I'm in my 50's) until this year. ... the year that Gnome decided to change direction radically when they were soo near perfection with Gnome 2 - and this following the huge mistakes that KDE made when they decided to go for a major change of direction."

As I turned 50, I changed the /etc/apt/sources.list to stop pointing at "testing," and to point instead to the name of the testing branch (Etch). That way I got to experience some of the legendary Debian stability.

When KDE launched version 4, I was somewhat protected by Debian's release cycles. It gave me plenty of time to evaluate KDE 4 as it developed, and decide that while I liked the direction KDE was heading, I wanted something lighter weight.

I also run LTS versions of Mint and Ubuntu Not up to Debian's stability standards, but if you want a quick install, they work fine.

I just put Debian on a netbook. I used LXDE and controlled the wireless with Network-Manager. With just Lxterminal open, I use 75 meg. That's what Linux is about. I get to choose how to run my machines, and then stop worrying.

The Gnome leadership has always been somewhat arrogant, but I suspect version 3 will be OK in another year or so.

[eulampios]

great post

Great post and a good thought!

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to mention

The sexist paraphrased( "A computer desktop is not a place for a woman") drivel!

..Yes, the article does say 2011, my screen hasn't become a doctor-whoesque portal to the past after all.

[Chika]

Cumquat

Heh! My first boss was a woman and it was me that taught her to use a mouse!

I used an Acorn A3000 and Lemmings to do it...

Ah, happy days!

[Anonymous Coward]

With a Linux community Like this

1. Quick to respond with anger or with a self assigned superiority complex, or down rate placid points of view that don't agree with their own.

2. Childish enough to criticise Microsoft Windows even though its not even mentioned in the article with the tiring $ symbol, rather than respect peoples right to choose.

3. Reciting experiences of Windows performance and stability issues from what seems like a century ago.

4. What seems like absolute user revolt against the idea of a successful Linux distribution, to feed into that superiority complex.

Is it any wonder there are problems with GNOME and Unity. Its time the Linux user base pulled their head out of their own arse and contribute constructively, positively, and about time they showed some respect to others and their choices, and grew up a little with the Microsoft hate speech.

And yes I have experience and use Linux and Windows 7 on different machines with different goals, I am fortunate enough to have a balanced opinion and a bit of respect for users of each and the reasons they choose to do so.

[Chika]

Broccoli

"1. Quick to respond with anger or with a self assigned superiority complex, or down rate placid points of view that don't agree with their own."

Fanbois will be fanbois

"2. Childish enough to criticise Microsoft Windows even though its not even mentioned in the article with the tiring $ symbol, rather than respect peoples right to choose."

Oh come on! Consider that the whole "Micro$oft Window$" thing has been around for decades now (I recall first seeing this on Usenet in the 1990s) and is done, amongst other reasons, to annoy Microsoft fanbois and fangrrls. The secret is not to rise to it!

"3. Reciting experiences of Windows performance and stability issues from what seems like a century ago."

You'd be safer not going there. While Windows is undoubtedly more stable these days than back when W3.1 was doing the rounds, it still has its flaws. Don't criticise until you see the actual flaw (or what I normally say - leave the error message on the screen until I get there!)

"4. What seems like absolute user revolt against the idea of a successful Linux distribution, to feed into that superiority complex."

Actually this has more to do with a preconception that some folk have which is why I often state that Linux is NOT <distro>.

"Is it any wonder there are problems with GNOME and Unity. Its time the Linux user base pulled their head out of their own arse and contribute constructively, positively, and about time they showed some respect to others and their choices, and grew up a little with the Microsoft hate speech."

They do. Don't judge all users by what you see here - consider that Linux is the sum of its user base. Where do you think the code comes from?

"And yes I have experience and use Linux and Windows 7 on different machines with different goals, I am fortunate enough to have a balanced opinion and a bit of respect for users of each and the reasons they choose to do so."

I'm glad to hear it. Now all you need is a sense of humour to go with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Broccoli's nice, especially with carrots and roast beef.

[Neil Barnes]

There's something inherent in Linux, I think...

That makes them get somewhere near and then make it all go tits up.

Aaargh. I was going to post some long, erudite, and witty post pointing out some of the more egregious idiocies that have been perpetrated on top of Linux over the years, but to be honest, you probably know them already. Many of them have been mentioned here earlier.

I'll merely state that I'm happy with Mint 10 - after giving up in disgust with Ubuntu after five or six years when they inserted Unity.

I still program in C, too.

Aaargh.

[Captain Thyratron]

Minty fresh?

I'm glad Mint exists. I don't use it myself, but it is morally incumbent upon me to offer it as a suggestion every time I hear some guy musing on inflicting the horror of Ubuntu on his mother. It is pretty much the reliable, resource-friendly, normal-people-accessible Linux that Ubuntu is supposed to be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares?

All I need from my desktop is a reasonably efficient way to present xterms, and a browser ... I am sure Gnome has made some really important advances in ... err, something. Maybe there are drag and drop facilities or some such .. who knows/cares ... I dont use them.

So long as I can display a few xterms and pop a browser and Eclipse up on the screen, I'm happy.

[Captain Thyratron]

Madness is in!

The trouble with all these full-fat environments used to be that they treated you like a dumbass, came with zillions of superfluous programs that shoddily imitated the functions of basic, better-debugged system utilities, and did irresponsable things to memory usage. Now, additionally, they assume you're insane, and that you have a terrible fear of anything that doesn't look like a tablet interface with flame decals and spinning rims.

I work at a help desk in a facility that was blighted with Fedora 15 recently, and we've been having all manner of bizarre problems with (among other things) GNOME 3. Freezing on logout. Users getting logged out unexpectedly. Applications ignoring previously working settings due to unresolved GNOME 3 bugs. X crashing mysteriously. Oh, and users not being able to find where the hell anything is. Every GNOME-bewildered user who has taken my advice ("try logging in under XFCE instead, or maybe Fluxbox, or anything else in that menu that isn't GNOME or KDE") has thanked me as though I'd rescued them from the claws of Satan.

[Chika]

Melons

I might note here that I moved a recent project off Fedora and onto openSUSE for this sort of reason. The way I saw it was that Fedora is a cutting edge distro in that not everything it did was necessarily ready for a production machine but it had the latest of everything.

While openSUSE has a similar environment if you want it, the main distro tends to be more tried and trusted as far as what is in it goes, so the project wasn't as open to possible bugs that could affect it. Horses for course, I guess.

Ubuntu is (supposedly) similar in approach (other than being aimed more at the GNOME environment and being Debian based amongst other things) which, I suppose, is why so many ex-Windows users tend to favour it.

[This is my handle]

@AC 14:35 (several): Thanks!

I thought there may have been a joke I was missing; thanks for clearing things up!

(He said, sheepishly....).

Mine's the one w/ the DVD of old SNL bits and Miss Wotyjla (Gilda Radner, RIP) saying "Never Mind".

[Richard Lloyd]

Don't use Fedora at work...

Captain Thyratron, I suspect whoever decided to install Fedora 15 on your work desktop is a pretty clueless admin. Not only is Fedora considered relatively bleeding edge, F15 in particular sucked spherical objects very hard indeed, which a few hours of testing would have shown. It's got a Frankenstein mix of systemd and Sys V init, GNOME 3 that works dismally on many ATI cards (It was only until Ubuntu 11.10 beta that I finally found a GNOME 3 distro that actually works with my ATI card) and even me, as a regular Fedora upgrader, decided to skip F15 due to its quite astonishing suckiness (they may have fixed issues with updates, but since F14 is still getting updates, I stayed with something that worked from day one).

What your IT people should have done was look at CentOS 6 - a free clone of RHEL 6 with 7 years of updates (F15 stops updates after about 14 months of life), GNOME 2 and 100% Sys V init. A much more suitable choice for a corporate Linux desktop than F15, IMHO.

[Zmodem]

gnome and kde can be as complete as they want, but linux will always be crap and not used much as a home desktop OS, until the whole desktop is hardware rendered through auto kernel code like windows, and every app not needed its own code to be hardware accelerated

[Chika]

o rly?

And there's me thinking "Linux won't be much of a home OS until manufacturers stop bundling their systems with Windows" or somesuch. I doubt very much that any ordinary home user would even have the first clue about how the system delivers its code.

[Julian Bradfield]

Nobody else using fvwm2, then?

[Zmodem]

anyone want to see openGL fullscreen screensavers slowing down with quad SLi

[D. M]

Another mint user

Try Mint. It works and doesn't take crap.

I think it is much to do with how Mint was financed. Mint is community based. Its users (like me) contribute to the project cost. If the developers do any crap to piss the users, they are in crap then.

[Zmodem]

no desktop on linux is hardware rendered, whether you install nvida or amd/ati drivers, each and every application has to call the drivers themselves, which pro programmers cant be assed todo if they want to port a powerful commercial application for vectors or 3d etc, or games pitsode pf od spftware

without desktop being hardware rendered, you cannot use all display sizes of your monitor either

[FuzzyTheBear]

aie carramba !

Just tried 3.2 on Sabayon 64 amd . it s**** just as bad as 3.0.

Where is GNOME 1.4 ! .. That was WAY better than this .

Time for a fork or a serious rollback in time.

Lost interrest years ago and i wont return .. xfce or kde are the better options.

[json]

Having migrated my dependable laptop of 4 years to Fedora 15 fairly recently there's a couple of things that irritates me a) Hibernate with many apps open usually (for me) results in a crash on waking, requiring fsck.. old XP doesnt have a problem with this at all b) when opening directories and files using the navigator, doing a right click has the copy but not the paste (but it's in one of the menus). c) the Gnome 3.0 is nice but fails reliably when an extended monitor is attached.