10 ms·

I find it pretty disappointing that these type of articles and the resulting comments like yours often can't seem to praise something like IceWM or AwesomeWM wi

by zxzax 5y ago

I find it pretty disappointing that these type of articles and the resulting comments like yours often can't seem to praise something like IceWM or AwesomeWM without also bashing GNOME or XFCE or something else because of "bloat." Who cares? Do you even care? I don't think you do, you'll just delete that desktop and move on and use whatever you want, and that's the whole point. Also, your characterization of GNOME's rationale is totally wrong. The goal was never to make a desktop with no features, it was more to make a desktop that is streamlined towards certain functionality. If that's not for you, then use a desktop that's more streamlined towards what you want. There's plenty to choose from. What is the real problem? Edit: I also want to address another common misconception that I see -- the GNOME Foundation does not direct development in a top down fashion and does not impose any rationale on the project. If some feature was removed, it was probably because an individual volunteer working on it decided that it wasn't worth spending time on that anymore, possibly because the need was better filled by a different project.

imwillofficial 5y ago
> “Who cares? Do you even care? I don't think you do“ > “ The goal was never to make a desktop with no features” Wow, your first paragraph you accuse people of lying at worst, or capriciously taking a position that doesn’t matter to them at best. It gets better in paragraph number two where you misquote GP and go boxing with that strawman. So to address your first paragraph, I’d say people here care a lot, and the bashing they do is not out of a place of tribalism, but out of a place of constructive criticism. Most of us here would LOVE to see improvement in $ArchEnemySoftware, and the failures strike deep because this stuff means so much to us. A mixture of disappointment with the status quo, and/or poor judgement calls with design or execution, rather than knocking a bit of tech that doesn’t appeal to us. As for the second paragraph, GP didn’t say “no features” in reference to GNOME, but decried the basic features that were removed, thereby rendering the software less useful to them. I’d take a brighter outlook on discussions like these, if the points land on the right ears, perhaps positive change might happen in GNOME. We can hope anyway.
- zxzax 5y ago
  I'm not accusing anyone of that and I'm not misquoting, please stop with this hostility. In my experience, people are happy to switch when it suits them. By "no features" I was referring to those basic features. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I also didn't see any constructive criticism, if you have any specific suggestions for positive change you'd like to make, then please make them. I'm all ears. But for the record, if you'd like to get involved in development, places like HN and reddit are generally not a good place to do it. The people who are most likely to listen to requests don't visit here.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    So let me get this straight. According to you, I should not criticize software that does not meet my needs lest it be interpreted as bashing and ruin the party for those who do use the software in question? That’s my take, please correct me if I’m not understanding your point properly. Also, no hostility here. I find these discussions illuminating. As for Reddit and HN, these places are excellent places for such commentary. Often times the maintainers of different packages heed complaints leveled here and change their ways. That’s a win for everyone if the change is a positive one.
    - zxzax 5y ago
      >According to you, I should not criticize software that does not meet my needs I have not said that, I just asked you for your specific criticisms.
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        I don’t know what GP deemed as basic functionality that was removed from GNOME. I use MacOS on the desktop.
        zxzax 5y ago
        Well there you go, you switched to a Mac :)
prvc 5y ago
>Do you even care? I don't think you do, you'll just delete that desktop and move on and use whatever you want, and that's the whole point. For the record: I care.
- zxzax 5y ago
  Can you elaborate? Is there something particular that you need that doesn't work on an RPi? If it turns out to be a small fix, then ultimately you may end up caring a lot less than you think.
  - prvc 5y ago
    Also, telling an individual user to "just use another DE" does not solve the problem, whose effects are widespread, on a whole ecosystem of software, its users, and developers.
    - zxzax 5y ago
      Could you please explain specifically what one or more of these effects is? I may be able to offer suggestions on how to mitigate it. When I was talking about using something else I was specifically referring to the article, which is talking about using a different window manager, and makes a good case for switching, and may even be able to help you deal with some of those effects. I assume you agree with the article, if not then I don't understand because it seems odd to me to single out this one passing mention in a paragraph that otherwise goes against what was just said, so please elaborate if you can.
      - daptaq 5y ago
        I'm not sure what the other user was thinking about, but I think that GNOME's push towards client-side window decoration is annoying and imposing. Depending on your WM, some applications become "useless", they waste space on small screens and just reinforce a sense of fragmentation. I get that it looks better on GNOME, and I appriciate it when using GNOME, but as there seems to be no system to remove the CSD on traditional systems, I still think it is an overall bad move.
lobstrosity420 5y ago
The people that characterize GNOME this way are desperate to identify themselves with a certain sub group of Linux users that prides themselves in doing things the hardest possible way (such as recompiling your terminal every time you want to change the font size) because it makes them feel 1337. Don't sweat it too much, it's just a little bit of garden variety internet tribalism.
- anthk 5y ago
  Not leet. Gnome is unusable in any machine older than 2015. Also, CWM flies on my 2007 netbook.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    I completely disagree, I'm using GNOME on a laptop from 2008 now. It's working fine for me. I did tweak it a little bit however.
jrm4 5y ago
Nope. I will continue to bash GNOME because it's something like "the opposing political party." I want Free Software, and by extension, Linux, to gain ground on desktops, and I genuinely believe that GNOME's "philosophy" is not a good one and is detrimental to this cause. Roughly, I'd characterize it like the following: I believe that the best way for Linux to gain ground is to be a serious, perhaps even a little boring, but definitely "grown-up" desktop. Simplicity is very important, but tt should lean toward configurability and techniness. What it should NOT do is what GNOME is trying to do, which is trying to streamline and appeal to everyone. This approach is like trying to beat Apple at their own game, which is dumb -- given that beating Microsoft at their own game is well within our reach. Heck, look at Windows 11, we're like a third of the way there already.
- zxzax 5y ago
  I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying or what the point of your bashing is. GNOME and KDE and XFCE and whatnot are not political parties and are not opposed to each other. They're not really even close to being that, they're open source projects that collaborate on a sizable amount of things. If you believe there is a better way to do something then just contribute to another desktop. The existence of GNOME doesn't prevent you from doing that and isn't detrimental to it, especially when you consider that the cost of switching to another open source desktop is a big fat $0. Please don't unnecessarily politicize things, one of the benefits here is that you explicitly don't have to do that. To put it another way: maybe some specific mode of "Linux gaining ground on desktops" with "configurability and techniness" is your goal, but people working on any given desktop (including GNOME) may not share that goal in the same way you do, and it doesn't make any sense to expect them to.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    > I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying or what the point of your bashing is. GNOME and KDE and XFCE and whatnot are not political parties and are not opposed to each other. They surely where born that way, GNOME only exists due to the original Qt license. Then Gtk+ was always the go to framework for C devs, while KDE was embraced by C++ community on GNU/Linux. Murray did a very good job for the C++ refugees on GNOME/Gtk, but that has always been a minority versus being on KDE land.
jejones3141 5y ago
All I can say is that GNOME 3 seems to take Havoc Pennington's famous essay about as far as it can go, considering configurability a bug. I don't know exactly when it started, but it definitely came to my attention bigtime with the infamous gnome-screensaver. Useful links: 1. https://ometer.com/preferences.html https://ometer.com/preferences.html, the subset of Mr. P's original essay that the original contains a link to. 2. https://www.derstandard.at/story/1313024283546/gnome-designer-jon-mccann-about-the-future-of-gnome3 https://www.derstandard.at/story/1313024283546/gnome-designe..., an interview with Jon McCann.
- zxzax 5y ago
  Yes, I would agree that a lot of GNOME developers still view that as a design goal. But not all do, and even so, having less configurability doesn't mean less features. If you ask me, practically speaking, what it has meant is that there is a larger collection of smaller apps to choose from. So if the app you want lacks a configuration option, you might be better served by trying to find a different app that just works the way you want the first time.

by zxzax 5y ago

imwillofficial 5y ago

> “Who cares? Do you even care? I don't think you do“ > “ The goal was never to make a desktop with no features” Wow, your first paragraph you accuse people of lying at worst, or capriciously taking a position that doesn’t matter to them at best. It gets better in paragraph number two where you misquote GP and go boxing with that strawman. So to address your first paragraph, I’d say people here care a lot, and the bashing they do is not out of a place of tribalism, but out of a place of constructive criticism. Most of us here would LOVE to see improvement in $ArchEnemySoftware, and the failures strike deep because this stuff means so much to us. A mixture of disappointment with the status quo, and/or poor judgement calls with design or execution, rather than knocking a bit of tech that doesn’t appeal to us. As for the second paragraph, GP didn’t say “no features” in reference to GNOME, but decried the basic features that were removed, thereby rendering the software less useful to them. I’d take a brighter outlook on discussions like these, if the points land on the right ears, perhaps positive change might happen in GNOME. We can hope anyway.

zxzax 5y ago
I'm not accusing anyone of that and I'm not misquoting, please stop with this hostility. In my experience, people are happy to switch when it suits them. By "no features" I was referring to those basic features. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I also didn't see any constructive criticism, if you have any specific suggestions for positive change you'd like to make, then please make them. I'm all ears. But for the record, if you'd like to get involved in development, places like HN and reddit are generally not a good place to do it. The people who are most likely to listen to requests don't visit here.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  So let me get this straight. According to you, I should not criticize software that does not meet my needs lest it be interpreted as bashing and ruin the party for those who do use the software in question? That’s my take, please correct me if I’m not understanding your point properly. Also, no hostility here. I find these discussions illuminating. As for Reddit and HN, these places are excellent places for such commentary. Often times the maintainers of different packages heed complaints leveled here and change their ways. That’s a win for everyone if the change is a positive one.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    >According to you, I should not criticize software that does not meet my needs I have not said that, I just asked you for your specific criticisms.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      I don’t know what GP deemed as basic functionality that was removed from GNOME. I use MacOS on the desktop.
      - zxzax 5y ago
        Well there you go, you switched to a Mac :)

prvc 5y ago

>Do you even care? I don't think you do, you'll just delete that desktop and move on and use whatever you want, and that's the whole point. For the record: I care.

zxzax 5y ago
Can you elaborate? Is there something particular that you need that doesn't work on an RPi? If it turns out to be a small fix, then ultimately you may end up caring a lot less than you think.
- prvc 5y ago
  Also, telling an individual user to "just use another DE" does not solve the problem, whose effects are widespread, on a whole ecosystem of software, its users, and developers.
  - zxzax 5y ago
    Could you please explain specifically what one or more of these effects is? I may be able to offer suggestions on how to mitigate it. When I was talking about using something else I was specifically referring to the article, which is talking about using a different window manager, and makes a good case for switching, and may even be able to help you deal with some of those effects. I assume you agree with the article, if not then I don't understand because it seems odd to me to single out this one passing mention in a paragraph that otherwise goes against what was just said, so please elaborate if you can.
    - daptaq 5y ago
      I'm not sure what the other user was thinking about, but I think that GNOME's push towards client-side window decoration is annoying and imposing. Depending on your WM, some applications become "useless", they waste space on small screens and just reinforce a sense of fragmentation. I get that it looks better on GNOME, and I appriciate it when using GNOME, but as there seems to be no system to remove the CSD on traditional systems, I still think it is an overall bad move.

lobstrosity420 5y ago

The people that characterize GNOME this way are desperate to identify themselves with a certain sub group of Linux users that prides themselves in doing things the hardest possible way (such as recompiling your terminal every time you want to change the font size) because it makes them feel 1337. Don't sweat it too much, it's just a little bit of garden variety internet tribalism.

anthk 5y ago
Not leet. Gnome is unusable in any machine older than 2015. Also, CWM flies on my 2007 netbook.
- zxzax 5y ago
  I completely disagree, I'm using GNOME on a laptop from 2008 now. It's working fine for me. I did tweak it a little bit however.

jrm4 5y ago

Nope. I will continue to bash GNOME because it's something like "the opposing political party." I want Free Software, and by extension, Linux, to gain ground on desktops, and I genuinely believe that GNOME's "philosophy" is not a good one and is detrimental to this cause. Roughly, I'd characterize it like the following: I believe that the best way for Linux to gain ground is to be a serious, perhaps even a little boring, but definitely "grown-up" desktop. Simplicity is very important, but tt should lean toward configurability and techniness. What it should NOT do is what GNOME is trying to do, which is trying to streamline and appeal to everyone. This approach is like trying to beat Apple at their own game, which is dumb -- given that beating Microsoft at their own game is well within our reach. Heck, look at Windows 11, we're like a third of the way there already.

zxzax 5y ago
I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying or what the point of your bashing is. GNOME and KDE and XFCE and whatnot are not political parties and are not opposed to each other. They're not really even close to being that, they're open source projects that collaborate on a sizable amount of things. If you believe there is a better way to do something then just contribute to another desktop. The existence of GNOME doesn't prevent you from doing that and isn't detrimental to it, especially when you consider that the cost of switching to another open source desktop is a big fat $0. Please don't unnecessarily politicize things, one of the benefits here is that you explicitly don't have to do that. To put it another way: maybe some specific mode of "Linux gaining ground on desktops" with "configurability and techniness" is your goal, but people working on any given desktop (including GNOME) may not share that goal in the same way you do, and it doesn't make any sense to expect them to.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  > I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying or what the point of your bashing is. GNOME and KDE and XFCE and whatnot are not political parties and are not opposed to each other. They surely where born that way, GNOME only exists due to the original Qt license. Then Gtk+ was always the go to framework for C devs, while KDE was embraced by C++ community on GNU/Linux. Murray did a very good job for the C++ refugees on GNOME/Gtk, but that has always been a minority versus being on KDE land.

jejones3141 5y ago

All I can say is that GNOME 3 seems to take Havoc Pennington's famous essay about as far as it can go, considering configurability a bug. I don't know exactly when it started, but it definitely came to my attention bigtime with the infamous gnome-screensaver. Useful links: 1. https://ometer.com/preferences.html https://ometer.com/preferences.html, the subset of Mr. P's original essay that the original contains a link to. 2. https://www.derstandard.at/story/1313024283546/gnome-designer-jon-mccann-about-the-future-of-gnome3 https://www.derstandard.at/story/1313024283546/gnome-designe..., an interview with Jon McCann.

zxzax 5y ago
Yes, I would agree that a lot of GNOME developers still view that as a design goal. But not all do, and even so, having less configurability doesn't mean less features. If you ask me, practically speaking, what it has meant is that there is a larger collection of smaller apps to choose from. So if the app you want lacks a configuration option, you might be better served by trying to find a different app that just works the way you want the first time.