Nicholas Petreley Slams Gnome 818
FreeLinux writes "Mainstream computer rag ComputerWorld, has posted a review of Gnome 2.6 by Nicholas Petreley. This opinion piece review, titled Living Down to a Low Standard, positively lambastes Gnome 2.6 over the new spatial Nautilus and Gnome's design choices. The review is quite the opposite to a previously reported review from PCWorld, last month. While this latest review is bound to be a polarizing and heavily debated issue (read flamebait), it is important in that this review will be seen by so many mainstream readers and corporate types who may have been considering Gnome."
Please... (Score:2, Insightful)
more of the same (Score:1, Insightful)
flog that goblin!
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
However, if this review makes the front page, Gnome is toast.
I think that's putting too much weight behind one person's opinion.
Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Short on Specifics (-1 Troll) (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't use Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
I dislike Gnome (Score:5, Insightful)
He needs to mind his own business and write about something he DOES like rather than running down something that he doesn't like.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree absolutely. I think we've gone beyond the stage of it being useful having two competing desktops.
In fact I seem to recall that Bill Gates himself (or Ballamer) said that he was very pleased that Linux had two competing desktops. That should be a wake-up call if nothing else.
I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
This so-called 'paradigm shift' of spatial browsing should not be enforced on users. We like Linux. We like choice. Stop being fascists and give us a 'turn off spatial browsing' button.
Not flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the old "dont you dare critisize my darling project!"-dilemma, it somehow seems that some people think that because a commercial entity is not behind a piece of software it is all of a sudden beyond any criticism.
Open source adoption and progress would be better served by taking criticism more constructively and try to actually address the problems put forward (even those that are put forward undiplomatically), instead of retorting to "no, you are stupid", "why would you want to do that?", "no you are really really stupid"-flamewars in a pathetic attempt att diverting criticism back.
Check the ego at the door and see the community prosper.
and it's right (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest argument against spatial navigation, as produced by gnome 2.6, is that it requires the user to learn TWO different styles of navigation: one for their browser and one for their files.
That is NOT simplification. And they didn't ask the community, and they are going against the gain of EVERY other OS.
If spatial is going to pay dividends when "database" filesystems arrive.... introduce spacial THEN. And even then, have it as an option. Besides won't a database file-system be based on searches? So won't we need "back" and "forward" buttons???????????
I am not going to swear here, but I am MAJORLY pissed at gnome. I am on 2.4 atm because of it. It is at worst elitist insanity, at best a poorly executed jump of the gun.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
If this makes front page, then a much higher percentage of pointy haired individuals will read it. And -- if on the front page -- the opinion will be taken with even more weight. The article does bring up some good points. If I had never seen Gnome 2.6 myself, I would probably never consider looking at it seriously after reading this article.
After-all, in the opinion of this publication, there's nothing good to say about Gnome 2.6.
User- and Developer- Designed Interfaces Sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Another thing GNOME has is a strong pursuit of consistency and perfection. Well, that's great, except that it doesn't always work very well. Putting "shut down" functionality in the "start" menu is an example of this: Microsoft did it because that was where people were most likely to look for it. GNOME doesn't like that because it isn't consistent, and makes things more complicated and confusing instead. (Yes, I know you CAN put it there if you want to, but most users won't change the default configuration.)
The much-trumpeted file selection dialog is another example. It does cleanly combine all the elements you'd want in there, but it isn't in the least intuitive.
To improve, GNOME *MUST* abandon the pursuit of perfection at the cost of usability and test interfaces extensively. If GNOME wants to get better than Windows or Mac OS, it must also get people doing research into interfaces, and proposing and testing new facilities. Users and developers just don't know how bad they are [apa.org] at it.
Article is flamebait. Know what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've toyed on and off with linux' window managers for years, I remember when fvwm was brand new. But they all have, and still do, look and behave like crap.
I mean, it sucks. Gnome sucks, KDE looks a little better but still sucks. They all suck.
And an army of zealots lined up to kiss ass wont make them better.
It's not ingratitude to say that either. Thanks for the free desktop environments, folks. I appreciate the choice, really. It's just that right now they suck. They suck enough I'd rather pay 200 bananas to use Windows XP, which is far from desktop perfection.
I love this passage (Score:4, Insightful)
A logical choice would have been to remove the first color selected from the second choice and voila.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, it would be nice to think that people withheld making a final decision until they carefully gathered all the information available, took into account the author's bias, and balanced the merits of all contrary points of view.
But the costs in time of gathering, understanding, and evaluating "all the information available" is huge. Managers often just make snap judgements, and often, because it's often less costly to be wrong than indecisive.
But I still wouldn't worry too much, or say that even if it made the front page, "Gnome is toast". People's negative opinion would only last until the front-page story that said "Gnome: worth a second look!"
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple Solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people find that clicking-opens-a-new-window behaviour annoying. It makes browsing around your directory as annoying as closing popup ads - its the same experience, pretty much. Your screen clogs with shit you dont wanna see.
He makes the point that no modern desktop OS does that, and for a reason.
Why is everyone so defensive? It's a perfectly valid criticism. It makes the desktop frustrating to the point of unusable for many folks.
Re:Simple Solution. (Score:1, Insightful)
Basically, he says the people writing Gnome seem to want to impose their personal preferences onto everyone, defending them as design choices. If their personal preferences reflected the preferences of the majority of users, that would not be a problem. However, these preferences seem to be very peculiar, and the product that results is flawed.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:4, Insightful)
But don't underestimate the power of a PHB.
- PHBs run commercial distributions, too
- PHBs can dictate what is on the Linux servers within their own department.
- PHBs can mentor their Employees in Linux, and teach a newbie, 'Don't select Gnome, it's not flexible'.
If the mentality spreads, then it becomes truth. It's not death, it's toast. Welcome to the popularity levels of Fluxbox.Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
You have choice. Use KDE [kde.org]. Use Rox Filer [sourceforge.net]. Use Evidence [sourceforge.net].
You like GNOME but don't like the new nautilus? You can use Konqueror from inside GNOME no problems. You can use Evidence from inside GNOME.
Dearly love Nautilus but don't like spatial? GConf is far from cryptic. The choice is right there.
Don't want to have spatial existant in any way shape or form? Grab the Nautilus source, make a few edits so that only the navigation behaviour is enabled in the build, and build your own version.
Explain to me
Jedidiah.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
This might (and I say might) be true if they were competing for resources. But they aren't: the reason there are two projects, and both are actively developed, is that there are some programmers who just fundamentally don't like how KDE/Qt works while there are other programmers who don't like how Gnome/GTK work (and then there's the ones who prefer lesstif/bare X, but they're just weird and can be ignored as a statistical fluke
Enough with the "Kill all but one desktops" please.
Re:Article is flamebait. Know what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you suck.
review sucks, but GNOME needs this (Score:2, Insightful)
As trashy as that review was, I think GNOME needs some backlash against the current trends in their UI approach.
The guy has a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to configure the crap out of gnome, making it do all kinds of weird stuff I liked. Then, version by version, my toys were taken away. I don't get it. If the toys made it unstable, why not fix them? What ever happened to the idea of "advanced" vs. "novice" settings for a UI? Every version that comes out has LESS functionality than the one before, railroading me into a certain way of interacting with a desktop.
In Soviet Russia, the desktop clicks on YOU!
Make it easy by default, but don't take away our toys and call it progress.
-ave
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
In an effort to thumb their noses at everyone else and ignore everything that has happened on desktop OS's in recent years the Gnome team has made some very backwards decisions, and it casts a very large cloud over everything good the team has done.
Re:A level headed reply to him. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not using gnome now, but this sounds like it turns it off for the current window, but there's no easy option to turn it off completely.
And his later point about gconf vs windows registry is irrelevant. He admits the interface is similar. They both accomplish similar things. So hey, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck its a friggin duck. Who cares if one uses an LDAP backend or a flat text file or a dunebuggy full of cockroach asses.
Gnome developers need to relax. It's just one guys opinion and he's entitled to it. If someone says your product stinks on ice, look into it and be man enough to admit if they're right.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
However, if this review makes the front page, Gnome is toast.
I'm sorry, but if Gnome is toast based on a single review from a single magazine, we've got big problems. Frankly, I can't imagine a person considering Gnome/Linux instead of Windows, reading this article, and deciding to go with Windows instead. Most of the people who read this will be either pro-Gnome geeks who will discard this as infamitory, anti-Gnome geeks who will consider the whole thing slightly interesting, or non-geeks who probably have never heard of Gnome and will continue using Windows as always.
I didn't read the article carefully, but if it's true that it pops new windows while you navigate the file system, I'd guess Gnome users will be up in arms. From my persepective that's about the most annoying part of old OSs' UI. However, having a bad review like this is not the cause of possible defections as much as the 'bad' funcationality itself.
Yeha, that's *real* usability (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like either of them... (Score:1, Insightful)
I despise them both.
They are both resource hogs.
K's QT isn't truely OSS since you have to pay out the ass to use it on Windows, so I avoid it on principle. But at least it looks crisp and professional.
Gnome is OSS but more confusing each release. It just plain looks 'cheezy'. There is no 'ala Windows Explorer' type app that I can ever *find* on the menu to browse the filesystem, so I have to resort to opening the Home icon then going 'up' a level, but that feels really hokey. Don't tell me it's there. If I look and look and can't find it, they have either hidden it or chosen a poor name for the icon. And I'm not poor Joe User either... Just think about him trying to find something. True or not, I'll always think of Icazza as some sort of MS schill which is another strike against it. Mark my words, the
Re:I don't use Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because it's NOT A FUCKING REVIEW
Look:
Living Down to a Low Standard
Opinion by Nicholas Petreley
So while the zealots line up to flame him for his "unprofessional review", keep in mind it's an OPINION, and he can have whatever opinion he wants.
Let's talk about slashdots "unprofessional article" that criticizes this guy for being an "unprofessional reviewer" for merely voicing an opinion, which happens to be that $YOUR_PET_PROJECT sucks.
Does it really matter that much? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, my favorite file manager for Linux is still the command line, closely followed by Midnight Commander (yeah, command line). I've never gotten used to Konqueror (KDE), I've never gotten used to Nautilus. That's to say... I think the both suck.
However, my choice of Desktop (I run KDE at work, and Gnome at home) is pretty undecided. They both have features that I like ... at the functionaltiy level. My main problem with the article is that it didn't touch on the things that make it a desktop. Icons, Menus, Task-bars, Desktop switching, key bindings, etc.
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's questionable whether it should be offered, much less enforced. If you're so close to your code that twiddling the interface of a fnarking file browser strikes you as a paradigm shift, you really need to get out more.
Personally, I'd like to see at least one fast, tight file browser that mindlessly clones Windows Explorer. Sure, it's not a perfect design, but the overwhelming majority of the computer-using population has been using it for nearly a decade and they're comfortable with it. If you really want to lure users away from MS, that's the only thing that matters. It's not like you can't use the bloated horror of Nautilus instead if that's your deal.
Petreley's a bit off the mark, though. A much bigger problem for Linux is how bloated and inefficient the common GUI apps are compared to Microsoft's equivalents. (Oh sure, mod me down, but hear me out first.) I have an old 120MHz Thinkpad laptop with 48 megs of RAM. I can fire up Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Word 97 simultaneously and have them run more than fast enough to be useful. Would you like to guess what happens when I boot over to Linux, start X, and try opening Nautilus, Mozilla, and Open Office? The amazing part is that they will eventually shoehorn themselves into memory and run at all, even if they are swapping madly and unusably slow.
And yes, I realize the most recent incarnations of these MS products are much more bloated, but the vital point is that Microsoft achieved a level of efficiency and functionality by 1997 that FOSS has yet to achieve. (Note: I am specifically talking about GUI apps here, not CLI apps, where Linux really shines.) The difference, I suspect, is that MS tests its apps on a wide variety of machines with an eye on the lowest common denominator, and FOSS developers tend to test on their own machines which are, of course, usually cutting edge. MS also lacks the ego problem that many FOSS developers have which prevents them from producing polished user interfaces because they perceive it as "dumbing down" the interface.
Personally, I hate MS enough that I'm going to shell out a couple thousand dollars to get a recent laptop so I can run Mozilla and Open Office, but the overwhelming majority of Windows users -- which you must bear in mind still includes tens of millions of people running Win98 on obsolete hardware -- are not going to see Linux as an option. To them, Linux offers a learning curve and an expensive hardware upgrade, and that's it. It's not exactly an appealing proposition.
Cancel - Ok buttons (Score:3, Insightful)
CANCEL
The reason given (other than being like Next buttons MS Wizard screens) for using Cancel-Ok instead of the Ok-Cancel was that we read from left to right in western countries.
By that logic, shouldn't the Cancel button be at the top left, since we read from top to bottom?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Our "left-to-right" reading is what makes Cancel-Ok so awkward.
Do you agree with the US being in Iraq?
NO.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.YES
Since we read the choices from left to right, wouldn't skimming through a page and accepting be more efficient if the default choice is on the left?
YES.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.NO
sorry about the x's. slashdot tells me "Please use fewer 'junk' characters when I use ' 's or '.'s "
some random comments (Score:3, Insightful)
The latest version Gnome does seem rather sparse to me. But that can also be a good thing for newbies.
One thing I noticed in the Ars Technica review at http://www.ars-technica.com/reviews/004/software/
If this paraphrase from Petreley is accurate, then the Gnome coders do have a lot to learn about ease of use: "For example, one GNOME developer says there's a good reason why users can't change individual colors in desktop themes: Someone might accidentally make both the text and background white, thus rendering the text unreadable."
Um, if you're concernd about people setting text and background to the same color, just do a simple check before applying the color and prompt the user if the two colors match.
Petreley may have some good points, but he's made them in an unhelpful way. The same way the article submitter showed a lack of objectivity with the comment about pc world being a mainstream rag.
Re:Simple Solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't had a chance to use Gnome 2.6 yet, but from what I've read the design decisions that they made don't seem all that peculiar. It is basically very simular to the original Mac spacial finder. When you would introduce a normal Windows user to the Mac they would figure out how the finder works and get on with their lives, unlike this guy who turned around and threw a big temper tantrum, and his only argument was that it wasn't like Windows.
OMFG these guys are clueless (Score:4, Insightful)
[PETRELEY:] Not even that abomination of operating systems, Windows 95, made users retreat to the registry editor to use a single window to navigate folders.
GConf is nothing like the Windows Registry, except for the similar appearance of their respective editors. If Mr. Petreley cares to compare and contrast GConf and the Windows Registry he would know this. In fact Nicholas, I will paypal you $100 US if you can name three architectural similarities between GConf and the Registry.
Ho-ly crap.
Here you have the GNOME fan arguing with a straight face that the user might care about architectural similarities or lack thereof between the Windows Registry and the GNOME equivalent. Earth to Castro: nobody gives a shit. The users just want to be able to configure the OS.
Years of experience with Windows tell us that the Registry is a terrible place to put important config choices. Why not learn from that lesson instead of flaming users because they don't understand the architecture?
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:1, Insightful)
I like Gnome, but prefer KDE. I don't like the spacial browsing. It was bad 9 years ago in win95.. it's still bad now.
Re:Article is flamebait. Know what? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do you need to have a 'usr' and 'home' folder open on screen, when what you want is no doubt in 'wasabi'?
Why are there no easy/obvious parent or home folder icons? Sorry, that looks worse than Win3.1's Program Manager which was the most annoying gui construct I can think of. And that's my opinion, and nothing you say will change that.
To me that's as annoying as pop-under web ads. I said popup before but pop-under is probably more apt. Still annoying.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, I can't even imagine people considering Gnome vs Windows.
Computer users may choose "Linux vs Windows", and then they may choose "Redhat vs SUSE", and maybe later they'll think "KDE vs Gnome"...
But at no point does someone have to choose between Gnome and Windows. Folks still using Windows probably don't know what Gnome is (and shouldn't have to). By the time Gnome is even on your radar screen, you've left Windows far behind.
Re:and it's right (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, until Apple switches back to a spacial finder and everyone praises them as visionaries.
GNOME is the example, the point much bigger (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineers design programs that work for them, not for end users.
I've seen this time and again during my work as a software product manager. Everything from base functionality to key UI choices are made by the development team based on what they find useful, or what they think will be useful. It is a very, very rare team that actually conducts any workflow analysis or UI usability studies during the design phase. And, once it's coded, it will cling like a limpet to a rock, difficult if not impossible to change.
I know enough about my own predispositions and biases to know that my judgment about what's best for me isn't always what's best for everyone. While both Microsoft and Apple make poor function / UI choices, with Linux the problem is magnified because each piece is built by a different design team using a different methodology.
Server-side and admin people aren't bothered by this, but your average end user is easily frustrated by applications that don't behave in an expected way, or don't have settings that can be easily changed to adapt to the user. If you give your software to a reasonably knowledgable end user, watch the interaction with your product. Don't argue, or explain why the actions aren't correct. Take notes, and figure out a way to accommodate the user. Don't use the mantra of "Read the man pages, foo!" That only leads to reviews like Petreley's, and the ensuing does not / does too debates on
"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution."
--Mike
Re:Simple Solution. (Score:1, Insightful)
Define "most" here. I think yur definition of "most people" really is "most people who use slashdot". That's a totally different definition of "most" from "most of the computer using population".
The people who use slashdot aren't like the rest of the computer using population. People here have a grasp of a directory structure. They are typically familiar with the command line and grasp the heirachical view of the filesystem that is the typical abstraction used at low levels. Just because that's true for people here, doesn't mean it's true for people everywhere. Normal people have bugger-all idea how their files are organised. They probably never leave their home directory or, at most, have a few folders under their home directory.
Gnome is designed for these people. Not for you.
In the specific case of Nautilus, there are multiple ways to never see the spatial features ('Browse Filesystem', 'Browse this folder', 'nautilus --browser &', edit a gconf key). So can we please stop this 'it's impossible to turn off' bullshit? The default settng is designed to work as well as possible for the people most unlikely to change default settings. This is a general design principle of Gnome and explains why useful settings are so easy to find.
So, in summary, before people criticise software for not meeting their needs, they have to consider whether they're the target audience. Flaming Gnome because it doesn't have all the power-user only settings exposed is like saying mainframes are useless because you can't carry them around easilly. That's a design decision that's right for a certian audience.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
No, meaningful choice is a good thing. Just throwing a bunch of crap out there so people can have something to choose from is stupid.
Nick is worth reading (Score:2, Insightful)
What the Linux desktop needs is very simple (Score:1, Insightful)
All in all, the Linux desktop need cut back on the information overload. People don't have time to keep track of all the knowledge required to use Linux as a desktop, and the horrible ways people emulate desktops on Linux actually contributes to the difficulty of Linux, not its ease-of-use. It's fine for Granny who will do nothing but use e-mail and the internet, because you can set everything up for her, but the average user who actually buys news hardware and drivers, installs new applications and removes them, does homework, and all the other things the average computer user does these days will have tough times compared to the much easier Windows XP.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
It was [ximian.com].
How Interesting, you give no other reason why it is "the was the biggest steaming pile of an almost useless evironment", and instead of finding out how to change nautilus to suit you, you switch to a completely different environment.
Your opinions will mean more if they are less dramatic and provide more information.
To paraphrase you: I liked gnome's last release but this one sucks because the file selector doesn't work the way I want it to. Rather than change how it works to suit me better, I moved to another desktop. This problem was obviously not well thought out and was just an attempt to say fuck you to the rest of the world and me.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
The only valid criticism in the article is that its a bit tricky to go back to browser behavior by default, in that you have to get into Gconf (which by the way is no where near as massive and convoluted as the Windows registry). IMO, it would have made sense to put a checkbox for it in File Management Preferences. But come on, dismiss an entire desktop because of the lack of one checkbox? Outrageous!
Please stop whining. (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone else hear MC Chris's voice when they read that last bit? For real, man. Relax already.
If you hate it so much, why did you submit it? Oh, I know. You wanted to get the link posted so a bunch of
How is that going to benefit the Linux/OSS movement? It's not. You are just going to cause an editor to get a lot of nasty mail just because he doesn't agree with your opinion. Perhaps, next time he will just find something besides Linux to write about..
It's great to support the one you love, but why strike out like that? Nobody gains anything from it. Oh, and shame on the moderators for letting this get through. You had to recognize it was soley to irritate the editor.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
laff.
No.
Any publicity is not good publicity. FUD is not good publicity.
Why do you think Mac people became/are percieved as being so fanatical?
Years of bad publicity. And Steve Jobs. And Guy Kawasaki. Try Googling "Guy Kawasaki" or "mac evangelism".
Before there was Linux, the mindshare fight was between Redmond and Cupertino, and it was nasty. God forbid anyone *ever* cast any aspersions toward Apple or pointed out any imperfections in Apple hardware or software. They would get tons of hate-mail, really ridiculous over-the-top stuff. That was *evangelism*, which of course brought about even more negative publicity for the Mac and Mac users. The media's quarterly forecasting of Apple's demise certainly wasn't good publicity.
Unfortunately I don't think the average Penguinista has learned the evangelism lesson.
I work with people who love nothing more than an article slamming anything even vaguely Linux-related, and will clip and distribute this article just for the sake of inflaming the Penguinistas I work with. Where it gets unfortunate is when people make business decisions based on these kinds of biases.
That's the only real benefit of being a Penguinista over a Macintosh Evangelist: you don't have to pay as much for the privilege of being perceived as some kind of weird fanatic by your average Redmond-worshipping blockhead.
All of it is platform bigotry, and ultimately it's a bad thing. There's no one hardware or software platform that's perfect for every circumstance, although my Mac is damn close :-)
Re:I don't like either of them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. Apparently nothing Troll Tech does is right. I'm sure you guys will find a way to whine if they released Qt into the public domain. The linux version of Qt is GPL'd and you can do whatever you like with it that you can do with other GPL'd software, including porting it to windows. Troll Tech hasn't done that for you, of course, and why should they?
Re:No big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a poor rebuttal. Aside from the obligatory accusation of bias, it mainly focuses on attacking Petrely's understanding of "spatial browser".
Problem: he never used the word "spatial".
Also, when Petrley complains that you need to edit GConf to change the default behavior, instead of finding a prominent checkbox, Jorge (a) lists 3 ways to change the current behavior, and (b) attack's Petrely's technical understanding of GConf. He says that aside from GUI, GConf is nothing like the Windows registry. Well guess what? From the end-user's perspective, the GUI all that matters! If you need to use Registry or GConf to alter a setting, then it's impossible to call that setting easy-to-change.
The oped comes down to a very simple position: when a piece of software first gets a radically different, optional interaction mode, common-sense dictates that the new mode should be OFF by default. To do otherwise will scare users who were accustomed to the existing behavior. (Or at minimum, the checkbox to "Act like the older version" should be prominently placed, such as an option at install)
PS. An additional funny part is that both Nick and Jorge manage to mistate what the motiviation for Gnome was: Nick says "freedom from Windows", Jorge says "kickass desktop"... when in reality it was meant for "freedom from KDE" (as is well-documented historically)
nah (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not going into the debate of KDE versus Gnome, since I only tried them out sporadically, but the 'if you don't like it, bugger off' reasoning has always been a very weak one, IMHO.
It's the same sort of thing you get from, say, chauvinistic USA zealots that answer to every sort of criticism of the government or state/country of fellow americans with: "well, if you don't like it, why don't you move to another country?"
Why should criticism be unvalid because of the possibility to go away, not use it, fork, etc? If the critique is valid, it remains valid, even if there are a zillion other things one can do.
Re:OMFG these guys are clueless (Score:1, Insightful)
Does anyone reading this quote, right off the bat assume that this is going to be a fair review of GNOME whatsoever? I can't even formulate a response to this.
It's an opinion piece. Deal with it. It isn't supposed to do anything other than give someone's opinion.
I was unable to find that setting. How does "Browse Folders" give the impression of going back to an heirarchical browsing style? If there were settings such as "open folders in same window" or "show location bar" then those would be helpful. Browse Folders is just a random phrase. When you have the folder browser open I feel that you are probably already browsing folders.
Windows 95 was never spatial. It was mimicked, poorly. Since Mr. Petreley can't seem to define what spatial is in the first place, and which OS implemented it in which way if at all, we're left with ye olde "Doesn't work like Explorer, it sucks." excuse. There's more to spatial than one folder per window. I'd explain it, but there are plenty of resources available that define this, unfortunately Nicholas failed to comprehend even one of them.
Just a bunch of bullshit and heresay. Petreley never says "it isn't like Explorer so it sucks". In fact, I get the impression Petrely dislikes explorer. He instead questions why explorer can do something so easily that Nautilus can't do. That is a valid question. Brushing it off makes jorge look like an asshole.
GConf is nothing like the Windows Registry, except for the similar appearance of their respective editors. If Mr. Petreley cares to compare and contrast GConf and the Windows Registry he would know this. In fact Nicholas, I will paypal you $100 US if you can name three architectural similarities between GConf and the Registry.
As mentioned before: who cares? So the architecture is different. Does it matter to a user? Editting gconf entries is for all intents and purposes the same as editing windows registry entries. It feels the same. It accomplishes similar ends. It's the fucking same damn thing. Jorge... I'm sure you won't read this, but you're clueless dick.
This is another passage that I can't even comprehend, and isn't worthy of replying to. I'd like to quote it for the record though. Note the lack of evidence when defining "primitive" and "inflexibility". I don't think anyone that has used GTK's language bindings will use the word "inflexible".
He's saying gtk sucks. Sometimes it does. It certainly doesn't look as nice or polished as it could.
Hmmmm, I must be a moron then. I like spatial Nautilus. Everyone I know who uses GNOME loves the spatial Nautilus, except for two. The other dozen or so dig it. Those that don't like it, shut it off and move on with their lives.
Once more jorge goes back to his favorite tactic of making shit up on the spot. Petrely never came close to saying "only morons like spatial". He said that gnome developers seem to think they are better than users at making choices about what suits a user's desktop. You know what! He's right! These days GNOME is made intentionally difficult to customize. Why? Shouldn't it be assumed that I know what I want on my desktop better than anyone else? If I say that do I insinuate that other people are morons? No. By the way though, jorge really is a moron. He got that much right.
It's ridiculous what they pay people to write articles these days. It's amusing, and heartwarming, that the Arslinux crew writes more in depth, informative, and well regarded content FOR FREE, because we love OSS, than a so-called OSS evangelist. Nicholas Petreley should be ashamed of himself.
Awe Nick doesn't like your pet project so he wrote mean things about it!!!! For shame. Fuck you, you fucking dick. I was a GNOME user until 2.6. My roommate was a GNOME user until 2.6. Now
Re:He's right... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, [homestead.com] it [nizkor.org] doesn't. [c2.com]
("Raising the question" != "Begging the question")
(Bored? ME? ;)
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
And yes, these are individual preferences. People who fall in the "power user" catagory are important too. And no, "power user" != "ueber-hacker" for all values. Some people just like to get damn work done in a way that makes sense for them.
On *NIX, I currently use KDE, which also is quite imperfect (KControl sucks, too many different freakin' media players, some odd behavioral quirks), but at least I can make it act more like how I want without firing up emacs and reading docs online.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
The Maturity of the OpenSource Community (Score:2, Insightful)
That behavior is very similiar to an ill-tempered 4 year old. Other (more successfull organizations) look at bad reviews and say, "Hey, this is a problem, what can I do to fix this."
Praise benifits image, where as critism SHOULD benefit the product.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
(Even today, you hear people talk about "Steve Bartko", some MS employee that posted a handful of times on a compuserve board 12 years ago. Sorta a legend in the OS/2 and Anti-Microsoft Zealot community.)
Back in the 1990s, there was a real effort among the Linux Community to encourage "good advocacy". Flamers were pointed to a Advocacy HOWTO document and there was a real effort to keep discourse polite in the Usenet tradition. It seemed like they might have learned the lesson of Team OS/2 & Macinsitas. However, now days with a proliferation of web forums, and Linux accumulating all of the OS/2, Amiga, and M$ Hater wackos, things have degenerated.
The thing to realize, in the real world of IT Dept Politics, zealous advocacy often hurts one's cause more than it helps. People tend to think "This guy is not objective, I don't like him, therefore I disagree with whatever he says." Yes, that's not logical like Mr Spock, but its how the real world works outside of internet boards. God forbid people have to work with a lot of you folks.
Re:The Problem is Nautilus (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes I think Slashdot readers are too wimpy to handle a real, heated debate on something. They run screaming "Flames, Flames!" at the slightest disagreement. We argue about politics and privacy quite openly on Slashdot. Do people really identify so personally with their computers and software that they literally cannot handle someone with a differing viewpoint?
Are you afraid you can't rebut his points? If you can rebut them, rebut them! The fact that he was a little snarky in expressing his opinion doesn't invalidate it.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think this is why.
Ah, there we go. I think that this is why they were perceived as fanatical. Because of the actions and attitudes of lots of individuals. Not because of any "publicity" from the newsmedia.
Re:What the Linux desktop needs is very simple (Score:3, Insightful)
X has been a thorn in the side of desktop development for two long. The Y-Windows [y-windows.org] paper describes why, and why they are creating a replacement from scratch. It will also be network-transparent and integrated. This hack of emulating a desktop on top of a library on top of a window manager on top of a graphics server is completely amateur and unprofessional.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine why, in the year since its announcement, no one has made any significant progress on Y. Or not. Maybe developing a new window system from scratch is both hard and pointless at this point in history?
You completely misdescribe the X architecture, which does make it easier to criticize. In fact, the X "desktop" window system runs directly on the graphics server, the window manager is just another client app, and all the client apps run on top of libraries. Aside from the fact that this works quite well, and has for "two long" decades, it is also pretty much exactly what Microsoft and Apple do. The only noticeable distinction is that the window management functions are integrated into the graphics server on these OSes: this doesn't appear to offer much advantage in practice, and makes it very difficult to change desktop behavior.
Damn you, X trolls. You get me every time.
Nobody gives a good explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that this thing doesn't scale! As a pathological example, say I have a 800GB volume with 400,000 files (mostly photos I've taken as a professional photgrapher) spread out over 3,000 directories. I'm not going to memorize the screen location of each of those 1000s of photo shoots. Dragging my mouse back and forth across my 24" monitor half-a-dozen times to get to the photo shoot I'm looking for is almost the worst scheme I can imagine. The Windows Explorer 2-paned tree model (as opposed to the MacOS tree where there's only 1 pane) is about the most efficient I can imagine for this scenario.
Now that disks are 1,000,000 times bigger than they were 20 years ago, why is somebody trying to introduce the metaphor that was only appropriate for use back then? Granted, it works fine if a novice user has maybe a dozen commonly used folders, but beyond that it is unwieldy.
I think the best solution is perhaps to use the "spatial" metaphor only for folders created on the user's "desktop". That way your ad hoc folders work the way your real desktop does (spatially), while proper hierarchies are still navigable the way they were intended -- as a tree.
aQazaQa
Re:I agree... (Score:1, Insightful)
FFS (Score:3, Insightful)
Two desktop environments for X11, each optimized for users with different preferences for user interfaces. And the best part is that they all interoperate, so I have no problem running KWorldClock in my Gnome environment, and you can run Evolution or whatever you want in your KDE. Check out what Havoc had to say about how modern DEs can interoperate these days. [ometer.com]
So by my definitions, Gnome is progressing rapidly. I'm enjoying version 2.6 over 2.4 after using it for only a few days. Do I consider KDE to be regressing because it is getting more cluttered and ugly by my standards? That would hardly be fair... it's progressing in it's own way, and the same is true for the Gnome project. Mr. Rodney King, we _can_ all get along, just don't let slashdot know.
Re:Scary (Score:1, Insightful)
It's like saying that because a wine critic likes Rhône wines, he can't write about two-buck-chuck (ok, let's say Shiraz) unless he compares it to Rhône.
Just because you like A, you don't have to write about everything comparint it to A. People who do that don't have preferences, they have obsessions.
Perhaps the part where he says that every once in a hile he tries GNOME and hates it should give you the idea that he *doesn't* like GNOME?
Since it only an opinion piece, you can not like it but you can't say he has no business writing it.
read it, weep, rant and then, why not think? (Score:3, Insightful)
Average user feedback is something rare for Linux, firstly because it's unappreciated and secondly because there's not many average users on Linux.
And if they balk at something, two responses out of three are "read the man pages". As if there's any reason to presume the man pages are actually any good or up to date or written with an average user in mind...
As always, I'm writing for linux people who like the idea of linux desktop.
Re:Simple Solution. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a minute... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, the "reporter" didn't really report anything other than his complete lack of knowledge of what Nautilus is trying to accomplish. There was no mention of spatial filesystems, their pros / cons, nothing. He just spouted his opinion and acted like he was all informed, which he wasn't.
Do us all a favor -- if you know this moron, smack him really, really hard right in the middle of the forehead and tell him next time he doesn't research what he is reporting, you'll move it down a couple of feet.
I've seen people yelling and screaming at the FOSS community to be creative.. to innovate, to come up with something different. Then once they do, I get to read how it's not like how this OS does it, or that OS does it. If you want something that looks and works just like Windows... JUST USE WINDOWS!
Re:Does it really matter that much? (Score:3, Insightful)
For one I hate almost *all* of KDE themese -- most of them waste more screen realestate than loosely spaced icons in MacOS X Finder. Plastik seems to be nearly getting there, but still not fully.
I agree with lots of posts and the article that such "bridge burning" as done by GNOME team w.r.t. Nautilus in 2.6 release is, probably, not right. Then again -- a lot of people did not like MacOS X's Finder when it first came around with default NeXT browsing layout. Giving users an option to easily switch between spatial and browsing modes (and not only as a right-click item) would have been very nice, but was probably not as important as making Nautilus so much faster than its previous incarnation.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
So here - 2 examples of design decisions that only appealed to very few users, while obeying some arcane UI design 'rules'. Remember, UI design is an empirical science, so if more than 50% of the users don't like some setting it's the theory that is more likely to be wrong, not the users. There's no provision against making experiments in the UI, but it's quite rude to force them on people who will have close to no chance of figuring out how to change the default annoying behavior to something they can live with. And exactly this kind of 'we know better even if 95% of the users disagree' ego trip attitude was one of the big UI critiques of proprietary systems, so it would be really sad if F/OSS ends up taking the same route.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, I think that going back to the way things were 10 or 20 years ago certainly counts as backwards, given that the rest of the industry is going forward and slowly improving the user experience. The best way to improve the UI is to not force the preferences of the developer on the user, which is what gnome has done so very wrong in 2.6. Choice is good, don't make your users choose a different product because yours thinks it's smarter than them.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that the point? The benefits of spatial file systems should be readily apparent without them having to be patiently explained to the user by the Gnome priesthood.
The user doesn't care about the theory of what Gnome is trying to accomplish. They're only concerned with what it does in practice. Evil selfish users!
Re:Reply from one of the Ars Technica crew (Score:3, Insightful)
The rebuttal split hairs on semantics and did not answer the concrete criticism of Petry's:
That nautilus opens folders in new windows by default and makes users edit settings in GConf to shut this annoying behaviour off.
Steve
Re:disagree with your comparison of MS and Linux a (Score:3, Insightful)
Ick. I haven't actually tried the Linux version of AbiWord, but I have tried the Win32 version. My experience ran like this: I loaded a 650 page MS Word document in AbiWord. Some of the formatting was mangled, but not irreparably. The trouble started when I changed from 100% zoom to 75% zoom. Fifteen minutes later, when it was finished resizing, I had pretty much decided AbiWord was not going to cut it for me.
Word 97 launches by itself, OpenOffice launches an integrated suite, so of course OO will take more memory.
This, IMHO, is a bizarre design choice for a free software package. The only real reason for integrated office suites was to lock out competition. Why can't I launch the word processor and the spreadsheet -- the only components I use -- as separate applications? Don't get me wrong, I think OpenOffice is a great product -- I am, after all, about to spend two grand to buy a laptop capable of running it -- but that does make it more expensive for me than continuing to run Word 97.
The reason I am comparing Word 97 and OpenOffice, incidentally, is because there have been no significant added features in subsequent releases of Word for individual users. Almost all of the new development in MS Word since Word 97 has been aimed at corporate groupware applications. Moreover, the OpenOffice word processor really doesn't offer anything Word 97 doesn't have, except for being free and based on open standards. Now, that matters a lot to me, and probably you as well, but odds are that we are a tiny, tiny minority.
Re:Vicious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GNOME is the example, the point much bigger (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah we're doing that. Workflows and storyboards and focus groups and crap. Two years, lots of Word documents, lots of meetings, consultants, product/project managers, sundry parasites. Nowhere near anything resembling a GUI.
I like the engineer's way better.
Re:FFS (Score:3, Insightful)
And like you I also like the XFCE project, and I'd run it myself if I was using a desktop that was sluggish running Gnome. But my problem with KDE isn't the widget set or the icons -- there are themes for KDE that look very pretty. I'm talking about the basic approach to applications -- each project's position on the balancing of neat-o features and usability.
I guess that I've never had the same problems with Gnome that you seem to describe. I appreciate that they've made some hard decisions to produce an incredibly sleek and kickass Desktop Environment. So maybe I resent it a bit when people bitch at the developers of the project for the very reasons that help define it.
What would you think about people that whinged about Ferrari for making cars that were too low to the ground? I'd say, look at Honda, they make great cars for people that prefer those design choices. It doesn't mean you suck for not liking it, it's just a realization that Hondas and Ferraris aren't for everyone, and it's good to have the choice between the two.
Of course, there is obviously a middle ground between the two. Judging by the response here it sounds like some people like Gnome but want just a little bit more functionality. In the case of the spatial browsing option, in hindsight they should have probably made it more obvious how to make the old behaviour the default. But in general, they do a really good job of keeping things simple and functional, and I hope they continue with this general direction.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
If you read the article, it actually is informative. He is telling you that it's too hard to configure Nautilus the way he wants to use it. He is telling you that he's fed up with Gnome developers telling him how he should use Gnome. His perception of Gnome may be wrong, even 180 degrees off base, but SOMETHING gave him that perception.
Re:Other problems, the insanity continues (Score:3, Insightful)
I use the spatial metaphor all the time on my desktop (the flat root window with icons on it). Move my DVD or Trash icons and I'll get pissed. I want them to remain just where I placed them. But I could care less if adding a new wallpaper to the wallpaper folder changes the "location" of all the other wallpapers. Frankly, I don't care if "index.html" is three inches up and two to the right of the bottom corner of the public_html folder.
But that's me. I'm sure other people want everything firmly affixes to the last place they left it, even if it's the
It all boils down to two things: what should the Gnome defaults be, and how convenient is to change them.
As to what the defaults should be, I see a lot of theory about the benefits of spatial filesystems, but no actual data that users will want to use it enough to make it the default. Maybe it should be, but there needs to be some actual practical evidence of the benefits before the traditional "explorer" and "commander" models are tossed out the window. Is this something most users will benefit from, or just a few? It's important to know before making it the default.
Re:Don't panic... it's not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
People tend to think "This guy is not objective, I don't like him, therefore I disagree with whatever he says."
Stop looking in my window.
Yeah, I do this, although I add an extra twist: "This guy is not objective, I don't like him, but if I take his advice some people will see me as being just like him, which I don't want."
I like Linux. I mean, it's an operating system, and it doesn't piss me off, which is all I ask of an operating system. But those Linux zealots drove me away from Linux for a very long time, and they still do, to some extent. (This that I'm typing on is a Windows machine. Not a dual boot, it's vanilla Windows.) I'm not a bigot, by any means - obviously, there are places where Linux is superior and should be used (like web servers). But I don't think I'm really ready to use Linux on my own box - there are probably workarounds to the various issues I'd have, though, and probably people who would love to hear all about them. I'm just not that concerned, yet, although I'm switching before DRM locks me out of my own computer.
So, yeah, Linux zealots, calm the scupper down and actually sell Linux properly. Is it just Windows, but open source? Is it Windows, but more stable? Give people a reference point, and tell them why they should go through the switching process, especially if they're happy with Windows. Bullet points, and get it everywhere. (None of what I'm fairly sure are standard starting places, linux.org and linuxforums.org, have anything suitable.) You won't get people to switch by acting like you're on drugs, and Gerry will get sad again when I bring up various issues I have with Slashdot users who like Linux way too much.
(If you think I mean you, you're probably right.)