GNOME and KDE Devs Wrangle Over 'System Settings' Name 289
An anonymous reader writes "The developer of the KDE System Settings application has launched a formal complaint against GNOME for renaming 'Control Center' to 'System Settings' in GNOME 3.0. This developer is demanding that GNOME immediately change the name of their control panel area. Developers on both sides are now discussing this act."
This is ridiculous! (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems both KDE and Gnome are making themselves irrelevant. Switched to XFCE, not going back.
Re:This is ridiculous! (Score:2, Insightful)
e17 ftw. :) Lighter than XFCE, even more customizable. Don't regret installing it for a moment. :)
Usual bit bullshit from Gnome devs (Score:1, Insightful)
As usual, Gnome developers assume that users will only run their DE and piss on any distro's attempt to easily integrate other DE's into their platform. Just look at the hostile tone of Gnome devs' messages and failure to address Ben Cooksley's concerns. Even when someone helpfully suggests a solution to the problem that Ben agrees to, they still piss on it. Other independent (read non-Redhat) Gnome devs should take notice on how bad a reputation Gnome is getting in the FOSS world because of these arrogant pricks.
Let me get it right. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem seems to be that duplicate names for different entries in menus on common distributions seem not be be correctly handled and the fix for this is not to go the consistent way (the same things are named in the same way) and fix the functions which create the menus (like detecting duplicate entries and attaching an indication of the package name in the entry), but to plainly forbid to name entries in the same way?
I dont like that. This is not the year of the linux desktop.
Re:That is a ridiculous complaint ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Basically, GNOME apps have some of their setting only st-able in the GNOME control panel. Same for KDE.
Now, despite what some people would have you believe, it is normal, usual, reasonable to have apps from both environment running under whitchever one you prefer. And you may still want to change their settings.
But now, it turns out that in your menu, you have two completely different system settings, named "system settings". This is clearly not very nice.
So ideally, they ought to be called GNOME SS and KDE SS, except for two details.
- KDE named their "system settings" first, and the GNOME dev knew about that
- KDE decided that "KDE" means the community, not the DE. And clearly, the app configures the DE...
To me, this is a case of KDE lacking a bit of forsight, and GNOME being their usual arrofant selves (we are an OS -- no you're not, you are a DE, and that is quite enough)
Re:seems to be about a name clash (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhh, I also comes from a long background of GNOME ignoring KDE, and acting as though they exist in a vaccuum. Also, they knew about the naming issue.
So the guy has reasons to be miffed: GNOME, at this stage lives in a bizzare delusion that they are an OS, and not just a DE. And this attitude is clearly grating: they seem to believe that what they do is the standard, and that probably KDE is something like windowsblind is (was?) for MS windows. And of course, the KDE dev have stopped assuming good faith, because their is none.
Re:This is ridiculous! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to say that XFCE is getting mighty fat recently - it is no fun on an old PC or even in a virtual machine. Which means that I am moving on to LXDE - it does just what I want, and it does it quickly.
Is there a law that says software has to get fat over time? Because that is surely the way it is going. KDE 1.0 was pretty light at some point, and up to KDE 3 it worked well in a virtual machine. I guess I could always use trinity instead - but then again I really like okular over kpdf...
Re:This is ridiculous! (Score:5, Insightful)
When you get to the phase where your new features all involve renaming things, rounding corners, or improving "user experience" then you know it's done and you should pick a new project to work on.
I'm sort of serious here. Early on in a project there are lots of important changes and each release has some big improvements. Later on though the devs/company wants to keep up having recent releases so they start reaching deep in the barrel to find things to keep the feature list full.
Creating something great requires two people (Score:4, Insightful)
When you get to the phase where your new features all involve renaming things, rounding corners, or improving "user experience" then you know it's done and you should pick a new project to work on.
My wife spent some time in serious art-school mode. One of the profs that she greatly respected told her that making great art requires two people -- 1) the person capable of making the piece, and 2) someone else to shoot the first person when they're done. This is because most folks can't leave well enough alone and keep futzing until what was great (or at least on the cusp of it) is munged beyond the pale.
It does indeed look like at least some of the Linux DEs are at the "shoot the artist" stage.
Cheers,