GNOME Developers Lay Out Plans for GNOME OS 208
From the H: "Allan Day has written a blog post on the concrete plans for 'GNOME OS' and provided background on the ideas that have motivated those plans ... Day starts by emphasizing that GNOME OS is not an attempt to replace existing distributions. Although the creation of a standalone GNOME OS is part of the plans, the idea is to make that a testing and development platform, and any improvements that come from GNOME OS should 'directly improve what the GNOME project is able to offer distributions.' Many of the drivers for GNOME OS are, Day says, old ideas to improve the development experience, such as automated testing and sandboxed applications, and while the developers could have separate initiatives for each feature, the idea is to work on them as a 'holistic plan' under the moniker 'GNOME OS.'"
A few slides provide more context. In the works are stabilizing the platform APIs, improving deployment of applications, making everything automatically testable, and probably the most controversial: "The increasing popularity of mobile and touch devices represents a challenge to existing desktop solutions. This situation is complicated by the emergence of new hybrid devices that combine keyboards, touchpads and touchscreens. During our discussions last week we talked about how existing types of devices – primarily laptops and desktops – have to remain the primary focus for GNOME ... At the same time, we also want to ensure that GNOME remains compatible with new hardware. ... We have set the goal of having a touch-compatible GNOME 3 within a maximum of 18 months." The drive toward touch may seem obnoxious to desktop users, but spreading Free Software to a hardware ecosystem that is currently locked down and proprietary seems like a good goal to have.
Re:Good lord NO!!!!! (Score:0, Interesting)
KDE is awesome. I like it. Gnome 3 is a steaming pile of crap, IMHO.
Honestly (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, I'm in the market for just a plain 1:1 ripoff of win7's interface. It's minimalistic, flows well and allows me to get shit done. That is all.
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a time when GNOME was a good idea. It works, it had support of vendors, and it evolved in a consistent fashion. I used it because it came with my distribution. Sometimes I used Ubuntu and other times Fedora, depending on my project. Both distributions supported GNOME and the difference from a user's perspective was small. Note that I was a professional Qt developer, but felt no urge to switch to KDE based on the my alliance with Qt.
Then came GNOME 3 with Fedora 16. I was baffled. The interface was not intuitive. It wasn't just the deviation from my expectations, but my total inability to do even the simplest task. I wrote to the project manager for Fedora and asked him what I should do, he suggested I try KDE. I am now using KDE as my desktop and find it manageable. There are lots of things I don't like, but it doesn't get it my way of doing work.
I own an iPad, iPhone, an Android Phone and Tablet, a Windows Phone 7, a Nokia N9, a MacBook and an Ultrabook running various Linux distributions and Windows 7. I am familiar and comfortable with touch screen devices and I think GNOME 3 is unusable. So excuse me if I don't buy the argument from GNOME that change is hard, and the release of GNOME 3 is all about the move from the desktop to touch devices. It is a bad, design that is unintuitive and clumsy and I pity the fools who decide it is a good platform for their product.
They aren't ready... (Score:5, Interesting)
... I don't know what other fundamental problems exist with GNOME, but one that sticks in my craw is one I discovered where I cannot run GiMP 2.8.0 on older Linux distros which use an older version of GiMP. The problem has to do with the version of GTK in use. Turns out the desktop environment uses a version (which is linked to theming and other UI elements such as IME (input method editors)) which is too old for GiMP 2.8.x and so it won't run. You can compile the newer libraries but you lose desktop integration, theming and other UI elements such as IME. This means I can run GiMP, but I can't enter Japanese characters into my work. Nice right?
The problem here is they are building an OS/Desktop environment the way people build applications. Sorry, but GTK is for applications...specifically for GiMP. I don't know what the correct or best answer might be, but clearly some sort of software engineering line has been crossed or muddied somewhere and no one on either side of the problem (GiMP or GNOME) want to address it.
So the result? Windows and Mac users get better support running GiMP than this Linux user. The answer most people suggest is "run a newer distro!" Sorry, but that's not a fix. Newer distros update too frequenly and it doesn't address the underlying problem. And if the "answer" is to run distros which update frequently, then holy crap... do we really need to go into why THAT is a bad idea? I use CentOS (RHEL) because it is stable and doesn't change. I can run the newest versions of all programs I use EXCEPT GiMP. (Sure, I have to compile some of them as packages aren't always available, but that's the way things go... I share the packages I make anyway.)
So with just knowing this much about the GNOME project, I have to say they just aren't ready. They aren't drawing those lines separating OS+Desktop environment and applications.
Re:Good lord NO!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, why not? It is not the same. It is different from what you were expecting, perhaps. So the devs have made an effort to document their work.
Like, previously I had no idea how to easily scale a window to consume exactly half of my display-space. But watching one of those short videos clarified it to me so I can make use of the feature. In fact, I later tried the same technique using Windows 7 and it also worked. I am pleased someone made the effort as easy as possible for me to learn [youtube.com].
Re:Good lord NO!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you tried Unity or KDE or the other stuff out there?
They're all crap.
Gnome at least is moving forward.
Not forward. Definitely not forward. Not even Brownian. Very definitely retrograde. It lost critical features of the earlier Gnome desktops.
Between that and the obsession of Gnome's original creator on Things Microsoft, I'd expect a Gnome OS to be a lot like Windows ME.
Re:Good lord NO!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, but it does mean there is a known-working distro that distro-maintainers can refer to and compare to their own in development, to determine why feature X is working in the Gnome distro but not in theirs - that is a useful tool. It also means that a comparative testing environment can be set up, to automate (to some extent) the regression testing process. With a bit of camera and image processing work it might even become mostly-automated.
First, get at least 1 touchscreen (Score:4, Interesting)
But ... the evidence is that there are literally no GNOME developers who actually have touchscreen hardware [slashdot.org]:
There is no way Gnome 3 is designed for touch screens. Or at least,
not for touchscreen-only computers. I use Fedora 17 on a pen-based
computer (fujitsu stylistic) and I can tell you that if it were not
for the fingerprint reader on it, Fedora would be *UNUSABLE*. Whenever
Gnome 3 needs a password to connect to WiFi or to unlock the screen or
unlock following suspend, THERE IS NO WAY TO ENTER THE PASSWORD! The
password windows captures all mouse input so it is NOT possible to
bring up an onscreen keyboard.
So lets stop pretending Gnome 3 shell is for tablet-type computers. It
CANNOT BE USED ON A COMPUTER WITHOUT A KEYBOARD.
Oh, and when one IS able to use the on-screen keyboard, it has is no
tilda (~) character. Not that you would ever need to type a tilda on a
unix-like operating system.
I've filed bugs on all these complaints, but there has been no action.
Are you listening Gnome team?
If they have corporate sponsorship, and aren't just building a funhouse in the air, surely their company can spring for a tablet PC.