Designer Jon McCann: "More Optimistic About GNOME Than In a Long Time" 235
An anonymous reader writes "In an extensive interview with derStandard.at, GNOME designer Jon McCann shares his thoughts about all the criticism GNOME 3 currently faces and why he doesn't think at all that GNOME is in a crisis. He also talks about the current plans for GNOME OS and explains why he thinks that Linux distributions should rethink their purpose."
Re:No, seriously (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit, you've obviously never used Gnome 3. Extensions are as simple to install as going to extensions.gnome.org with epiphany and clicking switching the "off"-button to "on" for the desired extension. It's by far the easiest extension install I've ever seen.
Re:No, seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Linus explains it better why these fabled extensions are horrendous:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDpF4i
Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Well OK here are the main points from the interview
1) He wants to move towards distributing Gnome more directly in particular to Windows.
2) He likes the fact that Gnome has clear direction. In his mind the crisis was when Gnome 2 started wrapping up and the Gnome developers didn't know what to do. While for the developers Gnome 3 has been full of direction
3) The Canonical divorce is continuing and Ubuntu will not be the testing platform going forward. Gnome OS is coming somewhat out of the desire to have a stable place to test Gnome.
4) He really believes the diversity of the open source eco system makes it impossible to support software.
5) He believes that the Gnome community is responding to the criticism they can extract, i.e. the constructive criticism. For example changes to the UI file movement and getting rid of the "copy and paste" applied to files.
Re:No, seriously (Score:5, Informative)
I'm using Cinammon, too, but my teeth are grinding. KDE is starting to look attractive again, although she's put some weight on.
Actually, if you disable the desktop search function in the settings, KDE uses less resources than Gnome 3 (shell or cinnamon) or Unity. At least that is my experience.
give it a try first (Score:4, Informative)
People should try it before they ignore it. It is not ill-suited to everyone. I think its a case of the gnome team thinking everyone works like they do. I use keyboard controls almost exclusively, with lots of windows open, mostly command lines. I start applications from a run box, or commandline, not menus. OSX came along and the spotlight/quicksilver method of starting apps was a big step forward, it would autocomplete the name of the application for me. Gnome 3 and unity are another step forward in that it will give me a nearest match if I mispell something, I can type either the visible name (like "files") or the application name "nautilus" and either works. Or natulius for that matter. Additionally its a single key press to start typing rather than two as in windows7 or osx. workspace key shortcuts haven't changed from gnome2 and the window tiling is sufficient, though usually I don't dock windows. I prefer gnome3 to unity for the shrinky window thing it does showing whats open (like osx).
If you mostly start apps from the commandline instead of menus or quickbars, gnome3 is for you so give it a try. They should have realized though that not everyone works that way and made it more flexible.