GNOME 3.6 To Include Major Revisions 327
supersloshy writes "The launch of the GNOME 3 desktop environment sparked heated debate and criticism. GNOME developers have been listening to the concerns of its users and it is rolling out several significant changes in GNOME 3.6. The message tray, often called hard to use, was made much more visible in addition to being harder to accidentally trigger. The "lock" screen can now optionally control your music player, the system volume, and display notifications so you don't have to type in a password. GNOME will also support different input sources directly instead of requiring an add-on program. Nautilus, the GNOME file browser, is also getting a major face lift with a new, more compact UI, properly working search features, a "move to" and "copy to" option as an alternative to dragging and dropping, and a new "recent files" section. These changes, among many others including improvements to system settings, will be present in GNOME 3.6 when it is released later this month. Any other additions or changes not currently implemented by the GNOME team can be easily applied with only one click at the GNOME Extensions website."
All two (Score:5, Funny)
GNOME 3 users are extremely excited!
Re:All two (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been using it for about the last year (occasionally switching to Xfce or Unity when I feel like it), and I'm okay with most of it, happy with a few bits, and fairly excited by the changes. My main complain was *always* the ridiculous notification system. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to hide notifications? When I gen an email while the screen is off, or I'm not looking at it, I want to frikkin' see it. That's the whole point of a notification system. Having to actually see if I have any notifications is only minimally better than having none at all.
Anyway ... yeah, nice to hear. I'm pleased enough with the rest of it now than the extensions are available that it actually looks and works like I used to have Gnome 2 set up, other than the notifications mess.
I tried Unity again this week on a new development machine. I tolerated it right up until I added the extra monitors. Global menu is a very silly idea.
Re:All two (Score:5, Informative)
You don't see the notifications at all (other than a toaster style warning the moment it happens). You have to 'ask' for them to be shown by putting the mouse in the bottom right corner of the screen. They hide them while the screen is *not* locked.
Re:All two (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not explaining well. Everything is hidden when the screen is locked. Unfortunately, notifications are also not displayed when the screen is not locked. You actually have to do something to see any notifications that might have occurred when you were not looking at the screen. For me, this nearly completely defeats the point of having notifications. I would like to see at a glance that I have an email, or a chat request, etc.
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Usually, notifications can be set up to pop up for a time, then disappear, or have them stay up until they're dismissed. Gnome doesn't allow this choice?
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Gnome doesn't allow this choice?
Consistently with the rest of Gnome, it doesn't. And the tray not working is a deal breaker in my book.
No, requiring ten extensions for basic functionality isn't acceptable either.
Solve a problem, don't force fit a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Me neither, but I'll try to explain anyway.
That's not actually the point. The screen lock is a possible solution to a set of common problems. If you insist on a single solution and then use a rigorous description of that solution as your criteria for whether the problem is solved or not, that's the opposite of good software engineering practice. The point is to define and solve the problem, not force expectations of what the solution should look like to shape your perception of what the problem is.
In most cases, the screen lock exists to prevent other entities from pre-empting your input - for example, I have to protect my keyboard from cats and small children at home, at work I need to prevent other people from sending mail under my username or deleting my local filesystem. I won't give a damn if anyone sees a notice that says "you've got mail" or if they can turn down the volume of my speakers - in fact those are desirable features for nearly all real world users.
In some cases, though, you may also need to prevent others from accessing your output devices - for example if you are carrying on a torrid affair without your spouse's knowledge, performing industrial espionage on your employer, or surfing porn while you're supposed to be babysitting, you'll want your screen completely hidden and you'll want a "hot button" that invokes lockout of all video and audio output instantly. Most people with this use case are also going to be satisfied by a screen lock that displays prominent notifications (without content) and allows control on audio outputs. They aren't going to want to have to type a password to stop the moaning sounds from their speakers - that's not a sufficiently responsive control for them - but they may want the screen lock to automatically mute audio outs.
The least common use case is going to be people who want total input and output device lockdown - when they are away from the computer, they want audio, video and network to be totally inaccessible until they type a password. That use case is important, because it is the highest possible security setting, but almost nobody wants their download to stop when they step away from the computer, almost nobody wants to have to pull the battery out of their kid's laptop to make the music stop.
So instead of focusing on what the meaning of the phrase "screen lock" is, a good solution would probably default to total lock of all inputs and outputs (on the principle of maximum security defaults) but would allow the user to trivially permit notifications and external device controls through a simple settings panel (as well as during any configuration dialog you might provide at setup time).
Too late (Score:4, Insightful)
Over 6 releases to have them starting to listen to their user? I am out!
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Over 6 releases to have them starting to listen to their user? I am out!
By the 8th release they'll take out the options so why bother in the first place ?
Re:Too late (Score:4, Informative)
Over 6 releases to have them starting to listen to their user? I am out!
Ignoring the fact that Gnome Developers are Users too; There has only been 3 releases [Odd .1 are development releases]; You never had to run it with Mate; Unity; Cinnomom [my personal preference]. Where are you going to, Seriously put that install Ubuntu on that overpriced Apple now so you know what you are talking about :)
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Sadly, Debian wheezy doesn't have Mate, nor even poor workarounds like Cinnamon. You'd have to go with XFCE which I find somewhat lacking, or one of fifty or so niche alternatives (I used to be a sworn WindowMaker user until ~10 years ago. It doesn't seem to have improved since then...).
Iterations (Score:5, Funny)
:P
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Insightful)
I see these OSs merging in terms of how they perceive user tasks. The old Unix/Windows model was that you had a bunch of applications running simultaneously, which the user had to manage themselves. In Mac, it feels like the emphasis is on working with one application at a time. This can be seen when the (File, Edit, View, etc) menus change context with respect to the selected application. Unity, and it looks like Gnome 3, are moving in this direction.
For users who are used to one style, completely revamping the UI also means revamping and disrupting everyone's personal workflow. What if I want to browse and code simultaneously? If the UI prohibits such behavior, than I'll have a hard time getting work done.
I don't have a problem with the changes, but I do have a problem with these changes getting shoved down everyone's throat without proper support to revert to a classic look. A lot of the 'core' features that are being added, could simply be mods on top of the existing desktop instead of the buggy restructuring that's currently going on.
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Interesting)
It also makes it almost useless to have apps on a second monitor. That "feature" was one of the reasons I moved away from OSX a couple of years ago.
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Are you saying the mac doesn't just dupe the top menu across all monitors? Seems like the obvious thing to do.
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> it's to do with the muscle memory advantage of just shoving the mouse to the top of the screen regardless of which application you're using.
Shhh don't try to confuse users with facts of Fitts' Law ;-)
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law [wikipedia.org]
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Mac top bar menus implement Fitts law (Score:3)
The menu bar following the app has always been a feature of the Mac OS. It's nothing to do with using one app at a time, it's to do with the muscle memory advantage of just shoving the mouse to the top of the screen regardless of which application you're using.
More specifically, it's an attempt to apply Fitts law [wikipedia.org] to computer user interaction. Tog has an article on the thinking behind this [asktog.com].
What is the problem with Gnome classic? (Score:2)
AFAIK, gnome-panel has continued to be available. Why all the complaining?
Re: (Score:3)
Has working applets and does not occasionally decide to resize itself to the size of the largest icon in some menu or applet.
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Insightful)
Having the menus at the top of the screen defined by the active window requires extra mouse antics, so I like the menus for each program contained within its window. I do not work in full screen unless I'm watching a video and doing little else. I have lots of windows open at once so I can monitor output simultaneously and provide input when required. How about some code open with an irc client, video/audio player open as well.. IM chat? video/audio editing software with encoders?
Some of us actually use the power we have in our desktops. We don't want that power sucked away with useless animations and idiotic limitations designed for constrained input like tablets. Seriously, it seems the current crop of 'designers' (I use the term loosely) working on gnome has never used a computer for anything more than checking facebook and playing music.
gak...
Re:Iterations (Score:4, Insightful)
So true, on a 30 inch monitor, gnome3 is unusable and a pain in the ass to use. But its build for tablets, even the gnome developers admitted it. Music player on lock screen? Tablet feature. Good portion of my developers at work are still using 10.04 due to gnome 3 and ubuntu unity fiasco. Those not using linux use osx.
Never liked unified menus, hated it with office, hated it with gnome3 and osx.
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand. In a desktop environment that supports overlapping windows, how does a global menubar save space?
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. Sadly though as long as iPhone and iPad are racking up the sales I think the only "innovation" is gonna be cell phone ripoff designs
I'm afraid both iPhone and iPad are losing market share. As for innovative, the Gnome 3 desktop is oozes innovation, that is not the problem. Your claim of it looking like an iPad is a little out of place...perhaps you had be better sticking those in the Samsung posts where you usually make them.
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Meh, Gnome 3 doesn't ooze innovation, although it does show to be very open to innovation. It's very obvious that that they are trying to do the right thing. They just aren't very good at it. I'm a user, by the way, for nearly two of years now. Their desktop is very modern. Not exactly innovative since pretty much every feature has been implemented elsewhere, usually better. But at least it's modern.
I really want Gnome 3 to be good but I have little faith in the Gnome team itself, I hope the community can k
Re: (Score:2)
Meh, Gnome 3 doesn't ooze innovation, although it does show to be very open to innovation. It's very obvious that that they are trying to do the right thing. They just aren't very good at it. I'm a user, by the way, for nearly two of years now. Their desktop is very modern. Not exactly innovative since pretty much every feature has been implemented elsewhere, usually better. But at least it's modern.
I really want Gnome 3 to be good but I have little faith in the Gnome team itself, I hope the community can keep them in check. I would love nothing more than they listening to us their users instead of keeping on trying to lure Apple users.
Really it has!? show me where the infinite Desktop idea has been implemented? If your a user why are you not using Mate or Cinnamon [its excellent] if you don't like Gnome Shell. This has nothing to do with Apple users [that is such a strange comment] it looks and fells nothing like OSX thank god. I'm pretty confident they are after the whole market not the few percent that Apple occupy.
It'll be tough. (Score:2)
My Ubuntu box with Gnome 3 is sadly neglected - after I spent days laboriously recreating my working environment on OSX.
I use docky with Gnome 3. This makes them superficially similar. I re-built the key mappings that I live with.
We'll wait cautiously and see.
Too late. (Score:2)
(The "too little" part doesn't even matter anymore.)
Gnome 3.6 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gnome 3.6 (Score:5, Funny)
It has buttons? That clearly must be a mistake that they will quickly remedy.
The way I read it was... (Score:3)
GNOME 3.6 To Include Major Revulsions
Yup.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't Care (Score:2, Interesting)
You had your chance, GNOME, and you wasted it.
Re:Don't Care (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, Xfce on anything is the one to beat now. It's time we all switched gears and started trying to list significant missing features and capabilities in Xfce so they can be added, rather than trying to fix brain dead DE abortions. I don't think there's very much missing from the latest version of Xfce (NOT the outdated version shipping with the spring release of Fedora and Ubuntu).
You know what's... (Score:5, Insightful)
the window/desktop manager I'm still using?
WindowMaker.
As I have been since 1998 or so, whenever I originally started using X on linux. It was intended as a clone of the NeXT workspace, and was for a time the official windowmaker of GNUstep. And you know what? They haven't fucked with it beyond a few minor usability improvements in 10 years. Basically the only changes were adding truetype fonts (Which helped with a few font related issues on later X servers, but otherwise hasn't added much), 'live' editable menus (previously text files that required a restart to change the right-click/f12 menu layout), and some inter-desktop fixes that came out whenever the release popped up on slashdot earlier this year.
It doesn't have a desktop shell, and finding updated wmapplets can be a hassle, but the former can be fixed by borrowing thunar from XFCE, the latter by fixing them yourself (or suc...er 'convincing' someone else to), but it'll run on any computer you have dating back to at least the pentium era (and would probably run on older if it wasn't for the 'mandatory' freetype support.)
Point being: What has gnome offered in either the 2.x or 3.x releases that made it so much better than the original versions, and did any of those features make up for it's unusable bloat on legacy systems?
I know nobody bothers to code for legacy systems anymore, unless they already were, but the point is program efficiency and usability is being reduced by wasting cycles on things that.... don't add to the apparent front-end usability! A problem that the GNOME project seems to be embracing from the wrong end wholeheartedly.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, WindowMaker has always been pretty nice and worked. Can't say I've used it "since" 1998 though. My experience with it may have been just before but I haven't been very loyal to anything.
Haven't really been an active Linux/*BSD user for the last 5+ years either so until very recently my last real experience was KDE 3.5.
Anyway. WindowMaker works.
Personally I think Enlightenment17 is pretty interesting to. It's fast, configurable, most likely coded by someone who knows what he's doing rather than experim
Nautilus? Compact? No. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they removed compact view. [gnome.org] To say it's "more compact" is the opposite of what happened.
Re:Nautilus? Compact? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good lord... One of the developers says that horizontal scrolling is "horrible", and the other says the comments are unhelpful and tells people to go away.
Is there even a point in using GNOME when shit like this happens and with people in charge being such enormous assholes?
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Good lord... One of the developers says that horizontal scrolling is "horrible", and the other says the comments are unhelpful and tells people to go away.
Is there even a point in using GNOME when shit like this happens and with people in charge being such enormous assholes?
I have to say I agree that "Compact View" is a waste of time. I personally will not miss 2 panes, because I have always found that a bizarre concept in a Desktop environment.
Now personally I object to them removing the up directory, because its something I use all day long.
PS. I think its kind of ironic that you calling people "enormous assholes" for telling people to go away
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It's amusing you suggest that two panes is a bizarre concept, considering the whole of GNOME 3's shell is ultimately a bizarre concept anyway (compared to most other desktop environments), so it's not like keeping dual panes would be out of place in GNOME 3. :)
I didn't use dual panes much, but occasionally they were useful. Just like the Windows "start" menu - occasionally useful, and it's annoyin
Re: (Score:2)
It's amusing you suggest that two panes is a bizarre concept, considering the whole of GNOME 3's shell is ultimately a bizarre concept anyway (compared to most other desktop environments), so it's not like keeping dual panes would be out of place in GNOME 3. :)
I didn't use dual panes much, but occasionally they were useful. Just like the Windows "start" menu - occasionally useful, and it's annoying to have it removed when it wasn't hurting anyone. It's reduction in functionality which made me look into using MATE (which lasted for a while, until I cracked and went back to Windows 7 for reasons of tension with the Linux ecosystem.)
Please do not confuse the gnome shell experience with nautilus. I use Gnome 3 applications with cinnamon and it is excellent. As for my reasons against two panels and why I think its bizarre. I can open more than one instance of "Files". Two panels made sense in DOS. I got driven to Linux by Windows by the abuses by the company and the Spyware/DRM in their [not your] OS Windows 8 is not where I want to be :)
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How can you say that? Compact view is the best view of all systems. I've been using it for years as my default view. I always thought it was stupid on Windows to have each column the same width and use up extra space when one file has a really long name. Choice should be what it is all about.
My opinion is just that an opinion. Although if the need is to have a "Compact View" I would be requesting a better resize "Icon View" [hold down ctrl and move scroll wheel]...and that I would agree is useful.
The full post on nautilus is here http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2012/08/01/cross-cut/ [gnome.org] and it does talk about the reasons for removing compact view, and I agree the explanation given is weak, without a better replacement which I still think is an improved Icon View, and this quote "The view itself was n
Re:Nautilus? Compact? No. (Score:4, Funny)
Oh god.. I read the bug comments too. The original poster refers to this gem, quote from developer:
Please go to random forums on the internet instead - there you can add your unhelpful comments that might make developers not want to look at certain bug reports anymore.
Well, that pretty much sums up Gnome development team's attitude.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nautilus? Compact? No. (Score:4, Informative)
The Mate desktop runs great on Fedora 17 with a third-party repo, and will be in the 18 repos. You can still have Gnome 2.
Re: (Score:3)
Did you bother trying the current latest version of Xfce? I did and I was amazed. Steady progress. I don't think it lacks anything of significance now. There are some applets that aren't quite as mature and well developed, and maybe one or two that are missing, but that's it.
I was a GNOME 2 fan as well; still am as a matter of fact, but I would be happy with Xfce when GNOME 2 is no longer an option (and maybe before that given its steady and rapid and evolution in unerringly the right direction).
Perhaps it
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Only in software... (Score:5, Funny)
...can (3.0 + 0.6) be less than 2.
Re:Only in software... (Score:5, Funny)
...can (3.0 + 0.6) be less than 2.
In a mod 3.3 number system, yes :)
Why we can't have nice things. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hipsters and people that sway easily to trendiness, are why computers are starting to suck. Whoever let these monkeys program needs to be drawn and quartered. "Oooh, let's take the close button, and not actually close or exit the application, let's just make it disappear but still running in the background, because users don't know what they want to do anyway." (Banshee, Pidgin, just to name a few). Let's just throw away 40+ years of HCI and ergonomics because touch screens are the new rage.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst part is that the GNOME team never, ever learns from past mistakes. After all the negative criticism they've gotten since the launch of GNOME 3 they still pull shit like this [gnome.org]. Seriously, I don't even know where to begin with that one. Apparently they think it's too much work to navigate a filesystem so they removed the left directory navigation pane. WHY?!! If it's there - they'll make sure to break it (or remove it) just so they can show off some bizarre "idea" about how things should work in la-l
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Agree 100%
> Whoever let these monkeys program needs to be drawn and quartered.
And flogged.
I'm looking at you Skype ... and all the retarded UI designers ...
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Congratulations, you are an idiot!
Copy to.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm glad to see GNOME finally adopt Copy To and Move To in their file manager. That was one feature which I loved in KDE and drew me away from GNOME, oh, about ten years ago. Odd it has taken them this long to include the feature, but I'm glad they finally did. The summary doesn't mention it, but have the developers finally enabled the shutdown button by default? The "press ALT to show" concept was really silly.
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I'm glad to see GNOME finally adopt Copy To and Move To in their file manager. That was one feature which I loved in KDE and drew me away from GNOME, oh, about ten years ago.
Even 10 years ago you could simply use another file manager (KDE's Konqueror or even something completely different).
I never understood why people change their whole DE when they just like a single application better.
Why not judge each component on its own merit? In my case most happens to be KDE-based but not everything. (eg. I use Firefox and GIMP)
Performance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 8 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Vista Gremlins (Score:2)
Major Revisions? (Score:2)
I hear all these people switching to OSX. (Score:4, Informative)
And I start to wonder if these are just Apple Trolls. Listen, It's easy enough to switch to KDE or XFCE. I run Mandriva 2011. I use KDE. I have my own custom KDE theme installed with rpm. It works fine. There is no reason to abandon Linux because Gnome sucks, just run whatever programs you please under XFCE or KDE if Gnome is so awful.
You are an idiot if you switch to OSX or Windows over this.
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One Note: No right click!
Well, you canif you buy a third party mouse, but all the mac lovers will ridicule you forever after.
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Ubuntu and hence Gnome user since 8.04 here. Reason why I am moving soonish to OS X is that I am tired of each "upgrade" of Ubuntu (and Gnome) breaking things and changing things. Sure, I can switch to a different distro. Sure, I can switch to different desktop environments. But that's exactly what I am tired of. All the switching and fixing. I want to do my work, not having to Google for hacks, extensions, tweaks, etc. My work (freelance Perl programmer) already involves a lot of problem solving, don't need additional problem solving to make the tools that I need actually work. It's like picking up an hammer and having to shape in into a screwdriver before you can use it. If that's what you like, good luck. But don't call us idiots because we have better things to do. Especially since as soon as I have figured out how to change that hammer into a screwdriver efficiently the hammer is replaced with a fiddle in the next upgrade of Ubuntu and/or Gnome.
If you really use Ubuntu your not using Gnome 3 you are using Unity so not I suspect using extentions as you claim. Personally I would love a list of all the things you "fixed". Which I suspect is nothing. If stability really what you wanted you would have chosen the fantastic stable Debian or LTS Ubuntu both lack current edge features but, well not much fixing. I suspect your post is disingenuous which is a lot worse than being an idiot.
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Last I heard, major revisions of Windows / Mac tend to fck things up also, maybe to a slightly lesser degree. Anyways, there are plenty of Linux distros that don't hump the bleeding edge, and plenty of spins of popular distros which have DE's that don't decide to change their paradigms on a dime. But of course, this does take more than a few minutes of research to investigate, so...
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I use Mac OSX at work, but it is inferor to xfce4 or cinnamon. more buttons to click and hold to do simple tasks.
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Guess I'm an idiot. I've run out of patience in all this infighting and tension in the Linux community. I just want some stability in desktop environments. I know everyone hates Windows 8 but Windows 7 is going to be around for quite a while still, so I'm sticking with it.
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Guess I'm an idiot. I've run out of patience in all this infighting and tension in the Linux community. I just want some stability in desktop environments. I know everyone hates Windows 8 but Windows 7 is going to be around for quite a while still, so I'm sticking with it.
"infighting and tension" I don't drink Milk anymore because of All the "infighting and tension" that happens between cows. I'm going back to drinking mud.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking as a former Ubuntu advocate (since Dapper, woot) it's not just GNOME that's driving ppl to OSX or Windows. It's Unity too. There's a race to become shittier by adopting all of OSX's worst features (global menu DAMN YOU) and leaving out the good stuff (Nautilus' second pane was pretty sweet). KDE is still too slow compared to Gnome, on my octocore gigantic RAID10 SSD behemoth, to tolerate on a daily basis.
After I got a Mac and found out how awful OSX can be I went to Mint and have been happ
Nobody has commented on the name (Score:3)
Ignoring the usability issues. Love the renaming of Nautilus to files. They need to continue on that trend
fundamental problem unaddressed (Score:2)
these superficial changes don't fix the GNOME3 philosophy of dictating user's workflow, and needing a fucking developer to make changes that are configurable by user in sane desktops. forget the fork, get a fire extinguisher for GNOME3, it's burnt beyond salvaging in the GNOME3 dev's oven; the smoke is stinking up the desktop Linux house. Listening to the remaniing few users fixes nothing.
KDE (Score:2)
Its better every release. At least if you dont have a touch screen device KDE 4.9 is the my new old way of getting work done.
Unlike gnome which seems to regress every release. I am waiting for them to release their own version of X and Linux. .exe and .so files could be called dll i guess...
A system with integration of all components into one monolithic thing.
Like Kernel/X/DE/... in just on bin.
Also might want to start calling bins excecutable files and shotren their extensions to
News (Score:3)
That is news. Wow. No disrespect, please keep doing that.
Actually really looking forward to this (Score:3)
I'm actually looking forward to some of the GNOME 3.6 changes. Once I went out and grabbed some extensions ( http://extensions.gnome.org/ [gnome.org] ) to tweak things more to my liking I really started to enjoy GNOME Shell. I was kinda hoping to wander into the comments here and talk to other Shell users about what they like and don't like and what extensions they use, but instead there's just this incredible hate-fest. Other GNOME 3.x users, what extensions are you using? There's like a million and I'm totally curious if I've missed some.
My top 5:
- Calculator (lets you type equations into the search bar)
- Weather (It's just a classy weather applet)
- Window Options (puts close/min/max options in the app dropdown menu on the top panel)
- Maximus (Removes the title bar of windows when maximized. Combines well with the 'Window Options' extension)
- Blank Screen (Adds a menu option to blank the screen without locking it. Puts the monitor in power saving mode)
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What I want to know is, when is it going to be the year of Windows on the desktop? With the new not-Metro interface, it looks like WIndows is getting pretty close to being as powerful and sophisticated as GNUStep...
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...Microsoft's favoured bedfellow in the free software community.
Why is there no "year of Linux on the desktop"? Well, my friends, it is not because Apple are cunning this or Microsoft are abusive that. It is because no-one has yet come up with a compelling reason to deploy POS like GNOME outside the basement.
...price :)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget the #2 distro, Fedora. They're giant supporters of GNOME, and not KDE. There's not many distros that feature KDE prominently, and the biggest one, SUSE, earned everyone's mistrust when they signed that deal with Microsoft.
You misspelled a word... (Score:2)
-B
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Write post
2. End with "I'll probably get modded -1 troll for this..."
3. ...
4. Profit!
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Fortunately, FOSS provides a solution as well, called forking. For example, MATE [mate-desktop.org] is a fork from GNOME 2.0 and will continue development the way GNOME SHOULD have.
Unlike proprietary software where the users may find themselves at the mercy of a chair throwing nut case, nobody can actually force the users to follow them down the rabbit hole.
As for usability groups, they must have an uncanny knack for never including people who think the way I do in their focus groups because I find FOSS much easier to use in
Re:And the other side of the problem... (Score:2)
As a "rogue programmer who forces everybody to use the software the same way that I use it", I also have a complaint from my side of the story. Every time I make a UI change that I believe makes the software easier to use, you complain that you can't keep doing things exactly the way you have been doing. And it's true, you often can't; but the other side of this complaint is stagnation. If you are not interested in trying something new that may give you a way to do things faster and easier than you are curr
Re:And the other side of the problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are not interested in trying something new that may give you a way to do things faster and easier than you are currently doing, why are you using my new UI?
Because you stopped supporting the old one.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Support is not free. You want to keep your old ways, while I want to move on. If I am a commercial developer, I'd weigh the value of keeping you as a customer and offer you a support contract to compensate me for the work required to keep you comfortably in the past. If I am an open source developer, you
Re: (Score:2)
This line of reasoning would be easier to appreciate if GNOME 3 had been a new project, or had been built with a new namespace so as to be able to coexist with 2.x on the same system.
It seems that steps were taken to deliberately force people to choose and move, and deliberately break the older stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
All right; I dig the willingness to communicate, and am prepared to contribute my two cents.
I think you know EXACTLY why y
Re:This is my problem with F/OSS in general... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the problem is people like these on /. who criticise everything.
That's stupid. You're stupid. Everything is stupid. Nyah :P
Compare this to games developers that give in to their fans and give them whatever they want, usually go bankrupt.
Like how Valve started circling the drain the moment TF2 went free to play?
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You do realize people write free software to solve their own problems right?
And those are not the people who write GNOME 3. GNOME 3 developers write free software to feel important and powerful, just like all other pretentious assholes.
Re:Why Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
Protip: The "Post Anonymously" checkbox is located above Comment Subject ;)
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Why are you using Linux desktop? Windows 7 and MacOS X deliver you a premium experience without having to worry about broken shit like this.
Premium experience? More like "experience forced for every single user because they all totally use computers in the EXACT SAME WAY".
Where are "extensions for OSX", eh? I have to use an iMac in my design class and I really, really would take Windows 95 over that "experience".
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't really realize what a premium experience means... I don't want to restart the OS when I install a browser, for example. Don't get me wrong, the Linux desktop has way too many kinks, but the problem with the Windows mono-culture is that people don't even see the huge problems because they are so used to them.
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I like Ubuntu + Unity very much.
And Ubuntu is more secure, has less malware, and is open. It is better than Windows.
Windows not a "premium experience" to me (Score:3)
Linux users do not have to use Gnome. There are many other desktops to choose from.
I use Windows 7 at work. For me, getting home to my Linux system is like a taking a breath of freash air.
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It's an optional feature, just don't enable it.
I would say the volume control's true benefit is being able to lower/mute the volume while locked. Handy situations?
-You want to play mp3s while reading a book / cooking / whatever, but having to type your password to adjust the volume is a chore.
-your alarm clock is an mp3 played by cron (I solve this by turning off my speakers, not really an option for laptops).
-you are in a lecture, the lock screen has come on, and that web page with randomly cycling ads ha
Re:Yawn... (Score:5, Interesting)
Screenshots are not encouraging...
I read through some of this and I am a user of Japanese language input. (Output too) In my recent experience with trying to get GiMP 2.8.x compiled and running on CentOS 6.x, I learned that when I was successful, I could only accomplish this feat by compiling many of GNOME's core libraries because the GIMP toolkit (you know, the GUI toolkit intended for use with GIMP) ended up as part of GNOME against the advice of the larger community. The result is that if I try to run a GTK based application in an environment which uses a different GTK, I lose theming... not the end of the world. But ALSO I loose access to my input method! Since I lose GNOME integration, input methods are also lost among other things.
This is GNOME's fault. They simply aren't mature in their development philosophies.
And what did I read in the article describing the new changes? "more tightly integrated IME!!" Uh... no. That's a bad idea. If there's one thing I learned from my experiences in breaking GNOME integration, it's that input is something of a low enough level that it should be handled by X, not by GNOME.
GNOME marches forward ruining things. If they want "a direction" they need to consider moving in a mature direction that unifies the desktop experience with X and with that other thing that is closer to the hardware... freeland or something like that?
And what was that "GNOME-OS" thing I heard about? Oh crap. Every app and environment thinks they should be an OS. Uh... no. Please no,
Astonishing (Score:3)
You have to assume that Mate has inherited all of these problems and while Unity is still as ugly as a bulldog's backside and less use than a chocolate ashtray you have to wonder if its completely rewritten core could not in fact one day be used as the basis of something both elegant and useful.
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To be fair about the Gimp thing, the guy was trying to run an extended life OS and install the latest and greatest. Such a thing usually needs a lot of skill (and probably hacking on sources).
On Linux you have four main ways of doing things:
1. You live on the bleeding edge, update religiously and cautiously at least once a month and reap the benefits of eternally fresh binaries and deal with the fear that one day you will update something that will irrecoverably break your system (which doesn't actually hap