Godwin's Law Invoked in Linus/Gnome Spat

lisah writes "The flame wars between Linus Torvalds and the GNOME community continue to burn. Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,' a member of the Linux Foundation's Desktop Architects mailing list suggested that Torvalds use GNOME for a month before making such pronouncements. Torvalds, never one to back down from a challenge, simply turned around and submitted patches to GNOME and then told the list, '...let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they actually improve the code.' After lobbing that over the fence, Torvalds concluded his comments by saying, 'Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it makes things more logical, and code more readable.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Please take care of Linus

[Reverse Gear]

I really think that Linus is a cool guy no doubt about that, sending in those patches to the Gnome community sure was the way to prove who is the over-geek here and how to get something done instead of wasting valuable time arguing over something as unimportant as Gnome (pun intented), if Linus is right.

But Linus does really seem to have a bit of an attitude problem at times. Which is many times good if you are a boss for employees, but the problem just is that is not what Linus is, he is the boss of volenteers, they can quit if they don't like their boss.

I can't help but get a little worried, had it been anyone else but Linus I wouldn't mind, let people have their strange ways as long as they do not bother me or anyone else to much.

I am just worried for Linus, I sure hope he does take care of himself and stay mentally fit, that flamewars like the one he appearently had with the Gnome people here does not bring him out of balance somehow.

If Linus somehow gets sick and overloaded then it will lead to a whole lot of mess with the development of the Linux Kernel which really would not be nice.

So please Gnome people start behaving, be humble, accept the patches and do not upset Linus, we really need him, even if he isn't always the nicest person around ;)

Re:Please take care of Linus

[_vSyncBomb]

You fucking etiquette Nazi. How dare you say that Linus isn't the nicest person around?

Re:Please take care of Linus

[Overly Critical Guy]

You know, the weird thing is that for many years, we all raved about how down-to-earth and carefree Linus was, and how he didn't get involved in Internet spats because he was a geek too busy working on Linux. In recent years, however, he's taken public stances and hurled a few insults here and there. This Gnome criticism is just stupid. Linus doesn't know EVERYTHING; he should leave the Gnome interface to the people who design the Gnome interface. It's not thinking users are stupid when you don't provide the overwhelming configurability that messy interfaces like KDE provide. It's just recognizing that the majority of people in the world just don't care and want something that is already the best solution, because they don't want to have to configure anything. As a kernel geek, it doesn't surprise me that Linus doesn't get that.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

he should leave the Gnome interface to the people who design the Gnome interface

He did and look what happened: Gnome.

Attitude

[EmbeddedJanitor]

There are two parts to attitude.

First off, nice touchy feely people get nothing done. All good OSS projects depend on focussed, and often heavy handed, leadership. Linus might piss and moan about Gnome, but then a lot of people do about Linus too. Linus is effective because he's not democratic. Try send patches that Linus does not like upstream in the kernel. They will get squashed. Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they should be aware of the cultures they are playing with.

I run an OSS project too, one that is pretty successful. I don't willy-nilly accept patches that I don't like either. I will often take patches and recode them to be the way that I want them to be.

Linus is good. Linus contributes a lot, but untimately that does not give him the right to be a fuckwit in someone elses project, any more than it gives anyone else the right to be a fuckwit in his project.

Roll over and be nice to Linus is a poor way to handle things.

Re:Attitude

[sumdumass]

This attitude has been in the workings for quite a while now. I'm not talking about linus specificly but the entire linus-gnome tidbit dates back to at least 2005 or earlier. And it has more to do with others not being able to get stuff done or having their projects borked. Here is a discusion line that goes from a printing issue with some configurations on the ppd stuff [gnome.org].

You can see it in there if you follow the list. It revolves around the idea that User are stupid so design for stupidity and stuff availible on other desktops simply not being there because users are stupid. Strangly, the gnome people are trying to convince linus that their way is the best way. Now this printer dialog post was made after the gnome project stopped submissions that would have nebaled it to work from being considered.

In all, outside the spanish email who thinks someone is stupid because they might not be able to read something writen in spanish, the entire attitude and conversations has been quite tame. Well, as far as i know. And I have been trying to follow this for a while. I used to use gnome and had to switch to KDE when stuff stopped being there. I don't see much of anything changing anytime soon. All that will happen is people will continue to reinforce their positions and beginers will eventualy grow out of gnome.

Re:Attitude

[Gorshkov]

Linus is good. Linus contributes a lot, but untimately that does not give him the right to be a fuckwit in someone elses project, any more than it gives anyone else the right to be a fuckwit in his project. Roll over and be nice to Linus is a poor way to handle things.

Funny. One of the biggest cries you hear when somebody trashes something else in open source is "You don't like it? Fix it and submit a patch, and stop expecting these hard-working volunteers who give up all of their free time to develop something out of the goodness of their heart to babysit you"

So - let's see what happened here.
a) Linus bitches about something he doesn't like

b) Somebody says "Use it for a month and THEN see if you like it (which totally ignores the fact that what he's bitching about shows that he HAS, in fact, used it). Others tell him that if he's not using it, or doing something about it, he has no right to complain.

c) Linus turns around and does what he's told to - he submits patches to fix what he thinks is broken

I don't see anything wrong here. I don't see evidence of an ego. What *I* see is somebody with very strong opinions, and grounded with a basis in fact (even if you don't agree with his conclusions - which I don't), doing something about it instead of just whining.

I wish MORE people had this particular "ego problem" of Linus' - Open Source would be much further along.

Re:Attitude

[hey!]

It's one thing to bitch about the Windows UI being like an assistant who you suspect is waiting to bury a an icepick in your head. If you use Windows, its probably because you don't have a meaningful choice. But you dont' have that problem on Linux or BSD. Not only do you have a choice of distros, on most major distros you have a choice of desktop environments. If you prefer KDE, why not jsut use it? Why bitch that Gnome is not KDE?

What Linus is saying is that the Gnome developers are idiots because they have different priorities than he does. And its always possible to improve bits of code in any major system, so the fact that he has submitted some clean patches doesn't prove anything.

The reason this is a problem is that anything Linus says, even things that are patently stupid, immediately gets attention and credibilty because of his status. He should just use KDE and leave the Gnome people to pursue their own priorities.

Re:Attitude

[Dr. Spork]

I see your point, but it's not that simple. Like it or not, Gnome is the first thing that many people see on their way to using the software Linus does care about, which is the Linux kernel. It's like the lobby of the Linux hotel. And it's hard to blame Linus for saying "Clean up that fucking lobby, you stoners! I've dedicated my life to the internals of this hotel, they're aswesome, but once people see the filthy lobby, they run away without even noticing the good stuff!"

Re:Please take care of Linus

[Fordiman]

I dunno. I think it's fine for him to act all badass once in a while; it gets people's attention.

As for the Gnome issue... I rather agree with him that it's underfeatured. Honestly, XFCE is about as robust for grandma needs, at a much lower HD/RAM footprint.

Gnome is good but he really has a point

[dbIII]

Before criticising him too much on this people should actually take a look at gconf - and despair!!!

I see it as a not paticularly good idea implemented badly - as an exercise for the reader consider how you would go about exporting the gpanel menu setting from one user to another on the same machine. Consider it in detail and look at source code instead of just stating "it's XML - how hard can it be?" - it will suprise and offend you - and you'll see why some very capable gnome developers have not yet fini

Re:Please take care of Linus

[Reverse Gear]

The way you put this, sounds like Torvals has some kind of severe autism.

I don't know the man, so I can't say if that is true.
HOwever I do think that assuming he has some degree of autism isn't unlikely, I myself suffer from quite serios mental disorders and I seem to find that autism and other mental disorders (or what you like to call them, doesn't matter much) is much more common in "the geek community" than in the world surrounding us.
Probably has a lot to do with that the commputer is really a big help to people like me who have problems handling social situations.

But then again I do not know Linus at all, I just know that he is important to the Linux Kernel and I would like for the kernel to keep on developing, if I have to bow and jump around to please Linus I would do that as I know he is much better at doing what he does than I am and even if I were more skilled being humble and appreciating what Linus has done would let things run more smoothly.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[tinkertim]

HOwever I do think that assuming he has some degree of autism isn't unlikely, I myself suffer from quite serios mental disorders and I seem to find that autism and other mental disorders (or what you like to call them, doesn't matter much) is much more common in "the geek community" than in the world surrounding us.
Probably has a lot to do with that the commputer is really a big help to people like me who have problems handling social situations.

If you get the occasion, read The curious incident of the dog in the night time [amazon.com] by Mark Haddon. Its a very small and entertaining paperback, an avid reader could finish it off in one evening's sitting.

I also suffer from :

    * Severe Anxiety In Social Situations
    * Extreme difficulty making decisions when new options are in front of me
    * Panic attacks when touched unexpectedly
    * Panic attacks when people shout or demonstrate hostile / violent behavior

.. and an array of other extremely annoying ailments which lead me to believe that (most) very smart people could also be considered mildly (or more) autistic.

I'm not saying they / we ARE autistic, I'm only pointing out that reclusive geeks demonstrate very, very similar symptoms. From the research I've done, it seems that somewhere around Gen-X kids who are really smart were given an overdose of stimuli which grew their creativity and intellect but shot them in the foot emotionally. Right about the time of the Texas Instruments home computer, from what I can tell, and onward.

I had to wade through an enormous amount of kiddie-shrink finger pointing papers, and I'm still doing that .. to try and see how not to pass this along to my 15 month old daughter. I can only say I'm 100% convinced that Autism has more forms than documented, and one of them is developed, not acquired when we don our "genes".

There's also a school of thought that empathy is the next evolutionary "tool" we're devloping, and the feedback we get from the heightened sense literally drives us crazy to the point where we seem autistic.

People who stay home and work, electing not to interact much with the outside world around them do so for very good reasons, and we really need to be tolerant of eachother's quirks. This doesn't mean that you put on a T shirt that says "Hey world, I have a hard time coping with you so plese be nice to me all the time", however.

If you (yourself) won't make an effort to get past yourself, you can't expect more from those around you.

The smarter we get, the less we're able to handle it. I don't think the world is going to slow down so we feel more comfortable being in it .. so the word for today kids : cope.

Let us not forget, Linus is most directly responsible for this 'cool little safe haven' we found where not only can we interact at a level that also lets us feel safe, we can also have careers. When he talks, listen. If you don't like what he says, cope.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[zhrike]

I feel for you, and certainly wish you did not have to deal with such unfortunate (though human) conditions.

That said, to attempt to draw a parallel between those things and intelligence is both absurd and unsupported.
There are many, a majority, in fact, of extraordinarily intelligent people who are not only able to function
socially, but are able to apply that intellect and bring a greater awareness to bear in decision-making, and in
navigating social and political situations, sans conditions like those from which you suffer.

I also respectfully submit that your "research" is necessarily biased, as you clearly have an emotional desire
to have your theories proven true (as you apparently and understandably suffer from feelings of inferiority from your conditions).

Studies have consistently shown that higher intelligence leads to healthier (physically and mentally) and happier
people. This "semi-autistic genius geek" thing is a BS myth. Don't say most, say "me." Because that is what you mean, and it ends there.

Furthermore... this cult of personality nonsense (re: listening to Linus because he's Linus) is the height of idiocy.

When he talks, listen. If you don't like what he says, cope.

The first part is reasonable, the second ridiculous. If you don't like what he says, provide a counterpoint. It will be no more or less valid regardless of any factor save its internal logical consistency.

Re:

[kryptkpr]

I have seen enough anecdotal evidence to back up the GP's point. The smartest guy in my university classes had a very, very strange introverted personality and behaviors that definitely bordered on autism.

There is a certain degree of intelligence where the logical side of the brain dominates to the extent that the emotional/social side begins to suffer.. it's not as impossible as you seem to think it is, but also not nearly as common as the GP thinks.

Re:

[charlieman]

Richard Stallman really deserves the most credit for the Linux operating system environment

When did it become the Linux Operating System?

Well, now we can credit Linux for helping out at Gnome :)

Re:Please take care of Linus

[tinkertim]

I'm sorry, but you've got a dangerous mistake. Richard Stallman really deserves the most credit for the Linux operating system environment, with his foundation of the GPL, the massive code base of gcc and glibc and other core open source projects, and the continuing work there. The Linux kernel is critical, but a similar project such as HURD coming out earlier could have filled the same spot.

I stand corrected (and your right) and I know better because I was there. The sentence should have said "Linus and Stallman", but Linus is the topic.

If any part of the 'big bang' had not happened just as it did, I'm quite sure the universe would still exist but I can't accurately say just how things would be within it.

Free software as we know it has more than one parent, you are 100% correct. Stallman laid the roads, no doubt about it .. but it took a 'Linus' to get people to spend the $300 in long distance calls to download the source over 2400 (or slower) bps. I was one of those people.

"Yes, hello, MCI? Yes about my bill, this call to California .. you see, my cat jumps up on my desk when I'm at work, and he accidentally triggered my modem to dial out .. Yes, yes, he must have pushed a key on my keyboard .. no no, you see it was a computer that made the call, do I have to pay for this call to California? Nobody was talking, it was just modems .... yes, M O D E M .. No? I don't? Really? THANKS!"

I'm not at all negating or diminishing the work of everyone else involved, but lines of code aren't the only measure of how much someone contributed.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[John Nowak]

The way you put this, sounds like Torvals has some kind of severe autism.

Oh please, if Torvalds is autistic, then I'm a borderline pyschopath. People sometimes lose it when typing. I do often. They don't see the other side of the conversation as an actual person. It happens. For example, right now, I want to hit you with a stick. If this were real life, I'd not want to, and I'd have you out for coffee.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd not want to, and I'd have you out for coffee.

Speak for yourself and hand me the stick...

Re:Please take care of Linus

[dangitman]

If this were real life, I'd not want to, and I'd have you out for coffee.

Being made into coffee sounds less pleasant than being hit with a stick. Oy! The grinding and the scalding and the hot hot hot! Heuven glavin!

Re:Please take care of Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, if Torvalds is autistic, then I'm a borderline pyschopath.

Sincerely,

Hans Reiser

Re:Please take care of Linus

[pnewhook]

I think your geek status on Slashdot went down a bit as soon as you said 'wife'

Re:Please take care of Linus

[dan dan the dna man]

Whereas I am sick and tired of people trotting out this 'We're all a bit Aspergers' line because we're in IT.

I work partly embedded in an academic CS environment, there are plenty of people there who aren't the most socially adept, but to suggest that these people all have Asperger's is nonsense.

There's a huge problem with people self-diagnosing autistic spectrum disorders, they read a paragraph or two on Asperger's and then they have the 'omg that's me!' moment. I can happily sit around all day picking bits out of DSM criteria that fit my personality.

Let me tell you something, these geeks don't have Asperger's. I have a girlfriend who is diagnosed with Asperger's and believe you me she is nothing like the people I know in the CS department.

Just because you're a bit shy, antisocial, have a thing for code and maths and aren't the most outgoing person in the world doesn't make you fucking Asperger's.

You don't want to be autistic, you don't even want to pretend to be autistic. Watching someone with Asperger's struggle with living day to day is not fun. You geeks don't struggle to live from day to day. Panic attacks are not the sole preserve of people with Asperger's, and when you see an AS suffer 'overloaded' with stimuli you don't want to be around because there's nothing you can do to calm them down and they're using one of their coping mechanisms to keep themselves from literally losing the plot.

Living with Asperger's is not something you should aspire to. You can be logical, antisocial, good with computers and suffer panic attacks and still not be Asperger's or anywhere on the autistic spectrum.

Repeat after me - Wikiepdia is not a fucking doctor, it cannot diagnose you. If you think you all have Asperger's go get a referral to someone who can tell you. Watch as they boot you out of the surgery for wasting their time.

regards,

long suffering partner of a wonderful Asperger's gf.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[macaddict]

As the mother of an autistic (PDD) child--thank you for saying all that.

I'm so fucking sick and tired of these geeks who think autism is some sort of neato cool thing to have which makes your life a magical fairyland of math and science genius while explaining away their aversion to dating and soap. That attitude alone tells me they have no fucking clue what they are talking about.

Autism is not a benefit and it's not fun and games. It's a fucking nightmare! I can't even begin to imagine what my son goes through when he "short circuits" on sensory overload. And he's old enough now to realize something is going wrong, but he can't do anything to stop it. How come none of the "autism wannabes" out there ever talk about that aspect? Maybe because they're not actually autistic? Trust me, if I could I'd take my son's autism away from him and give it to one of those "autism is so kewl!" geeks so their dream of being autistic can come true.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[OriginalArlen]

I truly believe we need something like Godwin's Law for "'ZOMG! Autism!" turning up in a discussion.

And thus Macaddict's Law was conceived.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[rxmd]

Whereas I am sick and tired of people trotting out this 'We're all a bit Aspergers' line because we're in IT. [...] There's a huge problem with people self-diagnosing autistic spectrum disorders, they read a paragraph or two on Asperger's and then they have the 'omg that's me!' moment. [...] Repeat after me - Wikiepdia is not a fucking doctor, it cannot diagnose you.

Straight on. I had a girlfriend once who was manically depressive and who made life very difficult for herself by talking herself into thinking she was a borderliner when every medical professional told her she wasn't.

I think the best description of what happens when people diagnose themselves is in the first chapter of Jerome K Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat [authorama.com]":

"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into some fearful, devastating scourge, I know and, before I had glanced half down the list of premonitory symptoms, it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever read the symptoms discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vituss Dance found, as I expected, that I had that too, began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Brights disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaids knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadnt I got housemaids knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaids knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to walk the hospitals, if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted mys

Self-diagnosis is fraught

[Presence1]

I completely agree with the parent post. Self-diagnosis is fraught with problems, and will generally lead to false positive diagnoses.

It turns out that this is also a common problem with first and second year medical students, as I found out from two separate friends who went through it.

Medical students spend most of their long waking hours reading about new (to them) diseases, syndromes, collections of symptoms. Naturally, their brains, being good at pattern-matching, find patterns in the quirks of their own experience, leading them to conclude that they have lived with some previously undiagnosed disease. Of course, this is not the case, but that doesn't stop it from happening to every new class of med students.

I even fell prey to the same thing when all the articles on Asperger's started flying around about 5 years ago, thinking: "OMG, I have this, and this, and this, and I score very highly on this survey, blah, blah, blah". Then, I think and observe some more, remember my med school friends, and read accounts like the parent, and realize that I'm just confused. Nevermind.

Re:

[arodland]

It's not a "fashion" thing. GNOME has recently been explicitly about limiting choices in the name of simplicity, and standardizing in the name of consistency. If you do that, it means that someone who agrees with those choices will be pretty happy, and everyone else will have something to complain about; that goes without saying. The part that's arguably my opinion is that the user that GNOME is evolving to best serve is a complete and utter idiot -- but on the other hand there are a lot of people out there

Re:Please take care of Linus

[DrXym]

I'm a power user and I really don't have a problem with GNOME. It's simple, straightforward, minimalist and stays the hell out of the way while I do stuff. After all, it is "stuff" that I use the computer for, not to fuck around configuring the desktop.

The thing is (as Linus has demonstrated), is that if you know what you're doing you can add this stuff, or at least drop to the command line or install Konq or Midnight Commander. Virtually every Linux dist has a vast library of tools to use. I do think that GNOME would benefit from some kind of power tools (think TweakUI on windows) or even an advanced mode which exposes more, but making the desktop simple, consistent and easy to use for mere mortals by default is the only way to go.

Anyway GNOME isn't as simple as OS X (for example), yet dare criticize OS X on slashdot and you invoke the wrath of Apple zealots everywhere.

Re:

[mickwd]

"The thing is (as Linus has demonstrated), is that if you know what you're doing you can add this stuff"

By downloading the source code for an entire desktop environment, learning how it works, patching it, building it, and testing it yourself ?????

Wow....that's configurability for you.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[synthespian]

Two years ago IIRC the whole GOME usability discussion popped up in OSNews, involving its editor, Eugenia Loli-Queru.
It became very clear that GNOME did not even accept patches. Not only that, they didn't even look at substantial percentage of patches.
In another, more recent, example, the FreeBSD GNOME guy said that it was hard working with the GNOME hackers, because they practically only care about Linux (as opposed to KDE people, who were cooperative) and were not really focused on portability.
A few years back, glibc maintainers refused to accept some OpenBSD suggestions reagarding C string functions (safer by design, from the OpenBSD team, with an extensive proven record in safe coding)- they only did so after two years, IIRC.
So, yeah, it seems there's some problems with GNOME people.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[scotch]

It's not a contradiction. Real powers users are up to their asses in the shell/editor/compiler/applications/etc. They want the desktop to stay out of the way - functional, good-looking, and maintenance-free. If you think you're a power user because you spend all day tweaking your window borders and desktop behavior, well, whatever.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that some choices are a bit hidden in GConf, like disabling those stupid "My Computer" or "Trash" icons on the Desktop, or disabling raise-on-click for the window manager. But in the end, Gnome works for me, and quite well.

I try out KDE every two years (and recently), and even after throwing out all those junk buttons in those thousands of toolbars, I still end up with an UI that's incredibly clunky, ugly, menus full of stuff that I won't ever need and where I can't find WHAT I need and so on.

Hones

Re:Please take care of Linus

[Haeleth]

I try out KDE every two years

Wait, why are you bringing KDE into this? What on earth does KDE have to do with the question of whether Gnome is limiting or not?

If you'll forgive my saying this, you sound like one of those people who responds to every criticism of Bush by bringing up something Clinton did. This isn't a binary thing. This isn't a "everyone who hates Gnome must love KDE" thing. It is perfectly possible and legitimate to criticise Gnome's decisions completely without reference to KDE. I for one think both environments are equally unpleasant to use; I use Gnome at the moment purely because I haven't got round to looking for something better.

Honestly, Gnome works for many people, and KDE does, too. What's the problem with that? It's about TASTE or PREFERENCE. Don't argue about it; just let people freely choose their desktop.

You see? You are totally missing the point. This is not about whether Gnome is better than KDE or vice versa! This is about whether someone for whom Gnome is 95% perfect is able to fix that remaining 5%, or whether they're going to be permanently frustrated by little niggles that they can't straighten out. This is about whether the decisions Gnome's powers-that-be make are allowing Gnome to fit the TASTE and PREFERENCE of people who want to choose Gnome, because Gnome is closer to what they want than any of the other choices.

I don't get it. Why do so many people like you seem to think that the existence of other desktop environments means it should somehow be off-limits to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of any individual environment? Why do you think that any attempt to improve a minor aspect of one environment must really be a conspiracy to replace it with a different environment? Why are so many people dedicated to stifling debate? We're talking about desktop environments here, not religion, for God's sake.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[thrillseeker]

That's the way it should be IMHO. Avoid confusing the less technical users by putting only the essential configuration options in the GUI, but leave the more advanced configuration options available for advanced users who are capable of using GConf.

With that attitude the good stuff on the web would still only be reachable via Gopher.

If it's configurable, and eeverything possible should be that doesn't break the system, then it should be obviously configurable. What ever happened to the idea of treating Unix people like adults?

Gnome developers aren't idiots

[oohshiny]

Unlike you, the Gnome developers don't actually decide things based on their opinions alone, they apply widely used principles of UI design and they test their interfaces on "real people".

Gnome is doing a good job at what they're doing. If people like Linus and you want to help, learn something about UI design first. Then, you can either contribute suggestions for specific improvements justified based on accepted UI design criteria, or you can participate in user testing. Your and Linus's opinions, on the other hand, are pretty much worthless.

Re:Gnome developers aren't idiots

[mickwd]

"Unlike you, the Gnome developers don't actually decide things based on their opinions alone, they apply widely used principles of UI design and they test their interfaces on "real people"."

If they apply "widely used principles of UI design", why, for example, is the file save dialog so different (and much worse) than in Windows, OS X or KDE ?

Testing the interface on "real people" is fine, but are they exclusively doing this on people who have next-to-no computer experience ? Testing what these people find useable for their first few days of computing experience with a new environment is fine, but everyone learns things in time, learns their own preferred way of doing things, and is able to absorb more and more functionality.

I really don't understand why people should be limited in their configuration options for their own sakes. (If developers don't want to be bothered coding all those options, that's another matter).

What on earth is the problem with, for example, having TWO control panels - one to control just the basic options, and a second one (or an "advanced" section in a single control panel) to allow more advanced users the options they would like ? Particularly if the "advanced" control panel has a prominent button on it marked "Reset all Advanced Settings to Default Values" to rescue anyone who happens to get lost trying out things they don't fully understand, or have forgotten how to restore.

"Gnome is doing a good job at what they're doing. If people like Linus and you want to help, learn something about UI design first..... Your and Linus's opinions, on the other hand, are pretty much worthless."

If people like you want to help, learn something about not being a condescending prick first.

Re:Gnome developers aren't idiots

[FooBarWidget]

"If they apply "widely used principles of UI design", why, for example, is the file save dialog so different (and much worse) than in Windows, OS X or KDE ?"

Do you even know what you're talking about? The GTK file dialog is almost exactly the same as the OS X file dialog. Compare these screenshots:
GTK save file dialog: http://clemens-and.nihongonauts.com/uploads/gtk2.4 _file_dialog_save_2_small.png [nihongonauts.com]
OS X save file dialog: http://www.uwec.edu/help/MacOSX/Images/dialog/file save.gif [uwec.edu]
GTK open file dialog: http://www.flamerobin.org/images/screenshots/0.6.0 /gtk2/open_dialog.png [flamerobin.org]
OS X open file dialog: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/interface /dialogs/openfile/macosx103-1-1.png [guidebookgallery.org]

Which part of the GTK file dialog is "much worse" than the OS X one? There's almost no difference.

"Testing the interface on "real people" is fine, but are they exclusively doing this on people who have next-to-no computer experience ? Testing what these people find useable for their first few days of computing experience with a new environment is fine, but everyone learns things in time, learns their own preferred way of doing things, and is able to absorb more and more functionality."

How naive you are. Things don't work like that for 90% of the users, sorry.

Re:Gnome developers aren't idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Those dialogs are from older versions of OS X. You also seem to ignore that the Mac versions offer column view.

Re:Gnome developers aren't idiots

[Just Some Guy]

If people like Linus and you want to help, learn something about UI design first. Then, you can either contribute suggestions for specific improvements justified based on accepted UI design criteria, or you can participate in user testing. Your and Linus's opinions, on the other hand, are pretty much worthless.

That's right, kids: unless you become an expert on how other people might use a computer, you are unqualified to have an opinion on how you would like to use it. And never forget that even if you hate a design decision, all of your friends hate it, and everyone on the Internet seems to hate it, your collective opinions are worthless compared to that of a person who once read somewhere that it was a really good idea.

TweakUI?

[squidinkcalligraphy]

The solution is simple. A default gnome desktop install package that just works, and an additional power-users tweak package. Like Windows has with TweakUI (only more powerful). The extra step involved in installing the extra package would prevent accidental stuff-ups by grandma and grandpa, while being easy enough for l337 h4x0rz to install and configure.

Re:Please take care of Linus

[LainTouko]

I love the relative lack of configuration. I want to be doing my work, not spend my time tweaking how window borders should interact with each other.

Just because it's possible to tweak the way window borders interact with each other, doesn't mean you have to tweak the way window borders interact with each other. What it does mean is if you find the default way window borders interact with each other an irritation or a problem, you can change it. Well-implemented configurability should be a boon to those who want it, and invisible to those who don't.

Re:different desktops for different people

[Haeleth]

The point of having a rather diverse choice of desktop environments in Linux is that if you don't like one of them, you can use another.

And the point of desktop environments being configurable is that once you've found the choice that is closest to what you want, you can tweak it until it's perfect for you.

Right now, people who find Gnome 95% perfect are suffering, because it won't let them fix the last 5% and get their dream environment. And you are not doing these people any favours by telling them they should use some other environment instead, because if Gnome is 95% perfect then KDE, Xfce, Blackbox, etc. will all be worse for them.

huh?

[User 956]

Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,'

What exactly is an "interface Nazi"? Is that someone that develops a GUI that encourages concentration?

not that extreme, really

[game kid]

They just try to replace Save As... with SEIG FILE! whenever they see it in source strings.

Re:not that extreme, really

[grolschie]

Uhm, are you sure you didn't mean "Sieg Fail"?

No, he meant "siegfault". :-)

Re:huh?

[venicebeach]

What exactly is an "interface Nazi"? Is that someone that develops a GUI that encourages concentration?

Not too long ago, Random House added the following as an alternate definition of Nazi:

a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.

The Anti-Defamation League was not happy [adl.org] about this.

Re:huh?

[mollymoo]

The Anti-Defamation League are a bunch of anti-Nazi Nazis.

Re:huh?

[jtheisen]

If you make things up you shouldn't link content which proves you wrong.

Re:huh?

[wass]

when they are happy to endorse the exact same kind of defamation they claim to oppose

Who modded that up?
Did you even read the links you provided, or do you just like to defame an organization as you whine about about defaming others?

And as to your misleading comments implying they only care when Jews are harassed, here's one of many examples of ADL condemning anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence after 9/11 [adl.org].

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me started about "carpentry neocons." Sure they may claim to be traditional by rejecting the screws and nails the "progressive carpenters" are constantly touting, claming to be truly "conservative" by only using mortise-and-tenon joints and wooden pegs as fasteners. But have you ever heard of one of these so called "conservatives" take a stand against synthetic wood glues? No Sir! You haven't. Not one of them will admit that the only acceptable glue is made of boiled hides and hooves. A truly conservative carpenter will only use adhesives made of dead animals.

Users *are* usually idiots.

[izprince]

And there is a good reason why distros like Ubuntu default to GNOME and not KDE, in my experience it's a lot easier to break something in KDE, and it's harder for an end user to figure out how to get it to do things like, I don't know, not opening file downloads in a text editor. The other problem is that KDE is slow, REAL slow, I know that GNOME isn't exactly a speed demon, but KDE is suffering from code bloat and so many features being tacked on, and in the end performance takes a hit. I understand that Torvalds is frustrated with GNOME, and he can use KDE all he wants, but why does he have to criticize GNOME so much? The whole reason there are multiple window managers is because none of them do everything right, and so you put many of them out there and let people CHOOSE, he could have jsut as easily criticized KDE for bloat, and Fluxbox for missing features.

Re:Users *are* usually idiots.

[the_womble]

I am not sure that defaulting to Gnome is a good idea.

Yes, Gnome is easier to use for the completely naive users.

However, it makes Linux less appealing for Windows "power users". They are used to configuring things heavily, and doing quite a lot with their PCs - but they are used to doing this in the GUI. This makes KDE an easier transition for them.

As things stand the completely naive users are unlikely to try Linux anyway, unless they have someone to install and configure stuff for them, so it probably would be better to target the power users.

Yes, it is about choice, but I do think that KDE is a better default.

Re:

[anagama]

Surely if they are power users, then tick off the check box next to "kde-desktop", press apply, wait a little while, logout, and login to KDE.

Re:

[the_womble]

The problem is that they are Windows power users. How are they supposed to know they should try KDE? They are not familiar with the idea of choosing from multiple desktop environments. They are not likely to realise that they can click on a menu in the login manager and choose KDE.

So the result is likely to be that they will use the default, and assume that Gnome is "Linux".

The term "power user" implies a certain level of familiarity, but little actual knowledge - a lot of rote learning ("click here to

Re:Users *are* usually idiots.

[gfody]

I've noticed that KDE is super slow on (k)ubuntu. It's very snappy on debian, though. What gives?

Re:Users *are* usually idiots.

[Rimbo]

It's because Kubuntu is the ghetto wasteland of the Ubuntu distribution. It was enough to get me to switch back to Fedora, where while KDE isn't the default, it isn't broken.

Re:Users *are* usually idiots.

[rbanffy]

Would you care to explain this?

I am really curious.

Re:Users *are* usually idiots.

[Brandybuck]

I'm a huge rabid KDE fan. I use it on FreeBSD. It's fast, snappy responsive and quick. Other than some minor issues with HAL, it's also bug free. But then I needed a Linux distro for use with a project. I unfortunately chose Kubuntu. I swear Kubuntu must be an Ubuntu conspiracy to make people hate KDE. It's slow, bloated, buggy and a mess. And sluggish.

Re:

[Nightspirit]

Huh, I should give debian a try. My first experience with linux was kubuntu and I uninstalled it for vista (which believe it or not is actually much faster for me). I thought it was KDE itself, but I guess I should try a different distro.

Re:

[Hatta]

I found changing the icon theme to a raster them instead of the default SVG theme sped things up a lot.

Re:Users *are* usually idiots.

[arodland]

That don't match up too well with reality. Recent GNOME is bigger, slower, and has more layers of complication than recent KDE. If you want to talk about bloat, how about using a complete deadend technology like CORBA under the hood, or using XML in places where text would do because "you just don't know"? GNOME has been working on "performance enhancement releases" for the past year or so, but KDE has gotten faster with every release since 2002 and KDE4 is expected to cut overhead even more significantly. Have you compared the dependency trees for kubuntu-desktop vs. ubuntu-desktop? The GNOME one is considerably, um, bushier. Installing a GNOME app from zero takes so much downloading, I'm glad it's automated at least. I feel real pity for the person who actually has to compile all that crap.

Incidentally, spatial file management is one of the worst things ever to come out of the "if it agrees with common sense it can't possibly be right" school of interface design. ;)

Re:Users *are* usually idiots.

[eln]

What drives me crazy is the almost universal assumption that Gnome and KDE are the only desktop environments in Linux. Both of these environments are built around the concept that the user is an idiot, and both attempt to mimic Windows in various ways. I cannot understand how someone with real knowledge of Linux could handle working in either environment without going absolutely bonkers.

Personally, I prefer my desktop environment to leave as much of the screen usable as possible, without cluttering it up with silly icons and toolbars. I like to be able to fit several xterms on the screen at once so I can monitor them all without alt-tab'ing or some other such nonsense. I used to use TWM, but these days I use Enlightenment because it maintains the functionality I loved with TWM, only it's prettier.

The fact that modern distributions try to shoehorn everyone into either "Gnome people" or "KDE people" sucks rocks.

You know something?

[MrNonchalant]

They all come off as squabbling children. This is FOSS' finest?

Here are the highlights for those who didn't RTFA:
Lopez: "Linus, you don't know how to read Spanish, so are you an idiot too?"
[snip]
Schaller: "Could maybe be a good way to start a constructive dialog instead of this useless mudslinging?"
[snip]
Torvalds: "What I find unconstructive is how the GNOME people always make *excuses*. It took me a few hours to actually do the patches. It wasn't that hard. So why didn't I do it years ago?

I'll tell you why: because GNOME apologists don't say "please send us patches". No. They basically make it clear that they aren't even *interested* in fixing things, because their dear old Mum isn't interested in the feature.
[snip]
But why, oh, why, have GNOME people not just said "please fix it then"?

Instead, I _still_ (now after I sent out the patch) hear more of your kvetching about how you actually do everything right, and it's somehow *my* fault that I find things limiting.

Here's a damn big clue: the reason I find GNOME limiting is BECAUSE IT IS."

Re:You know something?

[wirelessbuzzers]

Well, look on the bright side. At least it wasn't Linus vs Theo.

Re:

[Antique Geekmeister]

Everything old is new again. Something similar happened years ago with Eric Raymond and CUPS, where Eric pointed out a clear set of flaws in the CUPS configuration tools in http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html [catb.org], "The Luxury of Ignorance". And his suggestions have been completely ignored.

Re:You know something?

[alienmole]

They all come off as squabbling children. This is FOSS' finest?

As long as no-one throws any chairs, it's all good.

Cleaner and more capable??

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Sorry kneejerkers, but its going to require a much more detailed description of those patches than simply "cleaner and more capable" before we can make a good evaluation of whether Linus's patches should be accepted.

After all, if someone submitted patches to the linux kernel to grab the local weather report and print it out on boot, that would be adding capability that Linus would never accept in a million years because it is outside of the scope of the kernel. If Linus's patches are similarly outside the scope of the official design goals of Gnome, then any expectation that they would be accepted is just a red herring.

Here's the link

[g2devi]

Here's the link: (it was posted a bit earlier)
http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/thread.html [linux-foundation.org]

Basically, Linus wants to have fine grained control over what the mouse buttons do.

Sounds like a simple request, but he doesn't reveal it until *after* he submits a patch and in that same email goes on to rant about how no-one listens to him and how GNOME developers make excuses instead of just doing whatever he wants. In a later email he comments that he sent the patches to a developer's only email address (that he admits may or may not have been able to see his patches) because he doesn't like bugzilla and says that the patches must be accepted or GNOME developers are a bunch of hypocrites even though an API freeze is in effect for about a month ( http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointSeventeen [gnome.org] ).

Personally, I find it a bit interesting that Linus has repeatedly flamed (or sidelined) people on the Linux kernel mailing list for acting like he is now, not following the kernel submission procedure, assuming that freezes don't count, and assuming that if the core architects of the Linux kernel think that a feature (done in a certain way) is a bad idea then they must be a bunch of hypocrites.

I personally don't know if the patches are any good or in keeping with GNOME's design or need changes or .... But I do think that Linus needs to chill and let the GNOME core developers run the way they want to and accept or postpone (if there's a freeze) or reject his patches as they deem appropriate. If Linus want to contribute to GNOME (I hope he does), he has to do it by GNOME's rules or fork, or pass it on to someone who *is* willing to play by GNOME's rules (I'd be surprised if there weren't are more than a few developers and distros who would be willing to work as intermediary between Linus and GNOME). That's the way open source works.

It's not unreasonable to expect this. GNOME core developers don't go on the Linux kernel thread and whine and submit attitude patches to Linus, 'tho if they did, they would (and should) be flamed. Linus has said repeatedly on the kernel mailing lists that submitters must either follow the kernel rules, or fork (e.g. if you don't like the license), or pass on your patches to someone who is willing to do things that kernel developer's way (none of Reiser's patches would have gone if it weren't for this later option).

Are there problems with the GNOME way of doing things? Sure. Linus brought up a good point about the ease of submitting patches. But all projects have issues. There was a time, not too long ago, when the submission process for the Linux kernel was "send Linus your patches and if he doesn't respond then keep resending them because the patches might have gotten lost". But the issues won't get better if you complain to the wrong people.

Just my 2 cents worth.

He's completely wrong

[WasterDave]

Linus, that is.

The whole point of the open source movement is to allow alternative approaches to flourish and be chosen (or not) on their merits. It's what OSS does to raise quality. The biggest problem KDE and Gnome always had was that they continually trod on each others' toes. So, let them go their separate ways - let KDE be configurable and Gnome be "designed for idiots". See who wins. Either which way the variety is good for OSS itself.

Dave

Re:He's completely wrong

[Rimbo]

I don't think it's that simple. People accept whatever default the distro gives them as "what Linux looks like," and Gnome has a foothold due to the licensing issues over Qt.

The problem is, long after the licensing issues with Qt have gone, and while Gnome continues to be the least functional GUI available for any modern desktop OS (a badge the Gnome community appears to wear with pride), no one has switched.

I'm as frustrated as Torvalds is with it, because it's not enough to just use KDE when given the chance. Look at the utter disregard the Ubuntu project has for Kubuntu; the system configuration dialogs last time I used it (Breezy Badger) were utterly broken and unusable -- and I've heard from some Edgy Eft users that it still sucks. There's a post right above here yapping about how awful slow Kubuntu is compared with Debian.

KDE's the only desktop that does things right. Konqueror is gorgeous, and easily rivals my Mac for usability and power.

Alternative approaches

[electrosoccertux]

Ironic, we're advocating choice and alternatives in the big picture by supporting an option (Gnome) that does neither.

Re:Alternative approaches

[zsau]

Erm, Gnome gives you the choice not to use it. That's what I've done.

Not about look

[mrsteveman1]

This argument has nothing to do with the background or what gnome looks like morons, it has to do with the way it responds to actions, the way it presents options to the user.

The fact that linus had to take time to submit patches means the gnome developers are doing something incredibly stupid, this isn't a turf war, it means linus is concerned that the kernel he spends shitloads of time on is being trivialized by idiot programmers refusing to accept what the rest of the world wants in the systems they use.

KDE does the same shit, its annoying. I use linux daily but i have to say this is classic linux bullshit, KDE has too much, gnome has too little and no one wants to talk to each other or solve shit because everyone is in their own little camp.

Prefixes are gay as well, kstfu, ggbye

Re:Not about look

[SoapDish]

Just to back you up on this...

People should read the thread where all this happened: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/thread.html [linux-foundation.org]

After someone asked about where the patches were, Linus said the following:

I sent them to the gnomecc list (the changes to let control center enable
it were bigger than the changes to the metacity ones, but more
importantly, control-center actually had a mailing list address in its
README).

The metacity patches I also sent to maintainers that I tried to google
for, because there isn't even any submission address in the sources that I
could find.

Of course, the gnomecc mailing list is "by members only", so I don't know
if the patches ever got accepted by the moderator.

Quite frankly, I think it's interesting how (a) no developer contacts were
listed and (b) the one that did list it doesn't even accept email from
outside. ...

(and maybe give hints
to them that if you have a README file that says "REPORTING BUGS AND
SUBMITTING PATCHES", it might be good to actually give an email to send
things to, instead of saying "Send me mail" with no email address actually
ever mentioned!)

gconf = regedit

[TheLink]

To all those Gnome fans:

There are tons of things that can be configured/fixed in Windows just like Gnome.

With some configuration tool that's only suitable for an elite bunch to use.

So, I don't see Gnome as an improvement over Windows in terms of usability.

Configurable click behaviour of title bars??

[iamacat]

I read description of the patches, and I don't want a window system with configurable right, middle OR double clicks on a title bar. If Linux ever becomes popular, it would be conceivable for a user to use someone else's machine, or expect instructions in an introductory book to work. He will then end up closing an important spreadsheet while trying to maximize it. Besides, window title bar is not the most critical or complex part of UI. I would rather gnome and kde teams focus on developing killer controls and good UI design tools. I DON'T want my window system's control panel to look like Linus'es make xconfig.

Re:Configurable click behaviour of title bars??

[SanityInAnarchy]

If Linux ever becomes popular, it would be conceivable for a user to use someone else's machine, or expect instructions in an introductory book to work.

Both of these are actually obscenely easy to deal with. If I let other people use my machine, I give them their own account and put them on GNOME. (I run straight Beryl with elements of Fluxbox.) And if you're reading an introductory book, you'll be dealing with defaults anyway.

Sane defaults, but configurability, is the way to go. And by the way, this is true of more than just Linux. I've tried to use someone else's Mac, and couldn't find the program I wanted easily because his desktop was absolutely fucking PILED with documents, something like 10 deep on top of the "hard drive" icon, making it kind of difficult to get to "Applications". Someone else's Windows, and you find they've got the status bar auto-hiding at the top of the screen. And for that matter, I use the dvorak layout, so...

I mean, I understand the point of that. That is why, for instance, game consoles are designed the way they are -- you can toss a controller to anyone and have them join the party.

But configurability can be done in such a way that it doesn't hurt usability. And, in fact, it has to be done that way, because if you nix configurability, you kill usability.

I use Fluxbox why?

[notanatheist]

Because I want full configurability.
Because I don't want the bloat involved with Gnome and KDE backgroud utilities running
Because I don't want my machine to act or behave like M$ Windows or OS X
Because I want pure freakin' speed!!!
Because eye-candy isn't that damned important. I get by fine with 3Ddesktop and translucent aterms.
If I really want eye-candy I'll run Enlightenment
As I've been telling people thinking about Vista, do you want a fast computer so your OS can look pretty or so you can get more done? Application performance comes first and foremost so I want the lightest, fastest desktop available short of running Rat or screen.

Really... +1 flamebait

[jschmerge]

There is a reason why i rip everything gnome & kde related out of a linux distro after an install... the UI is too much like windows.

I still use fvwm1 (with all of its quirks/bugs) because it gets rid of some of the *basic* usability issues that gnome and kde fail to resolve.

To list a couple:

• Why, on an empty desktop, should someone need to click a button to bring up a menu of the most useful things that they can do with the computer?
• Why is the close button for windows next to the minimize and maximize buttons? I can't tell you the number of times I clicked on the wrong button and said 'damnit'
• why do i need to suck the entire gnome (applies to kde/qt too) environment into a project in order to either render html _or_ print
• Why are both the gnome and kde developers more interested in adding features to their 'desktop environment' than fixing the basic problems that are causing them to work around X windows?' HINT: read Keith Packards blog

I think my point is that the gnome and kde projects are not so much about innovating as keeping up with microsoft... We need to create a community devoted to the idea of seeing what Redmond does and saying 'hey, thats interesting, but I can do that better'

This is what the kernel community does constantly... Linus is the gatekeeper, and he is right to critisize... When was the last time you totally changed the internal architecter of a subsystem of your project because you were wrong? For Linus it was the 2.4 MM (mid release cycle) /p?

Awesome!!!

[Error27]

I've cursed and cursed that the friggin right click doesn't lower the window.

I've literally been complaining about this crap for over 5 years.
http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40743 [justlinux.com]

BTW. I could have sworn that that a month after last time when we had this flame war one of the gnome guys created a patch to make it configurable. At the time, I wasn't using Gnome regularly so I didn't save it and now I can't find it anymore.

Here's what I want.
1) The top of the window should be next to an edge so I can click on it easily.
2) Right click should lower it. Currently middle click works but I really think the right click is less awkward.

I've got maybe 50-70 windows open at a time and I need to be able to cycle through them as fast as possible. I need to have Fitz law working for me.

3) The gnome terminal needs to stop sucking. I've got a frigging 3Ghz computer with 1G of RAM and a top of the line graphics card. Why does gnome terminal slow my whole box down when it's just scrolling ascii? Also why does it take a second for me to highlight text in gnome terminal? When I don't disable the feature where you can double click to select a word that takes up to five seconds...

Sorry I guess the terminal thing wasn't really related. I got on a rant and couldn't stop. But seriously, fix the blasted right click to lower stuff at least. Even if it takes a command line utility to customize it that's fine.

Maybe Linus should try beryl

[Eric MB Lard MD]

Looking at the patches Linus has provided they mostly relate to the window manager metacity.

I am 100% with Linus on this one. A few years back Gnome was using the sawfish window manager. Not only could this be configured to your hearts content, you could even write your own extensions for it. With sawfish windows could do some real magic.

Gnome saw sawfish and its configurability and decided it was bad -- and to some extent it was, there were a plethora of options. The right solution to this is to find a good set of default options and provide a configuration tool that presents just the options that people are most likely to configure + an advanced configuration dialogue for those that want to play with the more interesting options.

Gnome threw the baby out with the bath water when they went to metacity.

For a while I stopped using Gnome and used ratpoison as my window manager. Ratpoison shows the power of being able to do all your window manipulation from the keyboard (this is quite important for me, I have a neuromuscular disorder and so avoiding the mouse can make me much more productive -- metacity does not give me that option).

More recently I kept hearing about 3-D window managers and decided to give beryl a try. Now beryl comes with a plethora of options and has reasonably good support for keyboard navigation. Fingers crossed some gnome based linux distributions will go for beryl as their window manager.

Going from ratpoison to beryl is maybe going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but what the two have in common is configurability.

Linus is right, one size fits all sucks.

Misconception about Sawfish

[Ur@eus]

It is not correct to say that Sawfish got replaced by Metacity due to it being deciding its configurability was bad, far from it. Sure there
where people who felt Sawfish went a bit overboard in that regard, but that was not the reason it got
ditched as the default GNOME window manager. The reason for that was simply that after Eazel went backrupt and Sawfish maintainer John Harper
had to find a new job, he ended up at Apple. And thus he couldn't maintain Sawfish anymore. The really special thing about Sawfish was that it
was written in its own Lisp dialect so as part of Sawfish you got both an extra lisp interpreter and GTK+ bindings for it.
All of these three went unmaintained as John went away and nobody where interested in taking over. Thus the GNOME developers had to look elsewhere
for a maintained window manager, it was decided that one should aim for one written in C like the rest of the desktop libraries to lessen the chance
of future maintenance prolems. To answer this call Havoc Pennington stepped up with Metacity and it was quickly adopted by a lot of GNOME developers and
users and subsequently chosen as the standard. Havoc was very strict about what he let into Metacity, due to a policy that requests for config options was usually a result of broken behaviour in the window manager and thus feeling the behaviour should be fixed instead of a config option added to work around the problem.
This was in line with the policy that do govern GNOME, in the sense that there is a consensus to not allow 'random' patches
add config options to the GUI without a very good reason. For instance one shouldn't add config options as a way to work around bugs or
missing features in lower parts of the stack, instead one should try to fix them. In the case of Metacity this was applied in a much sterner/hardcore
fashion that for most other modules, but due to Havoc's high profile I think the policy he kept for metacity colored how people outside the project perceived
the project as a whole.

Re:Links to the patches?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even just bump for the response

http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/001129.html [linux-foundation.org]

You and the moderators are out of your minds

[acidrain]

"there will be hell to pay for ignoring it"

I can't believe Linus, who has probably dropped more patches than anyone else alive, would think that sending in unwanted patches along with a *fuck you too* for good measure would think that somehow the GNOME people would suddenly change their minds.

Furthermore, projects should avoid contributors that are unable to get along even if they would make a valuable contribution. Having the additional useful developer doesn't balance out loosing the contribution of others who are offended and the loss of community around your project. I'm not making this up, just ask any HR department whether they would hire an all around offensive individual regardless of how good he is.

Honestly, I have a lot of respect for Linus, and respect someone who cares so much about the right solution. However in this case he has gone way over the line from being passionate about technology and perhaps a little quirky, into being embarrassingly out of touch with the norms of human interaction in a public forum.

Re:You and the moderators are out of your minds

[Panoramix]

Geez. Did you read the thread in that mailing list? I did. Linus is right. Not only right, what he actually did is much more than what I probably would have done in his place (I probably would have sent just the "fuck you", sans patch).

Now I use GNOME, which to me is much prettier than KDE, has a nice shell where I spend most of the time, and lets me run Emacs. So I do appreciate the work the GNOME guys do and all. And never even noticed that right-clicking on the border of windows brings up a useless menu, and that there's no way to change this behavior. So Linus noticed, and it seems he talked to some maintainer and the guys in that list and eventually got fed up. Why, I don't exactly know. In fact, it does surprise me a bit, since I know Linus is a no-nonsense kind of guy, and kinda smart too, and the people who coded this beautiful user interface just can't be morons.

So I think that this brouhaha was caused by, sorry, people like you, getting all worked up in the name of "the norms of human interaction in a public forum" or (more likely in that case) the "norms for talking sweetly to the commitee so a change they didn't thought of is even considered". I'm sorry, but you sound exasperating. *Fuck* the norms of human interaction yadda-yadda, the change is an improvement, it does not affect usability at all (as I said, I didn't even noticed before), and if someone told Linus that they were not going to do it because GNOME is better off without it, then that someone was being a bureaucratic prick and deserved a sound fuck-you.

Re:

[Sancho]

Linus isn't asking them to change the UI. He's asking them to offer the option of changing the UI. There's no reason that the Gnome developers can't set the default while allowing someone to muck around with it (without having to go into the source and modifying/recompiling).

The specific issue at hand has to do with mouse events. In Gnome, mouse events are apparently hard-coded. Allegedly, you can't change the function of the right-click. That's absurd behavior from a user-interface. Yes, there should

Re:No.

[stuuf]

How do you expect a desktop environment to "discover" how quickly someone wants their panel to auto-hide or when the battery meter should change from green to yellow? Do you even know what this discussion is about, or did you just throw a generic Windows vs. Linux user-friendliness reply at it? The difference between Windows and Linux that you've mentioned is wether or not manual configuration of things like hardware is required; the issue here is developers arbitrarily removing the ability to configure software.

Re:

[Sancho]

You can have something that works out of the box (catering to most people) while allowing configurability (catering to almost everyone else). That's all Linus is saying.

It's a common theme amongst UI developers. Provide lots of customization, but ship with sane defaults. There is no reason that the Gnome developers couldn't provide this, except for the lack of time. Linus has started the process of solving that problem with his patches.

Re:

[arkhan_jg]

You haven't installed windows lately then. I've just been on a clean-up and reinstall/migrate jolly. I've installed two copies of windows XP pro on two different computers; two copies of vista on same, one 32-bit, one 64-bit, and kubuntu edgy on one of the boxes.

Kubuntu needed a one line command to install the binary nvidia drivers (I could have done it in the gui with a couple of clicks also); all else worked out of the box, apart from the 100s of MBs of updates and patches; but then windows needs that als

Mod parent offtopic/troll?

[SanityInAnarchy]

People don't want configurability, they want something that works out of the box.

In what world are these mutually exclusive?

That's why despite being free, people will pay 200$ for a copy of Windows.

Windows is free?

Come on, with a post that short, you can afford to read it aloud to yourself and see if it makes sense.

They don't want to compile things, they want it to work out of the box.

Funny, that seems like what Linus is doing here. He wants to be able to change his right-click without recompiling! In

No, insert SOME before PEOPLE

[SmallFurryCreature]

You are making the classic mistake of petty little armchair dictators everywhere. What is right for you is right for everyone.

You don't want to configure things, so NOBODY wants to configure things so things that can be configured are bad.

I hope that you are a homosexual or your partner is going to extremely frustated. What works for you, will not work for her. (yeah yeah, slashdot and partner, har har)

If what you claimed is true then Harley Davidson would be bankrupt since for a long period of their his

A false dichotomy

[fnj]

"People don't want configurability, they want something that works out of the box."

First, there is no monolithic "people" who single mindedly want something. If there were, everyone would be satisfied with the pathetic lot that the majority have voted into power in Washington.

More importantly, you are making a false dichotomy. Configurability is not the enemy of ease of use. The two properties are completely unrelated. Want to please both the dabblers and the deep tinkerers? Just give each software mod

Re:Must be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting opinion; have you ever met Linus? I have. He's not the type of person I'd call a jerk.

Richard Stallman? Maybe; he certainly can be a jerk in certain situations. Eric Raymond (the obscurity he so richly deserves seems to have finally caught up to him, so that reference may no longer be relevant) is definitely a jerk. Meeting both those guys was an eye-opener.

Torvalds? He's a nice guy, actually. He's also a very smart guy who holds his opinions because he's spent a lot of time thinking about them. Despite what people tend to assume, he doesn't insist you agree with his opinion; he does, however, tend to insist that your opinion is well thought out if you wish him to take it seriously. Unfortunately, the Gnome troop seems to have stopped at "simple is good" and not realized that it, like anything, can be taken too far.

Personally I tend to think Gnome's "users are idiots" attitude is not so much due to thinking that users are idiots; I think it's more due to the fact that a few large corporations pay for most of Gnome's development, and they want their users to be treated as idiots. Someone has to have control of the computer, and as is true with Microsoft, the last thing they want is for that control to rest with the person using it.

It is true, and it will always be true, that some people who use computers will never understand them at any level, and they will find a way to hurt themselves with any options you give them. It is also true that most people do not fall into this group, and despite what all the 14 year old fanbois who frequent Slashdot believe, they are not the only ones who can make sense of of a computer; most people who use them become quite adept at making them do what they want.

For Gnome to persist in preventing them from using the computer as they see fit is a shame (interestingly certain folks in the Mozilla project also seem to be infected with this disease, although in that case more pragmatic viewpoints usually prevail). Despite what so many seem to believe, an easy to use UI is not mutually exclusive to a flexible and capable UI; that so many developers assume it to be true is much more a function of their own lack of vision and ability than a reflection on the reality of the situation.

Re:Interface Nazis.

[julesh]

I'll tell you who are Interface Nazis. The developers for software that ends with an 'imp' and starts with a 'G'.

And GNOME was developed on the UI toolkit originally developed for which famous piece of software?

Re:Interface Nazis.

[OriginalArlen]

People who advocate the killing of other human beings should be banned off this board, plain and simple.

No, people who advocate the killing of other human beings should be lined up - blindfold - last fag - POP! POP! POP! (citizen smiff) [google.co.uk]

Re:Interface Nazis.

[chunky shit salsa]

they're only egomaniacs sitting alone in cheap condo in a mid-income neighborhood, "chatting" with others on a Saturday night, likely inside an online game. as you take them to a social setting with women, you see clearly they are just shut-in losers and dorks, and not worth time, conversation, or even recognition of them being alive. let's kill them all. kill them all by throwing the duck sauce packets filling up your fridge from the leftover chineese takeout. throw those packets hard, my friends. they'll break and cover those losers with sweet yellow duck sauce. then the ducks will come to eat that sweet duck sauce. they will try to fly away, but their feet will be stuck in the sauce. they'll lift up the dorks and take them to that island with all the fat ugly people. once we have enough, it'll sink into the ocean and that'll be that. rock the vote!!!

Re:Interface Nazis.

[linvir]

That was some epic shit. I want whatever you're drinking.

This is getting beyond weird guys

[dbIII]

Hang on - by definition most people are normal and not mentally ill. Applying the names for mental illnesses to people based upon third hand hearsay of a conversation that you haven't read and do not know the context of is just a little bit odd - and I think it is a fairly safe assumption that none of the people involved has been diagnosed with autism and requires special care to relate to the rest of society.

The mutant thing above really has me thinking it's time for people to reach for a dictionary, a fe

Re:

[fnj]

It's time for the obligatory Princess Bride quote. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Could it be that you intended the word "schizophrenia"? It is difficult to tell.

Someone who is autistic typically:
* Is unable to start or sustain a social conversation
* Develops language slowly or not at all
* Repeats words or memorized passages, like commercials
* Doesn't refer to self correctly (for example, says "you want water" when the child means "I want water")
* Uses nonsen