Linus Torvalds dumps Gnome3 for XFCE (G+ discussion) | Hacker News Reader

Linus Torvalds dumps Gnome3 for XFCE (G+ discussion)

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The full history:

Dec 13, 2005: "I encourage people to switch to KDE. This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease." - http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00...

Jan 26, 2009: "I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do... the whole 'break everything' model is painful for users and they can choose to use something else." - http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/012209-open-source-ide...

Jul 26, 2011: "I used to be upset when gnome developers decided it was "too complicated" for the user to remap some mouse buttons. In gnome3, the developers have apparently decided that it's "too complicated" to actually do real work on your desktop, and have decided to make it really annoying to do.

I'm using Xfce. I think it's a step down from gnome2, but it's a huge step up from gnome3. Really."

Linus has always endorsed being pissed off at your interface and ditching it for something radically different. The current move, as you can read, is not one of satisfaction with XFCE. Clearly Linus just thinks all UIs are shit, and maybe that's a signal no one has figured this out yet, or maybe it's just a signal he's a curmudgeon.

(Edited for typos - I kept swapping 'Linux' and 'Linus.')

I somehow wish Linus would be so pissed off at these interfaces for linux that he goes out and writes something totally awesome like he did with git.

I dunno. Git did not leave me with the impression that Linus is really good at making user interfaces.

  % git push
  fatal: protocol error: expected sha/ref, got '

Yes, this is an actual "helpful" error message.

A javascript, DOM-based window manager would be a worthy project for someone with the skills to do so. All prefs stored in JSON or somesuch. Separate from a browser to avoid frame-busting-busting-busting. Leave (and encourage) the styling and hacka-clicka-bility the users themselves. Twill happen eventually ... I'd just like it now :(

Isn't that HP webOS?

I haven't had a device yet to try that. They're supposedly coming out with a desktop version of "webOS". Will keep an eye out for an early release. I think they'll initially have that for Windows (whatever that means). Would love to try booting into the general concept from a shell on Debian.

> A javascript, DOM-based window manager would be a worthy project for someone with the skills to do so

You mean like GNOME shell?

A month or two back I started glueing XCB and spidermonkey together. The thought of DOM-based window management crossed my mind but I never saw the point of it. It makes sense in HTML where elements are nested inside one another, but in X, windows are seldomly nested - unless the application was designed that way. The heirarchy would be rather flat in a window manager.

Considering his ability to write OS kernels and RCSs, I'm guessing that his user interface design abilities are not very strong. Yes, it's a generalization, and maybe he's awesome at it, but they are very different skills.

Well there is Awesome. Dwm is also quite nice

Awesome has been working very nicely for me [1], but I wouldn't use it as an example of a {usable, intuitive, user friendly, magical} user interface. If a friend of mine shows the slightest interest for Linux and I want to show them just how easy it is, I tend to use KDE or GNOME for the showcase.

[1] Well maybe it comes a bit too pre-customised, which (to me) is worse than not customised and without sensible defaults. Then again, I may the one to blame here, for using a package rather than building from scratch.

Yes, considering the git UI I'm sure a window manager following the same principles would be... fantastic.

You've got this backward. His aim is not to switch to something radically different. When he switches, he's looking for something more like what he once had. Linus endorses stability in UIs, and the thing that drives him away is senseless novelty-driven churn.

Here's the signal that UI geeks miss with regard to Linus and DEs: His goals are utterly utilitarian; he wants the UI to save him time. That's it, nothing more. He uses Fedora because of its mostly OK out-of-the box functionality, and he picks from among the canned UIs offered at installation. He doesn't dick around with installing and configuring desktop environments, because he's not a fucking UI fetishist, as the gnome and KDE folks evidently are. He wants to press a button and have it work.

It's a simple and noble goal.

My biggest problem with Gnome 3 (and the number one reason I abandoned it in favor of Xmonad, which I've come to like quite a lot), was that it breaks the UI concept of the modifier key.

Simply pressing and releasing the super key (with no other keypress in between) triggers a change of state (bringing up the "overview" or whatever it's called). The modifier key is such a basic interface concept that I struggle to imagine why they would go out of their way to break it -- any way I look at it, it's just monumentally idiotic. And best of all, I could find no way of disabling it.

Admittedly, they're not the first to do this. OpenOffice has done something similar for quite a while (pressing and releasing a modifier key brings up a menu); that was one of the many things about OO that pissed me off. Nevertheless, precedent is insufficient justification for such a thoroughly moronic change.

I've been wanting to rant about that for a while now, glad to get it off my chest. Thankfully, Xmonad is fantastic, so in a way I'm grateful to Gnome 3 for leading me to switch to it.

It's not without precedent; In Windows, tapping the Alt key moves keyboard focus to the menu-bar (at least, it did in older version of Windows that had standard menu bars).

To be fair, I've nobbled that particular behaviour of GNOME 3.0 because it prevents using the Super key for any other keyboard shortcuts. If I read bugzilla rightly, that should be fixed in 3.2, though.

You can actually make the Super-Key usable again. Goto Region and Language -> Keyboard Layout Options and tick "Hyper is mapped to Win-keys" [1]. After that, you can use the super key again for shortcuts. I moved the activity window to Super-A but actually never use it.

[1] Image: http://www.andre-gawron.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/key.pn...

[2] Full blog entry: http://www.andre-gawron.de/383/amsterdam-peek-gnome-3-a-new-...

Just checking that I've got this correct: you set the 'Hyper is mapped to Win keys' option in the keyboard config, you set GNOME 3 to use 'Super' to activate the overlay, then re-configure your other shortcuts to use 'Hyper' instead of 'Super' (or 'Mod4')?

Hyper, Super ... I'm talking about mod4 (on most keyboards the win-key right to L-CTRL). The overlay is normally activated by pressing mod4. With the stated option ticked, triggering the overlay with mod4 doesn't work anymore (when I remember correctly) - but every other shortcut using mod4 + anykey works again.

To get to the overlay using a shortcut, I set it to mod4 + a.

Ah, right. That's probably a nicer way of doing it since you don't have to mess with gconf-editor.

Personally, I cleared /apps/mutter/general/overlay_key (which prevents the overlay from being triggered by any modifier, which got my mod4 bindings working again. I set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu to "<Mod4>Escape", which on GNOME 2.x activates the Applications menu, but on GNOME 3.x activates the overlay.

If an application has a hidden menu in the newer Windowses, Alt shows it.

To be fair, I've nobbled that particular behaviour of GNOME 3.0 because it prevents using the Super key for any other keyboard shortcuts.

Is this really the case on your system? I've always had a shortcut to gnome-terminal on Mod4+T and I can't remember having any problems since I upgraded to Fedora 15.

"any" is a generalisation; more specifically, gnome-shell breaks per-window keyboard shortcuts. My Mod4+N for 'new terminal' and Mod4+R for 'run command' shortcuts worked fine, but Mod4+W for 'close window' and Mod4+X for 'toggle maximize' were broken.

Well. You could argue the Super key is not a Modifier key, afaik it was popularized as they "Windows" key, which when it became popular pressing it by itself caused the start menu to open, doing something similar to what one of the most popular operating systems (XP) gas done is at least not something unexpected to normal users.

That said, I switched back to Gnome 2 because I find Gnome 3 basically unusable for anything other than browsing the web in a single window.

Also, in case someone mistakes my point of view I should say I don't use windows nor like it at all.

You can change the activities/overview screen shortcut in the 'Shortcuts' tab of the keyboard settings panel. It's located under the 'System' category.

I personally chose win-space instead of just win.

The primary function of the Windows key has been to open the Start menu since the day it was introduced. The modifier key aspect of it was always secondary.

...but that's Windows, this is not. I don't see why Microsoft's mistakes should carry over.

On my keyboard, it's not even physically labeled as the "windows" key anway, it says "option" (or, if I didn't have things re-mapped, "command").

So has Microsoft broken the modifier function too?

My memory of Windows was that the Win key worked as global system modifier key. But it's been a while now...

In Windows tapping Win key opens Start menu, but holding it down allows it to be used as modifier. So opening Start menu is triggered by falling edge, if no other key was pressed in combination.

It works as a modifier if you press another key with it, else it focuses the Start Menu.

It was broken from the start, since it was introduced in conjunction with Win95 and at that point it was designed to trigger the Start menu with a single press.

AFAIK (and this[1] seems to back it up), the Windows key has always been used for system-wide shortcuts since it's introduction in Win95.

(I apologize for the historical artifact of a webpage linked below)

[1]http://members.fortunecity.com/buchta/PCTourCD/files/win/Ove...

I agree. I think a double-super (that's two super presses in a row) would have been much better, but would be less discoverable.

Never heard of the modifier key, but it sounds like a stupid idea. How are you supposed to discover that magic key?

I think the point of UIs is to make documentation superfluous. If I have to read about that key in the docs, the UI has failed.

The UI should tell it. For example the right-click menu, which shows possible actions, could tell you which one is called when modifier+clicking. Or maybe under the popover of the name of the app it oculd say "ctrl+click to open a new window".

Ctrl is a modifier key. You'd really prefer not to have Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, etc? Each to their own, I suppose.

Does Ctrl-C and so on not work in Gnome 3 anymore? Maybe I misunderstood what the OP was trying to say. I thought he meant a key that changes the menus.

Also Ctrl-C and so on are only keyboard shortcuts. Most "normal" people probably don't know about them.

I guess you're just misunderstanding the concept of the key. A modifier key is only modifying when you press something at the same time. So when you do alt-a, that's a modifier; when you just press and release, it does something else. Quite simple, I never had a problem with it.

I came really close to the same decision. But honestly: I like gnome-shell (not all of gnome 3, the totally mucked up dconf/gconf configuration mess in F15 is unforgivable).

Along with all the favorite gadgets, it also throws out a ton of crap. It just gets out of the way for the most part. The clean vertical desktop scrolling is actually a fantastic feature once you get used to it. Putting the status icon mess into a hot corner seems weird the first time, but I find I quickly got used to it and that it's a great way to save screen space. Likewise I don't need to dedicate screen space to a desktop switcher: swapping desktops via the top left hot corner can be done very accurately (after a little practice) with two quick flicks of the mouse. Dragging a window all the way to the side locks it down to a half-screen-maximized mode which duplicates almost exactly my preferred working environment and saves me a ton of fiddling.

Really, I think it's a keeper. It's got some serious maturity (though not stability) problems in Fedora 15 right now. I think the defaults for some of the settings are just wrong. But overall I like it.

I really like Gnome shell too, and I agree that there are a lot of settings that are just wrong by default... I have to change quite a few (many of which are stupidly hidden so I have to do it via gconf or a tweak application) each time I set up a computer with Gnome 3 to make it usable. And even then there are some design issues that totally ruin some parts of the user experience that I hope are fixed soon. For example, you can't shut down the computer. At least, you can't from the GUI without googling, and finding out about the secret key you have to hold to make the option appear. So they've gone and made an function that many users every day completely hidden and undiscoverable.

And when you complain, well, of course they can't change it because "it's in The Design", as if it was a document set on a stone tablet delivered from heaven...

This is going to be unpopular, I know. I'm a linux buff too, diehard fan since 1997.

BUT. One has got to admit the Windows 7 interface is great. I bought a new notebook that came with it and I gotta say, I wish Linux had ONE great interface and standard GUI programming API.

The Windows taskbar is one of the biggest reasons why I couldn't live with Windows. I tried (for the sake of my games), I really did. But the grouping behavior just puts me off. I can't live without text so I switched back to the old rectangular bar with text and an icon style instead of the square with icon style. But say I have two Explorer windows open. Both would be placed right next to each other and moving one moves the other. What if I want one that's less active on the left while I place the other one on the right with all the other related tasks that I'm actively working on? Can't do it. That "we chose how you will do things and that's that" attitude made me run back to Linux where I can do whatever I want. tint2 + conky + openbox is all I need. :)

You should try the 7 Taskbar Tweaker : http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker-v2-0 (with video demo)

It aloud you to reorder the tasks in any order, for example:

  [Chrome] [Notepad] [Chrome] [Word] [Exel] [Chrome] [Chrome] [Notepad]

I am using an old version with "Grouping\Don´tGroup" enabled. But the new version can create custom groups, that seams to be better.

P.S.: And if you miss the blinking network indicator in the systemtray, you can use the Network Activity Indicator: http://www.itsamples.com/network-activity-indicator.html

I was a Linux diehard too, but I got a Mac laptop and now most of the time I just use Linux through SSH or occasionally through a VM...

I still love it as a development environment (I even get to do kernel hacking at work sometimes) but I'm not as sold on it as a desktop OS as I used to be...

By "ONE" do you mean at least one, as in implying there are none right now. Or by "ONE" do you mean that you wish there would be one and only one GUI/DE for linux?

If it's the first, I would agree because I would willingly pay money to use the Windows 7 or even OS X interfaces in Linux. Essentially, I feel that while Linux has software I can't live without, there is not a single WM/DE out there that I can use without being annoyed every 20 minutes or without having to spend weeks configuring it. Gnome came closest before the gnome-shell move, now KDE is the closest but it's seriously still too buggy and "WTF" inducing. I'm not sure if it would be less work to remove all the "default/assumed" features from KDE (like the wallet that irritates me even when browsing websites) or to set up XFCE to some bearable degree from scratch.

Regardless, I'd still take this selection of environments that are all either ugly, time consuming to configure, buggy, or flat out annoying over having no choice at all. Even if the "no choice" option was really excellent, I would not like the thought of being stuck with it knowing that under some rare condition it might be useless and my only way out is a complete OS switch. Example: as much as I praise the windows 7 UI, I would hate to try and deal with it if I lost my ability to use a mouse. Meanwhile, I know there are nice options in the Linux world that I could use if this was the case.

Pretty much it boils down to my opinion that no interface is going to be good at every use case. And for that reason I'd rather have a slew of mediocre ones that span a broader range over a single one that covers a small spectrum but does it well.

I was in the same situation as you. I had been using mac and then bought a desktop PC and ran Linux. I tried awesome, xmonad, gnome, kde, etc but none of them were to my liking.

So now I run Windows 7, which is more option-full than you might think and develop on a virtual arch box via ssh/vim... It's the perfect setup in my opinion!

> I wish Linux had ONE great interface and standard GUI programming API.

Gnome2 was the de facto standard Linux desktop for probably a decade. Then it was abandoned overnight because the developers got simply bored with endlessly maintaining it for free. But exactly that, maintaining, polishing and evolitionary improving Gnome2 and letting an app and extension ecosystem slowly grow for the next 10-15 years, is what Linux desktop needs.

After decades of boasting "stability" over Windows, I think Linux desktop users are slowly starting to reckognize the real value behind a commercially long-term maintained "stable" API. Having a "free" desktop is in practice useless when there is no one willing to maintain it.

What? When I bought a new laptop (few months ago) which came with W7 too, it took it about an hour (on the first run) to install some vendor (HP) crapware, randomly popping up old-fashioned term windows running a lot of text, before I could use it, anyhow; it ended up with some… something. I didn't even know how to connect to my wifi, there were two very different (both in appearance and behavior) widgets for that, fighting each other. The interface was, on the first sight, very polished and rather nice, but after first few minutes, I started to spot things that looked like leftovers from Windows 98, most likely, they were. To actually do something, I had to download some 3rd parties software packages, none of them really fitted into the W7 environment. Three completely different fileselectors on the screen at one time? W7 problem too, obviously.

Well, I'm not making definite conclusions from what I saw, it was just something like 4 hours and I bought the laptop to use with Linux anyway, so I didn't really want to use Windows even if I liked them more than I actually did. But I really tried to approach it without prejudices and bias. And I really think that it's stuck in 1990's. 20 years before OS X and now even Gnome 3. Hey, it was even worse than Android!

  One has got to admit the Windows 7 interface is great.

Opinions. I hate the Windows Interface with a passion, the same goes for OS X, and I'm not too fond of G3 either. It's just needless clutter, completely pointless blingbling, bloat and is generally unusable.

I say that as someone who hasn't been on Linux for too long (about a year now), and slowly worked his way from Ubuntu 10.04 to a custom Arch Linux install running Xmonad, and I'm never going back to stacking WMs on my main machines. Ever. All they do is hinder productivity.

I've been using Gnome 3 for a few months now. When I started, people told me on Twitter to stick with it and that I'd grow to like it. I didn't. And after three months, I'm very tempted to turn on compat mode (something I avoid doing in most software I use)

Compat mode is still pretty crappy.

I'll second this very strongly. Compatibility mode is a shadow of what Gnome 2 used to be, and I've spent enough time using it at this point to feel pretty comfortable saying that.

(And if you do any work in a VM, you too will become very familiar with compatibility mode.)

So the same shitstorm that hit when the new Ubuntu interface came on is now hitting Gnome 3. I wish the Linux interface designers would realize that desktops are not tablets and that they should be making a super polished desktop interface and not trying to break everything down.

The good thing about Linux though is that in Linux you always have options. There is always another GUI. So I think linux should be able to survive this wrong turn relatively unscathed.

Heh. I agree. But while you're telling that to the Linux guys, remember to tell it to both the Windows 8 and OSX Lion designers as well.

Actually, I feel that while Win7 and Lion simplified things, they didn't really take many features away. Some Linux designers seem to confuse removing complexity with removing functionality. But then, this is Linux, so someone will add the functionality and complexity back in soon enough.

You are right. I just don't care much about what MS or Apple do with their UI's nowadays.

s/Linux interface designers/GNOME interface designers/

I don't think that KDE4 or Xfce, much less other alternatives, are moving towards a tablet-inspired interface.

Linus isn't the target audience for Gnome 3.

Enough said, let's move on.

Haha, I was so confused. I thought Red Hat Linux was dropping Gnome3 in favor of XFCE as the default GUI shell. A few minutes later reading through the whole G+ thread it became apparent that Linus, as an individual, has decided to use XFCE.

Well, good for him I guess? But how is that news?

I guess I am not the target audience either, but gnome2 remains my favorite desktop environment and once that is dropped from distros I will go another route, perhaps xfce but it does indeed have many shortcomings.

I'm guessing you say that because you expect him to be doing crazy magic developery things that normal people don't need, but the objections he raises seem to be about fairly "normal" uses (he uses the terminal as an example but presumably it's the same for any other app).

>Linus isn't the target audience for Gnome 3.

But who is the target audience for Gnome 3?

Here's one!

I like the Shell. I really do. And that's from someone that

- used (black|open)box for a loooong time

- dislikes KDE's gazillion settings and the bling it offers

I cannot point you to the single one killer feature. It just hits the sweet spot between good looking (subjective, of course) and usable (ditto).

My previous workflow on any platform has been tied to something that combines searching/launching. OS X? Quicksilver. Windows? Launchy, with Windows 7 the startmenu became useable as an alternative. Linux? Gnome Do.

It just comes natural now to hit super and start typing. I do understand the point of other commenters here about breaking this as a modifier key, but frankly - I never used it as such. Except for super + space to launch Gnome Do/Launchy/you see where I'm getting to.. I don't use tools that use weird (emacs, sorry, we're just not meant to be together) key combinations and I don't use composition to access accents/umlauts/special characters. Although I'm german and my keyboard layout is the US one.

So: Sure, there are rough edges. It's new. But some parts of the discussion here seem to be a mixture of real issues and a healthy dose of 'omg it's different'.

Exactly. Gnome3 tries to reduce the time you spend searching for icons+windows and/or sorting them. That's the most time consuming task for a desktop user. It makes total sense to improve on that. I'm also faster at finding an icon when I first need to show the activities bar, instead of looking for it in an always-visible taskbar.

How is that possible? Shouldn't the taskbar be faster to access? It's selective perception: The longer you stare at something, the less interest it holds for the brain. Example: You see 20 individual looking apples in front of you. Each has it's own shape/color. You sit in front of those apples for hours, you don't exactly recognise them during work. Focusing on them again and finding a specific one is going to take longer as if they were hidden from view and just pop into view each time you want one.

I would find the exact opposite faster. Looking at something I'm used to looking at is easy, and it'll help muscle memory to be persistent. I don't have to decide I want to change, then wait while my hand triggers the popup, then parse the shapes.

That's not to say that the popup isn't a good idea, but the only benefit I see is I screen space.

Interesting that he felt the need to change to either Gnome3 or XFCE. Why not keep using Gnome2 if it works for him? If enough people would keep using Gnome2 it probably could be forked like KDE3 was forked (although I'm not sure if Trinity actually survived)

With GNOME3, I really tried. I decided to give it some time to see if the workflow would sink in but after a month of using it, I reverted back to GNOME2. Using GNOME3 makes you feel like the developers have effectively decided how your desktop workflow should be. I'm quite disappointed with this trend towards a polished, "grandma-friendly" desktop.

As of now, I'm fine with GNOME2. Perhaps I will switch to something like XFCE in the future.

"I have yet to meet anybody who likes the unholy mess that is gnome-3." I like Gnome 3 (quite a bit), then again I don't know Linus.

On a another note, it seems every time he speaks he gets several hundred likes and yet he doesn't say anything particularly special/insightful compare to the other people in conversation (I found this somewhat humorous). :)

This seems to be the same for other uber-celebs who are posting on G+ (the only other person in his league of popularity who I read with any regularity would probably have to be Markus Perrson (aka @Notch), and it's the exact same thing for his posts.. although I also observe this on posts from Randall Munroe, Leo Laporte, etc).

When contrasted against twitter (which has the similar "pick who you want to follow" semantics), G+ has a more succinct ego-stroking mechanism for people who want to make their sycophancy more apparent (I kid, I kid.. sorta).

OTOH, I suppose, twitter has the retweet.

I really wanted to like Gnome 3 and gave it an extended trial run. I really like the gnome shell for the most part, overview mode, left dock, dynamic desktops. It felt right on my 14" 16x9 laptop screen. However, it took a serious hit in terms of power management and other laptop usability - no auto dim on battery? No exposed lid close event? No exposed power profiles? It also didn't feel nearly as good on my dual desktop monitors. A lot of what the shell does right is conserving real estate, but when you have a lot of it the extra room isn't so critical and you start missing some of the convenience.

I did absolutely hate it until I learned a number of keyboard shortcuts and how to launch applications by typing a few letters of what you want.

I am back with KDE 4.6 for now, but I am looking forward to giving it another try after they've polished it up a bit. I heard when it launched that august was a target for a point release.

Excuse me but what is Gnome3? I've been using Xubuntu and Xfce4 for a number of years now and have been really happy with it. Periodically I will try regular Ubuntu and Gnome just seems to have too many awkward issues. For example it insists on me having a desktop (preferable one full of icons and Excel spreadsheets). Even if I turn off icons on the desktop, I still must have the Desktop directory. Their file manager is also confused: it thinks I need help mounting network file systems. That's the job of things like Fuse and NFS, not of a GUI application. Things like this are the reason why I prefer not to spend too long using Gnome.

Gnome 3 doesn't force you to use the desktop as icons etc are disabled by default.

The persistent desktop directory is down to your distribution/XDG - check out ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to remove it.

As for "it thinks I need help mounting network file systems"; Could you clarify what you mean?

It includes the functionality to mount NFS/SMB/FTP shatlres and those options are a part of the UI. Now, like I said, I haven't used Gnome in a while, but I remember finding this somewhat frustrating since I know how to use the mount command. By contras, thunar is very simple in what it does and it does it well.

xfce4 is really awesome. I can vouch for it as well. If you need a productive, traditional desktop, then try it. The only thing I miss is the gnome samba mount options.

I always thought I was weird for liking XFCE more than Gnome. Sounds like I'm not and it's time to give Xubuntu a full-time shot, especially with Unity being the default in Ubuntu now.

I recently changed from Xubuntu to Mint XFCE and really like it:

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1725

Xubuntu is still an excellent choice though.

hey thanks - that was a really interesting find. However, it is a rolling distro based on Debian Testing. I hope that doesnt mean frequent instability.

Debian Testing is stable enough for the desktop. It should be fine, plus you don't get the inconvenience caused by upgrading every 6 months.

Gnome3 doesn't fail because of that - it fails because it doesn't alert the user and teach them the changes as they use Gnome3.

For example. I have Firefox running. I want another Firefox window, so I click the Firefox icon. At this point, why doesn't Gnome3 say "Hey! Just so you know, you've already got a Firefox window open, so we'll take you to that - but if you want a NEW Firefox window, click the logo again while holding down Control".

The last time someone tried that in a big way was MSOffice. Remember the paperclip? People's reaction was so violently negative everyone has been scared to try it again.

No that's not the same. The paperclip was something separate, on another part of the screen, that tried to "help" for absolutely everything, constantly, and again and again.

I'm suggesting something similar to what gmail does: when a new feature is launched you get a popup box near the new feature with an arrow pointing to the feature explaining two things:

1. What it does and why it would be useful

2. How to get rid of the popup box, but also how to get the info from the popup box again later if you need it.

meta-shift-enter = new terminal. Xmonad!

alt-enter = new teminal. http://i3wm.org/

[Any keystroke] -> New Terminal. [Any window manager worth it's salt]!

I've had ALT-F2 bound to New Terminal window for the past 12 years now, through half-a-dozen window managers. ALT-F1 is new browser, and I've got some preferred CTRL-ALT-arrow keys for moving around virtual desktops. Everything has configurable keys and has for a long time, though sometimes you have to create a one-line shell script to pop up a terminal, find your local menu editor, add that script, then give that menu entry a shortcut.

You can set keyboard shortcuts on Gnome 3. Though I prefer super-enter for launching gnome terminal (from my earlier ventures with awesome).

Seriously though...

Xmonad is entirely unlike Gnome, KDE, XFCE et al. And thank goodness because I don't like 'desktops', overlapping windows and what not. Xmonad and its brethren wms give me what I want out of a GUI.

With apologies to XKCD...

http://i.imgur.com/EB5K9.png

I recently switched to Xmonad and I must say that I really enjoy it.

Yes, tiling Window Managers are great. I do still run GNOME (2), I just swapped out the default window manager to something more to my liking.

As a designer, this kind of attitude is one of the many reasons I don't contribute to open-source projects. You can't touch anything without people complaining about change. Computers are very different than they were 20 years ago yet we're tied down to outdated interface principles. In Linux-land, we're expected to design for the way things have always been not the way they should be. It seems geeks are just as stubborn about change as everyone else.

Actually, I would be really interested on research done in this area. What are some modern UI concepts (apart from those oh so usable interfaces offered by this big fruit company)?

Are there any fresh concepts out there at all? I would really like to see what might be possible if somebody really starts developing something radically different and well suited for the novice computer user and the ubergeek at the same time.

Hiding complexity from the user might be one option, but there should be more ways to make use of the gui concept than just oversimplyfing things.

Exactly my thoughts. Once Gentoo drops gnome2 it's Xfce for me. I used it before on a low-powered laptop and it was nearly as good as gnome2, in some cases better.

I find it amusing that Linus finds what I consider annoying behavior more usable. Changing things up is always painful. I really hate clicking on Terminal and having something new pop up when I might just be trying to bring that application back into focus (to me 'one window' = 'one application' is a fallacy).

EDIT: Seriously though. People are making a big deal out of someone having a different opinion. Silly.

I'm confused.

> 'one window' = 'one application' is a fallacy

> hate clicking on Terminal and having something new pop up when I might just be trying to bring that application back into focus

Aren't those conflicting statements? The latter only occurs when the former is not considered a fallacy, no?

In a document-oriented switcher, the icon is the application, while the window is an open document (for a relaxed definition of 'document' when speaking about a terminal).

So clicking on the application icon will present the user with all documents opened by this application, hence will raise all of its windows, while modifier+clicking will create a new document.

That sounds to me like an application oriented switcher. The application is focused, not the document.

This has really annoying consequences in OS X where it trips me up all the time. For example, I open a pdf from within Safari. I finish reading and close it. I expect to be back in Safari: I'm not; I'm focused instead on a completely unrelated photograph that I'd opened ages ago and forgotten about.

Linux GUIs were traditionally all about documents. As they've tried to converge with Mac and Windows, they've become more about apps. IMO that's a shame, but there it is.

Like others have said, it's more about what the icon represents. A window (maybe a document) or an application. I prefer the application metaphor more than the window metaphor. I've come to like this since I don't always need to see all my windows to access a running application.

That said, there is plenty of other questioning that can arise like, does one close the application when all windows are gone? Tricky.

Gnome has been around, what, 10 years? If they are randomly changing behavior just because someone feeling it would be 'better', it indicates either nobody is using Gnome, or they don't care if anyone has been using Gnome. I don't see either Mac or Windows making these sorts of minor, workflow-breaking changes and just telling people to suck it up.

The changes are not "random", just because you don't know about the thoughts and testing that went into them.

Mac made a huge all-breaking change with Mac OS X. That only occurs every few years, but as you say, Gnome 2 is ten years old. Then Lion introduced all kinds of workflow-breaking changes, like the automatic spelling correction, the "overview mode" or whatever it's called, the reversed scrolling. And you have to suck it up that much more on Mac OS, because there's just no way to install a different version of the interface.

Two of those examples (spelling correction and reversed scrolling) are user configurable settings. Mission control I'd say is less of a workflow breaking change and more of the natural evolution of exposé & spaces.

I agree. I do find it odd that they are changing things in one direction rather than making it optional or spinning off another project. Personally, I look forward to change even now, since computers are far from perfect.

While we're at it, distros should upgrade KDE4 back to KDE3. I switched from KDE4 to Gnome 2 because KDE4 was so bad.

I can't get used to Gnome, can't get used to KDE4 (and while we're at it - also not to Windows 7). Maybe because I grew up with older Desktop Environments, but nothing even comes close to KDE 3.5.10 for me. Since I updated to Debian Squeeze which no longer used KDE 3.5 I've stopped being happy when working on my system :-( I'll have to check-out Trinity at some time, I'm just a little worried if that project has the man-power to really keep KDE 3.5 alive.

When was the last time you tried KDE4? I found that it was very unstable and buggy when I first tried it when it came out. Nowadays it seems stable (haven't had it crash anymore), and much less buggy (ie. normal level of bugginess).

> When was the last time you tried KDE4?

About a month or so ago.

> I found that it was very unstable and buggy when I first tried it when it came out.

My problem with it isn't bugginess, it's that they'd removed the existing UI and replaced it with new stuff that worked differently. This means that I no longer know where to find stuff (e.g. for configuration).

Also some of the new interface I really don't like, e.g. they have replace the main menu with a scrolling menu that only shows a few options at a time, so I have to scroll up and down to see all the options. This "feature" on its own is one I dislike so much that I will not willingly use this interface.

I think its time someone provided an alternative to the big two, GNOME and KDE. They have been around a long time and I guess reached their pinnacle. A nice, lightweight, intuitive environment minus all the fuss and cpu hog would be welcome by many I guess.

Xfce?

Yes, that's one of the options. With Linus now adopting it, guess more will follow !!

Linus wants a new terminal to pop up when he hits the terminal icon? That's pretty old-school behavior. OSX and Windows have long moved away from it. I don't use Gnome3, but hitting cmd+n or cmd+t when I want a new terminal doesn't seem to bother me much.

That behaviour makes sense for a lot of applications sure but for stuff like terminals it is really annoying.

Why isn't it possible to configure that on a per-launcher basis?

It will be eventually, but the default behaviour is the most important thing to get right.

Configurability being added to Gnome?

Ha!

I spent a few years using OS X, and clicking on some corner of some terminal somewhere and hitting Cmd-N to get myself a fresh terminal (or clicking somewhere on the desktop and hitting Cmd-N to get a fresh file-manager window) was so convenient that even in GNOME 3 I have Super-N bound to 'new terminal window'.

Linus is right. "Old school" or no, a new window for apps like terminal is exactly the right behavior. At least for my workflow it is: I want a shell right now, and I'll throw it away when I'm done.

I worked around this by binding Ctrl-Alt-T to spawn a gnome-terminal (likewise Ctrl-Alt-E to launch a new emacs window). Happily that key customization UI survived the transition to gnome 3.

Here's the kicker: there isn't one right way to make it work. Gnome 3 is basically changing to fit with how other recent desktop environments have behaved like OS X. Of course people will bitch but it's no less right or wrong. Maybe just unpolished.

I'm cool with the OS X behavior because I have an icon on the finder toolbar that spawns a new shell in the directory the finder window is showing.

How do I download it?

http://code.google.com/p/cdto/

I actually didn't know about that one, thanks.

I used ShellHere, but I see this page has some additional information for tabs: http://maururu.net/2007/enhanced-open-terminal-here-for-leop...

for the do it yourself types:

1. open AppleScript Editor

2. put this script in it:

  tell application "Terminal"
  	activate
	do script ""
  end tell

3. Save as an Application (probably in your Application folder)

4. (optional) replace the icon by ctrl-clicking the new Application and selecting "Show Package Contents". Navigate to Contents >> Resources and change the applet.icns to something more pleasing. Maybe copy the actual terminal icon.

5. put this icon in your doc and always get a new window when clicking it.

Both terminal and iTerm require a right click to spawn a new terminal for me. I'd love it if I could left click the dock icon and get a new terminal with my hom directory as the working directory.

tensor - see my reply to redacted - no right click needed

And its a major complaint I have with OSX, haha.

This is not the behavior of Windows.

Only items permanently pinned to the task bar exhibit this behavior. Pinning an item to the task bar (where running applications are displayed) just keeps its icon there permanently. On the other hand, in the start menu (perhaps similar to the activity menu? I haven't used Gnome3 with this new set up, yet.) even the pinned and recently used items, when clicked, open a new application.

I'm not sure what you mean - clicking a runing app on the Win7 taskbar just brings the window to the front, like GP said.

Perhaps I misunderstood what the OP had an issue with. I perceived it as, when you attempt to run an application from a large, collective menu of all applications, if an instance is running, it would go to that instance, instead of starting a new one. This is not the way it is in Windows.*

If the OP declared that clicking a running application opened the running application, then yes, that has been the way it is for a while now, but it was that way in Gnome2, so I suspect this is not the case.

* added this sentence in edit.

re: Windows and OSX moving away from it - really? Apart from some exceptions on Win7 clicking an icon brings up a new instance. Exceptions like media player are...exceptions, and at the application's discretion. Unless I'm mis-understanding something you're saying.

I believe he was referring to the Windows 7 taskbar behaviour.

Aaaah, OK. Unfortunately because of corporate firewall policies I wasn't able to read the original post to understand the context.

I'm much happier since I abandoned both Gnome and KDE, and went with StumpWM instead.

I've been using tiled window managers for 7 years now (currently on awesome, which I switched 3 years ago) and the interface has always remained pretty consistent. I wonder if Linus has tried tiled WMs?

Someone just needs to desktopize Honeycomb even more and port it to x86. It shouldn't be too hard to make it work better than the mess KDE and GNOME are at this point.

That someone should be Intel and AMD I think - if they put their money we could really see some hope for Linux on Desktop via Tablets. Real threat to Microsoft if they can make it work great on both platforms.

I fail to see the point.

The people that complain the most here are those that seem to fall into the "poweruser" category. That instead move off to a inferior (my view) DE like xfce just to keep their muscle memory or leave for tiling window managers, a completely different wm strategy.

Why do you think that these people would love working with Android as OS/DE? It seems to me that Android is much _worse_ for them - and falls exactly into the 'We don't want something that seems to be made for tablets, we want a productive work environment' line of complaints?

Edit: Oh, and let me add a snarky comment regarding 'That someone should be Intel': No, if you like to have a nice integrated environment that differs from current DEs and is tablet friendly, than Intel would be happy to see you using MeeGo, on a 'real' Linux stack.

Yeah, MeeGo is going everywhere. Snark aside I wasn't saying use Android as is on Desktops if you read what I wrote. It is already somewhat desktop-ish and would need to be made more so but I don't see why that would be hard to do.

> It shouldn't be too hard to make it work better than the mess KDE and GNOME are at this point.

Yeah, I bet you could build that in a weekend...

Thanks for putting the exact timeframe on it. Super useful to understand it in weekend for modifying something existing vs what do you think 4 weeks for fixing GNOME or KDE? :p

Today's Dilbert is made for exactly this situation :-) http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-08-04/

I switched from puppy-525 default desktop to xfce - what an awsome os!

Can you please refer the link where Linus says anything about XFCE? The link you provided doesn't say anything about Linus dumping Gnome3 to switch to xfce. It just says he doesn't like Gnome3 and wants Gnome2 back.

Just read the whole thing, it's in there, and then it degenerates even further into wanking over whose WM is superior.

I try hard to stick to XFCE, but after every update, ubuntu replaces thunar with nautilus

I miss my CPU/RAM/NIC monitor. :c

CPU:0.001% RAM: 7/10GB NIC: 1TB/s

Remember that time we went to 100% for 1 week and overcame a process you couldn't kill?

10ve,

p.c.

I missed that too. Now I have found an extension, which is not yet in yum, but it's not too hard to install following the instructions in the README.

https://github.com/paradoxxxzero/gnome-shell-system-monitor-...

I didn't know there was none in Gnome 3. That's a dealbreaker, I think it's an essential app(let).

I predict the next Hacker News posting on Linus will be titled something like "Linus wipes his ass". Oh wait, we've already had that one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2372096

Seriously though, who cares? Let's see postings from Linus about why he designed the Linux kernel the way he did or why git's command line interface is so damn unintuitive (this coming from a hardcore git fan before you downvote me). But posting submissions for every silly opinion he has reduces us to preteen groupies following every move of the latest teenage heartthrob.

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