Hacker News Reader

Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully this is just like the Ubuntu "switch" to avconv instead of ffmpeg. A stupid mistake quickly fixed in the next release. avconv and gnome-text-editor might be "cleaner" and mesh better with modern GNOME's copied Apple design principles but they can't do the same tasks easily so they're not real replacements.

Nothing GNOME has done since 2014 has improved gtk or their desktop environment (except for high dpi support). It's all been downhill.

View on HN

Sometimes I feel a little bit for not giving Gnome 3 a fair chance, but I just never got into it. GNOME 2 was, to me, the peak of Unix desktop environments, and I was rather sad when the devs moved on to GNOME 3.

Then I discovered MATE and was very happy because a) it showed me I was not the only one to feel that way about GNOME 2 and 3 respectively, and b) I could retain the comfort of GNOME 2.

I couldn't really tell if GNOME 3 is good or not, because I have not spent enough time to figure it out. Maybe I will one day, but I'm perfectly happy with MATE, so unless something changes drastically, I'll stick with it for the foreseeable future.

The only thing in common to all of the desktop environments and platforms out there is that they have users like this for whom some old version was the "last good version".

I feel like GNOME 41 was the best GNOME for me, it looked great and was functional. But the GNOME 42 UI looks much worse imo and has replaced great stock apps with less functional alternatives, namely terminal -> console.

Removing features is the GNOME development power play. By version 69 it's just going to be a shutdown button you can't use without a mouse.

Gnome community means RH/IBM business essentially, they are not the same but came on the same cultural boat, as a result they try to build things to sell, buildings powerless users instead of encouraging learning end evolution. That's is.

Something good was and is done, in a rush of crappy design ideas just to make commercial product as some manager imaging them.

The main issue unfortunately is another: lacking of proper clean and effective desktop GUIs libs aside Qt/G[TD]k witch makes newcomers feeling old systems styles when they see "alternative" WMs/DEs

Gnome 2 was best though I'm quite happy with KDE now.

KDE's efforts to clean up styling and polish rough edges over the last few years has put it in a really good spot.

It's about appealing to broader market. Missy people have no idea what ffmpeg is and even if they did, there is no way they can productively use it.

Gnome is clearly a lot better for beginners than it ever was. And locking down the theming will make life significantly easier for developers.

And it’s still easy for medium/advanced users to sub in their preferred applications instead of the defaults.

That’s how it should be. Easy defaults for beginners and non experts and easy ways for expert users to sub in their preferred options.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com