GNOME 3.13.3
blogs.gnome.org
blogs.gnome.org
https://fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/gnome3_outreach/
It clarifies a lot of thing and is a bit of a post-mortem of all major switches that Gnome has ever done from a community perspective.
This is a thought-terminating justification for anything.
Point being, even GNOME 3 (or Unity...) levels of vocal online user hate don't necessarily mean that a meaningful percentage of the user base actually dislikes the changes. Feedback should always be read and reflected on, just not followed slavishly. If you just try to avoid Internet hate from users, you'll never change anything, and even that philosophy will garner you a continuous stream of heated forum posts about how nothing ever changes.
It's kind of like reading Yelp reviews. In the aggregate, they help some places stand out from the crowd, but they're still not any sort of objective judgement on the place being reviewed. You always have to think about where the reviewer is coming from and take that into account. For example, dumbasses who go to some incredibly popular and trendy restaraunt at 7:30pm on Friday without reservations, and then post negative reviews because they had to wait too long for a table. Well, duh. In the software world, the equivalent would be complaints about a piece of software not being just like X (where X could be a previous version, or some competitor), when in fact your entire goal is to create something unlike X. If someone wants X and you're making Y, then have to take "Y sucks because it's not X!" complaints with a massive grain of salt. It still doesn't mean you ignore those complaints (maybe Y was a bad idea?), but you wouldn't be doing anyone any favors by doing the most common Open Source thing, which would be to either say, "oh well, I guess we'll stop making Y and just make another X instead", or (even worse, and sadly even more common), "I know, we'll make everyone happy by making something that's both an X and a Y! We can just put a checkbox in the settings!"
People who want to do, and can do, don't have to justify anything.
If what you want is to do the right thing (rather than a more concrete goal) then instead of (pseudo)accepting objections to your decisions as inevitable and to be ignored, why not address them individually, and on their merits? Let's pretend that the world is complex, and there's something left for all of us to discover about human behavior and what's easier, harder, and more productive for people.
This isn't the beverage or toilet paper industry. Niche products - especially ones like GNOME that don't have to "sell" or turn a profit - have a demonstrated way of living on.
There may be good arguments for what GNOME has been doing, but the need to compete (with largely imaginary competitors imho) is not one of them.
But it is though. If this is your philosophy I would love to see some of your crappy projects. Believe it or not, when you design an interface you're competing with the other people who are doing the same thing.
I'm sorry you dislike GNOME, but your comment adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.
If I was going to make a search engine I would make it with google in mind. If I was going to make a social network I would make it with facebook in mind. I don't care what twisted way you want to frame your argument, it's incorrect. GNOME 3 and Unity do compete with Microsoft whether you their competition is a real threat or not.
Do you not think Apple competes with Microsoft? Do you not think internet explorer competes with chrome?
Sure, and when you're designing a $100k sports car you're competing with the people who are designing a $20k utility truck.
> If I was going to make a search engine I would make it with google in mind. If I was going to make a social network I would make it with facebook in mind.
You'd probably make a shitty search engine/social network then. There is no reasonable way you could beat Facebook/Google at their own game by "having them in mind" as your main design rationale.
There are millions of devices sold with Apple/MS software on them EVERY DAY. The goals these products have in mind (for Apple, for example, that includes converting users to stay in their ecosystem, use iTunes, iMessage, iCloud, etc.) have nothing to do with the problems KDE and Gnome aim to solve. Unless you're saying that the goal of Gnome/KDE is to displace that? Because if so, for the past 10 years, we have been FURTHER away from that goal every single year.
There's a reason why LXDE and friends have been gaining in popularity. There is a demand for lightweight, straightforward environments that just work, even on super old hardware. Gnome and KDE are just relics of a very, very different past, and at this point their death is inexorable.
Source: I am a former Gnome contributor.
Gnome 3 is, on the other hand, a very good alternative for those that hated Gnome 2, which is the crowd I fall in.
It's important to understand that this isn't just "Gnome 2," but actually full Gnome 3 underneath with all the benefits that contains. That's why just continuing with Gnome 2 was a non-starter.
There wasn't enough time to maintain the existing Gnome 2, but there was enough time to create an entirely new desktop environment? I don't think that's possible.
The reason Gnome 2 was a non-starter was because developing a new DE is a lot of fun, and maintaining an old DE is not.
It's their choice, of course, but let's not pretend that abandoning Gnome 2 was anything other than a desire to work on something new.
-Taskbar cannot be resized (!)
-Systray widgets cannot be added, moved or removed
-The entire concept of a "panel" is gone.
Gnome 2 was extremely flexible. Gnome 3's "Classic Mode" is more like Microsoft Windows, although even Windows lets you resize the taskbar!
I get pissed off everytime Firefox updates and things break, aren't in the same place, have to be reexamined, disabled, enabled, whatever. Using ever-changing sites like youtube is just a nightmare.
I've switched pretty much all of my workflow on Linux to terminal software. I'm confident that programs like mutt and emacs will be essentially identical 10 years from now. Struggling with/rediscovering interfaces all the time just isn't on my list of things to do. I would prefer if developers invested some thought into it and got it mostly right the first time.
Could you please rephrase/clarify?
I have a similar issue on X11 since Gnome 3.6 or 3.8 (can't remember exactly) where when dragging windows, the window is moving a bit behind on where it should be relative to the cursor.
Feels smooth rather than crisp as it was previously, but it also feels like my CPU is playing catchup although it isn't.
I hope your comment was sarcasm! :)
I meant precisely that. I believe it has to do with difficulties synchronizing the X Server with the compositor. Wayland eliminates this by making the compositor the server.
Nothing in my comment was sarcasm...
I think it started happening when they announced this frame-perfect timing/rendering system. Solved a tearing problem but introduced a lag problem :) I guess you're right though, the lag problem should be solved with Wayland.
Oddly, I hear this may work on Wayland, but not on X11...