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Comment by danford | Hacker News Reader

The GNOME Devs did the right thing though. They are open source so the community can fork anything they want and there are plenty of other really similar DEs. Ubuntu and GNOME can't compete with modern UIs without making something that's multi-platform oriented. I believe GNOME 3 and Unity actually have the right ideas when it comes to convergent interfaces, whereas Microsoft just basically gives you two UIs. Traditional interfaces are great for traditional computers, but to compete with the big dogs, which is, I think, what Canonical and GNOME (to a lesser extent) want to do, they need to create interfaces which can work on anything.

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What will happen to GNOME if it does not successfully compete with the big dogs? Nothing. It does not compete with the big dogs now, has never done so, and - whatever convergent multiplatforming it may do in the future - is unlikely ever to do so. And yet it is still a viable project.

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.

>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?

> Believe it or not, when you design an interface you're competing with the other people who are doing the same thing.

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.

The one thing I dislike is that those of us who were using GNOME 2 lost our desktop environment for a long time. There should have been an attempt to keep the old DE going. I'm now using Mate on Linux Mint and am very happy.

This, by the way, is a sentiment directly addressed and validated in the video I linked.

Gnome 3 is, on the other hand, a very good alternative for those that hated Gnome 2, which is the crowd I fall in.

Gnome 3.8 added Classic Mode back: https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.8/

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.

> 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.

Gnome 2.32 was released in September 2010. Gnome 3.8 was released in March 2013. That's 3 years that a decent Gnome 2 replacement didn't exist. You don't have to drop 2.x support during development on 3.x.

Classic mode sucks. I'm using it right now because I can't arsed tinkering with this particular Ubuntu install, but here's what I found in 30 seconds:

-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!

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