Ubuntu Moves Away From GNOME 514
An anonymous reader writes "It's official: Ubuntu has, with its ironically named 'Unity' interface, chosen to move away from GNOME for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. Or at least move away from GNOME Shell. Mark Shuttleworth says that Ubuntu will still be 'GNOME,' even if it's not using GNOME Shell. Do you agree?"
Bye bye (Score:2, Interesting)
Do i agreee? Do whatever works. (Score:3, Interesting)
The times when i used not-the-standard-configuration-of-whatever distribution i installed to save memory are gone with my last laptop below 512MB of Ram. If Canonical thinks its easier to maintain it in a different way, fine with me. If it does'nt work i can tune, switch, get into the details and fix it. Until that point i would be happy not to figure out about changes......
If they do weird things, i am happy to use debian again.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnome Shell - YES, I have tried this in Beta - is a real drag.
KDE4 was a cock-up. It's taken, what? 2 years to get back to everyday, usable? Gnome is great. The Gnome Shell will only take 1 year to do the same.
I don't know about Unity. But Gnome shell is a productivity / usability killer.
Example: Gnome Application Menu in the current Panel. Sure, it doesn't scale when you have 30 audio applications and as many "Internet" apps. But Gnome Shell? Only a handful available - in a non scrolling, apparently unconfigurable "top-ten" or so. None of which I chose to be displayed. Hey? Where'd WebHTTRack go?
About time. (Score:0, Interesting)
Gnome has held GNU/Linux back for nearly 10 years now.
GNOME is going downhill (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't blame distributions for not following the GNOME project in all their technical decisions - some parts of GNOME are (and continue to be) neat, but several, particularly those bits tied with Mono and other attempts to wear Microsoft's leash, are lousy (plus some bits duplicate functionality better done elsewhere, e.g. Empathy over Pidgin).
GNOME is still a pretty decent development environment, and there are a lot of nice applications that use the GNOME libraries. Still, there's no reason distros need the detault GNOME desktop to run them, and people/distros can be perfectly happy taking GNOME components and standards piecemail.
Re:Natty Narwhal? (Score:2, Interesting)
>>>Names are much easier to google than version numbers
???
what?
http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+10.10 [google.com]
http://www.google.com/search?q=mac+os+10.3 [google.com]
http://www.google.com/search?q=mac+os+10 [google.com]
That wasn't difficult at all. In fact it was extremely easy, and I didn't have to remember if 10.10 == busty brassiere or Mac OS 10.3 == ugly unicorn, or whatever.
Re:Natty Narwhal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just wait for Orgasmic Octopus.. it's everywhere you want it to be..
Re:Aero (Score:3, Interesting)
1) The last update to AmigaOS 4.1 was just 5 months ago. It doesn't seem to be dead.
2)
Still alpha, though.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
So you are upset that KDE is not a copy of basically Windows XP/MacOS/Solaris/every other GUI?
How far we have come. When I started using linux, the complaint was that KDE was "just" a badly implemented copy of windows.
If I could get last pass to work with Konqueror, I would drop Chromium. That - and handbrake - are the only non-kde program that I daily use.
Isn't this the point of FOSS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Aero (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you kidding, not aware of AROS and ReactOS, or just commenting on how they both still have a ways to go?
Assuming the second, check these out(and possibly contribute, if you want to help speed development):
(1) AROS Research Operating System [sourceforge.net] - The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas.
(2) React Operating System [reactos.org] - ReactOS® is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows-NT® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture.
The blurbs next to each link are quoted from the homepages of AROS and ReactOS, respectively, and are not my personal opinion.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, Gnome's stock look is visually similar to the interface of MacOS while KDE's stock look is similar to Windows, but even there the resemblance is pretty superficial for both.
I think I like Gnome better, but I'm not sure how much of that is "KDE isn't as good" vs. "Canonical doesn't put together Kubuntu releases as well as core Ubuntu", since most of my recent KDE/Gnome comparison have been Kubuntu v. Ubuntu.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is that people still bitch about KDE4 as if it still was stuck on 4.0. Mac OS X 10.0 was a pile of shit. Gnome 2.0 was shit. Windows Vista -- somehow, people stopped bitching about Vista when service pack 1, AKA Windows 7, came out. Some people have forgotten even how bad Gnome 2.0 was.
KDE? Oh, it's become pretty damn good in a very short time, works fine out of the box and you can configure it to hell and back if you don't like it. But people simply can't forgive the project for doing the same thing that Steve "can do no wrong" Jobs did with OS X 10.0: released too early. Hypocrites.
Don't freak (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't mind change. (Score:4, Interesting)
I really *want* to like KDE, but every time I try it, it is always broken. Take 4.5 for example. They finally have the desktop to a pretty stable level, and then for some reason decided to rewrite Kwin from the ground up, and caused a severe performance regression. It's not as noticeable on new hardware, but on an older machine it means not being able to play 720p HD movies without major performance issues. The same machine runs 720p just fine under Gnome.
After using KDE4.5 for a week, I uninstalled it and went back to Gnome. It might be plain looking, but it works. I really hope that Gnome Shell doesn't carry a lot of this sort of baggage.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Gnome, because most of the programs I use tend to work better in it. I'm a bit compulsive with making things look the way they should.
KDE is, IMO, a knockoff of Windows (though I haven't used it much since 4.0 came out).
Gnome is also like Windows, but with a few things that make it more Mac-like. I can figure out both of them, but for me, Gnome "just works" and has fewer bugs.
Ubuntu who? (Score:1, Interesting)
Who really cares what Ubuntu does or threatens to do. I've moved my lot to Linux Mint and am delighted that they are getting off the Ubuntu bandwagon and going with Debian. Life could not be simpler and more easily lived than on Linux Mint LMDE 10.
Re:I agree... (Score:4, Interesting)
The people running the Gnome project are planning a radical shift from the current UI to something called "Gnome-Shell". Ubuntu is apparently not sold on this dramatic redesign, so instead they'll be going their own way with a UI that is, in some ways, closer to the current UI.
I don't really see how Unity is much closer to the current UI. It looks just as much a "we have a totally new idea on how to break stuff again!" thing as Gnome Shell is.
Re:And this is why people stick with other OSes (Score:3, Interesting)
He said that if you do a Ubuntu 9.10 > 10.04 upgrade, the result looks very different from a fresh 10.04 install... even if you made no tweaks to the original 9.10.
That has been my experience, as well. Now I always do a full reinstall so that everything is as it is intended to be.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
So you are upset that KDE is not a copy of basically Windows XP/MacOS/Solaris/every other GUI?
How far we have come. When I started using linux, the complaint was that KDE was "just" a badly implemented copy of windows.
Is there something wrong with the Common User Access [wikipedia.org] interaction design lineage? The very reason the document was put forth was to reduce user ramp-up time learning a new product.
WordPerfect 5, on the other hand, was a shining example of how to confuse the hell out of a new user by not working remotely like anything else out there. I used it for quite some time, even wrote applications with its macro language, and still couldn't get by without a key binding cheat sheet.
On the other hand, you could actually see begin and end tags in its Reveal Codes mode, and if you were willing to sink enough time and brain cells into it, it was wickedly powerful, so in some sense they were optimizing for the dedicated power user at the expense of the casual user.
On the gripping hand, for ~500 USD in the early nineties, perhaps they were right to expect a highly dedicated power user.